DREAM GALAXY

Literary dream · Cities & buildings

Christmas at a house by the Welsh border

North Wales border · Date unknown · literary dream-story

The strange things I am going to tell you, dear reader, did not occur, as such things generally do, to my great-uncle, or to my second cousin, or even to my grandfather, but to myself. It happened that a few years ago I received an invitation from an old schoolfellow to spend Christmas week with him in his country house on the borders of North Wales, and, as I was then a happy bachelor, and had not seen my friend for a considerable time, I accepted the invitation, and turned my back upon London on the appointed day with a light heart and anticipations of the pleasantest description.

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

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Source
Dreams and Dream-Stories, Part II: Dream-Stories — Anna Bonus Kingsford; edited by Edward Maitland, posthumous edition (1908 Project Gutenberg source edition). Part II, II. Steepside
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Literary dream
Place
North Wales border · British
Date
Date unknown · literary dream-story
Uncertainty
Low — Literary ghost story from Part II; not presented as a diary record. Its composition date is unknown.
Imagery
House · Friend · Road
Feelings
Joy · 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.

House

Whose house was it — one you know, or one you only know in the dream? Which room did you spend the most time in?

Jung · The house as psyche

In 1909 Jung dreamed of a house whose cellar led down into older and older layers — Roman, then prehistoric. He later took it as an image of the psyche, with the oldest layers at the bottom.

C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)

Phenomenology Philosophy

Gaston Bachelard argued that the house “shelters daydreaming”: the attic and cellar of a childhood home stay with us as places to imagine from.

Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (1958)

Chinese fiction Literature

In chapter 5 of Dream of the Red Chamber, Baoyu dreams his way into the Land of Illusion, a palace of cabinets holding registers of the household’s fates.

Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber, ch. 5

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Friend

How long since you last saw this friend? What were you doing together in the dream — something you used to do?

Dream research Dream research

The “continuity” view in dream research finds that most dream characters are people we know, and that dreams tend to carry on our waking relationships and concerns.

G. William Domhoff, The Scientific Study of Dreams (2003)

Tang poetry Literature

Du Fu, not knowing whether his exiled friend Li Bai is alive, writes that “my old friend entered my dream, knowing how long I have thought of him”.

Du Fu, “Dreaming of Li Bai” (759)

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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