Dream Galaxy

Anecdote collection · Water

I dreamed I was the fish

Shanyin (Shaoxing), China · 837

韓方寐，夢身為魚。在潭有相忘之樂。見二漁人，乘艇張網，不覺身入網，被取擲桶中。

Original text — Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282, Li Fang et al. (compilers)

Han was asleep and dreamed he was a fish, enjoying the carefree joy of the pool, when he saw two fishermen in a boat spreading a net; before he knew it he was in the net, caught and tossed into a bucket.

Translation · Editorial translation (draft)

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Source
Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282 — Li Fang et al. (compilers), 978
Rights
Public domain (ancient text)
Record type
Anecdote collection
Place
Shanyin (Shaoxing), China · Chinese
Date
837
Uncertainty
High — His cousin, who loved raw fish, had just sent for one; Han later became a monk.
Imagery
Water · Lake · Animals · Boat · Food
Feelings
Calm · Horror

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Early dream researchers often linked water imagery to bodily sensation and mood; later psychoanalytic writers read deep water as a figure for what lies below awareness. Modern researchers treat such readings as interpretive traditions rather than findings.

cf. Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911)

Mythological

Many cosmologies begin with primordial waters — the deep of Genesis, the Babylonian Apsu, the cosmic ocean of Hindu myth — so water often stands for origins, boundaries and crossings between worlds.

Comparative mythology

Chinese traditions

In Chinese poetry water carries time and loss — “all things flow east like water” (Li Bai) — while Daoist texts praise water as soft yet enduring.

Li Bai; Daodejing ch. 8

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images