"According to the Lakota ..., hambleyapi , or "crying for a vision," ... is the center of Plains Indian spirituality."

Hanble "either "dreams" or "visions"" :

"A girl may seek a vision by wrapping her first menstrual flow and placing it in a tree. Visions frequently come without seeking to very old men or women and to shamans."

"Among the Lakota, the Tapa Wakanyeyapi, or Throwing the Ball Rite, was associated with a visionary woman whose behavior was imitated by young girls who were specially initiated into the rite."

p. 97

[quoted from "RCI", p. 332] "Young girls did not seek visions, but when older they might and did. Usually this happened when a relative ... died".

p. 107, n. 5:21

[quoted from "VQCW", p. 69] Crow women "rarely sought visions before the age of 30."

p. 98

[quoted from MS&CO, p. 175] "One day there was a large wolf in one of the pits. ... The wolf knew her thoughts. He coughed up a blue stone. ... She took the stone and let the wolf go."

[quoted from "TSCI", p. 182] "she ... fell asleep with the otter bundle clasped tightly in her arms : "The otter gave her a dream and told her that if they got home safely, they should join the Tobacco [society] ... ."".

[Kiowa] "she crawled under the dried carcass of a dead buffalo laying [lying] on the open plains. Subsequently she had a vision {dream} in which the buffalo appeared to her and gave her the power to heal wounds ... as well as the knowledge of how to handle certain objects sacred to the buffalo."

p. 99

[S, pp. 31-9] "When the eagle came to her, everything around her disappeared with the resultant image of an eagle against a murky gray background ... . When the each was present, [she] trembled violently ... . She states that her heart beat very rapidly and she

p. 100

felt as if she were going to faint."

"a Stoney woman given bear power refused to eat bear meat ... . When she broke this prohibition once, she felt that she had to struggle against being overwhelmed by her bear spirit."

"Among the Lakota Sioux, skill in crafts was a power given by dreaming of Double-Woman, a spiritual being who was credited with the discovery of quill working ... . Women who dreamed of her became members of the Wipata Okolakiciye> society and shared their dreams ... with each other."

[quoted from O, p. 88] "A woman went fasting. She was daubed with mud. She was going along a creek when she saw a little bush covered with yarn in pretty designs. That was how she learned those designs."

"among the Blackfeet, a medicine woman, after receiving a special vision, could paint her face in such a way as to control the weather."

p. 101

[Lakota woman, quoted from WSM, pp. 54-5] "I woke up from my sleep and opened by eyes to see three women standing before me. ... the third one ... said, "I am Blue Bird Woman and this bag is full of songs. I am going to give you a voice.""

p. 102

[Absalooke woman, quoted from "VQCW", p. 82] "The Evening Star came to me in a human form. It was wrapped in a red blanket and its face was painted with red parallel lines. ... I heard a voice speaking to me from the sky, "You are called over there." I looked up and saw a chickadee flying overhead. It repeated those words. I stood up and followed the bird. I came to a place where four men were building four sweat lodges. They jack rabbits, the servants of Morning Star."

[Pawnee woman, quoted from CP, p. 319] "I had a vision. ... He said, "... We (dead people) are watching for our people to have the ceremony. ... one of the Bear men who knows the secret ceremony is still with you. ...""

p. 102

[doings of Piegan (Blackfeet) woman, quoted from FMLI, pp. 160-7] "She ... found the singing was under a big log there. ... She ... found under it ... a small reddish-colored stone that had the shape of a buffalo . ... [She] carried the buffalo stone concealed in her bosom, slept with it close under her pillow. ... Then on the fourth night, while she slept, ... the stone talked to her for some time."

p. 103

the Cheyenne woman dreamer Josie Limpy became the keeper of the Sacred Hat Bundle."

p. 103

[empowerment of Lakota woman by spirits in sweat-lodge, quoted from WSM, p. 150] "I go into a sweat lodge. If I take somebody in there, there are spirits in there, and I see them. Little lights, little blue lights. There are two of them – one is red inside and white around the edge, the other one blue [inside] and white around the edge. They come on each side of me and sit there. ... And when I pray for someone they go across and sit beside them."

p. 104

[dream-experience of Lakota woman on a butte, quoted from WSM, pp. 130-48] "I was facing north, and fell asleep. I saw a large shape approaching me. ... It was so big that it almost covered the sky. When it got closer I could see that it was an owl. ... The blue light was also present. It marched up my pipe stem. ... that blue light traveled all around me."

p. 105

[dream by a Lakota woman, quoted from WSM, p. 49] "Once I dreamed ... I was called to the corner of the room, where I found a peculiar light. It was in the form of a medicine wheel."

From one quadrant of that medicine-wheel came __ light.

It repraesesented __.

red

"spiritual insight"

dark

"music and dance"

white

"bringing ideas into physical reality"

yellow

"meditation"

p. 115

"In discussing aspects of ghost belief, Arapesh informants cite their appearance in dreams as evidence in support of certain standard ideas about them".

In Tahiti, dreams are "a window opening on the supernatural world".

p. 116

"Among the Rara`muri of Mexico, souls are believes to wander outside the body during dreams, where they can gather valuable cosmological information".

Among Daribi craftsmen, "real talent ... must be obtained through a dream".

The Asabano are located "at Duranmin in Sandaun Province. They are culturally part of the Mountain Ok or Min ..., but linguistically are tied to the Sepik-Ramu language groups". [p. 130, n. 6:3 : "The Min group of cultures are united by their common descent ... from an "Old Woman" known in Telefol as Afek and in Asaba as Semodu, who is said to have wandered through the area".]

p. 113

"Offerings for hunting and gathering success were made to wild humanlike beings called wobuno [p. 130, n. 6:7 : "Wobudu is singular, while wobuno is plural or collective."] and to ancestors, whose bones were kept ... . Vindictive spirits stones, trees, and waters could be persuaded through offerings to cease causing illness."

p. 120

"a certain stone brought from the Kienu River area ... has a wobudu inside. ... Women made offerings to him as well as men. He works by appearing in a dream to a man ... and he tells the dreamer where to go hunting. And it works! If you go there you’ll see animals. ... hunters actively sought dream encounters with wobuno as a method of obtaining game." {This technique, of using dreams to determine the locations of game-animals, is also used by South American Indians.}

p. 127

The daughter of this Kienu wobudu is named "Omsimin".

"each person has two souls, the alomo kamalanedu (little soul) and the alomo kamayadu (big soul) ... . {cf. ti (petite) bon ange and the gros bon ange, one’s 2 souls in Haitian nomenclature} The big soul goes around at night and shows us good dreams while we are alive. When we sleep, the little soul watches the body, and the big one goes around. So dreams are what the big soul sees when it’s traveling around." {"dreams are produced by the wanderings of the Gros-bon-ange when it abandons the body during sleep. The sleeper becomes aware of the adventures of the Gros-bon-ange through the Ti-z'ange who remains by him as a protector and yet never loses sight of the Gros-bon-ange. He wakes the sleeper in case of danger and even flies to the rescue of the Gros-bonange if this faces real danger." ("TV")}

"at death the two souls part ways. The little soul remains a potentially dangerous presence at the gravesite, while the benevolent big soul travels to one of several villages of the dead, located in tabooed sections of the forest."

"If I dream of having sex with a woman ..., I know the next day I’ll kill animals".

p. 119

"religious dreams were populated by the dead; benevolent wobuno; and malevolent tree, stone, and water spirits. ... In addition to verifying religious beliefs ..., they were a valued source of information on ... life after death."

p. 120

"Wobuno encountered in dreams told where to find game in response to an offering."

p. 120

"the wobuno also identified malevolent beings responsible for sickness : "We saw wobuno in dreams, and they would tell us which nambeno [tree spirits] were harming a particular person.""

p. 121

Dreamers could also obtain information about the source of illnesses by witnessing the attack. If dreamers saw that a tree, stone, or water spirit was responsible, they made a magico-economic exchange with it. It was vital to know the offending spirit’s gender ..., "The Asabano and Towale had the same custom. If a female spirit was causing the trouble, the women had to deal with it; if a man spirit was doing it, the men had to. They found out the sex by seeing a dream. People used to dream that a tree spirit or other thing had hurt a certain man, so when we had these dreams we would know ... . ... The nambeno have white skin. ...""

p. 123

[dreams by a woman :] "a dream ... I saw the ocean, ... said, "... you will turn into birds and fly ... ." ... Then a second time I dreamt the earth was changing, and ... I turned into a butterfly and flew up." {cf. Aztec butterfly-goddess Itztlacoliuhqui? Chuang Chou (Zhuang Zhou) the Taoist dreamt of becoming a butterfly.}

p. 128

[dream by a girl :] "In her dream, while washing clothes with her mother, a stone spirit grabbed her by the neck and pulled her underwater."

"A woman ... dreamed, in a lucid dream, that she was flying, found an attractive man, made love with him, and experienced an orgasm. ... In the laboratory experiments, measurements of vaginal blood flow and heart rate "Provided ... evidence for ... vividly realistic sex in lucid dreams." [LD, p. 91]

And a man who had a lucid orgasmic dream reported, "... I found that I had not actually ejaculated ... ." [LD, p. 93] ... The lucid orgasmic dream produces erection, excitement .., but no significantly heightened heartbeat and no actual ejaculation."

p. 236

[YV 6:2:136-57] "I studied magic. I entered someone else’s body and saw all his organs; I entered his head and then I saw a universe, with a sun and an ocean and mountains, and gods and demons and human beings. The universe was his dream, and I saw the dream. ... I saw doomsday. This time, however, even while I was being burned up by the flames, I did not suffer ... . Time passed. A sage came to my house, and ... he said, "Don’t you know that all of this is a dream? {"In a dream, a spiritual guide ... appeared and instructed me, saying : ‘Why are you asleep ...?’ " (SHWS, p. 80)} I am a man in your dream, and you are a man in someone else’s dream." Then I awakened ... . I could find no body, nor could I get out of the head of the person I had entered, so I asked him ... . The sage replied, "While you were in the other person’s body, a great fire arose that destroyed you body as well as the body of the other person. ..." When the sage said this, ... he stayed with me until he died."

p. 237

"Inside the dream village, the new householder ... meets another sage, who enlightens him and wakes him up. Yet though he is said explicitly to awaken, he stays where he is inside the dream; the only difference is that now he knows he is inside the dream. Now he becomes ... inside the dreamer’s dream."

p. 241

"It was Eliade’s experiences in India that helped ..., and particularly his romantic encounters there with his Indian teacher’s sixteen-year-old daughter (he was kicked out of the house and the student-teacher relationship for the affair)

[p. 247, n. 15:12

"Eliade would later fictionalize the affair in his novel La nuit bengali (1950), translated by Catherine Spenser, in which he chose to use the daughter’s actual name, Maitreyi. Maitreyi Devi ... read the novel some forty years after the romantic encounter and responded with her own Bengali novel, Na Hanyate (1974), literally "It does not die.""]

p. 241

and a young woman he met in a Himalayan ashram named "Jenny." With the latter he practiced some form of sexual yoga until they were caught and he had to leave the ashram." [mentioned in A, pp. 198-200]

"Massignon ... made it somewhat of a habit to apologetically share in print with his fellow historians of religion the strange instances of his own "premonitorial dreams" and what he called his "intersigns," those striking moments in life when external events seem to coincide perfectly with his internal state and its questions and so act as confirming guides on one’s vocational path. (The idea is very close to Jung’s notion of "synchronicity," not to mention Eliade’s ideas about "destiny" and the reading of one’s mundane life through coincidence and sign as the narrative of a meaningful script.)"

"Frithjof Schuon, the philosopher of religion and premier theorist of the perennialist school of the study of mysticism ... painted a number of his dream-visions, many of them involving the vaginas of naked Christian Madonnas and native American goddess figures, and then ritualized these in his own southern Indiana religious community within a sacred ritual dance (he would stand naked in the center, wearing a feather crown {cf. "peacock feather headgear" of Nepalese shamans (HASh, p. 87, Fig. 5.3)}, as female devotees danced bare-breasted around him) before ... sexual scandal closed the group down". [see "DM"]

p.

citation

reference

250

"the principle of contraries in which dreams indicate the opposite of what they seem, ... the practitioners of this type of dream interpretation include "such widely separated peoples as Ashanti, Malays, Maori, ... Semai and Zulu" (Dentan 1986:33)."

Dentan 1986 = Robert Knox Dentan : "Ethnographic Considerations in the Cross-Cultural Study of Dreaming." In :- Jayne Gackenbach (ed) : Sleep and Dreams. NY ; Garland. pp. 317-58.

251

[Yolmo Sherpa of Nepal] "a large degree of among individuals concerning the meaning of dream imagery ... "an implicit ‘dictionary’ of dream symbolism," which individuals relied on ... (Desjarlais 1991:102-117)."

Desjarlais 1991 = Robert Desjarlais : "Samsara’s Sadness". PhD diss, U of CA at Los Angeles.

252

"in Temiar society, ... local dream sharing through song connects the musical and medical domains ... . In this Malaysian society, spirit guides reach dreamers songs by singing them phrase by phrase, and dreamers learn songs during their dreams by repeating the songs phrase by phrase. in public performance ... a male medium sings a song phrase that is then repeated by a female chorus. {Male-female alternation in singing stanzas of a mythological chant is characteristic of the Miao (Thai) of southern China.} ... dream songs varied by the spirit guide source, creating ... trance behavior. ... . ... these dream-song performances, together with intricate dream narratives and interpretations (Roseman 1986, 1990)."

Roseman 1990 = Marina Roseman : Healing Sounds. U of CA Pr.

[New Guinea] "erotic dreams taking place in menstrual huts ... (Herdt 1987:73-74)."

Herdt 1987 = Gilbert H. Herdt : "Selfhood and Discourse in Sambia Dream Sharing". In :- Barbara Tedlock (ed.) : Dreaming. Cambridge U Pr. pp. 153-67.

254

"the premonitory dreams of fishermen and kula traders, the use of dreams by ritual specialists in initiate novices and to advise their community, dreams in which women’s dead relatives inform them of their pregnancies, and the sending of dreams by magical means to cause others to fall in love with one ([Malinowski 1927]:92-96)."

Malinowski 1927 = Bronislaw Malinowski : Sex and Repression in Primitive Society. NY : E. P. Dutton.

p.

citation

reference

255

"an Eskimo shaman who has heard ... or a Crow visionary who has seen a strange apparition ... I can understand ..., because I have had identical episodes every night and almost every day of my life" (Lowie 1966:379)."

Lowie 1966 = Robert Lowie : "Dreams, Idle Dreams". CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 7:378-82.

256

In a woman anthropologist’s "dream numerous times the tepees slowly became clearer, then larger and larger, until they swarmed around her and danced with a drum beating time to their movements. ... (Marriott 1952:74-87)."

Marriott 1952 = Alice Marriott : Greener Fields. Garden City : Dolphin Books.

258

"I dreamed ... that I was diving ... scuba ... . I ... saw a shaft of light coming down through the water ahead, showing me a cave with a floor covered with seashells."

[dream by authoress B.T.]

259

"I saw a blue-jay and put my hand out to invite it to come. the bird came and rubbed its breast against my fingers".

[dream by B.T.’s husband Dennis]