Dream Galaxy

Research case · Cities & buildings

Snow at the top of the hotel

England · before 1911

I dreamed that I was in an hotel, mounting many flights of stairs, until I entered a room where the chambermaid was making the bed; the white bedclothes were scattered over everything, and looked to me like snow; then I became conscious that I was very cold, and it appeared to me that I really was surrounded by snow, for the chambermaid remarked that I was very courageous to come up so high in the hotel…

Original text — The World of Dreams, Havelock Ellis

Open this dream in the galaxy →

Source
The World of Dreams — Havelock Ellis, 1911. Ch. IV
Rights
Public domain (US)
Record type
Research case
Place
England · British
Date
before 1911
Uncertainty
Moderate
Imagery
Stairs · Heights · Snow & ice · House
Feelings
Wonder

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Houses, corridors and endless stairs are frequent dream settings. Some writers read buildings as figures for the self; others note simply that dreams rebuild the spaces we move through every day.

cf. Stevenson, A Chapter on Dreams (1888)

Mythological

Labyrinths, towers and underground cities appear in myths from Crete to Babel — built places where people lose their way, reach too high, or find hidden kingdoms.

Greek myth; Genesis 11

Chinese traditions

Tang tales like “The Governor of Nanke” place a whole kingdom of palaces inside a dream, only to reveal it as an ants’ nest — a lasting image for the brevity of worldly glory.

Li Gongzuo, c. 802

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images