Dream Galaxy

Anecdote collection · Water

The great fish with a hook in its mouth

Chang’an, China · c. 120 BCE (as told)

漢武帝夢大魚，求去口中鉤。明日遊昆明池，見一魚銜鉤，帝取鉤放之。三日，池濱得明珠一雙。

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

Emperor Wu of Han dreamed of a great fish begging him to remove the hook from its mouth. The next day, at Kunming Lake, he saw a fish with a hook in its mouth, took the hook out and let it go. Three days later a pair of bright pearls was found on the shore.

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
Chang’an, China · Chinese
Date
c. 120 BCE (as told)
Uncertainty
High — Anecdote preserved in the Taiping Guangji (978); the dream is reported, not first-hand.
Imagery
Water · Lake · Animals · Ruler
Feelings
Tenderness · Wonder

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