DREAM GALAXY

Diary & poem of record · People & kin

A company condemned to death

Not stated · November 1876

I was visited last night by a dream of so strange and vivid a kind that I feel impelled to communicate it to you, not only to relieve my own mind of the impression which the recollection of it causes me, but also to give you an opportunity of finding the meaning, which I am sill far too much shaken and terrified to seek for myself. It seemed to me that you and I were two of a vast company of men and women, upon all of whom, with the exception of myself--for I was there voluntarily--sentence of death had been passed.

Original text — Dreams and Dream-Stories, Part I: Dreams, Anna Bonus Kingsford; edited by Edward Maitland

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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, I. The Doomed Train
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Diary & poem of record
Place
Not stated · British
Date
November 1876
Uncertainty
Low — First-person dream transcribed from Kingsford's diary; this is one excerpt from one complete dream chapter.
Imagery
Crowd · A stranger · Road
Feelings
Fear · Unease

Another way to look at this dream

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

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

All perspectives on a stranger →

Road

Were you heading towards somewhere or leaving somewhere? Did you choose this road?

Jung · Individuation as a way

Jung often spoke of individuation as a path one has to walk oneself; no one else’s map fits exactly.

C. G. Jung, “Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation”, Collected Works 9i

Upanishads Classical text

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says that in dream “there are no chariots, no harnesses, no roads — but he creates chariots, harnesses and roads”: the dreamer builds the way as they go.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.3.10

Tang tale Literature

In “The World Inside a Pillow”, a young man on the road to Handan lives a whole career in a dream while millet cooks — the source of the idiom “yellow millet dream”.

Shen Jiji, “The World Inside a Pillow” (c. 780)

All perspectives on road →

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

Dreams that share its images