Myths and Dreams. 3

Waking Dreams

Write one word at a time on the city walls, as the letters take the streets, and the things you know become, beyond what they were before, despite the silence in your mind, now speaking unsung tongues you have never heard, except in your dreams - waking.

I will continue to explore our dream world. Why do we dream and what purpose have our dreams?
As soon as man had learned to use writing characters, they seemed to record their dreams. In the 100s A.D, a Roman fortune-teller called Artemidoros travelled through the civilized world in order to collect material to his great work Oneirokritika(Dream Interpretation). In king Assurbanipals library in Nineve, he found notes with dreams engraved on clay tablets, which went as far back as to 3000 years B.C., and even earlier.
It is truly fascinating to know, that when the remains of Assurbanipal's library were excavated in the middle of 1900s, archaeologists found many fragments of dreams, that reproduced the Babylonian epic about Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. Gilgamesh had become reckless, gathered great richness, forced his people to build Urak's fortifications ever higher, and developed a sinister habit of raping virgins. Lately he'd got very bad dreams, and he was deeply concerned. Gilgamesh told his mother Ninsun, and she knew too well, her son's power had risen to his head. Her interpretation about the newcomer who her son fought against, with no success, was simple. Ninsun explained, her son and the newcomer would become friends, and together they were able make great deeds.  Meaning, he had to surrender and make improvement in his behaviour.

There are three theoretical directions:

•  Dreams are caused by supernatural powers from gods or angels, and should be perceived as messages. They can be either good or bad, but have a message to the dreamer. Still, children in our own culture, believe their dreams come somewhere from the outside - until they learn to believe different.

• Dreams are real experiences, depending on the soul's wandering during the sleep. An important,  and perhaps a dangerous experience, to feel being outside the body. It sometimes can be difficult to return to the body, it's such a nice feeling to feel free. The question is, can it be real?

• Dreams are natural phenomena, the result of normal activity during the sleep. Those who includes this theoretical view, do not agree whether dreams are meaningful and whether they allow themselves to be interpreted. 

Of these three directions, the first two are far older than the third and, in addition, have a certain mark of holiness. Only in two civilizations and during two relatively short periods in history has the third gained acclaim:
In ancient Greece between the third and the first century B.C., and in the Western society since the 1800s.  
Isn't that a very interesting thought, or not? Next time I'll continue with Freud and Jung, and their theories about dreams.