Literary dream · Cities & buildings
Your fetters are loosed
Northern borderlands (story) · c. 1070 (compiled)
And the goddess Durgá in a dream commanded Nischayadatta and his companions—“Rise up, my children, depart, for your fetters are loosed.” Then they woke up at night, and saw that their fetters had fallen off of themselves, and after relating to one another their dream, they departed thence delighted.
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- Source
- The Kathá Sarit Ságara, or Ocean of the Streams of Story (Tawney trans.) — Somadeva; trans. C. H. Tawney, c. 1070 / 1880–84 (trans.). Ch. XXXVII
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Northern borderlands (story) · Indian
- Date
- c. 1070 (compiled)
- Uncertainty
- High — From the Kathāsaritsāgara, Somadeva’s 11th-century Sanskrit story collection (C. H. Tawney trans., 1880–84); a story-dream, not a personal report.
- Imagery
- Gate · Friend · Darkness
- Feelings
- Relief · Joy
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
Gate
Was the door open, closed, or locked — and did you want to go through it?
Ancient Greece Classical text
Penelope says dreams come through two gates: those through polished ivory deceive, those through horn come true. Even in Homer, not every dream was to be trusted.
Homer, Odyssey XIX
Anthropology Dream research
Arnold van Gennep described rites of passage as separation, a threshold (“liminal”) stage, and return. Doors and gates are where many cultures stage that middle step.
van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (1909)
Friend
How long since you last saw this friend? What were you doing together in the dream — something you used to do?
Dream research Dream research
The “continuity” view in dream research finds that most dream characters are people we know, and that dreams tend to carry on our waking relationships and concerns.
G. William Domhoff, The Scientific Study of Dreams (2003)
Tang poetry Literature
Du Fu, not knowing whether his exiled friend Li Bai is alive, writes that “my old friend entered my dream, knowing how long I have thought of him”.
Du Fu, “Dreaming of Li Bai” (759)
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
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- Would the fall never come to an end? Oxford, England · 1865 (novel)
- Carried up out of a well Chang’an, China · c. 750
- I could make the summer Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1910
- Heaven, surrounded by dazzling light United States · before 1911
- Gold under the pillow every morning Chinchinī, on the sea coast (story) · c. 1070 (compiled)
- My friend, alive, no longer editing England · before 1911