DREAM GALAXY

Literary dream · Water

The island that kept backing away

Imaginary sea voyage · c. 170 CE (satire)

A little after appeared the Isle of Dreams near unto us, an obscure country and unperspicuous to the eye, endued with the same quality as dreams themselves are: for as we drew, it still gave back and fled from us, that it seemed to be farther off than at the first

Original text — Lucian’s True History (Hickes trans.), Lucian of Samosata; trans. Francis Hickes

Open this dream in the galaxy →

Source
Lucian’s True History (Hickes trans.) — Lucian of Samosata; trans. Francis Hickes, c. 170 / 1634 (trans.). True History, Book II
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Literary dream
Place
Imaginary sea voyage · Ancient Greek
Date
c. 170 CE (satire)
Uncertainty
High — From Lucian of Samosata’s True History (Francis Hickes trans., 1634); a Greek satirist writing under Roman rule.
Imagery
Sea · Boat · Gate
Feelings
Wonder · Confusion · Longing

Another way to look at this dream

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

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

All perspectives on water →

Boat

Were you steering, a passenger, or simply being carried? Did you know where the boat was going?

Jung · The night sea journey

Borrowing the ethnologist Frobenius’s phrase, Jung wrote about the “night sea journey”: a hero swallowed by the sea or a monster who travels in the dark and comes out changed.

C. G. Jung, “Symbols of Transformation”, Collected Works 5

Ancient Egypt Myth & scripture

Egyptian funerary books such as the Amduat describe the sun god sailing a barque through the twelve hours of the night before rising again at dawn.

Amduat (New Kingdom)

Daoist thought Philosophy

The Zhuangzi praises one who wanders “like an unmoored boat” — drifting here is ease, not loss of control.

Zhuangzi, “Lie Yukou”

All perspectives on boat →

Gate

Was the door open, closed, or locked — and did you want to go through it?

Ancient Greece Classical text

Penelope says dreams come through two gates: those through polished ivory deceive, those through horn come true. Even in Homer, not every dream was to be trusted.

Homer, Odyssey XIX

Anthropology Dream research

Arnold van Gennep described rites of passage as separation, a threshold (“liminal”) stage, and return. Doors and gates are where many cultures stage that middle step.

van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (1909)

All perspectives on gate →

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

Dreams that share its images