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Subliminality

Many dreams pick up subliminal images and information, and dramatize them so you'll notice how they're affecting you--or for more practical reasons, like finding lost items.

Subliminality happens all the time in the creative arts too: you don't realize what you've really drawn till it's done, or maybe not even then--it hangs on the wall a year before you stop in shock one day...

This is a new list, so email me if you find dreams with subliminal images or messages that might belong here. Better yet, contribute your own dreams that pick up unnoticed or ignored bits of your waking life and...

RELATED TOPICS: uh... puns - dream humor - symbols - Freud - Jung - calendrical and anniversarial dreams - memory and cryptomnesic dreams - apparent ESP - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

What this site is - Add your dreams! - How to read blurbs - Ratings - Copyright - Downloading - The World Dream Bank has 4000 dreams plus 1000 pages on dreamwork, shamanism, surrealism, fantasy, worldbuilding, creativity and genius. Site © Chris Wayan 2001-2022.


AGASSIZ’S FISH: by Louis Agassiz, ca. 1840: subliminal, psychic, or just a great guess?
Agassiz, faced with a fossil he had to crack open, was unsure where to strike.
But for three nights he dreamed...
ALTHEA'S CHICKEN: by Wayan; 1990/3/27, a nightmare-farce.
My sister Althea decides my house has demons, and hires an exorcist who botches things, so that...
ANNE SEXTON: by J.D. McClatchy; 1974/10/4, a predictive dream.
I dreamt my friend Anne Sexton's death was on the news.
I woke, the phone rang, and I learned she'd...
CAUTION: SUICIDE
ARCH: by Wayan; dreamed 1998/8/10, painted 1999, acrylic on wood.
I dreamed that as a kid I saw two girls making love in the bushes, awakening my own
sexual orientation. Later, I saw the bigger picture, which wasn't about sex at all...
CAUTION: SEX
ARCHANGEL: by Wayan; 1997/10/19, a dream-farce--or is it?
Sure I've been through hell, but how the hell did that get me elected archangel? And why's my butt itch?
CAUTION: ITCHY BUTT
THE CAMBODIAN GIRL: by Wayan; 1996/4/2 dream, sculpted 1998/11/9.
VERY mixed media--the boat is warped wood. And the story is warped more...
CAUTION: SEX, SHAME FROM EARLY TRAUMA
DALI CENTAUR: by Wayan; 1981/12/12; a surrealist nightmare.
I dreamed I saw what looked like an ink sketch by Dali of a horse--but I was dead wrong...
CAUTION: YUCK
DATE GHOST: by Wayan; 1983/11/26, nondream surreal painting of a shyness fit
I tried to date a nice young butterfly but was stopped by a monster who was... my own wings?
CAUTION: UNDERAGE BUG
DOG THIRST: by Cecy and Wayan; 1991/10/7, shared or telepathic dreamlets
CECY: In a desert, a thirsty dog jumps out of a tree--the first known dog suicide...
WAYAN: I'm a talking dog. Our owner denies us enough water, so we protest...
DREAM CAUSED BY THE FLIGHT OF A BEE AROUND A POMEGRANATE A SECOND BEFORE WAKING
by Gala Dalí 1943? painted by Salvador Dalí 1944; a supposedly instantaneous dream.
Dalí's wife Gala naps, but a bee wakes her--and her dream instantly magnifies
bee into tigers! After all, both have fur, sharp bits, black & gold stripes...
CAUTION: BREASTS; BAD DREAM THEORIES.
DREAM OR REALITY?: by Ben Torter, 1994?, a (subliminal? psychic?) lifesaving nightmare
I'm in a small pond. A monster goldfish stalks me. I seem trapped in place, and
wake in panic, sheets drenched--to find my pet goldfish gasping on the floor...
EAGLE AND GEESE: by Penelope of Ithaka; c.1240 BCE, a subliminal, self-interpreting dream
I dreamt an eagle slaughtered my twenty geese. I wept until he spoke to me: "Take heart! I am thy husband..."
ENJOY LIFE: by Wayan; 1983/8/24 dream inspires 1990/1/31 digital painting-experiment
This image is senseless, but I have an excuse: I was watching TV in my dreams. TV on another world...
E.S.P., NOT LANGUAGE: by Wayan; dreamed 2021/3/29, an Aspie dream about you humans
Turns out humans communicate mostly by mental imagery; speech is just a carrier wave. But in most
cases, ESP is subliminal. I'm autistic, though; for me, background stuff jumps out. Like all six senses...
CAUTION: AUTISM, E.S.P. SPECULATIONS
FANFARE FORESEEN: by Wayan; 1983/7/7, a dream anticipating an unlikely event by just half a second
He turns on the radio, and a moment later a loud horn section rings out.
I wake shocked--for that horn fanfare isn't just in my dream ears...
FISHERGIRLS: by Wayan; 2.6M, 42 illus.; 1996/7/15; a sexy dream epic.
I had an epic dream lasting subjective weeks--a true other life. It wasn't Earth and we weren't human.
I was a teenage lemur, sailing with two friends into unknown waters--a rite of passage. One night,
my friends curled round me, I saw I didn't WANT to pass the test, be declared a woman, marry, and have pups.
I loved my girl friends. In a world lacking the very word, I was groping toward queerdom.
Sailing into unknown waters! "Here be dragons," the old maps say. And they were right...
2600K loads slowly? Try it in parts: 1: HOME, 650K, 2: VOYAGE, 1200K, 3: BACK 750K.
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, QUEER TEEN ANGST, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
FOX STORM: by Wayan; fractal painting of dream (date lost, but pre-1998/8/11)
I might have been less cowed by the storm-face, if I'd seen it was made of little foxes just like me...
GOLD NECKLACE: by Elaine, c.1970, told to Ann Faraday; a subliminal or psychic warning dream
DREAM: My husband was slipping a gold necklace onto a slim, dark girl I'd never met. I woke and sketched it...
AFTER: He was having an affair with the girl, and gave her the necklace the night of my dream--her birthday...
GUARDIAN GHOST: by an Oklahoma girl; 1919, a dream (?) of ghostly advice
I dreamed my late stepdad warned me to stand by my mom--she'd be in trouble soon--gossip & blame...
HALF PAST FOUR: by J.W. Dunne; 1899, a dream of clocks and time
I say it's 4:30 PM; the waiter says 4:30 AM! I wake in the night to find
my watch says 4:30, but it's stopped! I wind it, and next morning...
HOT: by Roz Chast, 2023 or before, a dream from a subliminal stimulus
I'm in a restaurant at a round table. Waiters wrap me in hot towels. I laugh "If I were
chilled, I'd love this--but I'm NOT!" I wake to find I am too hot--too many blankets...
HOT FEET: by Patient 2 of William Hammond, c.1868, a nightmare--but subliminal or mystical?
I'm in the Rocky Mountains. Gold-hungry Mexican bandits capture me and put my feet to the fire,
demanding "How do you transmute copper into gold?" I scream "I don't know!", waking to find...
CAUTION: TORTURE PLAYED FOR LAUGHS
INTRUDER: by Georges Perec; Feb. 1971, a dream unsure if it's warning, erotic, subliminal or psychic. Dream #50
Someone's broken in, prowling my apartment. Man or woman? The scent gives her away.
I wake, calling aloud "What is it?" Moments later, C. knocks on my door...
IRISES: by Frederic Mistral; 1834, a four-year-old's ecstatic dream
That day Frederic, craving irises, fell in the water three times. At night he swam through an iris paradise...
IRONFALL: by William Henry Hudson; 1859, the first dream of an extinction event?
I saw a dark object like a cloud at a vast height, but coming swiftly down toward the earth.
It resolved itself into iron bars--tens of thousands, millions? I said: this is the end of everything...
LOST OPAL: by Anonymous #27; pre-1961, a clairvoyant or subliminal dream
The opal fell out of my ring somewhere around town. I was heartbroken at the loss. But that night my husband dreamed...
THE LOST RING: by Helen Fraser; 1924; an astral lost-and-found dream
A friend in Heaven promises Helen a lost ring would return to her. Three days later it did; but its path had been strange...
MARCOUX'S DREAMS: by Shirley Marcoux, 75/11/4, 76/4/2, 4/28 & 6/24; & one by Cheryl, 76/4/3
Four apparently psychic dreamlets of a gun in a desk, a guy needing to hide,
a canyon with woodpiles & a locked gate, and a blonde girl named Cathy...
CAUTION: SMALL DREAMS, LARGE IMPLICATIONS FOR E.S.P.
MARTIAN AIRLOCK and JAGUAR MASK: by Wayan, 2015/6/22, twin shamanic near-nightmares
Jaguar Mask: a were-jaguar stuck in human form asks me to sew a new jaguar face on."But won't it hurt?...
Martian Airlock: I'm suitless on Mars. Freezing, choking, I dive into an airlock & slam the switch--but it's sabotaged...
MOM ON THE WING: by a tail gunner; 1942-45, a lifesaving warning dream
I saw my mother standing on the tip of one wing of our plane. She was
dressed in white flowing robes and calling my name, warning me of danger...
THE MUSICAL AMOEBA, by Hermester Barrington, spring 1979, a predictive musical dream
I'm hiking through the Catskills when a gigantic amoeba comes slipping over the hills...
NOT THREE!: by Wayan; 1996/11/11, an encouraging nightmare
I was wrong. I didn't survive three assassins. It's been seven! Why'd I forget the others?
OFF BY ONE HOUR: by Wayan; 1988/3/20, a dream
DREAM: my bedroom clock's late by an hour. Must have been a power failure. I'll be late for that play...
AWAKE: my bedroom clock was right last evening, but now it's late by an hour. Outage! I'll be late for...
CAUTION: SUBLIMINAL OR E.S.P.?
PERFUMES: by Hervey de Saint-Denys, early 1860s? Experiments in scent-triggered dreams
I trained myself to associate one scent with the mountains, one with an art studio. On a random
night my servant applied both secretly, and I dreamt artist & model burst into a mountain scene...
POINTED EARS, POINTED DREAM: by Wayan, 2019/1/4, a surreal dream
I walk home in cold rain; my hooded robe soaked. It has holes for my long pointed ears.
Hit a thriftshop to buy a dry one, and run into two girls I crushed on but ran away from:
Danielle is comforting Cary who's crying. Their ears are pointed too. Wait--who are we?...
CAUTION: GUILT FOR SINS OF OMISSION?
PREEMIE; 1951/10/30 by an Oklahoma woman; a predictive dream
We were looking at our three-pound premature baby girl. Though tiny she was bright-eyed, active, perfect...
PRODROMAL DREAMLETS: by Arnaud de Villeneuve, c.1300; Conrad Gessner, 1565/12/8;
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...
RUM JUNGLE: by Wayan; 1996/1/22, digital painting-poem on dreaming
Think of your dreams as a rainforest, clearcut every morning--unless you make the effort to remember...
CAUTION: TINY NAKED ANGELS
SABOTAGED BOAT: by C. G. "Chinese" Gordon; c.1861-4, a recurrent warning dream
I recognized the saboteur. If I had neglected that dream warning we all would likely have drowned...
SENTENCED TO CHEESE: by a Birmingham physician; early 1850s? a classic subliminal nightmare
One night as I slept over a cheese shop, I dreamt I was trapped in a huge cheese, as a rat-horde gnawed...
CAUTION: YOU ARE LUNCH
SEPTIC: by Steve (age 6), pre-1961, a recurring predictive nightmare
For three weeks he wakened screaming in fright; he said he "fell in a hole." Then, one snowy day...
SHELL AND STONE: by William Wordsworth; late 1840s, a dream of a new Great Flood
An Arab shows me a stone he calls a book, and a prophetic shell that warns of a flood rushing toward us...
SKYLIGHT: by an Honorable Lady; before 1894, a crimesolving dream (psychic? subliminal? ghost-visit?)
My dead father said a trusted servant was stealing our goods through an unlocked skylight. This proved true...
STRETCH NOW!: by Wayan; 1991/7/25 forgotten dream provoking a 1991/11/13 digital sketch
DREAM: I was a cheetah seeking a book of cheetah rolemodels, but this specist librarian harassed me...
PAINTING: months later, dream forgotten, I painted myself as an intellectual cheetah stretching...
SULFUR GROTTO: by Wayan; dreamed 1988/8/30, a psychic genderbent rescue-dream
I'm a teenage girl diving for treasure. In an eerie coral grotto reeking of sulfur,
I spot a diver in trouble... and wake to find the grotto is real..
THIRTY THOUSAND RADIATORS: by Wayan; 1999/7/30, a dreamtale.
I dream normal women don't turn me on--I like the 30,000 little aliens who just landed!
I wake to see an ad about them on a passing bus... and it turns out I'm NOT still dreaming...
TIMER: by Robert Brust; July 1990; a clockish dream. Subliminal, circadian or psychic?
In my dream I worry I'm going to wake up late, so I ask what time it is. Immediately, white digits
form in the air saying 10:00. I wake, but can't read my clock until I put on my glasses. It says...
UNICORN STAIN-GLASS WINDOW: by Wayan; 1983/4/28, subliminal or predictive dream
The stained-glass unicorns were stunning, sexy... but veiled by a bland, tasteful,
flowery inner stained-glass window. 18 months later I saw the dream window...
VONNEGUT: by Alan Vaughan, 1970/3/12; a psychic dreamlet
VAUGHAN'S DREAM: I visit Kurt Vonnegut. Kids all over. He's going on a trip soon. Mentions of 'Jerome' and an island...
VONNEGUT REPLIES: "That night, childrens' author Jerome B visited; we discussed my upcoming trip to England..."


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