Reves: Visions Revelatrices

Folklore, April, 2006 by Jacqueline Simpson

Reves: Visions Revelatrices. Edited by Maya Burger. (Studia Religiosa Helvetica, 7.) Berne, Oxford and New York: Peter Lang, 2003. 311 pp. Illus. 31.00 [pounds sterling]/$57.95 (hbk). ISBN 3-906770-83-4

The thirteen papers in this collection consider the topic of dreams in relation to religion, rather than as psychological or physiological phenomena, and prove--if proof were needed--that this pre-modern approach provides many fruitful insights. The contributors come from various disciplines, and range widely both in time and space and in the religious traditions they explore: Classical mythology, Rabbinic Judaism, Islam, the Old and New Testament, Australian Aborigine culture, and Hinduism.

The traditional "explanations" for dreams, and the functions they fulfil, are by no means uniform even within the same cultural area. Of the three papers on Hinduism, the first (by Catherine Weinberger-Thomas) deals with instances where the fact that a woman dreams of her missing husband is taken as proof that he is dead, and as an instruction to her to burn herself to death, even though his corpse is not present; the second (by David Gordon White) explains that in Tantrism dreaming is seen as a form of demonic or ghostly possession, to be overcome by exorcism by a ritual specialist, the tantrika; and the third (by Nicola Pozza) analyses the use of dreams and visions in a modern epic poem, the Kamayani of Jay Sankar Prasad, where they represent altered states of consciousness vital to the hero's spiritual quest, an interpretation rooted in Hindu philosophy.

A recurrent theme is the role of dreams in authenticating a belief and/or legitimating a course of action; where psychologists see the dreamer's own mind producing symbolic hints at the solution of some problem, the religious personality sees a message from an external, superior force--possibly God himself. Pierre-Yves Brandt offers a fascinating paper on this, entitled (in translation) "Must one dream it before one dare do it?" His examples include Biblical episodes such as Joseph's dream telling him to marry the pregnant Mary and Peter's dream of eating "unclean" beasts, but also a modern story: Veronica O'Brien, a nun who was unhappy in the Belgian order to which she belonged, experienced a symbolic dream in 1935 that foretold, and endorsed, the authorisation to depart she received next day. Years later, in 1960, she dreamt that it was her mission to find a suitable wife for King Baudouin; she told him so, went to Spain, met Fabiola de Moray Aragon and saw in her bedroom a painting, which she (Veronica) recognised as one she had dreamt of the previous night--and eventually she persuaded Fabiola to marry Baudouin. All this is recounted by the Belgian Cardinal Suenens as an example of God's working.

Pierre Lory describes how, in Islamic tradition, "true dreams" are important divine messages; to see Muhammed in a dream is the same as seeing him in reality, and his aspect (angry or smiling, richly dressed or ragged, vigorous or wounded) conveys a message of moral judgement on the dreamer and/or the society. The two papers on dreams in Rabbinical Judaism (by Jean-Christophe Attias and by Philippe Bornet) stress that interpretation is a specialised skill, involving traditional rules on the manipulation of symbols as well as spiritual insight. The dreams of the great Biblical prophets were revelations of truth, but those of ordinary modern people are seen as unreliable, being mingled with personal opinions or even infiltrated by demonic suggestions; bad dreams must be countered by immediate fasting--a technique taught by Maimonides, and still recommended on Jewish Internet sites.

There is much here to interest the cultural historian and the folklorist.

Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore Society