Dream Galaxy

Anecdote collection · Transformation

The five-coloured brush taken back

Southern China · c. 500 (Liang)

嘗夢人授以五色筆，故文采俊發。後夢一丈夫，自稱郭景純，謂淹曰：「前借卿筆，可以見還。」探懷得五色筆，與之。自爾淹文章躓矣。

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

He once dreamed someone gave him a five-coloured writing brush, and so his writing flourished. Later he dreamed that a man calling himself Guo Jingchun said, “I lent you my brush; you may give it back.” He reached into his robe, found a five-coloured brush and handed it over. From then on his writing faltered.

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
Southern China · Chinese
Date
c. 500 (Liang)
Uncertainty
High — The origin of the idiom 江郎才尽, “Jiang’s talent is exhausted.”
Imagery
Writing · Book · A stranger
Feelings
Grief · Wonder

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Dreams of becoming someone or something else, or of not knowing whether one is awake, have long interested writers on lucid dreaming; Stevenson credited such night work with parts of Jekyll and Hyde.

Stevenson (1888)

Mythological

Metamorphosis is one of mythology’s oldest engines — Ovid’s Metamorphoses gathers hundreds of beings changed into trees, birds and stars.

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Chinese traditions

Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream gave Chinese thought the idea of wuhua, “the transformation of things”, and the phrase “Zhuang Zhou dreams of the butterfly” remains shorthand for the blurred line between self and world.

Zhuangzi, Qiwulun

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images