Research case · Falling & stuck
The acrobat who never touched the floor
England · before 1911
I dreamed that I was watching a girl acrobat, in appropriate costume, who was rhythmically rising to a great height in the air and then falling, without touching the floor, though each time she approached quite close to it. At last she ceased, exhausted and perspiring, and I had to lead her away.
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- The World of Dreams — Havelock Ellis, 1911. Ch. VI
- Rights
- Public domain (US)
- Record type
- Research case
- Place
- England · British
- Date
- before 1911
- Uncertainty
- Low
- Imagery
- Flight · Falling · Heights · A stranger
- Feelings
- Wonder
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Sensations of falling or being unable to move are often reported near the edges of sleep. Ellis described them in terms of the body’s signals reaching the dreaming mind; sleep researchers today discuss related experiences such as hypnic jerks and sleep paralysis.
Ellis (1911), ch. V
Mythological
Falls mark thresholds in many myths — the fall from paradise, Phaethon tumbling from the sun chariot, descents into the underworld — moments when one order of things gives way to another.
Comparative mythology
Chinese traditions
Classical dream books such as the tradition attributed to the Duke of Zhou catalogued falling and climbing among common dream images; their readings were folk conventions rather than fixed meanings.
Folk dream-book traditions
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- A hotel I could see into England · before 1911
- A ladder set up on the earth Bethel, Canaan · undated (text c. 6th c. BCE)
- Climbing a ladder to touch the sky Luoyang, China · c. 95 (as told)
- Snow at the top of the hotel England · before 1911
- Rome half veiled in mist Vienna, Austria · c. 1897
- Would the fall never come to an end? Oxford, England · 1865 (novel)