Literary dream · Death & the departed
Hari on Garuda warns of a trap
Pāṭaliputra (Patna) · c. 1070 (compiled)
Then the adorable Hari, who is compassionate to his votaries, appeared to me in a dream, mounted on Garuda, with his breast marked with a lotus, and thus commanded me—“My son, this Prapanchabuddhi is rightly named, for he will inveigle you into the cemetery to take part in the incantation of the circle, and will offer you up as a victim.
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- 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. XXXVIII
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Pāṭaliputra (Patna) · 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
- Bird · Grave · A stranger · Flower
- Feelings
- Fear · Relief
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
Bird
What was the bird doing — flying off, landing near you, singing? Did it seem to bring something?
Ancient Greece Classical text
Penelope dreams that an eagle kills her twenty geese, then speaks: it is Odysseus, come home to the suitors. The dream explains itself inside the dream.
Homer, Odyssey XIX
Japanese custom Folk saying
The hawk is the second of the three lucky images of the New Year’s first dream (“first Fuji, second a hawk…”).
Edo-period saying on hatsuyume
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
A stranger
Did the stranger remind you of anyone, even slightly? What did they want from you?
Jung · Shadow, anima and animus
Jung read unknown figures as possible parts of the dreamer: a same-sex stranger may carry the shadow; an other-sex figure what he called the anima or animus. These are offered as lenses, not labels — and his gender framing reflects his time.
C. G. Jung, “Aion, ch. 2–3”, Collected Works 9ii
Homeric epic Classical text
In Homer, gods and dreams arrive in borrowed shapes: Athena visits Nausicaa disguised as her friend; Zeus sends a Dream to Agamemnon looking like Nestor.
Odyssey VI; Iliad II
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- The feathered man who opened my heart Zhou court, China · legendary (Western Zhou)
- A masked man asked for his bone back Huangkeng, China · c. 795
- A cannon before the Arch of Constantine Rome (dreamed) · before 1912
- Two ghosts plotting to enter my father Taiyuan, China · Tang (undated)
- The earthquake is coming Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1910
- Thou art but a dead man Gerar, Canaan · undated narrative