DREAM GALAXY

Literary dream · People & kin

The husband she met only in a dream

Śoṇitapura (legend) · c. 1070 (compiled)

Then she saw in a dream a certain man looking like a divine prince. She was married by him according to the Gándharva form of marriage, and after obtaining the joy of union with him, she woke up at the close of night. When she did not see the husband she had seen in her dream, but beheld the traces of his presence, she remembered the boon of Gaurí

Original text — The Kathá Sarit Ságara, or Ocean of the Streams of Story (Tawney trans.), Somadeva; trans. C. H. Tawney

Open this dream in the galaxy →

Source
The Kathá Sarit Ságara, or Ocean of the Streams of Story (Tawney trans.) — Somadeva; trans. C. H. Tawney, c. 1070 / 1880–84 (trans.). Ch. XXXI
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Literary dream
Place
Śoṇitapura (legend) · Indian
Date
c. 1070 (compiled)
Uncertainty
High — From the Kathāsaritsāgara, Somadeva’s 11th-century Sanskrit story collection (C. H. Tawney trans., 1880–84); a story-dream, not a personal report.
Imagery
Partner · Ruler · A stranger
Feelings
Longing · Confusion · Wonder

Another way to look at this dream

Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.

Partner

Was it your partner now, someone from the past, or someone you have never met? Was the distance between you the same as when you are awake?

Jung · Anima and animus — after the real person

Jung would first read a dreamed partner as your actual partner and relationship. Only then might the figure carry what he called the anima or animus — an inner image of the other — a framing that reflects his era’s ideas about gender.

C. G. Jung, “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, “Anima and Animus””, Collected Works 7

Homeric epic Classical text

After twenty years apart, Penelope tells how a likeness of Odysseus lay beside her that night, “such as he was when he went with the host”, and how she took it for real.

Homer, Odyssey XX

Han-dynasty poetry Literature

In one of the Nineteen Old Poems, a wife sleeping alone through the long nights dreams she sees her husband’s face, and he comes for her in a carriage — then is gone.

Nineteen Old Poems, “Cold, cold, the year draws to its end”

All perspectives on partner →

A stranger

Did the stranger remind you of anyone, even slightly? What did they want from you?

Jung · Shadow, anima and animus

Jung read unknown figures as possible parts of the dreamer: a same-sex stranger may carry the shadow; an other-sex figure what he called the anima or animus. These are offered as lenses, not labels — and his gender framing reflects his time.

C. G. Jung, “Aion, ch. 2–3”, Collected Works 9ii

Homeric epic Classical text

In Homer, gods and dreams arrive in borrowed shapes: Athena visits Nausicaa disguised as her friend; Zeus sends a Dream to Agamemnon looking like Nestor.

Odyssey VI; Iliad II

All perspectives on a stranger →

Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Dreams that share its images