Memoir · Light & dark
A thunderbolt fell on my father’s house
Mesopotamia · 401 BCE
It seemed to him in a vision that there was a storm of thunder and lightning, and a bolt fell on his father’s house, and thereupon the house was all in a blaze.
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- Source
- Anabasis (trans. H. G. Dakyns) — Xenophon; trans. H. G. Dakyns, c. 370 BCE / 1897 (translation). Book III
- Record type
- Memoir
- Place
- Mesopotamia · Ancient Greek
- Date
- 401 BCE
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — Xenophon’s own dream on the retreat of the Ten Thousand (Dakyns translation).
- Imagery
- Storm · Light · House · Father · Fire
- Feelings
- Fear · Awe
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Dreamers often report vivid light, shadow and colour. Ellis observed that vision dominates dreams even though the eyes are closed; some later writers treat light and dark as figures for knowing and not-knowing.
Ellis (1911), ch. IV
Mythological
Sun, moon and stars bow to Joseph in his dream; across cultures celestial lights mark rank, destiny and the order of the cosmos.
Genesis 37
Chinese traditions
The moon in Chinese poetry is a shared light across distance — the same moon seen by people far apart — which is why it appears so often in dreams of absent loved ones.
Su Shi; Du Fu
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- A fire in a hotel in a strange city Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1913
- 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 could make the summer Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1910
- Thornfield Hall a dreary ruin England · 1847 (novel)
- The scene I had to write England · before 1911