Artemidorus was the most famous dream interpreter in the Greco-Roman world. Operating in the second centuty, he was originally known as Artemidorus Daldianus, from his mother's city of Daldis in Lydia, but mostly practiced in the great temple city of Ephesus. He wrote many books, but only one survives: his five-volume Oneirocritica, "The Interprettion of Dreams",from which Freud borrowed the title but not the approach.
Artemidorus states his general objective at the start of this book. He wants to make a rational and effective case for divination, based on his personal experience and the case studies he has collected. Second, he wants to offer a practical and original guidebook that any intelligent reader can use.
He gives his
credentials in his opening pages: “I have not only taken special pains to
procure every book on the interpretation of dreams, but have consorted for many
years with the much-despised diviners of the marketplace…In the different
cities of Greece and at the great religious gatherings of that country, in
Asia, in Italy and in the largest and most populous of the islands, I have
patiently listened to old dreams and their consequences.” [On 1: preface. White pp 21-22] His authority is based on
experience: “Everything has been the result of personal experience, since I
have always devoted myself, day and night, to the study of dream
interpretation.” [On 2.70; White
p.158]
Artemidorus
proceeds to distinguish different types of dreams. A fundamental difference is
between oneiros, which he defines as
a dream that “indicates a future state of affairs” and enhypnion – stuff “in sleep” – that “indicates a present state of
affairs”, ranging from the state of your digestion to your desire to be with
your lover or the haunting images of things that you fear. People who lead “an
upright life” try to discipline themselves to avoid being “muddled” by the
fears and desires reflected in such sleep experiences, which are the stuff of
much modern dream analysis [On 1.14]. In the Oneirocritica, Aretmidorus is interested only in dreams that reveal
the future, and only in those that do this through allegory rather than by
literal depiction of possible scenes and events. Allegorical dreams are “those
which signify one thing by means of another.”
“The mind
predicts everything that will happen in the future.” [On 1.2, White p.24]
Artemidorus gives several examples of precognitive dreams that presented future
events in an entirely literal way. A man dreams of a shipwreck and then his
boat is wrecked and he narrowly avoids drowning, as in the dream. Another
dreams he is wounded in the shoulder by a friend in a hunting accident, and
again the dream is played out exactly.
If it is possible to dream the future with this kind of
clarity, why do we need allegories? Artemidorus gives two reasons. The first is
that we may lack the experience to understand a future event perceived in a
dream – for example, because we have not yet encountered a person or situation
that features in the dream. By setting us a puzzle to figure out, the
“allegorical” dream gives us a rational way
to access what the larger mind knows about things to come. Second, the kind of
dream dramas Artemidorus describes can bring an emotional charge that leads to
action; “it is the nature of the oneiros
to awaken and excite the soul by inducing active undertakings.” [On 1.2, White
p. 23]
Artemidorus
also notes that while the gods do not lie, they like to speak in riddles. This
is because “they are wiser than we and do not wish us to accept anything
without a thorough examination”. He gives the example of a man who dreamed the
god Pan told him that his wife would poison him via his best friend. It was the
relationship that was poisoned, when the wife proceeded to have an affair with
the friend. [On 4.71, White p.224]
Thus
Artemidorus sets very clear boundaries around the field of dreams he explores
in the Oneirocritica. He is going to
show us how to decode allegorical dreams in order to discern the future. He is
well aware that other kinds of dreams require other kinds of dream work, and he
wrote about other types of dreams in books that have not survived, as well as a
book of augury – divination by bird-watching. [Price p.29] This approach is
completely different from that of Freud, who postulated the equal status of all
dreams, all formed by the same mechanisms.
Artemidorus
recognized that every dream may be unique. The snake in your dream is not the
same as the snake in mine. To read the meaning of a dream symbol correctly, you
must know the dreamer’s identity, position in life, habits and medical
condition. “You must examine closely the habits of men before the dream….you
must inquire carefully into them.” [On 4.59, White pp 217-8 ] Suppose you dream
you are made of silver or gold. If you are a slave, this means you’ll be sold;
if you are poor, you’ll become rich; if you’re already rich, you’ll be the
victim of plots because everyone will be out to get your money.. [On 1.50 White
p.57] You must also question the dreamer’s feelings
about a dream.
Artemidorus
observes that we dream the future for others as well as ourselves. Sometimes we
receive a dream message for someone else. “Many dreams come true for those
whose characters are similar to the dreamer’s and for his relatives and
namesakes.” Artemidorus gives the example of a woman who dreamed she was
married to a man who was not her husband. He observed that work with this dream
could proceed in several directions, including exploring the possibility that
it warned of death; “marriage and death signify each other because the
circumstances surrounding a marriage and a funeral are similar.” [On 4.30,
White p.204] This association, it turned out, was on the right track, but it
was the dreamer’s sister, not the dreamer herself, who “married death” after
the dream.
Artemidorus kept
in touch with his clients after consultations, and apparently believed that
divination through dreams is for the benefit of the whole community. This
carries a burden: “If a man dreams that he has become a prophet and has been
celebrated for his predictions, he…will take upon himself, in addition to his
own anxieties, those of others.” [On 3.21, White p. 164]
He wanted to
raise dream divination to the level of an applied science. In the view of one
modern scholar, Christine Walde, he succeeded. “The more complex aspects of
divination – which is the attempt to investigate the connections underlying
fate and the cosmos through natural and artificial means – constituted both an
ancient mode for mastering life and a way of gaining knowledge or insight that,
in the context of its time, can in no way be dismissed as irrational; at most,
it might be considered extrarational.” Artemidorus devised a “demystified”
approach to divination that “provides the standardized conditions that
scientific distance requires” and “an imposing reservoir of knowledge about
things in the world and their interdependence.” [Walde 126, 128]
References
Artemidorus,
Oneirocritica: The Interpretation of
Dreams. Trans. Robert J. White.
Price,
S.R.F., “The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorus,” in Past and Present no.113 (November 1986).
Walde,
Christine, “Dream Interpretation in a Prosperous Age? Artemidorus, the Greek
Interpreter of Dreams” in David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa (eds) Dream Cultures: Explorations in the
Comparative History of Dreaming.
Text adapted from The Secret History of Dreaming by Robert Moss.Published by New World Library.
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