Diary & poem of record · Nature & weather
The banquet of twelve gods
Mythic mountain · September 1877
I saw in my sleep a great table spread upon a beautiful mountain, the distant peaks of which were covered with snow, and brilliant with a bright light. Around the table reclined, twelve persons, six male, six female, some of whom I recognised at once, the others afterwards. Those whom I recognised at once were Zeus, Hera, Pallas Athena, Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis. I knew them by the symbols they wore.
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- Source
- Dreams and Dream-Stories, Part I: Dreams — Anna Bonus Kingsford; edited by Edward Maitland, posthumous edition; dreams recorded c. 1876–1887. Part I, IX. The Banquet of the Gods
- Record type
- Diary & poem of record
- Place
- Mythic mountain · British, Ancient Greek
- Date
- September 1877
- Uncertainty
- Low — Dated first-person diary dream using classical Greek divine figures.
- Imagery
- Mountain · Snow & ice · Light · Food · Ruler
- Feelings
- Awe · Wonder
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
Mountain
Were you climbing it, looking at it, or already on top? What would reaching the summit mean to you?
Japanese custom Folk saying
An Edo-period saying ranks the luckiest images for the first dream of the New Year (hatsuyume): “first Fuji, second a hawk, third an aubergine”.
Edo-period saying on hatsuyume
Chinese poetry Literature
Li Bai climbs Mount Tianmu in a dream, sees a whole immortal world open up, then wakes on his pillow — and decides not to bow to the powerful.
Li Bai, “Dreaming of Tianmu” (c. 745)
Snow & ice
Was the snow fresh or old? Did it make a sound underfoot? Did the cold hurt, or wake you up?
Early dream research Dream research
Ellis gives cold from disturbed bed covers as a common bodily source of dreams, with the case of a sleeper who dreamed of being surrounded by snow on a mountain and woke tangled in the sheets, partly uncovered, on a cold night.
Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. IV, on tactile sensations
Chinese poetry Literature
Liu Zongyuan’s “River Snow” empties a whole landscape — no birds, no footprints — and leaves one old man fishing in the cold: snow as solitude.
Liu Zongyuan, “River Snow”
Light
Where did the light come from? What did it let you see — and was anything too bright to look at?
Jung · Lumen naturae
Writing on Paracelsus, Jung took up the old idea of a lumen naturae, a “light of nature” within us that illuminates from the inside rather than from outside authority.
C. G. Jung, “Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon”, Collected Works 13
Early dream research Dream research
Ellis noted the common claim that light on closed eyes sets off dreams, but said he had no decisive evidence and that eyelids guard sleep well. His own dream of a bright light and a huge shadow came after an evening walk into the setting sun.
Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. IV
Hebrew Bible Myth & scripture
The first thing spoken in Genesis is “Let there be light”: light marks the start of an ordered world.
Genesis 1:3
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- Gold under the pillow every morning Chinchinī, on the sea coast (story) · c. 1070 (compiled)
- The letter on the seashore Seashore, location unstated · 31 January 1877
- My own vast shadow England (countryside) · before 1911
- The princess beyond the sunset Imagined world beyond the sunset · Date unknown · literary dream-story
- A golden hump on his neck Rome, Italy · c. 90s CE
- Three branches and Pharaoh’s cup Egypt (narrative setting) · undated narrative