We have about four or five dreams every night, although sometimes we do not remember them. But when we managed to remember some, especially a nightmare, we do not stop turning it until we find an explanation. An explanation or meaning that is being looking for throughout history because even the oldest peoples were interested in the interpretation of dreams. Do you want to know how we have reached the point where we are? Do you want to know how and why dreams are interpreted? In Female Diario we talk about the interesting evolution of the meaning of dreams.
The dream world has always exercised a great fascination in the human being. Dreams can be taken as premonitions or visions of the future, such as altered states of consciousness or as messages from the gods. And throughout history they have interpreted in many different ways until they are considered as information that our subconscious stores and that is related to the collective unconscious. Today dreams are symbolic material and we owe that to Carl Gustav Jung.
But let’s not go. Because in ancient cultures such as Mesopotamia, Egypt or Greece the most powerful went to priests or priestesses to tell them their dreams in search of meaning. And based on that interpretation they made decisions that could affect their entire people. At that time more than interpretation of dreams was authentic oniromancy or divinatory art.
There was a dark era in which the dream world was held in the world of shadows and sin at the request of the Catholic Church, which prohibited any analysis of dreams except saints and martyrs.
We would have to wait for Sigmund Freud to come to begin the authentic dream revolution. Sigmund Freud endowed the dreams of meanings that revealed repressed desires and almost always related them to the sexual field. It was a great attempt that completely changed the interpretation of dreams.
Discreply from his predecessor, Carl Gustav Jung laid the foundations for the current interpretation of dreams. For Jung, dreams are symbolic representations of the collective unconscious and, therefore, it is about understanding the symbols to access the meaning of the dream.
At this point, we are currently in which the interpretation of dreams helps us to know each other better, to discover our feelings and emotions and to face our fears, as it happens when we have nightmares. But it has been a long dreamlike road until it reaches our days.
+ Dreams in Ancient Egypt
In ancient Egypt, the interpretation of dreams was a profession and the most important. The pharaohs took the meaning of dreams very seriously, so much that political decisions depended in much of the priests in charge of their interpretation.
A papyrus called the “Book of Dreams” is preserved with an approximate dating of the year 2000 a. C. It is a list of dreams with their respective interpretation, something like the most frequent dreams. It is written in black ink except when the word “bad” appears at the end of the interpretation of some dream with bad omen.
+ Dreams in ancient Greece
For the Greeks, Hipnos was the god of sleep, although in charge of creating the images and events that appear while we sleep was their son Morpheus. Homer himself mentions the importance that dreams and dreams had for considering them direct messages of the gods. And the doctor Hippocrates used the interpretation of dreams on some occasions to make their diagnoses.
In the Greece of the second century there is an essential figure, Artemidoro de Daldis. If you thought the title “the interpretation of dreams” had occurred to Sigmund Freud, it is not. We already have this title of the artemidoro hand in which it analyzes more than 3,000 dreams and classifies them between true dreams, oracles, fantasies, visions and appearances. And what is more important, for Artemidoro dreams were also symbolic representations as it happens today.
+ Dreams in Chinese culture
The dream world could not pass by Chinese culture. In China, dreams can be premonitions, visions or divine messages and, as throughout the world, they can have good or bad omen. However, what distinguishes the interpretation of dreams in Chinese culture is that it is a more accessible practice than in other places.
This occurs thanks to “the book of the interpretation of the dreams of the Duke of Zhou” in which the most frequent dreams were analyzed and that even today is accepted by many people who use it as a consultation book to understand the meaning of their dream.
+ Dreams in Islamic culture
The Koran itself was responsible for promoting the interpretation of dreams, since they considered that prophetic dreams were sent directly by Allah. Islam gave so much importance to the dreamlike meaning that dream interpreters were up to the prophets.
In Islamic culture, the dreamlike material was created by a kind of evil spirit or deity and another benign, hence the distinction between dreams of bad omens and dreams of good omen or the most obvious of dreams of well -being and nightmares. A very interesting detail is that the most important dreams are those that occur at dawn.
+ Dreams in Buddhism
Buddhism does not neglect the world of dreams or its interpretation, but it has a more active part. The proposal is that it is not necessary to just have a dream, remember and seek its interpretation, but that you can participate in it. Do lucid dreams sound to you? Well, that is precisely what Buddhism proposes, that you are able to change or intervene in the dream content.
In addition to lucid dreams, Buddhism also recognizes karmic dreams or ordinary dreams, based on day -to -day experiences, but in which content or information of our previous lives may also appear. And then there are the dreams of clear light, with spiritual messages, visions and energy transmission.
As you can see, the interpretation of dreams has been present throughout history in all cultures. For something it will be and we do not believe that it is only the fascination for the mysterious. Because the dream world still keeps secrets to reveal, but little by little we understand a little more of that self -knowledge process that dreams suppose.
Dreams can be taken in different ways, for some it is mere superstition, for others it enters the scientific field. We enjoy them and others suffer. What is clear that understanding the symbolic meaning of a dream, no matter how much a nightmare, can help us find well -being. And yes, it is unlikely that the lottery is touched by dreaming of numbers, but what better award can have to wake up knowing us a little better?
You can read more articles similar to dreams throughout history: evolution of its interpretation, in the category of meaning of dreams in Diario Female.