Dumuzid dreams raptors prey on his flock, his hearth fire's doused, his churns knocked over; he lies dead.
His sister Jestinana interprets it: "Manhunters will kill you; you must flee." He does, across the known world...
The hero Gilgamesh troubles his city till he dreams the gods will send him a best friend & lover, Enkidu...
CAUTION: SEX
Sargon, a delivery man, dreams the Goddess drowns the King in a river of blood. He wakes and tells the King...
A winged god whose body's a wave urged me to do... what? I couldn't understand him! I woke...
A scribe with a shining stylus listed stars; an architect gave me plans and a brick-mold. I woke
again! My dream had clarified itself. So I built the temple shown me, aligned with those stars...
Jacob dreams of angels climbing to heaven. He meets God, who promises
the Holy Land to him and his tribe. Jacob uncritically accepts...
Joseph as a teen dreams sheaves of his brothers' grain bow to his; then the sun, moon & stars bow to him.
Eleven years later, in prison, Joseph interprets two cellmates' dreams as premonitory, and gets both right.
Two years later, he interprets two bizarre dreams troubling the Pharaoh, thus saving Egypt from famine...
CAUTION: BRONZE AGE FUN! NEAR-FRATRICIDE, SLAVERY, EXECUTION, FORCED MARRIAGE...
Liu Bang's mom dreams a spirit is making love to her. Her husband sees the spirit is a dragon! Her baby grows up to found the Han...
Yi Yin's mom dreams a spirit warns "if water pours from your mortar, run!" She does, and survives a flood, to help found the Shang...
CAUTION: LIKELY JUST FOLKLORE
Thutmoses napped in the shade under the Great Sphinx--then buried to the neck in sand.
The resident sun-god complained of the sand; "the throne is yours if you'll clear it off..."
Hecuba dreams she gives birth, not to a child but a flaming torch! But she lets Paris live...
CAUTION: MORAL NO-WIN SITUATION
I dreamt an eagle slaughtered my twenty geese. I wept until he spoke to me: "Take heart! I am thy husband..."
As his reign begins, King Solomon worries he's inadequate. He dreams
God offers him one gift, of his choice--but what would help the most?
Ethiopian records say Solomon and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, had a son who stole
the Ark of the Covenant! Solomon dreamt of the theft but didn't check til it was too late...
Nebuchadnezzar dreams a voice from heaven commands a great tree be cut;
Daniel interprets this as a prediction the king will go mad for 7 years...
After 20 years without a child, Maya dreams devas carry her to a holy lake, wash her...
and then an elephant carrying a lotus flower enters her right side. She knows it means...
CAUTION: DREAM OMITS TINY DETAIL--IMMINENT DEATH
Suddhodana dreams of great upheavals; no courtier can interpret the dream.
An ascetic claims the upheaval will be for the good, then... turns into an owl?!
CAUTION: PERHAPS NOT ENTIRELY ACCURATE
Croesus dreamt his heir Atys was slain by an iron blade; he locked them all in the armory. But Atys went
hunting; his guard Adrastus's spear went astray. Did Fate kill Atys, or superstition rattling poor Adrastus?
Gopa dreams the earth shakes, stars and meteors fall. She's naked, her marriage bed is broken, her husband
Siddhartha's treasures lie scattered. He says "How auspicious!"--and prepares to abandon her and their son...
CAUTION: SEXISM
I'm gigantic, stretching from Ceylon to Tibet. Grass grows from my navel to heaven.
Worms crawl on me. Birds flock to me and change color. I climb a mountain of dung...
CAUTION: PIOUS MISINTERPRETATIONS
I saw a boy beating a qilin [Chinese unicorn] with a willow branch, hurting its left leg. I scolded
him and wrapped the leg in grass. In gratitude it spat up three books! I studied them diligently...
Xerxes twice dreams a god orders him to attack Greece. So he asks his uncle to dream of the god to confirm...
A huge gold cup was stolen from the Temple of Hercules. Sophocles thrice dreamt Hercules named the thief...
Wei Linggong was an autocrat heeding only one minister. A dwarf bravely told him "I dreamt
you were no imperial sun warming all, just a stove, and your crony hogs all your warmth..."
The night before he met his greatest student, Plato, Socrates dreamed he nursed a baby swan who grew...
I dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering about, content with my lot. Suddenly I awoke and was Chuang-tzu again...
I was barren. I asked Asklepios, God of Healing, to make me pregnant. Soon I was--for 3 years, until...
DAY: while traveling, Zhuangzi found a skull. Wondering how it had lived and died, he slept on it.
DREAM: the skull answered him! It told of death, which the skull found preferable to mortal life...
Liu Bang's mom dreams a spirit is making love to her. Her husband sees the spirit is a dragon! Her baby grows up to found the Han...
Yi Yin's mom dreams a spirit warns "if water pours from your mortar, run!" She does, and survives a flood, to help found the Shang...
CAUTION: LIKELY JUST FOLKLORE
Wei Linggong was an autocrat heeding only one minister. A dwarf bravely told him "I dreamt
you were no imperial sun warming all, just a stove, and your crony hogs all your warmth..."
Bo Ji, a minor concubine in the early Han court who'd never even met
the Emperor, dreamt a dragon slept in her lap. Next night the Emperor
summoned her; the child they conceived became one of China's best rulers...
A traveler dreams his friend's attacked, but he ignores it. Next he dreams his friend begs him to at least avenge him...
Plutarch says Caesar dreamt of sex with his mother; it was interpreted as "you'll take the motherland". So he crossed the Rubicon...
But Suetonius says he dreamed it way earlier, at age 33, after seeing a shrine to Alexander (who died at 33); Julius felt inferior...
CAUTION: INCEST; DREAM USED FOR PROPAGANDA
Dream-skeptic Cicero dreamed a youth descended from heaven on a golden chain.
The next day he first met Octavius, and exclaimed "but there is the actual boy I dreamed of!"
The boy became Augustus Caesar, presiding over Rome's golden age...
The night before Caesar's assassination, he dreamed he flew above the clouds and met Jupiter;
his wife Calpurnia dreamed he'd be stabbed, and begged him not to go out, but politics...
Augustus was ill, but a friend's dream prompted him to leave his tent before Brutus's assassins...
After murdering his mother, Nero dreams he's losing control: ships drift, statues chase him, and his own tomb says...
Vespasian dreamed he and his family would rise only when Emperor Nero lost his teeth.
The next day, a surgeon happened to show Vespasian a tooth he'd just extracted from...
Resistance fighter Josephus, cornered, took a hard look at his prophetic dreams and decided to make peace...
Two boys dream robed figures climb in the window to cut their hair--and find, awake, someone has. While Pliny...
As a boy, my family urged me to aim low and follow our trade: stonecarving. I dreamt two strong women fought
over me, a grubby sculptor and an elegant writer. I sided with the writer, and she let me ride in her flying chariot...
A man dreamed he was the River Xanthus at Troy. I interpreted it to mean he'd bleed for years, but not die of it...
Natalius dreamed that angels whipped him for joining a heretic cult, and woke to find welts on his back...
Facing death the next day in a Roman arena, Perpetua dreams of the spiritual duel behind the physical one...
A murder case. But the suspect had gone to an interpreter and told of an ominous dream.
The investigator saw its strange images might be puns, naming the real killer--and they did...
Gennadius re-dreams a previous dream, helping him see he's dreaming. His guide points out spiritual implications...
At 17, Xiao Dao dreamt he rode a black dragon as the sun set. A dream interpreter said sunset
meant the end of the Liao Song dynasty, and that Xiao Dao would rise to found the next dynasty...
DREAM: Lu's best friend had to go away. They composed poems on the sadness of parting...
DAYS LATER: Lu learned that on the night of his dream, his friend had been killed in an uprising...
The Emperor dreamt he was eating dirt. He feared it was a metaphor for
death. Wrong. No metaphor! Soon after, his enemies suffocated him in dirt...
CAUTION: BRUTAL
The Emperor dreamt a monster hedgehog terrorized his city. On waking, he ordered the slaughter of
every hedgehog in town. People started seeing him as the killer hedgehog! Soon he was deposed...
On a hunt, Guntram took a nap. His courtier saw a snake emerge from his mouth; it tried to cross a creek. The
courtier lay his sword out like a bridge, and the snake crossed, climbed a hill, and went in a hole. It returned
and crawled in Guntram's mouth. He woke and said "I was crossing a river on a great iron bridge..."
King Ethelfrid bribes Redwald to turn over his guest, Edwin. Edwin dreams an angel warns him, swearing to save him if
he'll convert. Redwald's wife tells him "Don't betray a guest." Once Edwin's king, that dream-angel demands his fealty...
CAUTION: SHODDY SPIRITUAL BARGAINING
Fursa the preacher, sick, dreams flaming devils & angels are trying his case; one
failure to coax a deathbed repentance gets him scorched. He wakes with burns...
CAUTION: DREAM HAS PHYSICAL EFFECTS
Caedmon can't sing. But he dreams an angel makes him try. Soon he's the first great English poet and singer...
Hilda, founder of two monasteries, dies in one. Begu, in the other, 13 miles away,
dreams Hilda's been taken to heaven. She tells her sisters. Messengers arrive...
Egbert decides to go convert the Germans. A brother monk dreams twice that God wants Egbert in Scotland, but he
sails--and nearly drowns. At last he gives in. Another monk sails to Germany. Two years later he returns defeated...
CAUTION: STUBBORN MONK, DEITY, AND GERMANS
Li Bai's mother dreams of Venus shining, and names her unborn son Bai, 'white'. She dreams he'll ride a
red dragon, too: greatness, but what kind? Li Bai when young dreams the answer: his brushpen flowers!
twin dreams predicting their children and nation will prosper.
Ragnhild sees a lovely tree rooted in her pain and blood;
Halfdan sleeps with pigs and dreams he has a great head of hair...
CAUTION: KIDNAPPING, ARSON, GENERAL BARBARISM (check the date!)
Guan Xiu, a painter in the late Tang Dynasty, dreamt that sixteen arhats
or luohans (Buddhist sort-of-saints) asked him to paint their portraits--
not their earthly forms but their (rather peculiar) astral forms. He did...
Wang dreamt a man cut his belly open and implanted a big mirror inscribed with stars. It hurt,
even when he woke. For a month! But his belly now had a hunger to learn about astronomy...
Viga-Glum dreamt a giantess came to visit. "She is the spirit-guide of my grandfather in Norway. He is dead...
Gisli had two spirit-wives who told him in dreams how to evade the bounty-hunters after him... for 13 years!
Before his daughter's even born, Thorstein dreams two eagles in love with a swan kill one another in rivalry over her...
CAUTION: PATRIARCHAL BARBARIANS
Four childhood dreams predicting Gudrun's life; plus a predictive dream by her husband Thorkell Eyjolfson
Gudrun dreams of four treasures: a hood, a bracelet, a ring, a jeweled helm. Her cousin sees them as four marriages...
Thordhr dreams a pack of wolves attack him in a trade-booth! He wakes sure the trade-fair will be trouble...
CAUTION: ICELANDIC NAMES AND CUSTOMS
An dreams a scary woman pulls his guts out and fills him up with brush! He wakes, gets gutted in a feud, and then...
CAUTION: BLOODY VIKINGS!
Thorhadd's been slandering his enemy Thorstein. He spars publicly with a dream expert
who interprets all his dreams as: "Your tongue just can't quit!" True. It can't...
CAUTION: VIKING EGOS (AND BODY COUNT)
Sarashina adopts a stray cat with oddly refined manners. Her sister dreams the cat tells of her
last life, as the daughter of a high official. The cat does seem to understand human speech...
Four childhood dreams predicting Gudrun's life; plus a predictive dream by her husband Thorkell Eyjolfson
Gudrun dreams of four treasures: a hood, a bracelet, a ring, a jeweled helm. Her cousin sees them as four marriages...
Sarashina dreams (again) she needs to leave court life and a spiritual path. Her skeptical mom sends a
priest to the temple to dream for her! But he too dreams the Goddess shows two life-choices--happy or sad...
A ghost complains Herdis's grandma bothers her. Herdis wakes, tells Grandma, and they dig up the floor to find...
Three years before her husband died and she was left alone, Sarashina dreamt
Amida Buddha stood in her garden and told her "Later I shall return to fetch you"...
Anselm dreams God orders King William's death by an arrow of fire; the
King dreams his blood covers the sun. Waking, he mocks a third man's ominous
dream, goes hunting, and dies bloodily at sunset, an arrow in his heart...
I dreamt I gave birth to a white-hot stone shedding sparks. Most folk would find my son strange...
A rich man dreamt thrice that hidden in St Berner's Well near his house was a golden collar. He reached in and...
CAUTION: OW
I meet two Peacock Kings bigger than human beings, who chant blessings until I wake with tears drenching my pillow...
The sparrow died in the ashes, but the dove in my hands became a blue cloud.
I drank it, thinking "This will benefit us all"...
A strange transforming thing appeared in the sky--a light, a sheep, a man. It told me to stop burning my head...
A doll sent from China breaks into tears over her exile here in Japan. I reassure her and she becomes real...
I was trapped inside a boulder, but as I chanted it melted around me until it resembled a discarded skin...
Coleridge's dream-poem describes a palace itself inspired by a dream! Kublai Khan dreamt
of a huge yet delicate "pleasure dome", sketched it, and sent scouts to find a site matching...
The moon rises from my friend's body, and sinks into mine. Then
a great tree grows from my body, covering much of the world...
CAUTION: ORAL TRADITION AT BEST
M. Teste, 1830-1848, and Maurice Macario, early 1850s? four dreams predicting illness
Dog bites doctor's leg. Snake bites scholar's chest. Apoplexy kills a
government minister. Tonsillitis flattens a sleep and dream researcher...
DREAM: a great bird carries me to Mecca, Yemen, India, the south sea islands, China, the snowy north...
AWAKE: My host says it means I'll travel the world--but he adds "in India, my brother will save your life"...
King Charles loses a new hawk. But a winged deer lands, bows to him,
and offers him a wild ride across France after his bird...
Chapman dreams he must walk 100 miles to London Bridge; on the bridge, a stranger says
"dreams are nonsense! Why, I dreamt of buried treasure 100 miles away, in some town called..."
The black bird hovered above my cradle, and several times struck me with its tailfeathers between my opened lips...
Frederick dreams a monk writes words on the door of Wittenburg’s church
with a pen so big it pokes the Pope. The next day...
1521: I ask a talking ape how long I'll live. "Four years" he says. "No longer?" "No."
26 years later, I'm still hoping to get truth from dream-figures--two dead guys tell me...
CAUTION: JUNGIANS BEHAVING BADLY
The first drop struck about four miles away, with terrific force and thunder, breaking and drowning the land...
1521: I ask a talking ape how long I'll live. "Four years" he says. "No longer?" "No."
26 years later, I'm still hoping to get truth from dream-figures--two dead guys tell me...
CAUTION: JUNGIANS BEHAVING BADLY
A London Protestant dreamed Bloody Mary would find the congregation's member-list and burn them all...
From age six on, Simon nightly climbs mountains and faces roaring floods in a sort of naptime bootcamp...
Mistress Abbot dreams if she eats a jackfish her child will be great. Next morning one swims into her waterbucket...
M. Teste, 1830-1848, and Maurice Macario, early 1850s? four dreams predicting illness
Dog bites doctor's leg. Snake bites scholar's chest. Apoplexy kills a
government minister. Tonsillitis flattens a sleep and dream researcher...
Bruno flew through space--not crystal spheres, not Heaven, not even the Copernican solar system, but
interstellar space. He saw the stars were suns, those suns had planets, and those planets bore life...
CAUTION: BURNED ALIVE BY THE INQUISITION
The foremost wizard of Shakespeare's age dreams he's dead. They're burning his books, but that doesn't bother him...
Donne, in Paris, was alarmed by a vision of his wife holding a dead baby. At that hour, in England, his wife...
In one night Descartes had three dreams convincing him he had to change the course of his life...
Silla Kristos angered Saint Walatta Petros, so she cursed him. He got sick and died. She knew she'd overdone it,
and asked the Virgin Mary to revive him. Mary grumbled, but did. While dead, Silla Kristos got wise angelic advice...
CAUTION: BRATTY SAINT, BRATTY MONK
A cranky nun wants fish. Ilarya, the monastery's cook, sets out to buy one--a long walk, and unsafe after dark.
So Ilarya asks the sun to halt! She buys her fish, cooks, feeds her patient, and forgets to tell it to set...
CAUTION: PETTY, GOOFY, COMMUNITY-BAFFLING MIRACLE
As locusts advanced on his farm district, a magistrate dreamt a Mr. Willow had advice.
He took it. Bearing a gift of rice wine, he sought out the Goddess of the Locusts, and...
DREAM: a long green dog attacked Zhang from the south. He hid in his bedroom. He woke shaken but did not act.
SOON AFTER: General Gou Zhang (sounds like "Dog Long"), in a long green coat, attacked from the south...
I dreamt Anacreon the poet reeled with drink and lust--and I am wild and wanton like to him...
The wife of Admiral Richard Deane dreamt how he died two days before the news arrived...
I dreamt, and knew I dreamt, and I made love to Lady Castlemayne, and had all my desire.
If, as Shakespeere said, death is but sleep, and dreams may come, why then fear death?...
Samuel Pepys dreamt of kidneystones, pee, come, & snot--or did he? Thomas Macauley dreams his niece confesses...
In a dream, a dead friend told Mrs. Cl. how to cure her daughter's chronic illness: the yew tree. But yew is toxic...
Astronomer Edmund Halley had dreamed of sailing to St Helena in the South Atlantic,
but until he arrived hr didn’t realize how accurate his dreams had been...
Traders were vanishing. Newly installed Viceroy Zhu fasted, focused, and dreamt
the gods sent him a riddling poem. Each line suggested one word--together, they...
CAUTION: BRUTAL ORGANIZED CRIME
A farmer dreamt his new cow grew wings and flew away. Next day, he sold that cow at a heavy loss. Walking
home with the cash, he found a tame falcon, and tied its leg to his moneybag. One guess what the bird did...
Dou dreams he marries Lily; when a monstrous snake attacks her huge family, he reluctantly hosts
them all... when he wakes, they turn out to be bees driven from their hive by a (very real) snake...
Mr Bai dreams his son the mandarin is a tiger leading a pack of wolves--all man-eaters,
at least until two angels knock out his fangs and predict he'll get beheaded soon...
CAUTION: CANNIBALS, REVENGE KILLINGS
J.H. dreamt both his mother and Queen Mary appeared in mourning. Within days, both were dying...
Greenwood dreamt her murdered neighbor's ghost gave her tips helping her catch his three killers...
A carpenter demolishes a ruined abbey despite dreams he’ll be crushed by stones falling from a window...
I sold my soul to the Devil. On an impulse, I handed him my fiddle. To my
wonder, he played a sonata of exquisite beauty. When I woke I retained only echoes...
Mrs Griffiths has the same nightmare three times before she asks her nephew to skip a fishing trip...
Swedenborg flies on horseback through a house seeking someone. One room's clean, lit, full of people, but
most are empty and dirty. Longing to meet God is not enough! He's only cleaned up one aspect of his life...
Swedenborg fights a worldly acquaintance, then his dog, who turns into a serpent...
CAUTION: FIGHTING, SCORNS MATERIALISM
Swedenborg shakes uncontrollably all night, releasing or discharging some strange energy.
He frames it in religious terms, but it's a phenomenon even secular writers have reported...
CAUTION: WEIRD
Swedenborg cuddles a talking dog who asks after its old master, Swab, and then kisses
Swedenborg, grossing him out. But he wakes knowing just what his doggy pest represents...
Swedenborg's in bed with a woman, but she has teeth down there. Oh, now and she's not a woman, but
his political buddy Johan! Well, maybe it means not to get involved with women, or men, or... politics?
CAUTION: JUST WEIRD
Swedenborg jokes with his cousin's new girlfriend as she grows bigger and
stronger and bigger and... Oh. He needs to study the muscles!
Swedenborg meets an executioner who cooks the heads he chops off,
and eats them. Yet in context, the nightmare may be constructive...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
Swedenborg fights a flying woman over a lake, then is in bed with another. After some
language and privacy problems, all goes so well he thinks they've made a child...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, SEX
Swedenborg struggles to grasp the King's broken French. He wakes to realize he's trying to learn
a greater King's difficult language. Still relevant today, for he saw the problem's twofold: the
difficult language of images, but also issues the waking mind missed--or wants to deny!
A boar attacks Swedenborg's late brother, alive again. He tries to help, but the pig
eats his brother's head. That's what you get for drinking, partying, and gluttony...
CAUTION: VIOLENT DEATH
Swedenborg dreamt of danger on his London trip, twice. Both situations then came true, but he was prepared...
CAUTION: ANNOYING TO E.S.P. SKEPTICS
Swedenborg tenderly says goodbye to a lover. A few nights later he realizes his dream lovers
repeatedly represent scholarly fields! An avid scientist, he find research as sexy as, well, sex...
Swedenborg fights a monster but lacks strength. Yet later, on a higher plane, he learns the beast did die...
CAUTION: VIOLENT
Swedenborg gets in a duel, but his beautiful silver hilt has no sword attached. Uh-oh...
Then he's in bed and realizes he's been sexually boasting...
CAUTION: PHALLIC SYMBOLISM
Swedenborg's in bed with a woman, but finds she has teeth in her vagina. He interprets it not as revealing some
fear of women but as advice about pacing his scientific work. And the surrounding dreams hint he may be right...
CAUTION: ALMOST-SEX
Twice a condemned man's wife dreamt of a key lost in rubble below a wall. The second time she went out to find it...
Wilkins visits his parents in a dream. Only they think he's a ghost, and panic--in the real world...
A woman in Stockwith dreamt she'd drown going to market; but her friends talked her back into the trip.
When she fell in the water, they all stood by as she drowned; not one helping her till it was too late...
CAUTION: WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
Bennet's daughter dreamt her husband drowned after wading too deep (he couldn't swim). He promised
he'd avoid deep water, but his best friend played a prank, treading water to make it seem shallow...
CAUTION: WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
Swedenborg stuns the Queen of Sweden by whispering a secret only she and a dead man knew;
A widow begs him to ask her late husband to find a lost receipt. Swedenborg reveals a secret drawer;
Swedenborg, at a dinner party, grows alarmed by a fire that nearly burns his home--500 km away!
At 14, B. dreamt a stranger attacked her and hurt her badly. She said "but I'll hurt you worse." She did:
a week later that man attacked and nearly killed her. She survived to identify him--and get him hanged...
CAUTION: HARSH JUSTICE
A man in a blue coat on a white horse delivered papers from a nearby wrecked ship, signed Stephenson and...
Samuel Savage dreamt he rode through a graveyard and saw a new monument--for himself!
His death-date was marked: two years in the future. He died September 1772, on that day...
Daniel thrice dreamt of money hidden under a great stone in a nearby field. He dug and found a surprise...
CAUTION: IRISH HUMOR
Elizabeth tried to tell her dream, but her husband didn't listen. When his dad didn't show up for dinner, it was too late...
I had gone blind in one eye. I dreamt our Savior came to me, and when I woke, I could see...
A glowworm and nightwatch beetle help out a lost crying ant-woman. It's not always a bug-eat-bug world...
Blake was broke. Couldn’t typeset Songs of Innocence and Experience.
But in a dream, his brother advised him...
Blake dreams he's a young queen with an uneasy relationship to her guardian angel...
DAY: Rowland needed papers for a legal case, but couldn't find where his father had stashed them.
DREAM: his long-dead dad told R.J. a lawyer R.J. he'd never heard of had them, 'but the man may need
some reminding', and gave details of Portuguese gold and a drinking bout. Next day, it worked. But how?
CAUTION: GHOST? E.S.P.?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree (at least till that visitor from Porlock barged in)
CAUTION: POET ON PAIN MEDS