Religious narrative · Death & the departed
The dark woman who led the sleepers away
Kurukshetra (setting) · c. 4th c. BCE–4th c. CE (epic)
On other days, O sire, the foremost warriors of the Pandava camp used to see in their dreams that figure leading away the sleeping combatants and Drona’s son smiting them behind! The Pandava soldiers saw that lady and Drona’s son in their dreams every night from the day when the battle between the Kurus and the Pandavas first commenced.
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- Source
- The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa (Ganguli trans.) — Vyasa (trad.); trans. Kisari Mohan Ganguli, ancient / 1883–96 (trans.). Sauptika Parva, sec. 8
- Record type
- Religious narrative
- Place
- Kurukshetra (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
- Darkness · War · The dead · A stranger
- Feelings
- Unease · Horror
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
Darkness
What could you not see in the dark — and did it feel like something could see you?
Jung · Nigredo
Jung borrowed the alchemists’ word nigredo, “blackening”, for the dark first stage of a transformation — a time of confusion that comes before anything clarifies.
C. G. Jung, “Psychology and Alchemy”, Collected Works 12
Greek myth Myth & scripture
In Hesiod’s family tree of the gods, Night (Nyx) is the mother of Sleep (Hypnos) and of the tribe of Dreams. Darkness here is where dreams come from.
Hesiod, Theogony 211–212
War
In the war, were you a soldier, someone fleeing, or watching from outside? Was there a particular enemy?
Homeric epic Classical text
Zeus sends Agamemnon a deliberately false dream promising that Troy will fall at once. The epic itself treats a war dream as something that can mislead.
Homer, Iliad II
Song-dynasty poetry Literature
Lu You and Xin Qiji, both kept from the frontier they longed to recover, kept dreaming of battle; their war dreams are read today as poems of unfulfilled duty.
Lu You; Xin Qiji
The dead
Who was it, and did they seem to know they had died? Was there something you were able to say, or not able to?
Jung · Objective level first
Jung’s memoir records his own dreams of his late father and treats them with seriousness rather than symbol-hunting: a dream of someone who has died is first about that person and that bond.
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)
Early dream research Dream research
Ellis devoted a chapter to dreams of the dead, noting how often the dead appear as if alive and how such dreams can bring comfort.
Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. VIII
Homeric epic Classical text
Achilles dreams of the dead Patroclus, who asks to be buried; Achilles reaches out to embrace him and grasps nothing.
Homer, Iliad XXIII
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- A spirit passed before my face Land of Uz · undated narrative
- A mother praying for a father who never returns Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- She dreamt of her uncle and foretold her death London, England · January 1664 (as told to Pepys)
- I have suffered many things this day in a dream Jerusalem · c. 30 (narrative)
- His daughter took away his armour Ithome, Messenia · c. 724 BCE (as told)
- Who is dead in the White House? Washington, D.C., USA · early April 1865 (as reported)