Anecdote collection · Transformation
Swallowing a burned book of Go
Chang’an, China · c. 873
一夕，夢人以棋經三卷焚而使吞之。及覺，命待詔觀棋，凡所指划，皆出人意。
One night he dreamed someone burned three scrolls of a Go manual and made him swallow them. When he woke he watched the court players at Go, and every move he pointed out surprised them.
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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. 873
- Uncertainty
- High — Anecdote preserved in the Taiping Guangji (978); the dream is reported, not first-hand.
- Imagery
- Book · Fire · A stranger · Ruler
- Feelings
- 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
- A procession coming down the hill Yamato Province, Japan · 1904 (retold folk tale)
- A shirt washed clean by fire Wu, China · 3rd century (Wu)
- Into the ants’ nest: the Hall of Watching Rain Xiayang, Shaanxi, China · undated (Jin collection)
- The tenor climbing ladders to reach the high notes Germany · before 1911
- A great image with feet of clay Babylon · narrative set c. 6th c. BCE
- The five-coloured brush taken back Southern China · c. 500 (Liang)