Literary dream · People & kin
A flame descending into her womb
Takshaśilā (Taxila) · c. 1070 (compiled)
Then Tárádattá beheld in a dream a flame descending from heaven and entering into her womb; and in the morning she described with astonishment her dream to her husband, the king Kalingadatta
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- 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. XXVII
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Takshaśilā (Taxila) · 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
- Fire · Sky · Child · Mother
- 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.
Fire
Was the fire warming, destroying, or lighting the way? What, if anything, did it burn?
Jung · Transformation by fire
In the alchemical images Jung studied, fire is the agent of change: what passes through it does not come out the same.
C. G. Jung, “Psychology and Alchemy”, Collected Works 12
Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine
The Lingshu’s counterpart to the water image: when yang is excessive, “one dreams of a great fire, burning and scorching”. This is a historical theory about the body, not medical advice and not a way to diagnose anything.
Huangdi Neijing, Lingshu ch. 43 “Yinxie Fameng”
Greek myth Myth & scripture
Prometheus steals fire for humans and is punished for it: fire as a gift that costs something.
Hesiod, Theogony; Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Sky
What colour was the sky, and how far away? Were you under it, or up inside it?
Daoist classic Classical text
In the Liezi, King Mu of Zhou is carried up into a magician’s palace in the sky. He returns to find he never left his seat: “we were wandering in spirit,” the magician says — “why would the body move?”
Liezi, “King Mu of Zhou”
Roman philosophy Philosophy
In Cicero’s “Dream of Scipio”, the dreamer is taken up among the heavens and looks back at an Earth so small that Rome’s empire seems a speck.
Cicero, De re publica VI (“Dream of Scipio”)
Child
Whose child was it — yours, someone you know, or yourself when young? What did the child need?
Jung · The child archetype
Jung described the “child” in dreams and myth as an image of what is not yet — a beginning, small and easy to overlook, that carries a future.
C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype”, Collected Works 9i
Psychoanalysis Depth psychology
Freud began his theory with children’s dreams, which he found to be plain, undisguised wishes — a trip promised, a treat withheld.
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), ch. III
East Asian custom Folk saying
In China and Korea (where it is called taemong), “conception dreams” before a birth are a living custom, often retold within families.
East Asian folk custom
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- A ladder set up on the earth Bethel, Canaan · undated (text c. 6th c. BCE)
- Her body stretched to the stars Rome, Italy · 63 BCE
- A youth let down on a golden chain Rome, Italy · c. 50 BCE
- Heaven, surrounded by dazzling light United States · before 1911
- The moon, then the sun, entered my bosom Wu (Zhejiang), China · c. 175–182
- Where she was, there was I also Thagaste, North Africa · c. 373