I Dreamt a Dream

The magical tradition, of course, has a long history of paying attention to dreams.In the ancient world dreams were treated with respect. They were generally held as indicators of the future and regarded as channels through which the ‘gods’ communicated with man, though it was recognised that not all dreams were significant.

Because not a few of these dreams seemed to play a vital part in shaping affairs of the State and because there was a certain degree of interest in their interpretation they were one of the magician’s stocks-in-trade and many manuals were written to aid those who wanted to discover their import.

A quick look through history will reveal that the most influential of these manuals was Oneirocritica which was written by an itinerant ‘wise man’ from Asia Minor, called Artemidorous, in AD 140. The same manual was translated into Italian and appeared in Venice in the 16th century, and into English under the title The Judgement of Dreams which was reprinted in 1518. It sold so well that by 1772 it had gone through twenty editions!

Such is the popular fascination with dreams and their interpretations that not even the New World with its avowed faith in the practical could not long resist their allure. The first dream interpretation textbook published in America was called The New Book of Knowledge. Surprisingly perhaps, it came out in staid and boring Boston in 1767 and it proved immensely popular. Not long afterwards, back in Britain, in Glasgow, was started a tradition that saw the establishing of the popular almanac. A publication which, in a slightly modified form, has persisted to this day.

The popular rage for dream interpretation aside, however, magicians treated dreams with respect for entirely different reasons. The dream world was often called “The High Country of the Mind” and all too often a dream was likened to an unconscious vision.

Dreams, magicians reasoned, were representations of other worlds, very much like our own but also different. And for a lack of any other explanation, they thought these other worlds could be nothing but the abode of ‘spirits’ and ‘gods’. Worlds which man could tread in only with his mind.Such belief seems preposterous only in retrospect. Magicians in the past were the psychologists and psychiatrists of their day. Their knowledge of, and experimentation with, psychedelic drugs provided them with a body of experience concerning the workings of the brain and mind, which though couched in mystical and religious terms as it was, was nonetheless experimentally sound.

They were aware, for instance, of the fact that certain chemical substances contained in hemlock, foxglove, deadly nightshade and jimson weed (all ritually used in magical rituals, at one time or another, and all rich in an alkaloid based, brain protein called atropine that can induce hallucinations of flying) altered the way the senses perceived the ordinary world. They intuitively knew that the mind was far more than the sum of its parts and they could sense that the mechanism governing dreams was one that could act as a gateway to entirely different realities, though not all the time.

What magicians did not know, but suspected, was that the mind’s ability to shape reality, in order to work, required total suspension of disbelief. And to produce that they created the many physically exhausting, hypnotic almost, rituals that were designed to wear the analytical part of the brain out, and allow the power of implicit belief that is governed by the unconscious, to surface.

In the Trois Frères caves, in the south of France, is perhaps the most famous prehistoric recorded example of ancient man’s intuitive belief in the power of the mind. In the deepest part of the cave, above a high rock ledge approximately twelve feet up from the cave floor, is the picture of a man wearing an animal’s skin and tail. An owlish-looking mask and the antlers of a stag adorn his head.

This tradition of becoming a ‘part’ of nature by mimicking its attributes, in this case acquiring the strength of a stag and the wisdom of an owl, is so old that its beginnings can be traced as far back as the earliest recorded signs of the emergence of man. However crude, the technique represented by this ancient painting may be, it is nonetheless effective. Mimicry and ritual tend to hypnotise the mind and give rise to a non-judgemental sense of belief that is accompanied by chemical and physiological changes similar to those attained by trance-mediums, mystics and yogis. History abounds with references to ordinary men and women who have fought harder, ran faster and gone for days without food and water without suffering significantly ill effects simply because they believed that they could do it.

More recently, scientific experiments involving statistical analysis; random predictions and ESP indicate that there clearly exists a mechanism in the mind (and the placebo effect in medicine is the best documented case of its effectiveness) that has the power to transform or at least nudge ‘reality’ a little towards the desired path. And that mechanism may be the very same one involved in dreams.