Natural Magic - Doreen Valiente 1998

Magic of Dreams

There is one way in which everyone, psychic or otherwise, contacts the unseen world every night. This is the way of dreams.

In all ages this fact has been recognized. The classical Greeks and Romans had legends of two gates to the world of dreams, the gate of ivory and the gate of horn. Through the former, false and illusory dreams came into the minds of sleeping humans; but through the latter, the gate of horn, came those visions which were true, and should be heeded.

The kingdom of sleep is a mysterious realm and full of secrets. Yet it seems so close at hand that we tend to take it for granted. Especially do we accept, in a matter of fact manner, the idea that some dreams have an element of the precognition of future events. This has been proven over and over again by innumerable experiences, both of famous people and of everyday folk. It poses the deepest questions of the nature of time and of the human mind; yet we seldom really think of its implications.

If anyone wishes to prove that the precognitive element in dreams is a fact, this is not difficult. It simply requires concentration and persistence. It is necessary, obviously, to recall one’s dreams, so that they can be compared with future events. The best way to do this is to keep a notebook and pencil beside the bed, ready to jot down notes of one’s dreams as soon as one awakes.

It will be found that unless recall of this kind is practised, the dream-images will be surprisingly fugitive. It is as if, as soon as normal thinking and reasoning take over, the mind switches itself out of the state in which dreams can be recalled. We have changed gear, so to speak, into another way of using the mind and it cannot successfully function in both ways at once—or not for most people, at any rate.

However, if an effort is made to recall dreams immediately upon waking, but before the mind has completely readjusted itself to the ideas and responsibilities of every day, eventually more and more of our dream-life can be brought into our conscious life for consideration. I am so confident from personal experience that the precognitive faculty will then begin to manifest itself, that I can only say to readers—try it and see.

Sometimes the events thus prefigured are of importance; but much more frequently, they are quite trivial, though of some interest to the recipient. Some experiences of my own may serve to illustrate this.

Some years ago, I was making a particular study of the Qabalah. Books on the subject were not so easily found in those days as they are today, with the present renewal of interest in occult matters. Occult students had to search long and carefully on the shelves of second-hand bookshops, to find anything of real value.

In these circumstances, I had one night a vivid dream, I dreamed that I went to a second-hand bookshop which I often visited in search of books on the occult and there found a book on the Qabalah, which I bought for a moderate price. The book was of unusual size and shape, being large but quite thin, and it was in a red cover.

When I awoke, I remembered the dream clearly, and felt that this was a sign worth following. Accordingly, as soon as possible that day, I hurried to the bookshop. I searched all the likely shelves carefully; but alas, no such book as the one I had seen in my dream was to be found. Ah, well, I thought—just a dream! A pity it did not come true, as this would have been interesting in itself, apart from getting the book.

About a fortnight later, I happened to go into the shop again. There, on the shelf before my eyes, was the book of my dream, answering exactly to its description in size, shape, colour, subject and price. It was in fact Knut Stenring’s translation of the Qabalistic treatise called the Sepher Yetzirah; and I have it still.

I was not unduly surprised by this phenomenon, as I had already discovered that I sometimes had precognitive dreams. For instance, during the Second World War I was working in an office in London. One night, I dreamed that I was visiting an old aunt of mine, who lived on the south coast. I found her in a flurry of packing, about to move in haste. I asked her what was the matter, and she replied, in a state of great agitation, ’Get out of London! The Germans are going to start to shell us from the coast on the 13th!’

This was in June 1944, an exciting month, with the D-Day landings imminent. I told the girls at the office what I had dreamed and they laughed. They said I must have been reading the old World War One stories of the Germans’ legendary super-gun, Big Bertha, which was supposed to be aimed from France to destroy London. The Germans couldn’t possibly shell us from across the Channel.

I had to agree; but I felt uneasy, nevertheless. With the excitement of D-Day, everyone was tensed up. Then shortly after the 13th, we heard that a small German plane had crashed somewhere in London and exploded, doing a lot of damage. We didn’t know it at the time; but this was the first flying bomb.

The flying bombs, or V1 and V2 rockets, Hitler’s last terrifying weapons of destruction, were launched upon London from across the Channel and one of their main flight-paths was over the place where my aunt, whom I had spoken to in the dream, lived. Official war histories say that the first of them was launched on June 13th, 1944.

The faculty of dreaming true can be an uncomfortable one. One night in recent years, I had a vivid and horrible dream of seeing a man shot down in a sunlit street. I could see and smell the blood; and I was so shocked and upset by it that I mentioned it to a friend of mine who kept a local bookshop, telling her that I was sure there was going to be an assassination. Sure enough, a couple of days later we read in the national press that a United States diplomat had been assassinated in South America. I believe the report said that no less than nine bullets had struck him.

An account of this dream was broadcast over our local radio station, Radio Brighton. The lady who kept the bookshop was good enough to corroborate my statement, that I had told her about the dream before the story appeared in the papers.

I never want to have another dream like that. I felt shaken for days afterwards. Nevertheless, it is interesting from a scientific point of view that the sense of smell entered into it, as well as those of sight and sound, which are usual in dreams. I have also, though not often, experienced taste and touch in dreams.

Usually, I find dreams exciting and enjoyable. I have always dreamed in colour; indeed, I never knew, until I read books about it, that people ever dreamed in anything else. Apparently, according to psychologists, many people only dream in black and white. However, the colours I see in dreams are usually more subtle than those of earth. They often have a quality of softness, a kind of translucence, which is hard to describe; but I have seen something like it in the works of great painters, and wondered if they derived inspiration from their dreams.

There are remarkable stories of people who have been inspired by dreams. Scientists, inventors, musicians, authors and poets—all have paid tribute to the truth of the old saying that “Night unto night showeth knowledge”.

Two of the world’s most famous weird stories were inspired by dream-experiences of their authors; namely, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Music from the realm of dreams can be heard in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The composer wrote of this opera in a letter to Mathilde Wesendonk: “For once you are going to hear a dream, a dream that I have made sound … I dreamed all this; never could my poor head have invented such a thing purposely.” The music of the prelude to Wagner’s opera Das Rheingold is also based upon material that came to him in a dream.

The story of how Samuel Taylor Coleridge obtained his unfinished poem “Kubla Khan” in a dream is well-known. The poem remains a mere fragment, because while Coleridge was writing it down from memory, he was interrupted by a casual visitor, and he could never afterwards recall it. This illustrates the special nature of dream memories and how they seem to vanish back into the mists of the unconscious unless they are written down immediately upon waking.

We owe the invention of the sewing-machine to a dream that came to Elias Howe (1819-1867). Poor Howe had striven in vain to perfect his idea and was almost destitute, when one night he got a revolutionary new concept in a dream.

The trouble had been where to locate the eye of the sewing-machine needle. Howe had been following the model of the ordinary needle and this had proved unsatisfactory. Then one night he dreamed that he was building a sewing-machine for a savage king in some primitive land. It seemed that the king had given him twenty-four hours to complete the task, on pain of death if he failed. He worked and puzzled, but it was no use. The time was up and he was taken out to be executed. He found himself surrounded by fierce native warriors, all carrying spears. In the blade of each spear was a hole—and immediately he perceived the solution of his problem. The answer was a new kind of needle with its eye in the point. He awoke suddenly and forthwith went to his workshop and started on the design. This is the true story of the invention of the first successful lock-stitch sewing machine.

Closer to our own time is the experience of the atomic physicist, Niels Bohr (1885-1962). Bohr sought to picture the structure of the atom. However, the concept escaped him, until one night he dreamed that he was standing at the centre of a sun. It seemed to be composed of fiercely burning, gaseous matter. All around him revolved the planets of this solar system, which were attached to the central sun by thin filaments. He could hear the planets make a whistling noise as they passed him. Then the bright, gaseous matter seemed to cool and solidify. The planets became motionless, and the idea came to Bohr that what he was seeing was the model of the atom.

From Niels Bohr’s dream came the idea of comparing the atom with the electrons revolving about a nucleus, to the solar system. The use of this dream analogy enabled Bohr to win the Nobel Prize in 1922 for his concept of the structure of the atom.

We may note in both these instances that the inspiration did not come without preparation. Both Elias Howe and Niels Bohr had been working hard on their problems before they had the inspirational dream. Their conscious minds had been thinking with great concentration; so that when they slept the unconscious mind took over, solved the problem and presented the answer in the form of symbolism. We too can obtain counsel from our unconscious mind, if we study the symbolism presented by our dreams.

Ever since the days of Artemidorus of Ephesus, in the second century A.D., people have been compiling dream-books, with this idea in mind. The art of interpreting dreams was borrowed by the Greeks from the ancient Egyptians and Chaldeans; and from the Greeks it derives its name of Oneiromancy (from oneiros, ’dream’, and manteia, ’divination’). Artemidorus was the author of one of the oldest and most famous dream-books. Most of the books on dream interpretation in succeeding centuries were based upon his ideas; but such books tended to become more frivolous and superstitious with the passing years, as the occult sciences fell into disrepute.

By the nineteenth century, consulting dream-books had become a popular pastime. Many of these old dream-books still survive; but they are more entertaining than reliable. A better way to learn to interpret dreams is to study dream symbolism for yourself, with reference to the findings of modern psychology. This is, of course, a vast subject; especially when we come to the work of such masters as Carl Gustav Jung. However, the enlightenment we may find if we persevere will take us far beyond the fortune-telling level on which most of the old dream-books were written.

A method of interpreting dreams which is often recommended by psychologists, is that of free association. This means that you think over the symbolism of the dream, and record whatever your mind spontaneously associates with it, however irrelevant such an association may at first appear. This will give you the end of the thread, so to speak, and you can in time acquire sufficient insight to understand something at any rate of what your unconscious mind is trying to tell you.

Suppose, for instance, a young man dreams of walking by the sea. It is getting dark and he watches the moon rise over the water. Then birds start flying round him. They are big, dark-winged, menacing—he gets rather frightened. He looks down, and sees that on his wrist is a golden handcuff. At this point he wakes up. How would one interpret this dream?

For a start, one must always take into consideration the age and sex of the dreamer. The whole point of this dream is that the dreamer is a young, unmarried man. The thing he remembers most clearly is the frightening birds. Birds—birds—what does his mind associate with birds? Girls, of course!—it’s just a slang term for girls. And the golden handcuff? A pretty obvious symbol of a wedding-ring and the bonds of matrimony, to someone who at the moment doesn’t wish to be bound in them. Once one has grasped what the dream is basically about, the rest falls into place. The sea is the unconscious mind itself, the place of instinct and emotion. The moon is a universal mother-symbol.

Yes, mother keeps hinting that he ought to start thinking of getting married. But the dream is telling him that he is not yet emotionally mature enough to take this step; wise advice that both he and his mother would do well to heed.

This brief example may serve as an indication of the way in which modern psychology sets about interpreting people’s dreams. It works on a very different principle from that of the old-fashioned dream-books, which merely set out a list of arbitrary meanings which were supposed to apply to everybody, whatever their age or status. Nevertheless, psychologists have found that some symbols do have a general meaning, in whatever dream they occur; hence they have been styled ’universal symbols’.

For instance, the moon very often represents the mother, or feminine influence generally, especially in the dreams of a man; and the sun can represent the father, or masculine influence generally, especially in the dreams of a woman. A road or a railway can mean one’s progress through life. The sort of clothes one is wearing in a dream has something to do with one’s personality. A hostile entity of some kind, a burglar or bandit, often means one’s own repressed tendencies. A stallion, a bull, or other strong, fierce animal, can be one’s libido or sexual drive. The sea is the unconscious mind. Water generally is a symbol of emotions. A growing tree means knowledge, especially knowledge of life. The archetypal figure which Jung called “the wise old man” represents the accumulated wisdom of our instinctive inheritance, derived from our ancestors.

Sometimes the dream resolves itself into a sort of play in which the characters are really different aspects of the dreamer’s personality; and quite often our unconscious mind makes use of puns and even anagrams to get its message across. To do full justice to this subject would need a book to itself.

To return to the subject of precognition in dreams, that is, the incidence of dreams that foretell the future, this is a matter with which some scientific investigators are now seriously concerning themselves. The new wave of interest started in 1966, when a number of people claimed to have received warnings in dreams about the Aberfan disaster, in which a school was buried beneath a moving mountain of sludge from old mine tips and 116 children were among those who lost their lives. This tragedy which overwhelmed the little Welsh community of Aberfan aroused the pity and horror of the whole country. An article in the News of the World, dated 11th December 1966, stated that a senior psychiatrist had collected 72 instances of people claiming to have had premonitions of the disaster, and the Psychophysical Research Unit at Oxford had received 50 such claims. In all, some 200 claims had been examined by this newspaper, from people all over Britain.

Applying the test that the premonition must have been recorded or witnessed to in some way before the disaster, the News of the World stated that its reporters had been able to authenticate seven definite cases of premonition. Of these, three came in the form of vivid dreams.

Arising from these enquiries, the senior psychiatrist concerned (he was later identified as Dr John Barker) suggested that some sort of early warning system might be set up, with the help of people who had this faculty of receiving premonitions. He thought that a central bureau might be established, to which people could send accounts of premonitions, whether in dreams, visions, or other psychic experiences. If a sufficient number of such accounts were received at any given time, the details of them could be fed into a computer, which would sort them out, see what they had in common and hopefully be able to give some definite warning which could be acted upon.

Dr Barker actually started an organization for this purpose; but unfortunately he did not live to see the full fruition of his work. He died in 1968. However, the idea has been carried on by Mrs Jennifer Preston, who (according to a newspaper report in October 1972) has been running a Premonitions Bureau from her home in Marlborough Lane, Charlton, London. Mrs Preston has collected hundreds of predictions of events, which have been fulfilled too closely for the old explanation of ’coincidence’ to be anything but a worn-out phrase.

Two more instances of premonitory dreams may be mentioned which were reported in the national press in recent years.

In May 1968, an East London block of flats, called Ronan Point, partially collapsed after a gas explosion. The collapse was sudden and terrifying, the more so as the flats were new. No one had expected such a thing to happen; no one, that is, except a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who lived opposite. A short while before the disaster, this young girl had a nightmare, in which she saw the flats falling down, while people screamed and ran for safety. She told her mother about it the next morning and also some school friends and a few people who lived in the block; but at the time no one took the warning seriously. Later, the Daily Mirror reported her story, which her mother confirmed.

Suppose people had taken the warning seriously? Could such a happening be prevented? If not, what is the reason for such dreams? When we talk about ’seeing the future’, what exactly do we mean? Are events already formed in some other dimension, which we may contact while we sleep? Is this process part of what we vaguely call ’fate’ or ’destiny’ and what the wise men of the East call Karma? The faculty of dreaming true raises all these questions and more.

The idea of destiny seems to be especially relevant to another and still more recent case. In April 1973, a heartbreaking disaster hit four Somerset villages, Axbridge, Cheddar, Congresbury and Wrington. The members of the local Ladies’ Guild set out in a chartered Vanguard airliner for what was to have been a happy day trip to Switzerland. Their plane encountered severe weather and crashed near Basle, with the loss of over one hundred lives. Many children were left motherless; and like Aberfan, this was a tragedy which shocked the nation.

One family, however, was spared, because of a dream. According to a report carried by the Daily Telegraph on 12th April 1973, a young mother who had booked on the outing changed her mind and returned her ticket to the organizer, saying that she would be satisfied to get only half her money back. She had dreamed that she was in a plane which crashed into trees in a snowstorm and that she saw the bodies of her friends laid out in the snow. These were in fact the circumstances of the crash.

Why was that woman the one to be warned? Did others have such dreams and perhaps disregard them? We do not know the answers to these questions; but I feel that the value of dreams has been put beyond doubt.