DREAM GALAXY

Anecdote collection · People & kin

His son with thunder and a sceptre

Thrace · c. 60 BCE

And next night he dreamt that he saw his son under a more than human appearance, with thunder and a sceptre, and the other insignia of Jupiter, Optimus, Maximus, having on his head a radiant crown, mounted upon a chariot decked with laurel, and drawn by six pair of milk-white horses.

Original text — The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (Thomson trans., rev. Forester), Suetonius; trans. Alexander Thomson, rev. T. Forester

Open this dream in the galaxy →

Source
The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (Thomson trans., rev. Forester) — Suetonius; trans. Alexander Thomson, rev. T. Forester, c. 121 / 1796 (trans.). Augustus, ch. XCIV
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Anecdote collection
Place
Thrace · Roman
Date
c. 60 BCE
Uncertainty
High — From Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars (A. Thomson trans., rev. T. Forester); an omen-dream reported by a Roman biographer.
Imagery
Child · Father · Horse · Light · Ruler
Feelings
Awe · Joy

Another way to look at this dream

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

Child

Whose child was it — yours, someone you know, or yourself when young? What did the child need?

Jung · The child archetype

Jung described the “child” in dreams and myth as an image of what is not yet — a beginning, small and easy to overlook, that carries a future.

C. G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype”, Collected Works 9i

Psychoanalysis Depth psychology

Freud began his theory with children’s dreams, which he found to be plain, undisguised wishes — a trip promised, a treat withheld.

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), ch. III

East Asian custom Folk saying

In China and Korea (where it is called taemong), “conception dreams” before a birth are a living custom, often retold within families.

East Asian folk custom

All perspectives on child →

Father

Was this your own father as you know him, or a father-like figure? Was there something unsaid between you?

Jung · Objective and subjective level

Jung suggested reading a dream figure twice: as the actual person, and as part of yourself. A dreamed father may be about him — or about your own sense of authority.

C. G. Jung, “On the Psychology of the Unconscious”, Collected Works 7

Confucian classics Classical text

Confucius, growing old, lamented that he had not dreamed of the Duke of Zhou — his model and spiritual forebear — for a long time.

Analects 7.5

Psychoanalysis Depth psychology

The night after his father’s funeral, Freud dreamed of a notice reading “You are requested to close the eyes” — a dream he connected to duty and self-reproach.

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), ch. VI

All perspectives on father →

Horse

Were you riding the horse, chasing it, or running from it? Did it go where you wanted?

Greek philosophy Philosophy

Plato pictures the soul as a charioteer driving two horses, one willing and one unruly — the self as something that has to be steered.

Plato, Phaedrus 246a–254e

Chinese poetry Literature

Xin Qiji, a general who no longer commands, dreams himself back among army camps and warhorses: horses as a life that has ended but still returns at night.

Xin Qiji, “Po Zhen Zi”

All perspectives on horse →

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

Dreams that share its images