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*) Dreams (*
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From mythology to the epic poetry of India, early writings from around the world suggest that people have been fascinated by their dreams. In antiquity, it was widely believed that dreams contained important information, often in the form of predictions about the future of the dreamer, his or her family or village, or - especially if the dreamer was a king - the fate of an entire nation.
Sometimes a dream's message is perfectly clear, but often the meaning is hidden or disguised, requiring the services of an interpreter. Dream interpretation, or oneiromancy (from the Greek oneiros, meaning "dream" and mancy, meaning "prophecy") is one of the oldest systems of diviniation. In ancient times, it was always concidered a job for a professional - usually a priest or a priestess or someone known simply as a dream interpreter, whose only job was to listen to people's dreams and explain their meanings, sometimes offering advice on what course of action, if any, the dreamer should take.
Systems of dream interpretation are reffered to in the earliest of all recorded literature. In ancient Egypt, dream interpreters were known as "the learned men of the magic library" and resided in temples where the god of dreams, Serapis, was worshipped.
Special locations were designated not only for dream interpretation but also for dreaming itself. Many people hoped that solutions to problems that eluded them during their waking hours might be revealed in a dream sent by the gods, provided the right procedures were folowed.
Many famous people have found their dreams to be a wellspring of creative ideas and brilliant solutions to problems. The writer Mary Shelley claimed that the imortal charaters of Dr.Frankenstein came to her in a dream; the novelist Bram Stroker said the same thing about his most famous creation, Count Dracula. And the 19th century chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev, after struggling unsuccessfully with a system for categorizing the chemical elements, "saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required" and, on waking, came up with the periodic table of the elements.
In an effort to receive helpfull dreams, the ancient Egyptians were were known to sleep in the shadow of the Sphinx or spent a night in one of the temples of Serapis. Similarly, a citizen of ancient Greece seeking relief from poor health might travel to one of the temples dedicated to Asclepius, the god of medicine, in the hope of receiving a dream that would diagnose his illness and suggest a cure. In medieval Japan, a pilgram could stay at a dream shrine for one hundred days or more, adhering to a restricted diet and a rigid schedule of prayer in hope of an enlightening dream.
The first comprehensive dream guide was the Oneirocritica, or The Interpretation of Dreams, written in the second century A.D. by the Greek dream interpreter Artemidorus of Daldianus. It contained the meanings of hundreds of different dreams and dream symbols, it remained the most importent book on the subject for more than a thousand years. Some of the interpretations sound quite sensible even today, for example, 'all tools that cut and divide things signify disagreements, factions and injuries.' Others such as the warning that it's bad luck to dream of winged ants or quail, probably reflect the superstitions of the time.
Modern thinkers, such as Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, argued that the true significance of dreams lies not what they reveal about the outside world, but in what they can tell us about ourselves. Freud believed dreams ewpress our deepest wishes, while Jung said all the fascinating, scary, or helpful characters in dreams are aspects of our own minds.
You don't have to be an accomplished dream analyst to realize that the dream world is an unique place where anything can happen. Which may be why magic is sometimes strangely familiar to us, we've seen it all before in our dreams.
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