DREAM GALAXY

Anecdote collection · Flight & sky

Soaring above the clouds the night before

Rome, Italy · 15 March 44 BCE (eve)

Also, in the night on which the day of his murder dawned, he dreamt at one time that he was soaring above the clouds, and, at another, that he had joined hands with Jupiter.

Original text — The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (Thomson trans., rev. Forester), Suetonius; trans. Alexander Thomson, rev. T. Forester

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Source
The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (Thomson trans., rev. Forester) — Suetonius; trans. Alexander Thomson, rev. T. Forester, c. 121 / 1796 (trans.). Julius Caesar, ch. LXXXI
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Anecdote collection
Place
Rome, Italy · Roman
Date
15 March 44 BCE (eve)
Uncertainty
High — From Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars (A. Thomson trans., rev. T. Forester); an omen-dream reported by a Roman biographer.
Imagery
Flight · Sky · Ruler
Feelings
Awe · Wonder

Another way to look at this dream

Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.

Flight

How did flying feel — effortless, effortful, frightening? Is there something in your waking life you would like to rise above, or see from higher up?

Jung · Compensation

Jung thought dreams often compensate for a one-sided waking attitude: they show the side we leave out. A flying dream can be read either way — lightness someone lacks, or a height they have climbed too fast.

C. G. Jung, “General Aspects of Dream Psychology”, Collected Works 8

Early dream research Dream research

Ellis gave flying and falling dreams a whole chapter, “Aviation in Dreams”, and explained flying mainly through breathing sensations during sleep.

Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. VI

Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine

The Lingshu says that when the upper body is in excess, “one dreams of flying”. This is a historical theory about the body, not medical advice and not a way to diagnose anything.

Huangdi Neijing, Lingshu ch. 43 “Yinxie Fameng”

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Sky

What colour was the sky, and how far away? Were you under it, or up inside it?

Daoist classic Classical text

In the Liezi, King Mu of Zhou is carried up into a magician’s palace in the sky. He returns to find he never left his seat: “we were wandering in spirit,” the magician says — “why would the body move?”

Liezi, “King Mu of Zhou”

Roman philosophy Philosophy

In Cicero’s “Dream of Scipio”, the dreamer is taken up among the heavens and looks back at an Earth so small that Rome’s empire seems a speck.

Cicero, De re publica VI (“Dream of Scipio”)

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Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Dreams that share its images