Oral history · Animals
All the ponies driven westward
Dakota country · c. 1860s
Now Slow Dog had loudly proclaimed, on the night before this event, that he had received the warning of a bad dream, in which he had seen all the ponies belonging to the tribe stampeded and driven westward.
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- Indian Boyhood — Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa), 1902. Ch. X.4, A Meeting on the Plains
- Rights
- Public domain (US)
- Record type
- Oral history
- Place
- Dakota country · Native American, Dakota
- Date
- c. 1860s
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — Told by Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa), a Dakota physician and writer, from the stories of his own people.
- Imagery
- Horse · Crowd · Road
- Feelings
- Unease
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
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”
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
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)
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- Three black dogs howling Wu (Suzhou), China · c. 475 BCE (as told)
- A mother praying for a father who never returns Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- The child on my back grew heavy as stone Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- Who is dead in the White House? Washington, D.C., USA · early April 1865 (as reported)
- Thornfield Hall a dreary ruin England · 1847 (novel)
- Two women yoked to my son’s chariot Susa (setting) · 472 BCE (play)