Being returned to the earth is synonymous with death, and hence a dream of swallowing or eating dirt is associated with death.

Emperor Zhi Meng of Liang had a dream in which he saw earth and ate it.

Sometime later, his ministers overthrew him and buried him alive. And so, as he dreamed of eating earth, he suffocated at the age of forty-nine in the earth.

EDITOR'S NOTE

As I study the Chinese history of dreamwork, I can't avoid learning some Chinese history in general, though I always wish I didn't. Sadly, Zhi Meng's nightmare come true really isn't exceptional. Emperors got stabbed, poisoned, roasted, drowned or buried alive every few years... for millennia. And this nightmare was during one of the short-lived Liang dynasties (there were several) in the dark age between the Han and the Tang, when sadistic assassinations of two-bit Emperors turned into something of an annual sport. I found two Liang emperors suffocated in their late 40s--Jianwen, stifled in 551, and Emperor Yuan, in dirt, in 555. (Forget the third who was shoved in the river to drown; emperors are as disposable as kittens.)

So. Nothing special about a bad-omen dream per se. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." Nor is it news that dark ages breed dark dreams.

No, what stands out here is that Zhi Meng foresaw the method.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: The Interpretation of Dreams in Chinese Culture by Fang Jing Pei and Zhang Juwen (2000) p.140; primary source unstated. DATE: uncertain, since Wikipedia's list of emperors in the several short Liang dynasties doesn't show "Zhi Meng"--but as noted above, a Liang emperor about the right age was suffocated in dirt in 555 CE.

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