When the Emperor Sends You a Letter about Dreams

 

Manuel II Palaiologos was Byzantine emperor from 1391 to 1425. Perilous times. He hunted, campaigned and clashed with the paranoid Ottoman Sultan Bayazid, called The Thunderbolt, and was held ceremonial hostage by him. His capital, Constantinople, was besieged and blockaded by the Ottomans several times. Provinces were lost and won back and lost again; family members plotted to assassinate him or drive him into exile. He made a long journey west, to the crowned heads of Europe, all the way to France and England, seeking support against the Turks. He was received with great pomp at the court of Henry IV. He stood at the crossroads of a trembling world. His fourth son, the last Byzantine emperor, died on the city walls when Constantinople finaly fell to the Turks. 

A scholar by nature, who said that he loved to write, Manuel made time in the midst of war and intrigue to write discourses on many things, including marriage.The most intriguing of his productions may be the dream book that bears his name. Scholars dispute the authorship, some asserting that a highly literate emperor would not stoop to contribute to the lowly and "superstitious" genre of the dream dictionary.

Yet the few pages of this Byzantine dream book that survive suggest that the author was intimately familiar with life at the imperial palace, and the approach to dream meanings is reasoned and nuanced. Dream books of this era - tracing their descent from the Greek interpreter Artemidorus of Daldis, or from Persian, Indian and Arabic traditions, or all the above - were popular in elite circles as well as among the largely illiterate populace who would gather round a reader to hear a story or interpretation. The two surviving texts of the dream book have been assessed to be from the late fourteenth century, contemporary with the reign of Manuel II. Incidents are described involving high imperial officials. And we have an epistolary essay that was certainly written by Manuel that confirms his deep interest in dreaming and what it reveals about soul.

The Oneirokritikon kata Manouel Palaiologon, or Dream Book of Manuel Palaiologos, is not organized as a dream dictionary, with an alphabetical list of dream symbols, tagged with supposed meanings. It is arranged thematically,and it gives a rationale for interpretations. [1] The author had a taste for puns. and an ear for homophony. If you dream of mosaics, he says,  you may hope for a fair adjudication, because the Greek word for "mosaic pebble" (psephos) also means "judgement". The Greek word for “cheese” τυρί [tyri] sounds like a word for “disorder” or “turmoil” τύρβη  [tyrbi] so when things get "cheesy" you might prepare for more trouble than English slang would suggest.[2] 

The dream book describes the precognitive dream of a high official who saw the unexpected death of his son-in-law [3]. In the thirteen pages of printed text we have from the manuscript, seven dreams that proved truthful are reported. The commentary insists on factual reporting of possibly portentous dreams.

Dream symbols are discussed elsewhere in ways that recall Artemidorus. Thus: wells, cisterns and vessels that hold water relate to women. There is the  distinction that Artemidorus made between insignificant incidents in sleep  (enypnia) and meaningful dreams (oneirata). 

Let's turn to Manuel's letter on dreams.[4] It is not a letter as we think of them today. In her recent biography of Manuel II as  "author-emperor", Siren Çelik observes that Byzantine authors crafted letters as "beautifully ornate, polished compositions filled with literary features....Instead of offering concrete information, a letter aimed at providing literary delight to the recipient; sophisticated language, metaphors, allusions and quotations were highly desired and appreciated features in this context...Letters were meant to be circulated among a literary circle, and sometimes performed aloud in literary gatherings called theatra."[5] 

The emperor's epistle on dreams fits this mode. He is writing to one Andreas Asan, a provincial governor who may be his cousin. He takes his theme from a question Andreas has previously asked: Is it true that all dreams are prophetic, but become false or deceptive through the weakness of our interpretation? This sounds as if the questioner has read Synesius of Cyrene, who wrote that if dreams are read correctly then they all come through the Gate of Horn.

Manuel introduces a brief personal note by mentioning that he is writing (or more likely dictating) his missive in the spring, but a cold snap has caused him to draw close to the fire. This puts the reader inside the scene and also takes up at once - craftily and indircetly - the theme of veracity. It was commonly taught in the old Greek dream books that spring is the best time to look for veridical dreams because life is surging forth from  the earth. [6] 

On the question of whether all dreams are prophetic, Manuel delivers a short  philosophical homily, citing Hellenic and Christian authorities. He assigns dreams to three categories. There are dreams that are generated by the dreamer's “disposition”, daily habits, and the balance of the four humors. This first category includes the dreams you bring on yourself by eating too much or too fast. No prophecy here, though a doctor might find something to work with.

Next, there are dreams that are experiences of the soul. During sleep the soul “comes closer to its divine origins”, though it is still under the negative influence of the body. The emperor appears to acknowledge that the soul travels beyond the body in dreams. It may still fall into states of illusion, and the heavy influence of the body causes it to come back from its excursions blurry and confused.

Third, there are dreams that are true prophecies because they come from God. They are sent to the “pious and pure” who may also have waking visions. A prophetic dream is not only for the receiver but for the people. 

The emperor says that care must be taken to discern whether a prophetic dream is for real or a deception of the devil. Some dreams and omens, as well as some forms of divination, are used by the evil spirit in order to deceive. Thankfully, oneirokritike, dream interpretation, is not mentioned as a possible vehicle for the wiles of the Dark One. Back in the ninth century, the emperor Leo the Wise decided to give dreamwork a clean bill of health. Dream interpretation was formally removed from Byzantine lists of evil practices in the compilation of laws known as the Basilika, issued in 892.

The emperor writes that the devil does not have the gift of prescience: he can only speculate by calculations that either come true or not. The devil not only deceives; he may be deceived. [7] Whew. 

 Much of what Manuel puts in his epistle on dreams is borrowed from earlier writers, as he is happy to acknowledge. The theory of the influence of the four humors on dreams goes back to Galen and Hellenic medical writings. “Theoretical discussion and practice of divination was de rigeur in Byzantine learned circles in the fourteenth century.” [8]  Manuel weaves Platonist and Christian teachings on the soul into his discussion, but this emerges as the most original part of his epistle on dreams.   

His writing indicates he knew something of Neoplatonist philosophy and theurgy, as well as Orthodox mysticism and patristic literature. He recognizes that dreams may be experiences of the divine and imperishable soul, and that (contrary to Aquinas ) the soul may have greater access to divine wisdom than the angels.[9]  However, because of its long bondage to the body, the soul is heavy and distracted, drawn down towards darkness and its light dims. So the flight of the soul in dreams may follow the shifting border between truth and illusion, and the memories it brings the dreamer on its return will require interpretation. 

Did the emperor set himself up, as author, to play dream interpreter in the manner of Artemidorus or the anonymous author of the popular Oneirocriticon of Achmet? Byzantinist George Calofonos says, " I believe that still one cannot give a definite answer, although his letter and the dreambook show some similarities. Both texts are systematic, lengthy, and quite original. If Manuel was not the author it could be someone from his immediate circle."[10]

If we return to that dream book, we find one prognostication the emperor surely knew to be true: If you dream you become emperor, you will "face humility, dishonour, persecution, and accusations at the hands of many people" [11] 

Notes

1. The Greek text of the Manuel Palaiologos Dream Book (Oneirokritikon kata Manouel Palaiologon) is in Armand Dellate (ed.) Anecdota Atheniensia 1 (Paris: Vaillant-Carmanne 1927), 511-24. Translation in Steven M. Oberhelman, Dreambooks in Byzantium: Six Oneirocritica in Translation, with Commentary and Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2008)

2. Maria Mavroudi, "Byzantine and Islamic Dream Interpretation: A Comparative Approach to the Problem of ‘Reality’ vs ‘Literary Tradition’” in  Christne Angelidi and Gerge T. Calofonos (eds), Dreaming in Byzantium and Beyond (New York: Routledge, 2014)  169

3. ibid 166

4. The Greek text of Manuel's epistle On Dreams (περί ονειράτον) is in Jean François Boissonade, Anecdota Nova (Paris: Apud Dumont 1844) 239-246. For an extended paraphrase and discussion, see George T. Calofonos,  ‘Manuel II Palaiologos: Interpreter of Dreams?’ in Anthony Bryer, Manzikert to Lepanto: The Byzantine World and the Turks (1071–1517) Papers Given at the Nineteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, March 1985.  Byzantinische Forschungen 16 (1991) 447–55

5. Siren Çelik, Manuel II Palaiologos (1350–1425): A Byzantine Emperor in a Time of Tumult (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021) 6-7

6. Mavroudi, Maria V., A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 133-35

7. Based on text in Calofonos, op.cit.,450

8. Mavroudi, "Byzantine and Islamic Dream Interpretation"  173 

9. Manuel insists on the equality of the human soul with angels, contradicting Aquinas' statement in Summa Theologica 2:2, 172.2, on how the gift of prophecy comes to angels. “The angels hold a middle position between God and men, in that they have a greater share in the perfection of divine goodness than men have. Wherfore the divine enlightenments and revelations are carried to men by the angels.” 

10. Calofonos op.cit., 454

11. ibid 454-5 

Art: Manuel II Palaiologos depicted as a gift-bearing member of the Magi (Melchior) in Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. On his visit to France, Manuel feasted and exchanged gifts with the Duc du Berry, the uncle of the mad French King Charles VI

Rules of Coincidence - Streamlined

 

I have formulated the rules for navigating by synchronicity several times in slightly different ways, for example in my books The Three "Only" Things and Sidewalk Oracles. Playing the game of opening old journals at random, I found a "streamlined version" I recorded in 2008 and I rather like it. Here are the ten rules, in this simple version:

1. Read the signs all around you

2. Put your question to the world

3. Get moving

4. Work with the Library Angel

5. Notice that life rhymes

6. Look for opportunity in every setback

7. Don't be afraid to get lost

8. Notice what's showing through your slip

9. Identify your personal omens

10. Follow your star (the passions of the soul work magic)

Of course I could not resist dipping again and again into that old journal. I found a passage on the joy of watching herons nesting in May, and a poem I wrote on paths taken and untaken in life:

The berries were bluer on the path ahead
but she was drawn to huckleberry red
and familiar landscapes on the more traveled road...

I found my note on Artemidorus' report of a man who dreamed that the god Serapis - a deity of death, dreams and healing - placed him inside his calathos, a crown shaped like a tall food basket, symbolizing abundance and fertility. 

I found notes I had made from Jung's correspondence with the pioneer quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, including this New Year's declaration:

"In fact, the archetype represents nothing else that the probability of psychical events." [Jung to Paul, January 1, 1951]

I found my note I made from Bascom's Ifa Divination on the dream calling, via his father, of a Yoruba king's diviner who became the most renowned babalawo of his time. The father of Agboubou (died in 1947) told him:

"You were not made to be a farmer; you were made to be a babalawo. I have seen this many times during my dreams."

I found my dream travel reports from that spring and reports of group adventures, fueled and focused by my shamanic drumming, that I led at wonderful retreat centers - to a Blue Lake of Healing, to a scholar-city in the Imaginal Realm, to the astral realm of Luna. I harvested rich material for fresh writing and teaching, and saw some cases where waking events are just now catching up to things dreamed fourteen years ago. 

And I found index cards that were written and played in rounds of my Coincidence Card Game, including this, written in a clear hand I can't now identify:

What is the end, 
what is the beginning?
The cycle continues
Joy sparkles in the snow
while the budding branches
of the tree 
stand, long patient. 

Toilet dreams

“Shit is good!” The elderly Italian grocery store owner’s eyes twinkled as she bagged tomatoes and homemade pasta for me. “If you crap in your dreams, it means money.”

Her reading is an ancient one, still alive in many family traditions. Josefina had carried it with her from Sicily. The association between excrement and wealth isn’t silly, when we remember that gold and silver come from under the earth, the repository of night soil. One of the names of Hades, the Greek lord of the Underworld, is Ploutos (Roman Pluto) which means The Wealthy. 

Sometimes our dream producers make the link impossible to miss. I once dreamed I was on the potty and produced a gusher. What might have been an explosion of diarrhea was a great burst of liquid gold. I woke laughing, feeling a happy release and also a terrific sense of possibility.

As with any dream symbol, the excrement in your dream isn’t necessarily the same as in mine. A good guess, with many dreams of defecation, is that you are eliminating something that needs to come out of your body or your life. To “take a dump”, in a dream, may be to dump what you need to let go. When your feelings tell you that such dreams are positive, they may indicate effective cleansing and releasing, perhaps a return to good health. A bowel movement, in a dream, may herald or accompany a move beyond a blocked or stuck situation. We sometimes say, “I’m feeling constipated” as a metaphor for the sense that things just aren’t coming out of coming through as they should do.

A common variant of the poop dream is one in which we need to go but find ourselves doing it in public. Sometimes this reflects a need for privacy in the dreamer’s life. Sometimes it’s more about whether and when it’s okay to “let it go” in front of others. Guidance on that may come from the reactions of others inside the dream. If other people in the dream don’t seem to notice or mind, that may be telling you it’s okay to let it all out. Let’s remember that in some cultures, going in public was normal bathroom procedure.

Colloquial phrases involving shit or its synonyms may give us a clue to the meaning of a dream of this ilk. Relevant phrases that plop to mind include:

I’m pooped

The shit hit the fan

I’m in deep doodoo

Shit for brains

He/she is a real shit

That’s crap

On the shitlist

Time to shit or get off the pot

This dream theme has been actively discussed for as long as people have been dreaming and needing to go. Some of the best pages in the most famous dream book of the ancient world, the Oneirocritica (“Interpretation of Dreams”) by Artemidorus, are devoted to skatá(the Greek word for shit, from which we derive the term “scatological”). Though I am no fan of dream dictionaries, I have a soft spot for Artemidorus, because he was always careful to note that similar dreams mean very different things according to the varied circumstances of the dreamer, and he checked on incidents that followed a particular dream.

  If you see a lot of human shit in a public place, according to Artemidorus, you won’t be able to accomplish anything there. In general, it doesn’t bode well if someone is shitting on your head. But that depends. “I know of a man who dreamed that a rich friend was defecating over his head. That man received a fortune and was named the heir of his friend.” On the other hand, a man who dreamed he was “befouled with dung by a poor acquaintance” later suffered great damage from the person who shat on him in the dream.

Defecating while in bed is not a good thing in a dream, says Artemidorus; it could mean you’ll be bedridden. It could also mean that your relations with a spouse or partner are in trouble, since the bad has been defiled. On the other hand to defecate copiously while seated on a toilet means “good luck for all men”, including “the alleviation of many cares and all distress. For the body is lightest after it has relieved itself.” It’s also a happy event when you dream you relieve yourself this way at a place in nature, on a road or in a river. Watch out, however, if you dream you are pooping in a temple, a place of commerce, or a public street.

I’m not sure I would be happy if I dreamed that anyone was pooping on my head although some folk traditions maintain that having a bird shit on your head in physical life is a very good omen.

From the profane to the sacred isn't necessarily a long journey. I have noticed that many toilet dreams mark an important transition in the dream experience. They may carry the dreamer out of the dream - in order to pee in the batroom instead of the bed.Alternatively, they may move the dreamer into a deeper and sometimes even magical or mystical space. Here's report form my own journals of a toilet dream that carried me into the realm of the Sufi poets.

July 27, 2009

Dream

Your Beloved Is Calling

I woke at 3:00 AM today from the following dream:

I am at a conference center where they are setting up for lunch in the huge dining area. There are wonderful freshy baked loaves of bread on  fresh white tablecloths. There's a gathering in process that includes a lot of priests or ministers. Also present is an entrepreneur who made a lot of money developing an internet search engine.

 

I receive several messages, as I roam the place, that a Sufi poet has been calling. He wants to get through to a number of people who are here, but they have not been receiving his messages. I am planning to tell the search engine entrepreneur that he needs to develop a device that will alert people when a spiritual teacher is searching for them.

 

I go through the dining area to a men's room. Several of the ministers are washing up. I go into a stall for privacy and find writing inside the door. Instead of graffiti, it is a lovely poem about spiritual union. Go up to the rooftop. Your Beloved is calling.

 

I woke with a sense of delight, and recognition. I thought of Rumi, and also of his spiritual teacher, Shams of Tabriz. I went questing back through old journals, and found my chronicle of nocturnal encounters with figures that appeared to carry this tradition. Over the nights that followed, I found myself traveling to many locales - including a glorious Palace of the Winds - in contact with spiritual teachers.

Photo: from the  Israel Antiquities Authority showing a rare ancient toilet in Jerusalem discovered this year. It dates back more than 2,700 years to an era when private bathrooms were a luxury.The smooth, carved limestone toilet was found in a cabin that was part of a large mansion overlooking what is now the Old City. 

 

When Dreams Speak in Riddles: Learning from an Ancient Dream Diviner

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. Torrance CA: Original Books, 1990, pp. 82-85. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from Artemidorus are from this translation.

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. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Text adapted from The Secret History of Dreaming by Robert Moss.Published by New World Library.

 

 Photo of cat at Ephesus by RM

When you're losing teeth in a dream

I would love the Tooth Fairy to give me a dollar, or even a nickel, for every dream of problems with teeth that I've heard over the years. When I opened this theme for discussion in one group of dreamers, the first two comments reflected two radically different ways of looking at a dream of losing teeth. Both are valid.

     One dreamer said that when she dreams of loose teeth that may fall out, she thinks about the need to express herself carefully. This is a personal association that certainly speaks to me. Another dreamer reported that on her mother's side of the family, it's strongly believed that if you dream a tooth falls out, this means that someone connected with the family is going to die.

     The belief that losing a tooth means illness or death in the family has been shared by many cultures and codified in their dream books. We can trace this from the New Kingdom Dream Book of ancient Egypt through Artemidorus, the 2nd century Greek author of The Interpretation of Dreams (whose title was borrowed by Freud) on through the dream books that are bestsellers in the Islamic world today.
     Dream books like those of Artemidorus and Ibn Sirin not only say that a lost tooth means that someone close to you will die; they predict who that will be, based on which tooth is lost and its "status" in the "house of the mouth".

     If you have been raised in a belief system like this, it's likely not only that you will interpret a dream according to it, but that the actual content of your dreams will be shaped by those beliefs. So we get what anthropologists call a "culture-pattern" dream. You dream that a molar falls out because that's what your dream producers - following the agreed vocabulary of images - give you to let you know that an older member of the family will pass on.

    Back to the present. As always, while recognizing the apparent universality of the dream of losing teeth, we want to be alert to the specific details of a dream with this theme, the dreamer's feelings, and the spontaneous personal associations that arise. If you tell me a dream of losing teeth in a general way, I'm likely to do two things pretty quickly: (1) inquire when you last went to the dentist and (2) explore with you whether there are things you need to spit out - by expressing yourself, or perhaps by purging, or both.

    But I'll also consider lots of other things that may be involved in losing teeth, literally and metaphorically. For example:

- Teeth are tools and weapons and power in the animal kingdom. If I am losing teeth, am I at risk of losing my power, which could mean my financial resources, my fighting ability or my sexual potency?

- Am I aging, which could mean maturing (we lose our teeth) or just getting older?

- Am I eating right?

- Am I concerned about my appearance (and do I need to be)?

     How you lose your teeth in a dream is worthy of special attention. Sometimes you may find your dream self fussing with a loose tooth until you pull the tooth out. One woman reports that on a number of occasions she found herself fussing with one loose tooth, then another, until she succeeded in pulling all her teeth out. This prompted her to start thinking about where, in waking life, excessive worry over a problem might tend to compound it.

     Common expressions and sayings involving teeth can also give us clues. “You’ve bitten off more than you can chew” might be relevant – especially if you are losing teeth in the dream. A "toothless lion" is a term used for a person who has lost powder. Off and on, I've found myself saying (usually humorously), “You lie in your teeth", which reminds me of the Chinese tradition that if your teeth are falling out in a dream, it’s because you’ve been telling lies.

      There are further variants on the theme. Some dreamers have gum stuck in their teeth, which for me would raise the theme: what is preventing you from expressing yourself? Some dream of being gagged. An especially gruesome version of the gagging theme was a dream in which a woman had something like a horse's bit rammed into her mouth, so violently that some of her teeth were knocked out. The ends of the bar where then tied with straps around her head, very tightly. She was unable to cry out, and felt more of her teeth falling out. The dream suggested a whole structure if repression, maybe dating a long way back through family history. I did not have an exact context for this dreadful dream image until I read (in Richard Flanagan's brilliant and searing novel Gould's Book of Fish) about a vicious device called a "tube gag" that was operated in a very similar way to "teach silence at the price of agony" to convicts in early English and Australian prisons.

    The happiest dream of losing teeth I've ever heard came from a woman who reported that in her dream her teeth were falling out, but each time she lost one, a new one would take its place. "It was like my teeth were moving around on a conveyor belt rather than stuck in my gums." That's exactly how a shark's teeth are routinely shed and replaced. I suggested that, if it were my dream, I'd be glad to know that I have the resilience to get through the process of aging and shedding old stuff, and I wouldn't be scared of showing my teeth when a situation demands that!

Tombstone territory

Teeth may be tombstones but tombstones may also be teeth. On the eve of a visit to the dentist many years ago, I had a rather spooky dream in which I was in a graveyard, looking at a tombstone that was leaning over. I noticed that the tombstone was cracked down the middle. I wanted out of there! After examination at her office the next day, my dentist told me, "Sorry, that molar on the upper right side is cracked. It has to come out.

Drawing by RM.

The Dream Interpreter at the Sign of the Bull

νύπνια κρίνω, | τοῦ θεοῦ πρόσταγ|μα ἔχων·
τύχ᾿ ἀγα|θᾶι· Κρής ἐστιν ὁ | κρίνων τάδε.

I judge dreams, having the mandate of the god.
To good fortune! The one judging these is a Cretan.

The text is on the shingle of an ancient dream interpreter at Saqqara in Egypt in the Ptolemaic age,  2nd century bce. Scholars debate the identity of the god he declared to be his patron, but a good guess would be Serapis, a composite deity who melded aspects of Hades, Osiris and the Apis bull. Serapis was a lord of death and of healing; the famous pool at Bethesda belonged to him before it became part of the Christian story. We know that the training of a kathodos, or candidate for initiation, in the ancient precincts of Serapis centered on incubating and working with dreams. We have records of a candidate in the time of Cleopatra being assigned to spend a whole year recalling and reporting dreams to his mentor.
    The image above is a wonderful gypsum copy of the stele mounted in front of the dream interpreter's kiosk. In the painted scene a bull approaches a horned altar. The bull was sacred in both Egypt and Crete and was the favorite animal form of gods around the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. A very dramatic form of dream incubation was practiced in a mausoleum of bulls at Saqqara where the supplicant slept amongst mummified bulls encased in giant sarcophagi.
    The dream interpreter at the sign of the Bull plied his trade near the Anoubeion, the House of Anubis. Very appropriate, since the canine-headed Anubis was the patron of dreaming and soul travel as well as the guardian of the portals to the Otherworld. This was a busy commercial district, with constant traffic between two great temple complexes at either end of the street, the House of Anubis and the Serapeion, the Temple of Serapis. There were lost of vendors and small businesses. The dream interpreter sat in a booth behind his sign, waiting for trade. By identifying himself as "Cretan", he may have hoped to appeal to the Greeks and Macedonians who now ruled Egypt under the Ptolemies, in the wake of the conquest by Alexander the Great.

We don't know exactly what the dream reader at the sign of the Bull did for his clients, but his prime location suggests that he did not lack business. In his age, it was generally believed that dreams are a field of interaction between humans, gods and others, and that dreams often reveal the future. Everyone knew that dreams are important, so important that help may be required to determine the exact meaning, to decide on appropriate action to be taken, and to disperse or ward off bad energies that may be operating during the night.

   According to Aristotle (a skeptic in regard to dream precognition and transpersonal communication) we need help with the meaning of dreams because the images are distorted: “dream-pictures, like pictures on water, are pulled out of shape by movement”.

    An older and more popular view was that we need help in discerning the origin and nature of dreams because not all of them speak truth. Some may be deceiving messages dispatched by evil spirits or manipulative “dream senders” (oneiropompoi). The Greeks thought that Egyptian sorcerers were especially good at this.

   It was said that we may need help in reading dreams because “the gods love to speak in riddles” in order to test us and goad us to expand our understanding.

The prime requirement for a dream interpreter, according to Artemidorus, the most famous practitioner of this trade before Freud, is “a gift for resemblances.”

   Our dream interpreter at the sign of the Bull claimed something more, a special connection with a greater power. "The mandate of the god."

For a full discussion of ancient dream interpretation, please see chapter 2, "Interpreters and Diviners" in The Secret History of Dreaming.

News from Ephesus: dream divination is applied science

Artemidorus, the most famous dream interpreter of the Hellenistic world, lived and practiced in the great temple city of Ephesus in Anatolia. Only one of his many books survives, The Interpretation of Dreams, or Oneirocritica. The title was borrowed by Freud many centuries later, but their approach could hardly be more different. While Freud is plumbing the basements of the personal subconscious, Artemidorus is searching in dreams for knowledge of the future that can be used for the good of an individual, a family or a whole community.
    The dreamer of Ephesus states his general objective at the start of his book. He wants to make a rational and effective case for divination, based on his personal experience and the case studies he has collected.  He also wants to offer a practical 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.” 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.” [1]

     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
     In the Oneirocritica, Aretmidorus is interested only in dreams that reveal the future, and especially 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.” 

      Artemidorus states bluntly, “The mind predicts everything that will happen in the future.” He gives 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 offers 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.”

       Artemidorus 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. 

     Artemidorus is very clear about what the Oneirocritica is, and what it is not. 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. 

      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 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.” 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.” 

      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.” [2] 

REFERENCES

1. All quotations from Artemidorus are from, Oneirocritica: The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. Robert J. White. Torrance CA: Original Books, 1990.

2. Christine Walde, “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. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 126, 128.

This article is adapted from The Secret History of Dreaming by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library. All rights reserved.

Photo: Medusa at Ephesus (c) Robert Moss