My research for my project on sleep continues and my focus for my work has a clear direction. I proposed earlier this week to create a dream journal in the form of a scroll-based on two Japanese works posted below. I have decided to work with mixed media to tell the tale of my own dreams through illustration, collage, and hand-written poems and verse. I would like to weave each dream tale together so you are where one ends and the other begins is blurred. Similar to the style of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a poetry narrative on Roman Mythology that is basically one long poem filled with interwoven stories that are 416 pages long. For now, I will start with four of my dream tales but I have a really long scroll so I want to add stories and tales to this work for as long as I can well after this class is over.
When I revisited the book “Big Dreams” again, I wanted to focus on one of the main aspects of the book, where dreams may be the base for religion, collective sleep, and other ideas surrounding culture and dreams. Here are some quotes that I think are worth sharing:
“Classicist E. R. Dodds said, ‘[T]he Greeks never spoke as we do of having a dream, but always of seeing a dream.’5 ” (5 Recall)
“In a previous book, Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History, I discussed the various roles of dreaming in Hinduism, Chinese religions, Buddhism, religions of the Fertile Crescent (Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc.), ancient Greek and Roman religions, Christianity, Islam, and the indigenous religions of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. (p.83) The conclusion of that book serves as a prologue to this one: ‘Dreams and dreaming have been a widely recognized and highly valued part of human life—particularly in relation to people’s religious beliefs and practices—in virtually every cultural community known to have populated the planet.’13 ” (5 Recall)
“During the normal course of human sleep the immune system becomes highly active, performing a variety of essential tasks for bodily health. Religiously inspired dream rituals can have the medically useful function of enhancing those endogenous healing processes. What Western researchers call the “placebo effect” can be activated in certain kinds of dreams, particularly in big dreams with highly memorable images, characters, and emotions. These dreams can boost the physiological impact of the placebo effect and mobilize the body’s own illness-fighting defenses.” (15 Ritual Healing)
“The historical background to this aspect of human religiosity has deep roots in the ancient teachings of many traditions. One of the best illustrations of dream-based religious healing practices comes from the same cultural world as Perpetua’s, just a few years before her birth, in much more favorable conditions. The Roman orator Aelius Aristides was born in (p.244) 117 C.E (…) One of the primary tools used by the priests at all Asclepian temples was dream incubation. We know a great deal about this practice at Pergamon from Aristides’s dream diary, which he titled The Sacred Tales.3 (p.245)” (15 Ritual Healing)
“A medieval Jewish text described a “dream question” ritual (she-elat chalom) that has many of the same features as the Asclepian and Muslim (p.247) incubation practices.7 Like them, it starts with changes in diet, purifications, immersions in water, and extensive prayers and scriptural recitations.” (15 Ritual Healing)”
“Heraclitus was right about many things. But on the solipsism of sleep, the philosopher had it wrong. In sleep each person goes into a world that remains profoundly social, with ongoing connections to interpersonal relationships, collective realities, and cultural systems of meaning and value. Sleep involves a lowering of sensory awareness, but not a total withdrawal, and sleep almost always occurs within the familiar context of a broader community. A social dimension of sleep has deep roots in the evolution of our species. From the earliest times through the modern era, humans have naturally preferred sleeping together.” (4 Culture)
