DREAM GALAXY

Anecdote collection · People & kin

Embracing her crowned son

Elis, Greece · c. 4th c. BCE

But the mother of Dinolochus dreamed that she embraced her son after being crowned, and moved by this dream he trained, and outran the other lads

Original text — Pausanias’ Description of Greece (Shilleto trans.), Pausanias; trans. A. R. Shilleto

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Source
Pausanias’ Description of Greece (Shilleto trans.) — Pausanias; trans. A. R. Shilleto, c. 150 / 1886 (trans.). Book VI, ch. 1
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Anecdote collection
Place
Elis, Greece · Ancient Greek
Date
c. 4th c. BCE
Uncertainty
High — From Pausanias’ Description of Greece (A. R. Shilleto trans., 1886); a local tradition recorded by a 2nd-century traveller.
Imagery
Mother · Child · Crowd
Feelings
Joy · Tenderness

Another way to look at this dream

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

Mother

Was this your own mother as you know her, or someone in her place? What did she do or say?

Jung · The mother archetype

Jung first reads a dreamed mother on the “objective level” — your real mother and your relationship. Only then on the “subjective level”: the mother archetype, which he described as both nourishing and devouring.

C. G. Jung, “Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype”, Collected Works 9i

Early dream research & psychology Dream research

Family members, friends and strangers populate most dreams. Freud read many such dreams as wishes in disguise; contemporary researchers emphasise continuity with waking relationships and concerns.

Freud, Dream Psychology (1920)

Myth & scripture (several traditions) Myth & scripture

Dreams in epic and scripture are often addressed to someone — a wife waiting for a husband, a son receiving a vision for his family — and are told aloud to be understood.

Odyssey XIX; Genesis 37

All perspectives on mother →

Child

Whose child was it — yours, someone you know, or yourself when young? What did the child need?

Jung · The child archetype

Jung described the “child” in dreams and myth as an image of what is not yet — a beginning, small and easy to overlook, that carries a future.

C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype”, Collected Works 9i

Psychoanalysis Depth psychology

Freud began his theory with children’s dreams, which he found to be plain, undisguised wishes — a trip promised, a treat withheld.

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), ch. III

East Asian custom Folk saying

In China and Korea (where it is called taemong), “conception dreams” before a birth are a living custom, often retold within families.

East Asian folk custom

All perspectives on child →

A stranger

Did the stranger remind you of anyone, even slightly? What did they want from you?

Jung · Shadow, anima and animus

Jung read unknown figures as possible parts of the dreamer: a same-sex stranger may carry the shadow; an other-sex figure what he called the anima or animus. These are offered as lenses, not labels — and his gender framing reflects his time.

C. G. Jung, “Aion, ch. 2–3”, Collected Works 9ii

Homeric epic Classical text

In Homer, gods and dreams arrive in borrowed shapes: Athena visits Nausicaa disguised as her friend; Zeus sends a Dream to Agamemnon looking like Nestor.

Odyssey VI; Iliad II

All perspectives on a stranger →

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

Dreams that share its images