DREAM GALAXY

Anecdote collection · Death & the departed

An old woman in a brass coffin

Ithome, Messenia · 369 BCE

This man was bidden in a dream, in the place where he should find at Ithome an ivy and myrtle tree growing, to dig between them and recover an old woman who was ill and confined there in a brass coffin and already near to death’s door. And Epiteles when day broke went to the appointed place, and dug up a cinerary urn of brass

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 IV, ch. 26
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Anecdote collection
Place
Ithome, Messenia · Ancient Greek
Date
369 BCE
Uncertainty
High — From Pausanias’ Description of Greece (A. R. Shilleto trans., 1886); a local tradition recorded by a 2nd-century traveller.
Imagery
Coffin · Tree · Grave · Book
Feelings
Wonder · Awe

Another way to look at this dream

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

The dead

Who was it, and did they seem to know they had died? Was there something you were able to say, or not able to?

Jung · Objective level first

Jung’s memoir records his own dreams of his late father and treats them with seriousness rather than symbol-hunting: a dream of someone who has died is first about that person and that bond.

C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)

Early dream research Dream research

Ellis devoted a chapter to dreams of the dead, noting how often the dead appear as if alive and how such dreams can bring comfort.

Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. VIII

Homeric epic Classical text

Achilles dreams of the dead Patroclus, who asks to be buried; Achilles reaches out to embrace him and grasps nothing.

Homer, Iliad XXIII

All perspectives on the dead →

Tree

What kind of tree was it, and was it alive, bare, or in bloom? Does it remind you of a particular place?

Jung · The philosophical tree

Jung collected trees drawn by his patients and found in alchemy, and read them as images of slow growth — rooted below, reaching up.

C. G. Jung, “The Philosophical Tree”, Collected Works 13

Norse myth Myth & scripture

Yggdrasil, the world-ash, holds the nine worlds in its roots and branches.

Poetic Edda, “Völuspá”

Tang tale Literature

Chunyu Fen falls asleep under an old pagoda tree and dreams of a kingdom; on waking he finds it was an ants’ nest among its roots.

Li Gongzuo, “The Governor of Nanke” (c. 802)

All perspectives on tree →

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

Dreams that share its images