Dream a Little Dream…
The Australian Aborigines believe in the existence of ancestral beings more powerful than most humans, which are considered to have other-than-human counterparts such as rocks, trees and land formations. These beings exist in ‘Dreamtime’ and may be contacted in dreams. This underscores the Aboriginal belief in multiple classes of beings and alternate dimensions within which these beings reside. The culture considers all creative products that are transmitted through dreams to be a reproduction of an original creation by an ancestor. As a result, the dreamer is revered as a conduit through which the wisdom of the ancestor is received.
Dreams and Healing
The earliest recorded dreams date back approximately 5000 years to 3100 BCE in Mesopotamia where the Sumerians left dream records. In other early writings, deities and royals, such as the 7th century BCE scholar-king Assurbanipal, gave careful attention to dreams. The fifth century BCE marks the first known Greek book on dreams and during this century, the Greeks developed the belief (through contact with other cultures) that souls left the sleeping body. The practice of dream incubation was important to the Greeks as it was among Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Chinese.
Mythologically speaking, Aesclepius, son of Apollo, was a Greek healer who became a demigod. Educated by Chiron the centaur, he was revered as a divinely inspired physician who worked with dreams to heal. There were hundreds of shrines and temples throughout ancient Greece and Rome where people would go to be treated for illnesses by trained members of the priesthood via a technique called dream incubation. The tradition was carried through the Roman conquest of Europe and even integrated into the Celtic culture.
The snake symbolized the cult of this oracle god of healing and dream seekers would often sleep in a place where snakes moved about freely. The incubation included elaborate rituals, after which Aesclepius would often appear to the dreamer as a bearded man or an animal. Upon awakening, the therapute would interpret the dream and make a diagnosis or, in many instances, the individual would awaken cured.
Aesclepius’ counterpart in Egypt was Imhotep of Memphis, circa 2600 BCE. As a vizier, sage, architect, astrologer, and chief minister to Khufu Cheops, Imhotep was a practicing magician associated with empiric-rational medicine- medicine based on experience and experiment. His temples were crowded with sufferers who prayed and slept there, convinced that the god or his snakes would reveal remedies to them in their dreams.
The Chinese considered the dreamer’s soul to be the guiding factor of dream production. The hun, or spiritual soul, was thought to leave the body and communicate with the land of the dead. They also practiced incubation in dream temples that served the people through the 16th century. Any high official visiting a city reported to a temple the first night to receive dream guidance for his mission. Judges and government officials were also required to visit dream temples for insight and wisdom.
