and many paintings and woodcuts depict individual dreams in progress. ... .

... we now have examples of spells used against nightmares dating from the 3^rd century B.C., which were found in a tomb at Shuihu-ti, Hupeh, in 1975. Significantly, similar spells ... are still in use today".

p.

dreams

27

7. dreams corresponding to the seasons;

28

10. dreams whose meaning varies according to the dreamer’s temperament; that is, taking into account the dreamer’s personal likes and dislikes."

"From the 2^nd century A.D., too, comes Wang Yen-shou’s "Dream Rhapsody" ("Meng fu") – an account of a nightmare ... . It is evident that the poem itself was intended not only as a narrative of a fearful dream-experience; it was itself designed as a potent spell against night-roaming, dream-invading demons (Harper, 1987)."

p.

manuals

28

"Among the Tun-huang manuscripts discovered ... at the beginning of this [20^th] century are thirteen incomplete manuscripts of dream manuals. The most extensive of these has been published, with study, translation, and cross-references to other literature, by Jean-Pierre Drege ("Clefs des songes de Touen-houang," in Soymie’, ed., Nouvelles contributions aux etudes de Touen-houang, Geneva 1981).

cosmetics, and so forth."

29

"Specialized dream-books of this sort have been investigated by Wolfram Eberhard, Jean-Pierre Drege and Michael Lackner, whose study of an encyclopaedic book on dreams, the Meng-lin hsuan-chieh (Secret Interpretations from the Forest of Dreams, 1636), was published in 1985 : Der chinesische Traumwold (Frankfurt)."

p.

medical literature

29

"The Yellow Monarch’s Book of Medicine provides the basic information, arranged according to each of the vital organs. These data were extracted and gathered into the short, systematic disquisition, The Book of the Divine Pivot (Ling-shu ching, 2^nd century A.D.)[.]

The book’s basic argument is that when alien, pathogenic agents invade the body, they dislodge the souls (hun and p>o), causing them to flutter about. This experience causes pleasurable dreams.

{This is, or course, likewise Siberian (and other) shamanisms’ basic argument; though there often stated in the specific way as the patient’s "health" being thus dislodged.}

The book further assumes that physical imbalances [excesses and deficiencies] determine the subject matter of the patient’s dream."

an excess of __ vital breaths

causeth the patient to dream of __

yin

"crossing a great body of water"

yan

"fire and scorching heat"

"A superabundance of both vital principles with produce dreams of killing."

excesses in the __ part of the body

will produce dreams of __

upper

flying

lower

falling

a __ person

dreameth of __

"famished"

"taking"

"sated"

"giving"

terror, weeping ... from the lungs, and so forth."

a depletion centred in the __

produceth dreams of __

heart

"hills, mountains"

lungs

"singular objects made of gold and iron"

30

"The standard, early 7^th century source on disease symptoms and nomenclature, Ch>ao Yuan-fang’s Chu-ping yuan-hou lun, links wet-dreams in men to a demon’s capturing the subject’s breath-depleted, undefended kidneys. ... this produces dreams of intercourse with demonic beings ... .

Cause a man to have [sexual] intercourse with her, without ejaculating, day and night without ceasing. Even the worst cases with be cured within seven days."

p.

methods

30

"Another form of demonic dream-possession ... occurs in Ko Hung’s early 4^th century Methods within Easy Reach for Use in Emergencies (ch. 1, p. 9). In this "sudden demonic possession" the sleeper cannot awaken. This is because in their external wanderings, his aerial and spermatic souls have been detained by some alien, malific spirit-agency. Though they want to return to their body-domicile, they are unable to do so; so the victim sleeps on. ... Prevention takes the form of "holding fast," that is, clasping the thumbs inside closed fists as on lies in bed prior to sleep. It is widely believed in Europe, too, that this mano fica {‘hand-fig’} mudra keeps off the nightmare.

Or ... tickle his nostrils ... . Or take blood from the comb of a cock and blow it through a tube into the dreamer’s throat.

31

Or ... let his head hang down into the well and call his name.

{Harut and Marut "hang by their feet in a well in Babylonia until the Day of Judgment." ("SGDM"; "H&M")}

Or place the patient on the ground, draw a circle around him with the tip of a sword ... . He will start to speak in demon-language ... . Interrogate him [the possessing demon] as to his identity and reason for coming. Having received these answers, rub out a little of the magic circle with your finger at the patient’s shoulder, and the demon will depart".

p.

revelations

32

"the Mao S^an Revelations, texts produced under divine inspiration by Yang Hsi from A.D. 365 to 370. In these, dreams constitute a primary mode of communication between the Taoist adept and spiritual beings from the celestial realms ... . The "revelations" proper consisted of scriptures and hagiographies, as well as night-to-night, in-person spirit communications to Yang Hsi ... . ... . But the majority of dream materials are annexed to the revelations themselves ... . ... We have Yang Hsi’s accounts of four of his dreams, two of them quite long.

The dream proceeds, other deities appear and recite symbolic poems".

"the earliest of Yang Hsi’s recorded dreams, and the most fateful ... occurred on the 27^th day of the fourth month in the year 365. ...

33

Five years later, young Hsu Hsi ... intentionally killed himself by taking an alchemic elixir."

"Just 150 years later, in 515, the editor and annotator of these Mao Shan documents, the great pharmacologist and polymath T>ao Hung-ching (456-536), recorded a dream in which he had been summoned to a position in the invisible world. He was just approaching his sixtieth birthday, a most significant moment for a Chinese ... . ... T>ao Hung-ching lived on for another twenty years (Strickmann, 1979).

But nearly at the same time, ... a nineteen-year-old disciple of T>ao’s at Mao Shan ... too experienced a dream summons, which was followed by a series of nightly visions, in which the immortals came to him directly while he was awake. In 516, confident of his posthumous destiny, he killed himself by swallowing an elixir compounded of cinnabar and toxic mushrooms (Strickmann, 1978)."

"The progression from dreams to visions was thought to be a normal, desirable course for those singled out for celestial favor. Ideally, initiates and ascetics found that edifying dreams were the prelude to direct contact with celestial beings. But this path was not always open, even to the most dedicated. ... Among the first generation of devotees at Mao Shan, only Yang Hsi himself succeeded in having full-scale visions."

"He [Hsu Hsi?] ... often ... dreamed that he was flying, or participating in gatherings of divine beings.

{("DWFS") "Then the demon ... would carry her to ... where the witches and devils held their great gathering ... (Ginzburg 1990: 299).. ... From at least the tenth century, women had dreamed of riding through the air with the goddess Diana, or Herodias ... (Flint 1991: 122-5)."}

After his [Hsu Hsi’s?] premature death, he himself appeared in the dreams of Yang Hsi and (later) of T>ao Hung-ching. T>ao tells us that this long-dead young man served as his spiritual mentor, his "Master in the Invisible World," an important position to Mao Shan Taoists but

one usually filled by a celestial personage of opposite sex."

{cf. Zaratustrian guardian angel of opposite gendre from that of mortal human}

p. 34

You will be able to cut down on sleep considerably until what you behold in your dreams will be just as clear and real as what you see when awake. This will be a sign that you are ...

p. 35

In this way, with the dream-enacting souls increasingly directed by potent pharmaco-chemical agents, one’s dream life can become an intense and concentrated quest for secret knowledge (YCCC 78:21b).

Another text ... explains that in everyone’s body there dwell three "corpse-demons" or "corpse-worms." They abide deep within, hating their host and plotting his destruction. They may manifest themselves in dreams, where they may appear as three men dressed in rather old-fashioned costumes. ... If, for example, one dreams of building a house and putting up a fence, this means that the deadly trio are settling in the stomach. A dream of intercourse with a woman means that the corpse worms are having a meeting. If you are being treated by ingesting powdered cinnabar and it is taking effect, you will dream that there is a great fire burning up your house. If you are consuming various other pharmaka, when they start to work ... you will dream that a grave has been destroyed and the coffin has vanished ... . All these are indications that the corpse-worms are being destroyed (YCCC 83:8a)."

"a short work dated 632 ... entitled "Method of the Patriarchs for treating night-dreams in which, having roamed to various regions, one’s aerial souls are beguiled by jade maidens" (HY 589:6b). ... The Taoist priest uses a young child as a medium. ... . ... he twice recites the name of a deity called "The Immoveable One," then takes a piece of black paper, folds it in two, and has the child hold it between his teeth. Then he wraps the child’s head in a piece of cotton cloth and puts it to sleep ["perhaps by hypnotism"]. Next he inhales twice and recites : "I send the four great spirit-generals to apprehend the jade maidens who have beguiled the souls." He then blows his breath into the mouth of the sleeping child. ... He next goes to look at the patient and then recites : "I send the four great spirit-generals to apprehend the souls which have been beguiled by the jade maidens. I call them swiftly to return!" Then he calls out the sleeper’s personal name and awakens him."