Memoir · Death & the departed
Buried a thousand years in stone
Grasmere, England · c. 1817–1819
I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed… I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids.
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- Confessions of an English Opium-Eater — Thomas De Quincey, 1821. Part III, The Pains of Opium
- Record type
- Memoir
- Place
- Grasmere, England · British
- Date
- c. 1817–1819
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — The surrounding passage frames Asia through 19th-century orientalist fear; shown here for its imagery, not its views.
- Imagery
- Temple · Coffin · Time
- Feelings
- Horror · Awe
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Dreams of the dead returning are widely reported after bereavement. Ellis noted how such dreams often move, over years, from disbelief to quiet acceptance; many people describe them as comforting rather than frightening.
Ellis (1911), ch. VIII
Mythological
In Homer, dreams pass through gates of horn and ivory; across many cultures the dead were believed to visit the living in sleep, and dreams were a place where the two could meet.
Odyssey XIX
Chinese traditions
Chinese poets wrote dreams of the departed as acts of remembrance: Su Shi’s “Ten years, living and dead” and Du Fu’s “My old friend entered my dream” are read to this day as elegies.
Su Shi (1075); Du Fu (759)
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- The pale student of unhallowed arts Near Geneva, Switzerland · June 1816
- A samurai racing the temple clock to enlightenment Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- About to be nailed down England · before 1911
- Carving the guardian out of the wood Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- My friend, alive, no longer editing England · before 1911
- Two boys said: move your bed Jiankang (Nanjing), China · c. 480 (Southern Qi)