Dream Galaxy

Anecdote collection · Water

Move me to high, dry ground

Dantu (Zhenjiang), China · late 4th century

商仲堪在丹徒，夢一人曰：「君有濟物之心，豈能移我在高燥處，則恩及枯骨矣。」明日，果有一棺逐水。

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

At Dantu, Yin Zhongkan dreamed a man said: “You have a heart for helping others — could you move me to high, dry ground? Your kindness would reach even dry bones.” The next day a coffin indeed came floating down the water.

Translation · Editorial translation (draft)

Open this dream in the galaxy →

Source
Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282 — Li Fang et al. (compilers), 978
Rights
Public domain (ancient text)
Record type
Anecdote collection
Place
Dantu (Zhenjiang), China · Chinese
Date
late 4th century
Uncertainty
High — Taiping Guangji anecdote; the Wikisource editors restore “Dantu” from parallel texts.
Imagery
A stranger · Coffin · River · Water
Feelings
Tenderness

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