DREAM GALAXY

Research case · People & kin

Setna’s night with Tabubua

Memphis, Egypt · Ptolemaic period (story)

At the last she gives a fearful cry and vanishes, leaving Setna bereft of even his clothes. This would seem to be merely a dream, by the disappearance of Tabubua, and by Setna finding his children alive after it all

Original text — Egyptian Tales, Translated from the Papyri: Second Series, W. M. Flinders Petrie (ed.)

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Source
Egyptian Tales, Translated from the Papyri: Second Series — W. M. Flinders Petrie (ed.), 1895. Setna and the Magic Book, commentary
Rights
Public domain (US)
Record type
Research case
Place
Memphis, Egypt · Egyptian
Date
Ptolemaic period (story)
Uncertainty
High — Flinders Petrie’s note on the Demotic tale of Setna Khaemwase (Egyptian Tales, 2nd series, 1895).
Imagery
A stranger · Child · Book
Feelings
Unease · Confusion · Relief

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 →

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 →

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

Dreams that share its images