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Greek Philosophy After Aristotle and the Survival of Myth
Ancient Dream Interpretation
From Inanna to Aristotle
Geshtinanna interprets her brother Dumuzi's devastating dream (75):
"Bring...bring her...bring my sister.
Bring my Geshtinanna, my little sister,
My tablet-knowing scribe,
My singer who knows many songs,
My sister who knows the meaning of words,
My wise woman who knows the meaning of dreams.
I must speak to her.
I must tell her my dream."
Gilgamesh reveals his dream of the meteor to his mother, Ninsun, who interprets it. "Your dream is good and propitious!"
Enkidu reveals his dream of death just before he dies. [Sandars, 66-67]
"It is not unusual for women to be involved in the interpretation of dreams. Ninsun, mother of Gilgamesh, is a goddess who is noted for her wisdom...." [Gardner & Maier, 84].
The god Ningirsu (of the Mesopotamian city, Lagash) tells Gudea in a dream to build his temple. Gudea consults the goddess Nanshe to interpret the dream. (189- 190)
Quote from Hesiod:
"And Night bare hateful Doom; and black Fate and Death and Sleep she bare, and she bare the tribe of dreams; all these did dark Night bare, albeit mated unto none" [Theogony, II. 211f.] (Frankfort, 375)
Pindar & Homer on the absolute reality of dream images [7]
"Dream oracles are more straightforward. After preparatory sacrifices, the inquirer spends the night in the sanctuary; priests are at hand to assist in the interpretation of the dreams. This incubation later flourished above all in the domain of the healing gods, in the Amphiaraion at Oropos and in the Asklepieia. The practice, however, also leads back into Asia Minor tradition: the oracle of Mopsos in Cilicia was a dream oracle, as the oracle of the Telmessians in Caria."
"Let us remember that Marcus Aurelius put mysteries between dream visions and miraculous healing as one of the forms in which we may be certain of the care of the gods. In psychological terms, there must have been an experience of the 'other' in a change of consciousness, moving far beyond what could be found in everyday life. 'I cam out of the mystery hall feeling like a stranger to myself' --this is a rhetor's description of the experience at Eleusis." [Burkert, 90]
On Posidonius of Apamea (135 - 50 bc)
"In early times the greatest attention was paid to dreams, which seemed to be a message from the other world, and to birds, whose incalculable appearances constituted the most omnipresent and important of omens. Zeus sends the birds and also, as the second book of the Iliad shows, the dreams --those in which no figure of the dead appears."
"The belief in the oracles was the business not only of the priests and seers but also of the politicians. Only one method of foretelling the future --dreams -- was not attacked. Everyone believed in dreams, and even Aristotle treated of the divine nature of dreams." [136]
To a primitive mind, dream visions are reality [11]
Examples of healing through temple-sleep (incubation) [252-253]
"The gods, said Democritus, can reveal the future by appearing and by speaking (fr. 166). This they did most frequently in dreams, of which Plutarch reports his general theory...What we see in our sleep are the films or images thrown off by things or people, which penetrate the body through its 'pores.' These convey not only the physical likeness of their originals, but also their 'movements of soul, intentions, characters and emotions,' and so when they strike the dreamer 'they speak to him like living things and report the thoughts, arguments and impulses of those from whom they have come.' Some are more accurate than others, depending on the state of the air through which they have passed. Here at least the limits of materialistic explanation seem stretched to breaking point in order to accommodate the popular beliefs of his time."
(Epicurus on Dreams)
"There remains the evidence of dreams, which had already been accepted by Democritus and explained by the impact of images (idola ) entering the pores of the body in sleep. These images are objects of 'mental apprehension', an act independent of the senses, but analogous tothe perception of sensible things. It is unnecessary to go into the reason which Epicurus gave for believing that we have a 'clear knowledge' of the anthropomorphic gods who appear to us in dreams, whereas visions of chimaeras or hippocentarus are mere change combinations of stray idola with no corresponding realities. It is obvious that the real motive behind Epicurus's theology is his determination that there shall be immortal and blessed beings, enjoying an existence of untroubled peace such as the Epicurean desired for himself. But for that determination, our dreams of the gods could be explained away just as easily as our dreams of chimaeras; and the Academic in Cicero's de Natura Deorum has no difficulty in tearing the doctrine to pieces. Epicurus' theology, which his most ardent admirers do not care to defend, offers only the thinnest pretense of a 'scientific' character. [26]
"Recapitulating Plato's doctrine, Cicero reminds us that this visionary power of surveying all time and existence is possessed by the soul in sleep. 'When it is called away from the contagion of its bodily associate the soul remembers the past, discerns the present, and foresees the future; for the sleeper's body lies as if dead, while his spirit is alive and in full vigour' (de Div. I,63)." [73-74]
Plato's Republic (IX, 571D): Quoted in Cornford,74.
"Inspired divination comes only when the power of understanding is fettered in sleep or by some disorder or by divine possession. The visions must be interpreted by sober reflexion afterwards. It will be seen that here significant dreams are not ascribed to any outside source....Aristotle similarly ignores the interpretation of omens but acknowledges that the evidence for prophetic dreams is too strong to be dismissed." [141-142]
Heraclitus on dreams:
"...our intelligence is a portion of the divine intelligence, and therefore capable of understanding the 'thought' which governs Nature. In popular belief and in the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition, this divine faculty was supposed to receive revelations of truth in dreams, when the soul was set free from the body. "It sleeps when the limbs (organs ) are active, but, to the sleeper, in many dreams it reveals a judgement of weal or woe drawing nigh' (Pindar, frag. 131). Aristotle, in an early work, similarly declared that 'the soul in sleep, being alone by herself, recovers her proper (heavenly) nature and divines and prophesies the future' (frag. 12). Heracleitus dissents from this view. The sleeper is shut up with his private fancies; he 'turns aside into a world of his own'. When the channels of sense are closed, the mind is cut off from contact with the mind outside, preserving only, in respiration, a sort of root. It becomes rational again only when we wake and look out through the windows of sense. The idea that truth is revealed in dreams is thus denied; but the important conception of the human mind as a kind to the divine mind is preserved." [150]
On the following fragments from Heracleitus:
[Frag. LXXXIX] "Death is all things we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep."
"A man strikes a light for himself in the night, when his sight is quenched. Living, he touches the dead in his sleep; waking, he touches the sleeper.
"Unlike Pindar, Heraclitus refuses to admit a more penetrating psychic life in dreams: in sleep 'all we see is sleep'. At nightfall we have lost our contact with the daylight, the fire that is shared. So each oneis obliged to strike a light 'for himself'....The experience of nightfall is one of isolation, where the individual, in his own person, reflects the quenching of diurnal fire. Like the lighting of the lamp, the dream experience is a weaker counterpart for the lucid fire of the day...."
[Republic IX: 571]:"What desires do you mean?" he said. "Those," said I, "that are awakened in sleep when the rest of the soul, the rational, gentle and dominant part, slumbers, but the beastly and savage part, replete with food and wine, gambols and, repelling sleep, endeavors to sally forth and satisfy its own instincts. You are aware that in such case there is nothing it will not venture to undertake as being released from all sense of shame and all reason. It does not shrink from attempting to lie with a mother [571d] in fancy or with anyone else, man, god or brute. It is ready for any foul deed of blood; it abstains from no food, and, in a word, falls short of no extreme of folly and shamelessness." "Most true," he said. "But when, I suppose, a man's condition is healthy and sober, and he goes to sleep after arousing his rational part and entertaining it with fair words and thoughts, and attaining to clear self-consciousness, while he has neither starved [571e] nor indulged to repletion his appetitive part, so that it may be lulled to sleep."
[Timaeus 72a]
And that God gave unto man's foolishness the gift of divination a sufficient token is this: no man achieves true and inspired divination when in his rational mind, but only when the power of his intelligence is fettered in sleep or when it is distraught by disease or by reason of some divine inspiration. But it belongs to a man when in his right mind to recollect and ponder both the things spoken in dream or waking vision by the divining and inspired nature, and all the visionary forms that were seen, and by means of reasoning to discern about them all [72a] wherein they are significant and for whom they portend evil or good in the future, the past, or the present. But it is not the task of him who has been in a state of frenzy, and still continues therein, to judge the apparitions and voices seen or uttered by himself; for it was well said of old that to do and to know one's own and oneself belongs only to him who is sound of mind. Wherefore also it is customary to set the tribe of prophets to pass judgement [72b] upon these inspired divinations; and they, indeed, themselves are named "diviners" by certain who are wholly ignorant of the truth that they are not diviners but interpreters of the mysterious voice and apparition, for whom the most fitting name would be "prophets of things divined."For these reasons, then, the nature of the liver is such as we have stated and situated in the region we have described, for the sake of divination. Moreover, when the individual creature is alive this organ affords signs that are fairly manifest"
[Theaetetus 158]:
Socrates: One which I fancy you have often heard. The question is asked, what proof you could give if anyone should ask us now, at the present moment, whether we are asleep and our thoughts are a dream, or whether we are awake [158c] and talking with each other in a waking condition.
Theaetetus: Really, Socrates, I don't see what proof can be given; for there is an exact correspondence in all particulars, as between the strophe and antistrophe of a choral song. Take, for instance, the conversation we have just had: there is nothing to prevent us from imagining in our sleep also that we are carrying on this conversation with each other, and when in a dream we imagine that we are relating dreams, the likeness between the one talk and the other is remarkable.
Socrates: So you see it is not hard to dispute the point, since it is even open to dispute whether we are awake or in a dream. [158d] Now since the time during which we are asleep is equal to that during which we are awake, in each state our spirit semblances that appear to it at any time are certainly true, so that for half the time we say that this is true, and for half the time the other, and we maintain each with equal confidence.