DREAM GALAXY

Diary & poem of record · People & kin

The card partner who changed age

Not stated · 7 December 1883

I dreamed I was playing at cards with three persons, the two opposed to me being a man and a woman with hoods pulled over their heads, and cloaks covering their persons. I did not particularly observe them. My partner was an old man without hood or cloak, and there was about him this peculiarity, that he did not from one minute to another appear to remain the same. Sometimes he looked like a very young man, the features not appearing to change in order to produce this effect, but an aspect of youth and even of mirth coming into the face as though the features were lighted up from within.

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, XIX. The Game of Cards: A Parable
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Diary & poem of record
Place
Not stated · British
Date
7 December 1883
Uncertainty
Low — Dated first-person diary dream; the source titles it a parable, but the record remains classified as a diary dream.
Imagery
A stranger · Faces · Light
Feelings
Confusion · 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.

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 →

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

All perspectives on light →

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

Dreams that share its images