DREAM GALAXY

Religious narrative · Nature & weather

Was it a dream that I saw?

Forest (epic setting) · c. 4th c. BCE–4th c. CE (epic)

And she asked herself, ‘Was it a dream that I saw? What an occurrence hath taken place! Where are all those ascetics? And where is that asylum? Where, further, is that delightful river of sacred waters—the resort of diverse kinds of fowls? And where, again, are those charming trees decked with fruits and flowers?’

Original text — The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa (Ganguli trans.), Vyasa (trad.); trans. Kisari Mohan Ganguli

Open this dream in the galaxy →

Source
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa (Ganguli trans.) — Vyasa (trad.); trans. Kisari Mohan Ganguli, ancient / 1883–96 (trans.). Vana Parva, sec. 64
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Religious narrative
Place
Forest (epic setting) · Indian
Date
c. 4th c. BCE–4th c. CE (epic)
Uncertainty
High — From the Mahābhārata (K. M. Ganguli trans., 1883–96); an epic narrative.
Imagery
River · Tree · Flower · Bird
Feelings
Confusion · Loneliness · Grief

Another way to look at this dream

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

Water

Was the water clear or muddy, still or rising? Which water in your own life — a place, a swim, a flood — does it bring back first?

Jung · The unconscious

Jung called water the most common image for the unconscious: something deep, below the surface, that we can look into but not see through.

C. G. Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious”, Collected Works 9i

Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine

The Lingshu pairs dream images with the balance of yin and yang: when yin is excessive, one “dreams of wading through great water, and is afraid”. 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”

Hebrew Bible; Babylonian myth Myth & scripture

Several creation stories begin with primordial water — “darkness was upon the face of the deep” in Genesis, the fresh-water Apsu in the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Here water is what exists before order.

Genesis 1:2; Enuma Elish I

All perspectives on water →

Tree

What kind of tree was it, and was it alive, bare, or in bloom? Does it remind you of a particular place?

Jung · The philosophical tree

Jung collected trees drawn by his patients and found in alchemy, and read them as images of slow growth — rooted below, reaching up.

C. G. Jung, “The Philosophical Tree”, Collected Works 13

Norse myth Myth & scripture

Yggdrasil, the world-ash, holds the nine worlds in its roots and branches.

Poetic Edda, “Völuspá”

Tang tale Literature

Chunyu Fen falls asleep under an old pagoda tree and dreams of a kingdom; on waking he finds it was an ants’ nest among its roots.

Li Gongzuo, “The Governor of Nanke” (c. 802)

All perspectives on tree →

Flower

What flower was it? Did someone give it to you, plant it, or did it simply appear? Was it opening or fading?

Jung · The golden flower

Jung wrote a commentary on the Chinese inner-alchemy text The Secret of the Golden Flower, reading its flower as an image of a centre. It is his reading of a Daoist text through his own framework, not the text’s own meaning.

C. G. Jung, “Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower”, Collected Works 13

Chinese drama Literature

In The Peony Pavilion, Du Liniang falls asleep after walking in a spring garden and dreams of a young scholar among the flowers; the dream love outlasts her waking life.

Tang Xianzu, The Peony Pavilion (1598), “The Interrupted Dream”

English Romantic poetry Literature

Coleridge asked what it would mean to pass through Paradise in a dream, be given a flower as a pledge, and wake with the flower in your hand.

S. T. Coleridge, Anima Poetae (1895)

All perspectives on flower →

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

Dreams that share its images