Anecdote collection · Falling & stuck
Falling from the palace hall
Chang’an, China · c. 750
玄宗嘗夢落殿，有孝子扶上。
Emperor Xuanzong once dreamed he fell from a palace hall, and a man in mourning white helped him back up.
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- Source
- Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282 — Li Fang et al. (compilers), 978
- Record type
- Anecdote collection
- Place
- Chang’an, China · Chinese
- Date
- c. 750
- Uncertainty
- High — Anecdote preserved in the Taiping Guangji (978); the dream is reported, not first-hand.
- Imagery
- Falling · Palace · A stranger
- Feelings
- Fear · Relief
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Sensations of falling or being unable to move are often reported near the edges of sleep. Ellis described them in terms of the body’s signals reaching the dreaming mind; sleep researchers today discuss related experiences such as hypnic jerks and sleep paralysis.
Ellis (1911), ch. V
Mythological
Falls mark thresholds in many myths — the fall from paradise, Phaethon tumbling from the sun chariot, descents into the underworld — moments when one order of things gives way to another.
Comparative mythology
Chinese traditions
Classical dream books such as the tradition attributed to the Duke of Zhou catalogued falling and climbing among common dream images; their readings were folk conventions rather than fixed meanings.
Folk dream-book traditions
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- The scene I had to write England · before 1911
- Two women yoked to my son’s chariot Susa (setting) · 472 BCE (play)
- The acrobat who never touched the floor England · before 1911
- Thou art but a dead man Gerar, Canaan · undated narrative
- A green lizard fell into my belly Huainan, China · undated (Jin collection)
- Carried up out of a well Chang’an, China · c. 750