"one recipe for receiving a dream connected explicitly to stars ... :

[quoted from MS. Oxford Bodeliana 1965, fol. 183a] " ... stand before the stars, where Ursa Major is, and say in front of it : In the name of Stani, I conjure ... send me this night two sages who will reveal to me whatever I ask and demand from them in truth ... .""

p.

diviners

238

they called also to ... the mekhashshefim, who know the propitious hours ..., so that they might ... know [the meaning of] the dream in accordance with the configuration of the

239

He also called the kasedim, who know the future in accordance with their lore".

"the the mekhashshefim too know the propitious hour, and in accordance with that hour they are able to know the dream of a man, if he sleeps, by means of the configuration of the stars at that hour."

"the mekhashshefim interpreted dreams according to the hour of the dream".

{The Javanese classify dreams according to the time of night during which they appear." (WDB, p. 225)}

p. 240

[quoted from MS. London, British Library Or. 19788, fol.s 4b-5a; Lideros^ >elohim, fol.s 19b-20a; Hemdah Genuzah, fol.s 43b-44a] "Mercury ... is appointed for wisdom and knowledge of the hidden things ... . ...

p. 241

And he should sleep ... left side and you will find, in the midst of your sleep, that the spirit of the holy God will dwell upon you and the hair of your neck will bristle [p. 248, n. 12:35 : cf. >iyyob 4:15], when the sleep of tremendum comes upon you, and fear to your thoughts. During the dream at night you will see the visions of a man who will awake you {a peculiar variety of dream of false-awakening?} ... and will tell you the secrets of wisdom, and twice as much understanding."

"According to some Midrashic views, the Torah was ... in its primordial form ... a different and much more powerful combination of letters [Scholem 1969:27]. Such an order, if retrieved, may transform ... into a powerful book of magic."

"A perusal of his magical book shows that a Neoplatonic attitude to reality informs its structure ... . The main contribution of this treatise is ... to the much later figure Yohanan Alemanno ... .

The anonymous author draws heavily upon the Arabic view of drawing down spiritual forces from various astral bodies".

{This was also a practice in Hellenistic magic.}

... prophesying ... prophets did ... only by means of the mirror that does not shine. ... . ... this intellect was ... descending upon them ... only in a dream or terrifying visions."

"According to some texts, God dresses himself in a garment in order to reveal himself to man, while according to other texts, the mystico-philosophical ones, man divests himself of his materiality in order to become God. ... However, ... those forms of religious experience not only coexist, as in the case of Alemanno’s ladder of states of cognitions [p. 250, n. 12:72 : "See for the time being ... Alemanno’s passage’s extant in ms. Oxford 2234, fol. 106b; ms. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale 849, fol. 28ab; Sha.ar ha-H.esheq, fol. 42a; ms. Oxford 1535, fol. 123a], but may sometimes complement each other."

" "The veridical dream is one forty-sixth of prophecy," states an Islamic tradition attributed to the Prophet Muh.ammad. [p. 268, n. 13:1 : "For an extensive list of sources and variants see Kister 1974:71 n. 20".] This statement implies that ... messages of divine origin can still be communicated through dreams ... . ... For S[.]ufism it meant that divine inspiration (ilham) could be granted to the friends of God (awliya> allah), the holy men of Islam. For philosophy it meant that ... during sleep ..., the human Intellect could become united with the Universal (or Active) Intellect and thus have access to transcendental truths. It was universally accepted that those who had cultivated their inner faculties and insights could decipher the encoded messages of their own dream as well as those of others."

p. 253

"Artemidorus’s Oneirocritica was translated into Arabic by H.unayn ibn Ish.aq in the ninth century".

Ya<qub bn Ish.aq al-Kindi (d. ca. 866) ..., in his Epistle on the Nature of Dream and Sleep, maintains that the understanding of "sleep" and "dream" is based on the knowledge of the psyche (nafs) ... . ...

What the dreamer sees and hears in a dream comes ... from a special psychic faculty which he names "the form-creating faculty" (al-quwwa al-mus.awwira) ... that ... produces them in their pure, non-corporeal forms. ...

[cf. the dream "images" of Lucretius (supra, pp. 174-5)]

p. 254

In producing such dream forms, the psyche, which is "knowledgeable, awake, and alive" (<allama yaqz.ana h.ayya) acts for the dreamer as a revealer of things to come, since in this way it points to, or prophesies, future events."

p.

dreaming

254

"Medieval Arabic literature on dreams and visions ... reiterates ... knowledge of spiritual "meanings" (ma<ani – referred to also as "ideas," "forms," "intelligibles," "universals") acquired through the inner, subtle senses that are activated in dreaming." [p. 269, n. 13:19 : "On the "internal senses" see Wolfson 1935:69-133."]

[quoted from Altman & Stern 1958:136] "A man will behold himself during sleep ... flying ... between heaven and earth; and it will seem to him as if the heavens are open, and a voice is calling thence and speaking to him ... . The evidence of these forms and images is spiritual, subtle, transcending the natural order ... . ... .

255

... there is agreement between all authors of books on religion and all who believe in prophecy that dreams are a part of prophecy."

[quoted from Altman & Stern 1958:136-7] "When the person awakes from sleep, ... Remembering them [viz., dreams], one seeks to understand their spiritual meaning through the cogitative faculty (al-qawwa al-mufakkira) ... . ... When, therefore, the cogitative faculty of the person concerned is spiritual, pure, luminous, and hardly obscured ..., intellect ["i.e., the transcendent Universal Intellect" – Sh.S.] will cause its light and brilliance to emanate upon it and make known to it its own properties, forms, and spiritual messages".

p. 255

According to "Moses ibn Ezra, an eleventh/twelfth-century Andalusian Jewish Poet", "Only dreams ... which ... emerge from a celestial origin, are veridical. ... These ideas reveal to the dreamer’s rational soul (an-nafs an-nat.iqa) divine and hidden truths ..., which ... are inspired by the Universal Intellect

p. 256

(al-<aql al-kulli). Interestingly, in this class of dreams no role seems to be assigned by Moses ibn Ezra to the imaginative faculty."

"In the eighth chapter of the last book of the Ih.ya> <ulum al-din (‘The Revival of the Religious Sciences’) ..., the author, Abu H.amid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), offers ... an exposition on dreams ... . ... Al-Ghazali explains that ... the veil covering the heart is lifted and a vision of future is revealed to the heart’s eye. The heart, he explains, is like a mirror upon which forms (s.uwar) and meanings (ma<ani) are reflected. The source of these forms and meanings is the (Preserved) Tablet (al-lauh.al-mah.fuz.) [p. 269, n. 13:30 : "On ... al-lauh.al-mah.fuz ... see commentaries to sura 85:22; see also Schimmel 1994:155, 228."], the heavenly book that records all created and preordained phenomena from the beginning of creation to its end. In the process of dreaming, it is suggested, a double act of mirroring is taking place : the Tablet mirrors the incorporeal forms that exist in the unseen, and the unveiled heart, in contemplating the Tablet, mirrors the images reflected there."

[quoted from >al-Gazali] "Someone told Ibn Sirin : "I saw myself in a dream holding a seal by which I was sealing the mouths of men and the privies of women." Ibn Sirin said : You are a muezzin (mu>adhdhin) who calls for prayer on the mornings of Ramad.an."

According to >ibn >al-<arabi, a 13^th-century Chr.E. Andalusian mystic, "In dreams, through the imaginative faculty (al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila), even divine attributes can be perceived in a corporeal form. The friends of God, says Ibn al-<Arabi, see images of highly spiritual beings such as angels ..., the Heavenly Throne (al-<arsh), and even God himself. ...

[quoted from >ibn >al-<arabi 1946:99] "The light of this luminous wisdom expands to [embrace] the plane of imagination. This is the beginning of Divine inspiration granted to the people of Assistance (ahl al-<inaya). [This is supported by a h.adit transmitted in the name of] <A>isha : "The first inspiration [granted to] the Prophet was a veridical dream. Every dream that he had was [as clear as] the breaking of dawn ... ."".

"the sixth chapter of the Bezels of Wisdom, which is concerned with Isaac, ... is based on a Qur>anic verse according to which Abraham says to his son : "My son, I see in a dream that I shall sacrifice thee" (37:102). ... But according to Ibn al-<Arabi, ... What had appeared in his dream was a ram in the form of his son".

p. 261

" "Good tidings," al-Tirmidhi writes in his The Way of the Friends of God (Sirat al-awliya>), "is a veridical dream ...; the dream of the faithful is God’s word spoken to him in his sleep.""

p. 262

... I would ... wander in the ruins and graveyards around my town. This was my practice, and ... I took refuge in ruins and in solitary places."

p. 270, n. 13:56

"The fact that al-Tirmidhi wakes up sitting ... may suggest that the dreaming took place in a mosque."

p.

dreams

262

[the 2^nd dream by >al-Tirmidi :] "I saw a huge assembly [p. 270, n. 13:59 "majlis <az.im is equivocal" ... {may mean ‘place for assembly’}. Cf. Radtke and O’Kane 1996:19."] with an embellished seat and a pitched canopy ... . ... I entered through the veils and saw neither a person nor a form. ... After a while I found myself outside the veils."

263

[the 1^st dream by >umm <abd>allah :] "I saw in a dream, ... standing in midair, ... an old man, curly haired, wearing white clothes, sandals on his feet, and he was calling to me from the air ..., and he disappeared."

[the 2^nd dream by >umm <abd>allah :] "And lo, a man came toward us, curly haired, on his head a white turban, his hair loose behind his turban, his clothes white. Then

264

he ... said to me at a distance from my sisters : ...

I am one of the angels; we roam the earth, and our abode is in Jerusalem. Then I saw in his hand [a bunch] of young green myrtle [branches] ... . ... Then he said : We roam the earth and we call on the worshippers. .. I woke up. ...

In the book of Zechariah (1:8-11) ... : I saw by night and behold a man ..., and he stood among the myrtle trees ... . ... And the man that stood among the myrtle trees ... said, These are they whom the Lord has sent to walk to and fro through the earth."

{>iyyob 1:7 : "and YHWH said unto S`at.an : ‘Whence comest thou?’ Then S`at.an answered YHWH, and said : ‘From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’ " (So, did both Zkaryah and >umm <abd>allah thus encountre S`at.an?)}

265

[another dream by >umm <abd>allah :] "I saw a tree growing by the side of this couch ... . ... I came closer to the tree and heard a voice coming from around it, although I could see no-one there. I looked at the trunk and saw that it had grown out of a rock, a big rock. By the side of this rock I saw another big rock which had a hollow, like a pool. From the trunk of the tree a brook emerged and its water, which was pure, flowed into the hollow of the rock and gathered there. Again I heard a voice calling me from the bottom of the tree : ...

266

Look! I looked, and saw a green bird, the size of a pigeon. ... The bird hopped upwards, ... from branch to branch; whenever it perched on a dry branch ..., it became green and moist ... . ... The bird flew to the top of the tree ..., and the whole tree become green."

[still another dream by >umm <abd>allah :] "I saw two dignified persons sitting. ... One of them said : ...

"You are one of the pegs of the earth ... ."" [/>awtad/ ‘pegs’]

p. 267 "At the top of this hierarchy stands the "pole" (qut.b), "the Master of the Friends of God" (sayyid al-awliya>). Under him come the "pegs," below which come the substitutes (al-abdal)."

p.

experience

267

"She said : ... Heat spread through the cavity of my body, my heart was on fire, and all the sacred names appeared to me in their glory. ...

268

This fire that I first saw in the sky ..., ... now I see it as sparks of emerald and silver, blown and kindled."

"Macrobius divides dreams into five categories ... :

prophetic vision (visio),

nightmare (insomnium),

ghostly apparition (phantasma),

enigmatic dream (somnium),

oraculum (oraculum)."

"The classification of Macrobius reemerged in the twelfth century in an anonymous work titled Liber de spiritu et anima ... . It was in fact written by a Cistercian named Alcher de Clairvaux".

"Guibert de Nogent ... was marked by numerous autobiographical dreams, as he recounted toward the end of his life [c. 1115], in his De vita sua". [Schmitt 1985:291-316]

Even earlier, the monk Otloh de Saint Emmeran (died c. 1070) wrote a Liber visionum, comprising twenty-three visions. The first four visions ... are personal dreams recounted by Otloh".