Why do we dream? Do dreams predict the future? How do you save yourself from bad dreams? These and many other questions have intrigued man since time immemorial. Ancient cultures developed different beliefs regarding dreams, and psychologists and artists have also dealt with dreams over the years. Don't stop dreaming!
Article: Sarit Eliyahu
The article was published in Young Galileo - the monthly for curious children. For a gift digital sheet Click
The dream is a mental activity that occurs during sleep. The plot of the dream includes sights, thoughts, feelings and sensations. In a dream everything is possible. We can take risks, lose control and become anything, visit distant places, real and imaginary, fly over mountains, fall into the depths, fight demons and have all kinds of experiences, sometimes quite strange. Although the dream is a very personal experience, it is also a universal human experience.
People are looking for a meaning to their existence in the world. Every culture, even very ancient cultures, dealt with the subject of dreams. Maybe they thought they would find in them the key to the riddle of the meaning of existence. When examining the attitude to dreams, one can see two main concepts regarding the central questions: Where do dreams come from? And do dreams have meaning? The popular concept was based on beliefs, on spells and words of prophecy, and the rational-scientific concept is based on using the tools of science to study the dream.
The interpreters of dreams
Thousands of years ago it was believed that dreams come from outside, and not from within the dreaming person. In ancient times in Greece and Rome it was thought that demons and spirits come to man at night, stand near his bed and whisper to him in his dreams. Therefore, see dreams as messages that can predict the future. Such is a "true" dream - a valuable dream sent to the dreamer to warn him or to predict his future; Compared to "false dream" - a worthless dream whose purpose is to mislead the dreamer or send him to destruction. The popular concept, according to which dreams are the gods' way of communicating with humans and conveying messages to them, has been prevalent for thousands of years.
The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus told about a dream that Alexander the Great had while he was in India. Some of his soldiers and officers were hit by the poisoned weapons of the enemy and died. Alexander saw in his dream a snake holding a plant in its mouth. Alexander woke up from his sleep, found the plant and prepared a medicine; This healed his people.
In ancient Greece, there were sick people who slept in the temples of Asclepius, the god of medicine, believing that they would have a dream that would help heal them; People who had existential questions came to the temple area with gifts to the god, ate a little, bathed and relaxed before going to sleep. The next day the priests would interpret their dreams.
In the ancient cultures, including ancient Egypt, a lot of space was given to the interpretation of dreams, and dictionaries for dream interpretation were very common. There were Egyptians who were buried with their dream dictionaries. In this world, priests and interpreters of dreams were highly respected. The Egyptians used to dream in special temples in the belief that in this way they would receive an answer from the gods. When they woke up from their sleep, they recorded their dreams in writing on papyri.
According to Egyptian mythology, Horus, the son of the goddess Isis, asked his mother to banish his terrifying dreams. Isis taught her son a spell that banishes bad dreams and invites good dreams in their place. The Egyptians placed stone tablets in their temples with the image of Horus walking bravely on the backs of crocodiles and holding snakes; The image of Horus is also emblazoned on ancient amulets that protect the wearer.
keeper of dreams
The Japanese also believed in gods - kami in Japanese. They believed that the gods could be good to humans and could also harm them. That's why they created amulets and symbols that would protect them from the evil attacks and initiate the good. Baku is one of those symbols. He has the body of a bear, the trunk of an elephant, the feet of a tiger, the mane of a lion, the eyes of a rhinoceros and the tail of a bull, and has the power to change a bad dream into a good dream and to grant luck and peace. Baku has its origins in Chinese folklore and mythology from the 14th and 15th centuries. According to the legend, Baku was created after all the animals had already been created, so it is made of the remains of different animals.
When the sailors were in danger from the pirates, they placed an amulet of Baku under their heads before going to bed because they believed it would eat their bad dreams and protect them on their way home. In Japan, to this day, it is customary to sleep on a pillow with the image of Baku emblazoned on it, and in many children's rooms his image is painted on the walls. According to the legend, if a child says three times "Baku, come eat my bad dream", Baku will immediately appear, suck the evil spirit and give him a good dream.
The Sandman (ole-lok-oi) is a character in Western folklore and also in Andersen's fairy tales; His job is to bring good dreams to the sleeping children. He does this by gently sprinkling sand or dust on the children's closed eyes at night.
dream catcher
The Indian tribes in North America created the bad dream catcher, which helps to enjoy a night of pleasant dreams. The ancient dream catchers were hung over the babies' cribs, and later - over the child's or the adult's bed as a protection against nightmares. The dream catcher is shaped like a web (like a spider's web, which is used to catch insects), and it is believed that it catches bad dreams and prevents them from entering the sleeper's head at night. According to an ancient Indian legend, good dreams and bad dreams circulate in the night air. The good dreams pass through the mesh and enter the sleeper's head, but the bad dreams are caught in the net without being able to escape, and die with the first light of dawn.
The dream people
In the jungle in the high mountains of Malaysia, a small tribe was discovered in 1934. Due to the central importance of the dream in the lives of the members of the tribe, the members of this tribe were called "the people of the dream". The dream people thought that it was possible to control dreams and shape them through sharing, first of all in the family circle and sometimes also in the extended circle of the tribe. Sharing is an integral part of the daily routine: every morning, before going to work in the fields and fishing in the rivers, all the family members would sit together and tell their dreams. Whoever said that he did not have enough time to do everything he wanted in the dream - was sent to continue dreaming. Whoever had a bad dream and was in danger - could summon a friend to the dream to help him. Sometimes they chose to change the end of the dream. In their eyes, the most successful ending was when the dreamer found a gift. The gift inspired him to create a painting, sculpture, song or dance. Thanks to the tribe's attitude towards dreams, they were blessed with a life of peace and happiness.
Dreams according to Freud
However, even in the Greek and Roman literature of antiquity, other concepts were also found, which oppose the popular beliefs. Aristotle, one of the most senior naturalists and philosophers of antiquity and the father of Western philosophy, claimed that the dream is a distinct physiological product of the circulatory system, a kind of complex system that processes the experiences of the passing day that have survived in the brain, and that reason and scientific knowledge do not allow for the belief that information can be obtained through dreams about the future
Over the years, they began to examine the dream in depth, and not only through the eyes of the dreamer, and realized that the dream comes from the person himself and that the meaning of the dream depends on the circumstances of the dreamer's life. Aritamedros of Ephesus, a Greek geographer from the second century AD who traveled through Greece, Italy and Asia, noted that the subject of the dream is subject to interpretation according to the dreamer's age and status. It was a new way of looking at the dream.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the religious priests slowly began to lose their importance, and the people of science and philosophy began to take their place. So they also began to investigate the dreams in a more structured study.
The 19th century was a time of conceptual revolution. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, revolutionized the perception of dreams. He claimed that the dream is made of meanings that can help us in realizing ourselves and that it is "the king's road to understanding the unconscious in the life of the soul".
Freud distinguished between the conscious and the unconscious, and said that when immersed in deep sleep the "guardians" also fall asleep (the "guardians" protect us from everything we cannot deal with) and allow our imaginary theater to freely release our desires and fears and fulfill our wishes in a dream. According to him, in every dream there is a point of contact with the events of the day preceding it, and this understanding is an easy approach to dream interpretation. In 1899, Freud published his book "The Interpretation of Dreams"; He wrote in it about his method of analyzing dreams and described dream analyzes of his patients.
Carl Gustav Jung was Freud's student. He studied the connection between dreamers around the world and claimed that all human beings are like one family that is scattered around the world, and that there is a pool of experiences, memories and myths that have been preserved from generation to generation. He found a connection between the themes and images that appeared in the dreams of people who lived at the time and between myths from ancient cultures. He concluded that all humans have common symbols, even though in each country they dream and think in a different language. This is how Jung created a dictionary for the language of dreams. He believed that dreams show the dreamer his way, and that if we listen to them, we will learn about ourselves.
Dream creations
In 1924, an art movement called Surrealism arose in Paris, the capital of France (in French: sur = above, realia = reality; that is, above reality). Surrealism deals with the relationship between the real world, the imagination and the subconscious, which is the part of the mind that is active while dreaming. The artists belonging to this movement (including painters, writers and poets, filmmakers and musicians) were influenced by Freud's ideas. They strove to be free in art just like in a dream.
Indeed, when you look at paintings in a surrealist style, you feel like you are in a dream: the background and objects are drawn in a realistic style, but they are arranged in an illogical and impossible way. Just like in dreams, in which characters seem realistic but their behavior is strange and unpredictable, and objects and the elements of nature are humanized. The Surrealists saw a dream as an artistic creation in which everything is permitted: the sun shines at night, objects can move, and man can fly. They used to invite people to tell them their dreams, and then create rich and surprising works of art inspired by these dreams.
Even after thousands of years of dream research, in today's developed technological age, the riddle of why and how we dream has not yet been solved. Although we do not fully understand how dreams work, we can enjoy its positive effect on our lives and use the power of dreams to our advantage. Many people dreamed of new ideas that led them to create wonderful works: Albert Einstein, for example, said that the inspiration for the theory of general relativity came to him in a dream in his youth; The Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev realized in a dream that the chemical elements communicate with each other just like the sounds in music. When he woke up, he sat down and drew the periodic table of the elements. You too can dream and realize your unique ideas and creations.
* The writer is Handles drama and psychotherapy and the notebook "Sefer". My dreams", which was published by Am Oved publishing house
The dream book Mine, written by: Sarit Eliyahu, Ira: Lena Guberman, published by Am Oved
"The book of my dreams" is not just a book, it is a spectacular unique work, which invites readers to an experience of sharing, imagination and creation. The book presents the attitude of different cultures to the topic of dreams, and also includes "dream thoughts", which inspire readers to record their dreams. Thanks to the magnificent illustrations by Lena Guberman (Israel Museum Prize winner), the book is a magical work of art, which arouses curiosity and activates the imagination.
