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* "Steepside"
** "Beyond the Sunset"
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serious contributions to literature have been similarly initiated;
and, more than once, fragments of poems, both in English and other
languages, have been heard or read by me in dreams. I regret much
that I have not yet been able to recover any one entire poem. My
memory always failed before I could finish writing out the lines,
no matter how luminous and recent the impressions made by them on
my mind.* However, even as regards verses, my experience has been
far richer and more successful than that of Coleridge, the only
product of whose faculty in this direction was the poetical fragment
Kubla Khan, and there was no scenic dreaming on the occasion, only
the verses were thus obtained; and I am not without hope that at
some future time, under more favorable conditions than those I now
enjoy, the broken threads may be resumed and these chapters of dream
verse perfected and made complete.
It may, perhaps, be worthy of remark that by far the larger number
of the dreams set down in this volume, occurred towards dawn;
sometimes even, after sunrise, during a "second sleep." A condition
of fasting, united possibly, with some subtle magnetic or other
atmospheric state, seems therefore to be that most open to impressions
of the kind. And, in this connection, I think it right to add that
for the past fifteen years I have been an abstainer from flesh-meats;
not a "Vegetarian," because during the whole of that period I have
used such
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* The poem entitled "A Discourse on the Communion of Souls; or, the
Uses of Love between Creature and Creature, Being a part of the
Golden Book of Venus," which forms one of the appendices to "The
Perfect Way," would be an exception to this rule but that it was
necessary for the dream to be repeated before the whole poem could
be recalled. (Ed.)
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animal produce as butter, cheese, eggs, and milk. That the influence
of fasting and of sober fare upon the perspicacity of the sleeping
brain was known to the ancients in times when dreams were far more
highly esteemed than they now are, appears evident from various
passages in the records of theurgy and mysticism. Philostratus,
in his "Life of Apollonius Tyaneus," represents the latter as informing
King Phraotes that "the Oneiropolists, or Interpreters of Visions,
are wont never to interpret any vision till they have first inquired
the time at which it befell; for, if it were early, and of the
morning sleep, they then thought that they might make a good
interpretation thereof (that is, that it might be worth the
interpreting), in that the soul was then fitted for divination,
and disencumbered. But if in the first sleep, or near midnight,
while the soul was as yet clouded and drowned in libations, they,
being wise, refused to give any interpretation. Moreover, the gods
themselves are of this opinion, and send their oracles only into
abstinent minds. For the priests, taking him who doth so consult,
keep him one day from meat and three days from wine, that he may
in a clear soul receive the oracles." And again, Iamblichus, writing
to Agathocles, says:--"There is nothing unworthy of belief in what
you have been told concerning the sacred sleep, and seeing by means
of dreams. I explain it thus:--The soul has a twofold life, a lower
and a higher. In sleep the soul is liberated from the constraint
of the body, and enters, as an emancipated being, on its divine
life of intelligence. Then, as the noble faculty which beholds
objects that truly are--the objects in the world of intelligence--
stirs within, and awakens to its power, who can be astonished that
the mind which contains in itself the principles of all events,
should, in this its state of liberation, discern the future in those
antecedent principles which will constitute that future? The nobler
part of the mind is thus united by abstraction to higher natures,
and becomes a participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the
gods . . . . The night-time of the body is the day-time of the soul."
But I have no desire to multiply citations, nor to vex the reader
with hypotheses inappropriate to the design of this little work.
Having, therefore, briefly recounted the facts and circumstances
of my experience so far as they are known to myself, I proceed,
without further commentary, to unroll my chart of dream-pictures,
and leave them to tell their own tale.
