Anecdote collection · Falling & stuck
A willow tree fell to the ground
Chang’an, China · 815
昨夢柳樹仆地，其不祥乎？
“Last night I dreamed a willow tree fell to the ground — is that unlucky?”
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282 — Li Fang et al. (compilers), 978
- Record type
- Anecdote collection
- Place
- Chang’an, China · Chinese
- Date
- 815
- Uncertainty
- High — Liu Zongyuan (柳) was then sent to govern Liuzhou (柳州), where he died.
- Imagery
- Tree · Falling
- Feelings
- Unease
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
- Would the fall never come to an end? Oxford, England · 1865 (novel)
- My father sinking into a lake of mire Ayodhya (setting) · c. 5th–4th c. BCE (epic)
- I jumped into the sea and regretted it Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- Thornfield Hall a dreary ruin England · 1847 (novel)
- My friend fell into the river over a gambling debt Zhejiang River, China · 3rd–4th century
- A basket of cold squirming snakes England · before 1911