Literary dream · Water
Isis rose out of the sea
Cenchreae, near Corinth · c. 170 CE (novel)
I fortuned to fall asleepe, and by and by appeared unto me a divine and venerable face, worshipped even of the Gods themselves. Then by little and little I seemed to see the whole figure of her body, mounting out of the sea and standing before mee
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- Source
- The Golden Asse (Adlington trans.) — Apuleius; trans. William Adlington, c. 170 / 1566 (trans.). Book XI, ch. 47
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Cenchreae, near Corinth · Roman, Egyptian
- Date
- c. 170 CE (novel)
- Uncertainty
- High — From Apuleius’ Golden Ass (William Adlington trans., 1566); the narrator, turned into an ass, is restored by Isis.
- Imagery
- Sea · Moon · Faces
- Feelings
- Awe · Wonder · 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.
Water
Was the water clear or muddy, still or rising? Which water in your own life — a place, a swim, a flood — does it bring back first?
Jung · The unconscious
Jung called water the most common image for the unconscious: something deep, below the surface, that we can look into but not see through.
C. G. Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious”, Collected Works 9i
Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine
The Lingshu pairs dream images with the balance of yin and yang: when yin is excessive, one “dreams of wading through great water, and is afraid”. 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”
Hebrew Bible; Babylonian myth Myth & scripture
Several creation stories begin with primordial water — “darkness was upon the face of the deep” in Genesis, the fresh-water Apsu in the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Here water is what exists before order.
Genesis 1:2; Enuma Elish I
Moon
Was the moon far away or close? Who, if anyone, were you thinking of under it?
Jung · Sol and Luna
Jung followed European alchemy in pairing Sun and Moon as opposites to be joined. That pairing is specific to the alchemical tradition he studied, not a universal rule.
C. G. Jung, “Mysterium Coniunctionis”, Collected Works 14
Chinese poetry Literature
In Chinese poetry the moon is a light shared across distance — Su Shi wishes that people far apart might “share the same moon across a thousand miles”.
Su Shi, “Shuidiao Getou” (1076)
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
- Would the fall never come to an end? Oxford, England · 1865 (novel)
- The acrobat who never touched the floor England · before 1911
- The animals fell out of Noah’s ark Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1910
- I jumped into the sea and regretted it Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- Looking down at nine wisps of smoke Tang China · c. 810
- The moon, then the sun, entered my bosom Wu (Zhejiang), China · c. 175–182