Dream Galaxy

Research case · Water

Testing whether the water was hot

England · before 1911

Thus I dreamed that, not knowing whether some water was hot or cold, I put my finger into it and felt it to be distinctly hot.

Original text — The World of Dreams, Havelock Ellis

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Source
The World of Dreams — Havelock Ellis, 1911. The World of Dreams
Rights
Public domain (US)
Record type
Research case
Place
England · British
Date
before 1911
Uncertainty
Moderate — Reported in Havelock Ellis’s study of dreams.
Imagery
Water
Feelings
Confusion

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Early dream researchers often linked water imagery to bodily sensation and mood; later psychoanalytic writers read deep water as a figure for what lies below awareness. Modern researchers treat such readings as interpretive traditions rather than findings.

cf. Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911)

Mythological

Many cosmologies begin with primordial waters — the deep of Genesis, the Babylonian Apsu, the cosmic ocean of Hindu myth — so water often stands for origins, boundaries and crossings between worlds.

Comparative mythology

Chinese traditions

In Chinese poetry water carries time and loss — “all things flow east like water” (Li Bai) — while Daoist texts praise water as soft yet enduring.

Li Bai; Daodejing ch. 8

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images