Diary & poem of record · Falling & stuck
The horse on the cliff path
Sea cliff, location unstated · 15 September 1884
Out of a veil of palpitating mist there arose before me in my sleep the image of a colossal and precipitous cliff; standing sheer up against a sky of cloud and sea-mist, the tops of the granite peaks being merged and hidden in the vapor. At the foot of the precipice beat a wild sea, tossing and flecked with foam; and out of the flying spray rose sharp splinters of granite, standing like spearheads about the base of the solid rock. As I looked, something stirred far off in the distance, like a fly crawling over the smooth crag.
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- Dreams and Dream-Stories, Part I: Dreams — Anna Bonus Kingsford; edited by Edward Maitland, posthumous edition; dreams recorded c. 1876–1887. Part I, XX. The Panic-Struck Pack-Horse
- Record type
- Diary & poem of record
- Place
- Sea cliff, location unstated · British
- Date
- 15 September 1884
- Uncertainty
- Low — Dated first-person diary dream. The selected opening belongs to the single horse dream and is not split into another record.
- Imagery
- Heights · Sea · Storm · Horse
- Feelings
- Unease · Awe
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
Falling
Where were you standing before the fall? Were you reaching for something to hold, or letting go?
Jung · Descent
In his memoir Jung describes deliberately “letting himself drop” into an inner depth in 1913, and treated descent as a way of meeting what lies below everyday awareness — frightening, but not only a disaster.
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)
Early dream research Dream research
Ellis explained falling dreams through bodily sensations at the edge of sleep. Sleep researchers today describe the related “hypnic jerk”, a sudden start while falling asleep.
Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. VI
Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine
The same passage of the Lingshu pairs flying with falling: when the lower body is in excess, “one dreams of falling”. 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”
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
Storm
Was the storm far off or already on top of you? Were you looking for shelter, or standing in it watching?
English drama Literature
The Tempest opens with a storm raised by magic, and Prospero later says: “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on.”
Shakespeare, The Tempest, IV.i
Early dream research Dream research
Ellis recorded his own dream of a cyclone threatening the house, and connected it to the wind outside that night.
Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. IV
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- A willow tree fell to the ground Chang’an, China · 815
- All the ponies driven westward Dakota country · c. 1860s
- Four nights of flying from a cliff Minnesota River · c. 1860s (told)
- My father sinking into a lake of mire Ayodhya (setting) · c. 5th–4th c. BCE (epic)
- A tree reaching unto heaven Babylon · narrative set c. 6th c. BCE
- Never cross the large lake Great Lakes region · traditional (recorded c. 1820s–1850s)