What Do Your Dreams Mean? A Beginner's Guide to Dream Interpretation

Curious to explore the hidden messages in your dreams? Welcome to the intriguing world of dream analysis and its historical roots!

What Do Your Dreams Mean? A Beginner's Guide to Dream Interpretation

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Dreams are the thoughts or impressions that occupy our minds when we are asleep.

Every night, unless disease or strong excitement prevent, we are the subject of a phenomenon which if it only occurred once in a lifetime we would consider one of the greatest mysteries. We pass in an unconscious moment from the usual world of deed and action into another world, where we are unaware of what goes on around us; where we see, not with the eyes, where we hear things of which the ear gives no impression; in which we speak and are spoken to, altho no speech passes our lips or reaches our organs of hearing.

In that world we are excited to joy, to grief; we are moved to pity, we are stirred to anger; and yet these emotions are aroused by things that do not exist. Time seems to have lost its landmarks; distance offers no barriers; the dead return and the past comes once again to cheer or to grieve us.

We live in a land of Dreams. Many of the thoughts that pass thru our brains are forgotten before we awake. It often happens that people talk in their sleep, thus proving that they are dreaming, but on being awakened they deny that they dreamed, for their dreams have left no trace upon their memory.

The question whether we ever sleep without dreaming is as old as the days of the ancient Greek philosophers, and there are many able authorities on both sides of the question.

Locke, a great writer on mental phenomena, is of the opinion that dreaming is not always present during sleep; but many of the ancient as well as the modern writers contend that the mind is never at rest but continues uninterruptedly even in sleep, and that to cease to dream would be to cease to live.

Sir William Hamilton argues as follows: “When we dream, we are assuredly asleep, but the mind is not asleep, because it thinks. It is therefore manifest that mental processes may go on even tho the body is unconscious. To have no recollection of our dreams does not prove that we have not dreamed, altho the dream may have left no trace on our memories.”

Dreams, like our waking thoughts, are dependent on the laws of association. Altho the senses, are usually torpid in sleep, some of them continue to transmit to the mind imperfect sensations which they receive. Experiments have been tried to determine how far external impressions will cause dreams. A bottle of hot water applied to the feet of a sleeping man caused him to dream that he was on the crater of a volcano and that the hot earth was scorching his feet. Another man, having a blister applied to his head, dreamed that he was being scalped by Indians. A match suddenly lit may cause a man to dream of a terrible storm with lightning and thunder. Darwin relates the case of a man who was born deaf and dumb, and who never dreamed that he conversed with others except thru the sign language. So, also, a blind man never dreams of seeing vivid colors. Thus we see that our dreams are in many cases dependent upon our senses.

The condition of our digestion may also influence our dreams. If the digestive functions are properly performed, our dreams are apt to be pleasant, whereas every one knows the torturing dreams that may follow an indigestible supper of Welsh rabbit or lobster. In the same way the dreams that are caused by opium or other drugs or by intoxicating liquors are apt to be of a disagreeable nature.

The mind works with wonderful rapidity during sleep. A person who is suddenly awakened by a loud noise may dream of many things in the short second before he awakens. A long story may spin itself out in his brain,—adventure, robbery, war,—until he is awakened by what he believes is a shot. A certain writer was suddenly aroused from a sound sleep by a few drops of water sprinkled on his face. He dreamed of the events of an entire life in which sorrow and happiness were mingled, of a fight on the banks of a stream into which an enemy plunged him. We can dream more in a minute of time than we can enact in a day.

So, too, dreams are often characteristic of the peculiar life and thoughts of the dreamer. A miser will dream of saving money, a merchant of business deals, a musician of melody, etc. As a general thing our dreams are wanting in coherence. They do not seem true to life. They mix together things that are absurd and unconnected. We never dream of the past as a thing that is past, but as a reality. People that are long dead appear to us as living.

Do Dreams Foretell the Future?

It is a popular belief, and has been thru all ages, that dreams foretell for us what will happen. Many remarkable cases seem to prove this. All nations of antiquity believed in the divine nature of dreams. The Bible is full of allusions to dreams and most of the important events were revealed to men thru dreams.

Jacob dreamed that he saw a ladder which reached into the sky and that angels were ascending and descending. His whole life was shaped by this vision. His son, Joseph, was called “The Dreamer” by his brothers. We all know the fascinating story of his dreams, his interpretations of the visions of the butler and the baker and his reading of Pharaoh’s dream which eventually obtained for him the position of ruler over Egypt. The Books of the Prophets and of Daniel are based on dreams. So are many of the incidents of the New Testament.

Coming down to more modern times, we find that many intelligent men—writers, inventors, kings—believed in dreams.

Franklin believed that he obtained a clearer insight into political events thru his dreams and often acted upon the inspiration he received while asleep.

A celebrated doctor discovered a well-known remedy thru a dream. Tartini, a celebrated musician, is said to have composed his “Devil’s Sonata” under the inspiration of a dream in which the devil appeared to him and invited him to try his skill upon his favorite fiddle. When he awoke, the music was so firmly impressed upon his memory that he had no difficulty in writing it out on paper.

The poet Coleridge is said to have composed his poem “Kubla Khan” in a dream. He had taken an anodyne for some slight indisposition, and fell asleep in his chair. When he awoke he retained the impression of over two hundred lines of verse which had come to him in his slumber.

Cabanis, the philosopher, found in his sleep the conclusions of many problems that he was not able to solve while awake. Condorcet, the mathematician, found in his sleep the final steps in a calculation that baffled him while awake.

Napoleon was a great believer in dreams and was often guided by them in his campaigns.

Columbus, it is said, dreamed that a voice spoke to him saying, “God will give thee the keys of the gates of the Ocean,” and that it was this that kept up his courage.

In remote times the greatest of importance was attached to dreams. The ancients resorted to them in cases of difficulty or calamity. When pestilence spread among the Greeks before Troy, Homer represents Achilles as taking refuge in dreams, his reason being,—

“Dreams descend from Jove.”

Aristotle, Plato, Zeno, Pythagoras, Socrates, Xenophon and Sophocles have all expressed their belief in the divine or prophetic character of dreams.

A great number of historical instances are recorded in Greek and Latin classics of dreams that came true. The night before the assassination of Julius Cæsar, his wife Calpurnia dreamed that her husband fell bleeding across her knees. She tried to warn him, but he laughed at her fears. On the night that Attila died, the Emperor Marcian at Constantinople dreamed that he saw the bow of the conqueror broken asunder. Cicero relates a dream thru which a murderer was brought to justice.

Dreams were even allowed to influence legislation. During the Marsic War (90 B.C.) the Roman senate ordered the temple of Juno to be rebuilt, in consequence of a dream. There are many other examples in ancient history.

The old fathers of the Christian Church attached considerable importance to dreams. Tertullian thought they came from God as one of a series of prophecy, though he attributed many dreams to the influence of evil spirits. St. Augustine relates a dream thru which he was convinced of the immortality of the soul.

How Dreams Should be Interpreted

There are two kinds of dreams: those that are reproductions of one’s waking thoughts or actions, or the result of digestive disturbances; and those that proceed from some psychological condition which we cannot probe or understand. Many dreams are of so trivial a nature that it would be foolish to attribute any importance to them. Others seems to come from some outside inspiration and are prophetic. The ancient sages who were celebrated as interpreters of dreams had a maxim that the “Result of dreams often follows their interpretation.” They meant that if you believe that a dream means a certain thing, you will fashion your actions so that that thing will come true.

When the meaning of a dream is indefinite, many interpretations can be put on it and all of them be capable of coming true. If you are told that a dream means illness, you may take it so to heart that you will actually fall ill, or if you are philosophical, you will shape your diet or your deeds so that good health may result from the warning. If a man dreams that he will have financial disaster, he may become so unfitted thru fear that he will neglect his business and thus invite the ruin which he imagines the dream foretold. Or he may, if he is wise, take the opposite course and so shape his business methods that success will follow instead of ruin.

In our Dream Interpretation section we give the interpretations of common dreams as they are and have been given from time immemorial in most of the best known sources, with quite a number of original meanings as experience has shown them to us. Remember that the interpretation of dreams may vary with the peculiar conditions and circumstances surrounding the dreamer, and what would be true in the case of a sickly person might have the opposite meaning in the case of a robust man. “Man is master of his fate,” says a poet. The troubles that cause one person to take a pessimistic attitude and contemplate suicide serve to spur another on to new endeavors and new successes.

A Dictionary of Dreams

As a rule dreams are very complex and it is difficult to single out any particular feature that stands forth and dominates the dream. But it frequently happens that one idea is so vivid that it is remembered to the exclusion of all the rest. When you have a dream of this kind refer at once to the following list, look up the dominant thought of your dream and the interpretation will be given. These meanings are not random guesses, but are compiled from a number of very old books which have come down to us from such seers, astrologers and psychologists as Cagliostro, Lenormand, Albertus Magnus and others. Of course the meaning of the dream may be considerably modified by what subconscious thoughts accompany the dream. Thus while pearls may represent tears, yet if they are accompanied by the idea of love the indication is favorable, and means a gift of affection.

Curious to uncover the hidden messages in your dreams? Explore our dream interpretation section for symbol meanings HERE!