A Sufi master transfers an evil destiny from this world to a dream world

Writer and scholar Musharraf Ali Farooqi, whose works include a wonderfully spirited translation of The Adventures of Amir Hamza, alerted me to a most interesting story he discovered in an Arabic manuscript. The story involves a 12th century Persian Sufi master, Abdul Qadir Gilani, and how he is said to have saved the life of a merchant by transferring his evil destiny from this world into a dream world.
    The manuscript is a book of parables; the key passage is quoted from another book titled Behjatul Asrar or Behjatul Israr, attributed to Abdul Qadir Gilani himself.

     Musharraf Farooqi has generously shared his translation:

A merchant named Abul Muzaffar visited his friend Sheikh Hammad and informed him that he was departing to Syria with a merchant caravan, and asked for the Sheikh's prayers for his safe return. The Sheikh told him to postpone his plans for it would have dire consequences. He told him that robbers would rob and kill him.

     As the merchant was returning from the Sheikh with an uneasy mind, he crossed paths with Abdul Qadir Gilani who asked him the reason for his distraught looks. When Abul Muzaffar told him about Sheikh Hammad's prediction, Gilani told him not to worry and to depart for the journey with an easy mind. He assured him that no harm would come to him.

     The merchant followed his advice, departed for Syria as he had planned and returned after turning a good profit.
     During his return journey he misplaced his purse of gold coins when he reached Aleppo and went to sleep with a troubled mind. He dreamed that robbers had attacked the caravan and looted all his possessions and killed him.
     He awoke from the nightmare in terror and found himself safe and also remembered where he had kept the purse. When he returned to Baghdad he wondered whether he should first call on Sheikh Hammad or Abdul Qadir Gilani. Abul Muzaffar met the former in the bazaar.
     The sheikh told him that he should convey his gratitude to Gilani because God had transferred his destined fate, about which he had been warned by Sheikh Hammad, from the world of wakefulness into the world of dreams by Gilani's praying seventy times for him.

Musharraf Farooqi asked: "I wonder what you make of it and if you have read any references about such a transference of destiny from the world of wakefulness into the world of dreams."

My response: I am familiar with apotropaic procedures for averting an unwanted future event, especially one foreseen in dreams, and have actually used some of these myself. While I enjoy the way the author here speaks of sending an evil event from the physical world into a world of dreams, in today's language (as recognized in mainstream physics) we might speak of shifting an event into another parallel universe.

    In this story, what might have happened is revealed in a dream. The attack and murder seem to be taking place, in the dream, at the same time they would have unfolded in physical life, except for Abdul Qadir Gilani's intervention. I have seen dreams of this kind myself.

     However, the process that is most familiar to me is that we foresee an unwanted event in dreams and then take action to avert it. Some cultures have rituals for this. A traditional Iroquois practice was to play-act part of the content of an evil dream in the hope that this partial dramatic enactment would fulfill the dream, while containing its consequences, so it would not have to manifest completely. As described in my Dreamways of the Iroquois such play acting could be very fierce; thus a war chief who had dreamed he was taken by enemies and fire-tortured to death had himself burned with red-hot knives and hatchets.

      I have seen gentler, improvisational versions of such rituals of containment work. So we see that while the Syria-bound merchant's life was supposedly saved by the devout prayers of a saint, there are things that ordinary dreamers can do for themselves to shift a "destiny" from one event track to another.

The feat attributed to the Sufi master becomes more explicable, if no less extraordinary, when we consider current theories in physics of Many Interactive Worlds. Leading edge physicists suggest that we are living right now, in one of numberless parallel universes. They are forever splitting. However, they can also converge and influence each other. If this is how it is, then it is not so hard to imagine that an unwanted event could be deported to a parallel reality. The merchant survived, in what he thought was the real world. He died in world he may have continued to see in his dreams. We are not told what he discovered to be fundamental reality when he died and was able to see that the life just ended was also a dream. 

Illustration: Traditional portrait of Abdul Qadir Gilani, born in Persia in 1078, buried in Baghdad in 1166. Artist unknown.

On "bad" dreams and trash dreams

I've often said that dreams - including scary dreams and nightmares - are not on our case but on our side, in the sense that they show us things we need to see and to deal with.

    However, I am not of the opinion that all night experiences come in the service of health and wholeness, except in the sense that we can regard anything that comes up in life as a possible learning experience.

    Every ancient and indigenous culture that I know teaches that there are bad things that can try to enter our space in the night, and bad neighborhoods in the dreamworld in which we can get mugged. Hence the dreamcatcher, originally a spider web, intended to catch and keep out bad dreams and bugs, and other apotropaic rituals and procedures, including prayer to divine guardians. Hence traditional rituals for dispersing the energy of a bad dream right away.

   The ancient Assyrians sought to remove the contamination of bad dreams by rubbing the body with a lump of earth that was believed to absorb the unwanted energy. The lump would then be destroyed, preferably by breaking it up and scattering it over running water, so the river would dissolve it and carry it away. In the Assyrian Dream Book, we read that someone who experienced a "dark" dream should pray and then

He shall take a lump of earth, he shall recite three times the conjuration over it, he shall throw it into water. His misfortune will depart. [1] 

    The Egyptians employed similar rituals for cleansing the dreamer of from the pollution of an evil dream. In the Chester Beatty papyrus, this involved (1) telling the dream to the Great Mother - here the goddess Isis - and invoking her help and protection and (2) rubbing the face and body with bread soaked in beer and infused with myrrh and herbs. This bread-sponge was believed to be highly effective for psychic cleansing. The ingredients may seem odd, until we remember that in the ancient mind, bread and beer are both the gift of the Goddess. In the Gardiner translation, Isis says: “Come out with what you have seen, in order that the afflictions you saw in your dreams may vanish.” The ritual ends with a triumphal cry from the dreamer that he has dispelled an evil dream sent against him and is now ready to receive pleasant dreams. “Hail to thee, good dream that is seen by night or day!” [2]

    Some traditional dreaming cultures teach that it is not a good idea to share a certain type of bad dream with others, because you don't want to dwell on it and feed it with the energy of your attention, or risk spreading psychic infection. In West Africa, a traditional practice to avert the evil of a dark dream is to spit it out right away, within telling anyone about it. In Bali, in Anatolia, and in other places, there are traditional practices that involve telling - and sometimes expectorating - "bad" dreams into running water.
    Then there are dreams that are not necessarily "bad" but don't deserve attention because they are trash left over from the night before. Hawaiians have a marvelous term for trash dreams. They call them "wild goatfish dreams". Goatfish is something Hawaiians like to eat, in the right way, in the right season. But a "wild goatfish dream" - like a spicy pizza dream - is occasioned by eating the wrong way at the wrong time, and is not to be valued, but rather thrown away among the leavings of the previous night.

    As everyday practice, I would counsel anyone who feels oppressed by a bad dream to spit it out. I do mean literally. Spit it out on the ground or down the toilet. If you feel that's not enough, draw the dream image and burn it. Then think carefully about whether you really need to spend more time with that troubling night experience, and whether it is really necessary to inflict it on others. I am reminded that it was the wisdom of some Irish grandmothers, on both sides of the big pond, that you should not tell your dreams before breakfast unless you want them to come true.

1. A. Leo Oppenheim, The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1956) p.301
2. A.H. Gardiner, Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum. Third Series. Chester Beatty Papyrus. London: British Museum, 1935, in Oppenheim, op.cit., p.244.

Photos: Clay effigies of "bad" dreams, destined for release in flowing water, made by Xander Cloudwalker for a contemporary version of the ancient Mesopotamian apotropaic ritual.

Egyptian Rx for bad dreams: use bread and beer of the Goddess

An Egyptian dream book inscribed in the reign of Ramses II, in the 13th century  BCE,  contains a ritual for turning away the negative energy of "bad" dreams and the psychic forces at play in them.

     The hieratic papyrus classifies different types of dream as “good” or “bad”; the word “bad” is written in red, the color of ill omen in the Egyptian imagination.

     What to do about a "bad" dream?

     First,  the dreamer is counseled to rub his face with bread soaked with beer, herbs and myrrh. Presumably this was intended to draw "bad" energies (maybe hungry ghosts) into a container that could be safely disposed of later. Bread and beer are gifts of the Goddess, so we are already in her realm.

     Next, the dreamer is advised to tell his dream to Isis, addressed as Mother. The act of telling the dream to the Great Mother is held to disperse its evil. In the Gardiner translation, Isis says:

Come out with what you have seen, in order that the afflictions you saw in your dreams may vanish.

The ritual ends with a triumphal cry from the dreamer that he has dispelled an evil dream sent against him and is now ready to receive pleasant dreams. “Hail to thee, good dream that is seen by night or day!”

-

The dream book was found with a collection of magical and literary papyri in the cemetery at Deir el-Medina. The original author and owner are uncertain; at one time the papyrus belonged to a scribe named Qeniherkhepshef; who copied a poem about the Battle of Kadesh, which took place in the reign of Ramesses II (1279-1213 BC) on the verso.

Quotes above from A.H. Gardiner, Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum. Third Series. (London: British Museum, 1935).

Image: shabti of Qeniherkhepshef, the scribe who once possessed the Dream Book. The figure is depicted as a mummy standing like Osiris, gripping the crook and flail of kingship, but also two hoes, suggesting he is available for agricultural work. A shabti (literally, "answerer") was a magical doll intended to work on behalf of the deceased in the afterlife, once activated by a spell. The spell to make the shabti "answer" is painted in horizontal lines around the figure, starting with hieroglyphs that identify the owner by the title, "Scribe in the Place of Truth".