Anecdote collection · Transformation
My heart’s spirit resigned
Ye (Handan), China · c. 560 (Northern Qi)
夜夢一人曰：「我心神也。君役我太苦，辭去。」
At night he dreamed that a man said: “I am your heart’s spirit. You have worked me far too hard; I am leaving.”
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282 — Li Fang et al. (compilers), 978
- Record type
- Anecdote collection
- Place
- Ye (Handan), China · Chinese
- Date
- c. 560 (Northern Qi)
- Uncertainty
- High — Anecdote preserved in the Taiping Guangji (978); the dream is reported, not first-hand.
- Imagery
- A stranger · Book · Writing
- Feelings
- Grief · Helplessness
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
- Defeated in an argument by myself London, England · 18th century
- The five-coloured brush taken back Southern China · c. 500 (Liang)
- Charged one franc of interest Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1914
- A man clothed with rags Bedford, England · written c. 1676, pub. 1678
- A shirt washed clean by fire Wu, China · 3rd century (Wu)
- A postcard written partly in Latin England · before 1911