“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 the following tables 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.
This book is not intended to foster superstition, but to offer a means of solving many of the mysterious occurrences in our lives and help you rise above your surroundings to a higher plane of usefulness.