WEBVTT - From the Vault: Dreamfall into the Dark, Part 2 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:08.680 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:11.160 is Robert Lamb. Into the vault we go once more 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.560 for dream Fall into the Dark, Part two, which originally 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:22.200 published six twenty twenty three. Please enjoy Welcome to Stuff 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:25.560 to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:33.599 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:34.279 is Robert. 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:36.160 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.240 In the last episode, we discussed the power of dreams 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:43.919 to impact the waking world, with a particular focus on 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:47.720 times and places where the mystique of dreams seems to 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:52.480 have held particular sway over prominent intellectual and or theological 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:55.880 circles in a given society. So you know, what does 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.680 it mean for a people when the gateway of prophetic 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:04.440 dream is open wider and what factors seem to contribute 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:09.560 to these upticks in dream fascination in particular. In the 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:13.000 last episode, we discussed European Romanticism in the eighteenth and 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:18.240 nineteenth centuries, as discussed by authors Lynn A. Struve and 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:21.959 Jennifer Ford in their respective works. In this episode, we're 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:24.280 going to continue looking at some of the times and 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:27.600 places that Struve singles out in her twenty nineteen book 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:30.280 The Dreaming Mind and the End of the Ming World, 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.040 drawing in additional sources as well. Now, I believe the 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:37.119 plan is to get into Struve's thoughts on the late 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:42.120 Ming Dynasty dream culture in part three of this series. 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:45.000 But to kick things off here, I thought we might 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:49.760 discuss another movement another time in place that she highlights, 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:53.160 and that is Quakerism of the mid seventeenth century, with 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:58.880 religious and political strife in England, pushing immigrants out, religious 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.520 dissenters out of England and into a new hotbed of 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:06.320 religious and political strife in the New World. Now, I 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.640 don't know. This is definitely one of those cases, and 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:11.000 this is going to continue to be the case with 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:14.520 some of the examples we draw on. Certainly we would 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:16.639 love to hear from anyone out there who has actual 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:21.040 roots in Quakerism. I know I have a cousin that 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:24.520 is a Quaker. So this is very quake Quakerism still 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:27.120 is very much alive, but we're going to be dealing 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:32.040 with mid seventeenth century Quakerism in particular. Here Struve points 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:34.400 out that the majority of Puritans of the time period 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:39.760 considered quake heretical. It rejected the traditional Puritan power structure 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:42.840 in favor of a meeting structure where anyone in the 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.640 group could openly share their own account of seeking God 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:51.639 through Christ. And accounts of dreams factored into these oral presentations, 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:55.320 and sometimes these were written down as well. Quaker dream 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:58.880 testimonials lost much of their prophetic qualities, but continued to 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:01.399 be important in to the nineteenth century. 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:05.120 So I tried to do some digging to learn a 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:08.079 bit more about the role of dreams in Quaker history 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:11.480 and the more general historical context, and I came across 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:14.080 a lot of references to what looks like a highly 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:18.079 relevant and well regarded academic book on the subject. It's 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:22.400 by Carla Jirona called Night Journeys, The Power of Dreams 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:26.480 in Transatlantic Quaker Culture, University of Virginia Press in two 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:28.920 thousand and four. I was not able to read this 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.400 book itself, but I read a couple of academic reviews 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:33.680 of it to get a sense of its arguments and 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:36.480 major themes. So one of the reviews I'm going to 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:38.960 reference was by Robert Cox in the Journal of the 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:42.240 Early Republic Winter two thousand and five, and the other 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:45.280 was by Michelle Lisa Tartar in the Journal of Quaker 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:47.840 Studies two thousand and seven. But before I get into 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:49.680 this book directly, I think it'd be good to do 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.600 a little bit of background on the Quakers. So the 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:57.520 Quakers are officially known as the Religious Society of Friends, 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:00.360 and this tradition was founded in England in the mid 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.880 seventeenth century by a man named George Fox. So I 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:08.200 was reading about him in a book exerpt published in 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:11.000 the New York Times by historian named James Walvin. The 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:14.520 book is called The Quakers, Money and Morals. And before 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.359 going any further, I just have to note a physical 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:20.840 detail Walten includes in the description of George Fox, which 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:23.760 is that he was described at the time as a 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:26.360 man with hair like rats tales. 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.440 I'm having trouble picturing that because rats tales don't really 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:34.719 look like hair hair. They are by their very nature hairless. 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:38.080 Maybe he had kind of like a wet look and 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.040 had kind of like white or grayish hair. 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.200 Perhaps it was an ambiguous evocation for me as well. 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:46.640 But I'll keep trying to picture it as we go on. 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:50.320 So George Fox was born in sixteen twenty four. He 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:55.080 was the son of devout Puritan parents in Leicestershire, which 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:58.000 is a city in the English Midlands. His father was 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:03.440 a somewhat wealthy we and in sixteen forty three George 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:08.160 Fox had an unpleasant experience seeing friends drinking alcohol at 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:13.000 a local fair, and so the teenage Fox, after this experience, 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.479 heard the voice of God Almighty telling him to leave home, 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:20.440 abandon his friends, abandon his family, and seek the truth. 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:25.200 And after this he spent several years a sort of itinerant, 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.880 just wandering the country with his Bible in hand, seeking 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.479 enlightenment of some sort, and apparently harassing local priests and 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:35.960 ministers along the way. One example is in sixteen forty 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:38.880 nine he was arrested and jailed for getting up in 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:41.840 the middle of a church service in Nottingham and arguing 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.200 with the minister about his interpretation of the Bible. Now, 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:49.920 in defining Fox's early preachings and the Quaker's early beliefs, 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:54.719 it's kind of interesting because several sources I've read mentioned 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:58.400 that they're more easily defined in opposition to other beliefs 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:02.360 than in the positive substance of themselves. But one thing 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.520 seems to be that Fox's theology developed to include a 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:10.159 belief in the necessity of inner spiritual rebirth. Sometimes this 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:12.920 is known as born again theology. It was very much 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:15.920 about having the inner light of God or the inner 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:20.080 light of Christ revealed within yourself and experiencing God directly. 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:23.919 And Fox also came to preach a message that was 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:29.880 basically against the institutional structure of Christianity. It seems. Fox's 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:33.080 unique thesis was that you do not need a church 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:37.120 or a congregation or a cleric to act as any 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:41.280 kind of intermediary or interpreter between you and God, that 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.440 you should interact with God honestly and directly on your 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:46.200 own terms. 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.719 And I think already we can see how this is 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:52.200 going to line up with the importance of dreams, the 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:54.560 idea that there's some sort of direct communication. We saw 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:58.440 that already with the example of Fox having heard the 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:04.760 voice of God. As we've been discussing already in this series, 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:10.239 there's this long standing human tradition of potentially interpreting dreams 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:11.120 as such as well. 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:13.800 That's right, so we will get there. But another thing 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:16.280 I should note before we move on is that this 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:18.840 is happening in England in the sixteen forties, which is 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:22.000 the same time as the English Civil War. Or directly 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:25.520 after the English Civil War in the interregnum period. And 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:31.440 this is a time of major change, political, social, cultural 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:34.960 upheaval in England. I want to read a brief passage 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:38.200 from Walven summarizing the cultural climate in England at the time. 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:42.120 Quote Fox was not alone in suffering turmoil in the 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:46.120 sixteen forties. The entire nation was racked by personal and 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:49.280 social agitations that had been whipped up by a bloody 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:53.400 and vengeful civil war. That decade and the interregnum years 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:57.160 of the sixteen fifties formed what Christopher Hill has described 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:01.920 as the greatest upheaval in English history. Old assumptions and beliefs, 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:05.440 old certainties were shattered by the convulsion of religious and 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:09.400 political freedoms, which had scarred most people in some way 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:13.200 or other. The traditional acceptance that all English people belonged 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:16.440 to the National Church and must worship as a matter 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:21.320 of obligation was destroyed forever. And another feature of this 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.040 period that Walvin notes is that this is a time 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:28.120 when there was sudden dissolution of the strict censorship laws 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:32.080 that had up until then controlled the printed word. There 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:35.560 was kind of a sudden explosion in different kinds of 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:38.880 materials that could be disseminated in print, including books and 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:43.160 tracts that advocated radical and unorthodox points of view in 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:46.880 civil and religious life. Now, the people around George Fox 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.480 when he was traveling and preaching in the sixteen forties 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:53.600 or sixteen fifties, these would mostly include members of the 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:57.320 Church of England, the mainstream Protestant church in England at 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:01.600 the time, and also Puritans, people who dissented from, or 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.280 at least wanted to reform the Church of England, largely 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:07.600 on the ground, sorry to oversimplify, but largely on the 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.400 grounds that it was not removed enough from its Roman 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:14.880 Catholic roots and not sufficiently based on Sola scriptura. Church 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:19.240 of England was not Protestant enough. Now, I mentioned that 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:22.480 Fox was jailed at least one time for interrupting a 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:25.440 church meeting in Nottingham. He was jailed other times, I think, 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.160 for blasphemy of various sorts. Fox made a lot of 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.280 people angry, but he also won a lot of converts, 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:33.680 if that's the right word. At least you could say 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:38.600 he persuaded a lot of people to see their relationship 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:42.679 with God in his way, and his movement spread rapidly 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:45.520 in England and also to the colonies in North America 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.960 in the sixteen fifties. In fact, the colony of Pennsylvania 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:53.320 was founded by William Penn, who was a wealthy English Quaker, 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:56.320 to serve as a safe haven for Quakers who were 0:09:56.320 --> 0:10:00.560 sometimes viciously persecuted in England. Now, once again, it's sometimes 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:03.960 easier to say what Quakers don't believe than what exactly 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:07.760 they do believe. But though there's some variation, overall, Quakers 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:12.720 were known for rejecting hierarchy and rejecting the enforcement of 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:17.000 orthodoxy and religious matters, and they were also known, though 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:19.760 this might not have been a direct result of their theology, 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.120 they were known for at certain times, but not always, 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.199 having many members who supported radical social and political causes 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:31.480 such as pacifism, advocating for women's rights, and the abolition 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.280 of slavery. One thing that I think is worth noting 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:37.640 with relevance to the role of dreaming is the format 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:41.760 of Quaker religious meetings, which very often were just sort 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:45.000 of like gatherings of the religious society of Friends, the 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:47.920 Friends that would typically allow anyone to speak men and 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:52.360 women alike, rather than just having a minister sermonized top 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:53.760 down to the congregation. 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:59.280 Yeah, I believe streve mentions that of the various written 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:03.360 dream reports that would survive, a lot of these were 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:03.880 by women. 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:06.679 That's right. So that brings us back to a couple 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:08.800 of the reviews I wanted to talk about of that 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:11.800 book by Karla Girona, Night Journeys, The Power of Dreams 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:16.360 in Transatlantic Quaker Culture. Not only did early Quakers believe 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:23.240 that dreams contained genuine revelatory prophetic content, the culture of 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:30.080 Quakerism in the North American colonies was substantially downstream from 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:34.320 the contents of dreams, or what they might call night journeys. 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:36.920 I don't know why night journeys is is such a 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:41.000 cool term for dreams. I mean, it just ties in 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:42.480 with a lot of what we're talking about here. But 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:45.280 then it also sounds like it could be like an 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:47.880 eighties rock anthem. I don't know where the. 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:50.840 Dream warriors don't want to dream no more, except they 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:54.040 did want to dream more. They in fact, wanted to 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:56.440 dream quite a lot and discuss all their dreams. So 0:11:56.960 --> 0:12:00.920 Cox sort of summarizes Jirona's point as quote, dreams are 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:04.600 not only models of culture, they are models for it, 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:07.040 and I think a way of understanding this better is 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.920 that while we today often think of dreams as simple 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:17.640 reflections of individual internal psychological states and fixations, in the 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:21.880 case of early American Quakerism, during the colonial and revolutionary periods, 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:27.000 dreams were quote a collective endeavor. So the way I 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:30.520 understand it is that for these seventeenth and eighteenth century Quakers, 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:34.400 there was not only an emphasis placed on prophetic visions 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:39.480 received through dreams, but the development of a collaborative prophetic 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:46.080 dream culture, where stories of other Quakers prophetic dreams would 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:49.760 be shared either in meetings or disseminated and circulated in print, 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:55.800 and then interpreted by the community. Coxwrites, quote more than 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:59.640 any of their sectarian peers, Quakers developed a uniquely intense 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:03.960 practice of recording and circulating their prophetic dreams within their 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:08.839 meetings and beyond, each minister sharing in the discussion and interpretation, 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:12.520 each dreamer and each auditor imparting his or her own 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:17.920 shades of meaning, dialectically collectively shaping a common Quaker identity 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:22.199 in the process. So this really captured my imagination because 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:26.600 it's sort of describing a scenario where dreams are such 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:31.080 a common topic of conversation and a common subject of 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:36.079 printed material circulated within the Quaker community, that they really 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:40.160 kind of become a major facet of what the culture is. 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:42.440 A lot of what it meant to be a Quaker 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:46.760 in these times came from discussing dreams and what you 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:48.120 thought you learned from. 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:51.000 Them, Yeah, which is something that I honestly did not 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:56.280 know about Quakerism until we started getting into this research here. 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:59.520 But there's another side to it too, which is, as 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:04.200 with many religions that contain the possibility of individual revelation, 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:07.680 whether that's through dreams or visions or you know, you 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:10.480 believe in God speaks to you directly or whatever, there's 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:13.240 evidence of a kind of push and pull effect with 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:18.200 radical beliefs emerging through supposedly prophetic visions and dreams, and 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:21.840 then a kind of taming or watering down process that 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:26.160 comes through interpretation or through selective publication. 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:27.640 So, if you think. 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.000 About it, there's kind of an inherent tension between the 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:37.120 wild individual agency of democratized dream revelation. Again, thinking like 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:40.400 somebody could have a dream and share it with us, 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.240 and that may well be God himself speaking to us. 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.360 There's that, and then there's also just like the practical 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:51.240 necessities of maintaining a stable social group or the self 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:55.000 interested motives of leaders in maintaining their positions of power. 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:58.040 Yeah, I think it's easy to imagine for any of 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:00.200 you out there who are a part of say a 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:06.640 modern Protestant or Catholic denomination, like imagine going into church 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:11.120 one day and it being announced, okay, from now on, 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:15.760 starting right now, everybody can have an input on what 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:19.360 we believe and what our individual relationships with God happens 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:22.480 to be. And also a second part of that, dreams 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:25.280 count as well. Whatever's happening in your dreams, bring that 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:28.400 into the conversation. Like I think for people who are 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:32.000 who have not had had any either aspect of this 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:36.160 be part of their religious and organized religious experience, that 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:38.560 would seem chaotic. That would that you would wonder, what 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:40.440 does that mean that my faith is now going to 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:43.680 be like a Wikipedia article where anyone can edit it 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:47.880 and they can cite dreams, or is it going to 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:51.400 be something to where organically something will emerge to sort 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:53.040 of keep it in check, kind of like you see 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:55.400 with many mainstream Wikipedia pages. 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:59.080 But there's another layer of difficulty there too, because it's 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:04.080 not just like, oh, William had this opinion about what 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:07.760 we should believe, and that comes from William. Beliefs potentially 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:12.040 come directly from the Divine. The creator of the universe 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:14.320 is telling you this through your dreams. 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:18.320 Yeah, when anyone in a given congregation, any given group 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:22.560 is opened up to the like direct communications from the 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:26.640 Divine or you know, certainly things that are interpreted or 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:30.480 reinterpreted or presented as such. Yeah, that brings a whole 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:31.480 new way to everything. 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:43.600 Now, It's one thing if these supposed revelations are just 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:48.800 about you know, theological beliefs, understanding of the nature of 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:51.120 Christ or something. Not to say that's not important, but 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:54.440 that's you know, a different kind of subject matter than 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:59.640 dream revelations supposedly from God that are things like maybe 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.760 we should could overthrow the government, or maybe we should 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:05.800 all stop going to work or something like that. Where 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:08.040 it turns out that a lot of these early dream 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:14.720 revelations in Quaker Friends meetings did have direct political connotations 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:18.960 and direct political implications. There was often a tendency for 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:22.640 dreams of the early Quakers to be interpreted as granting 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:26.400 license to revolt against church and state, and one thing 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:30.320 documented in this book is that in response, influential Quaker 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:37.160 ministers often kind of counteracted these radical explosions of dream 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:42.160 revelation that threatened political or social stability by guiding collaborative 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:47.440 dream work sessions and by controlling the publication of prophetic 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:52.040 dreams to sort of like steer them toward different interpretations, 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:56.560 often having more to do with individual morality and regulation 0:17:56.680 --> 0:18:02.000 of personal behavior rather than having these radical political implications. 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.159 And this was especially true apparently for the dreams of Women. 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:07.399 To illustrate this, I'm going to quote from the review 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:11.320 by Lisa tartar Now who writes quote At the beginning 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:14.760 of the Quaker movement, such dreamings were experienced and expressed 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:19.520 as apocalyptic prophesying, replete with symbolic language. They promoted friends 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:25.160 religious enthusiasm, often attacked political leaders, and addressed contemporary issues, 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:29.479 similar to their public tradition of prophesying. Seventeenth century friends 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:32.920 shared their visions and dreams quite often and in public. 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:37.280 But then by the eighteenth century there was a transition 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:41.280 to a more corporate dream work within Quaker culture that 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:45.480 was facilitated by leaders of specific Quaker groups who assumed 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:50.480 control of the publishing of these dreams, and they regulated 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:54.520 and sort of censored how dreams were discussed in Quaker print. 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:59.639 Tartar writes, quote no longer confrontational or enthusiastic, This newly 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:03.119 shaped corpus of dreams sought to regulate Quaker behavior and 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:07.680 self discipline. Was more introspective in nature and focused on 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:11.919 the individual, but extended to community wide meaning. And so 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:15.960 she says that leaders at the time saw dreams as 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:19.000 powerful tools that like, if you selected the right ones 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:21.840 to publish and share with other Quaker groups, and if 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:25.399 you interpreted them the right way, they could be used 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:29.280 to encourage unity among the friends, to make everybody sort 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:31.399 of like you know, fit together and function well as 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.240 a social group. But you had to be careful to 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:40.440 avoid letting dream prophetic dreams rock the boat too much, basically. 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:43.000 And this is interesting to me because it seems this 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:47.120 would probably be the case for any religion that allows 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:53.360 new beliefs or new theology to evolve from individual direct 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.359 experiences that people have, whether that's they believe to be 0:19:56.400 --> 0:20:00.479 waking visions or just sort of verbal revelations got speaking 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.280 to people or through dreams. There's always going to be 0:20:03.359 --> 0:20:06.600 this battle going on within a religious culture that believes 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:10.560 in these kinds of revelations, anyone can present the contents 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:13.600 of their own mind and their own imagination as a 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:18.359 kind of new scripture carrying the terrifying authority of the almighty. 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:22.760 But then these dreams have to be quote interpreted, and 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:26.520 there will be various pressures guiding that process of interpretation, 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:32.359 often trying to resist the radical authority that leaps like 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:35.000 lightning out of the mind of a single parishioner. 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:37.760 Yeah, this is fascinating, and I mean you can even 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:42.040 compare it to to situations where individual ideas and opinions 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:45.840 within a given movement or a given group, you are 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:51.080 not tied to dreams and visions. But even in those situations, 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:54.439 like say like a protest environment environment like a protest movement, 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.880 is there going to be an effort to sort of 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:01.760 amplify certain voices and bands within that group? Is there 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:04.919 going to be an effort to like to lessen the 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:08.160 impact of other ideas? And then and then also how 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:11.199 do you make it all actionable? Like what ultimately is 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:12.879 the sort of the what are you going to end 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:15.000 up nailing to the church doors? In other words? 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:16.560 You know, mm hmm, But. 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:18.679 It is interesting, Yeah, that you bring up that like 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:23.359 through publication and selective publication, there is kind of like 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:30.080 a theological hierarchy that comes into play here determining exactly 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:33.919 what sort of gets presented, what actually gets put forth 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:38.960 for further discussion. Yeah, exactly, Struve and in her book 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:43.840 rights that in the cases she covers, including those early 0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:49.280 on involving Euro American dream mystique and also the example 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:51.919 get to here in a minute, there is ultimately a 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:55.960 trichotomy of opinions concerning the nature of dreams, fed by 0:21:56.040 --> 0:22:02.400 various influences, including philosophy, really, doctrine, and folklore. And they 0:22:02.440 --> 0:22:06.440 are one dreams as residue of thought and or byproducts 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:09.240 of bodily processes. We've just we've talked about that. The 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:12.880 second area dreams is seen as being caused by demonic 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:16.679 or satanic forces. And then three, in rare cases with 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:20.719 exceptional individuals, they are divine visions or messages. And with 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:23.400 the Quaker example, of course, we see item number three 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:29.760 taken and democratized. It's no longer the chosen few who 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:33.160 have the vision. It's everyone who has insight into the vision, 0:22:33.280 --> 0:22:36.639 everyone who's potentially hearing the words of God. 0:22:37.240 --> 0:22:39.399 Yeah, that is interesting, and it seems like so Struve 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:42.439 is saying with those that trichotomy you mentioned, basically that 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:44.920 every place you look in history there is sort of 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:48.440 a three way understanding of dreams, where there's some understanding 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:52.879 that they might just be essentially natural, you know, nothing 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:56.200 much to them. They're either something arising from the digestion 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:58.840 of beef in your gut, or they're just what you 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:01.120 were thinking about in the day. Second thing is they're 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:04.480 from an evil spiritual entity, and the third is they're 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:08.399 from a good spiritual entity. And so, yeah, it seems 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:12.440 like the Quakers really opened the floodgates on option number three. 0:23:13.400 --> 0:23:16.160 Yeah, and it does make me wonder like today are 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:19.080 we are we still living in an age where predominantly 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:22.239 the floodgates are open on item one, like like they 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:25.320 are we? You know, can I this doesn't cover everybody. 0:23:25.359 --> 0:23:28.760 You're gonna still have certain areas and parts of society 0:23:28.800 --> 0:23:31.280 where two and three are gonna have more weight. But 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:33.439 for the most part, yeah, do we just sort of 0:23:33.480 --> 0:23:37.200 default too? Well? You know, I shouldn't have eaten that potato, 0:23:37.400 --> 0:23:39.840 or I shouldn't have like in my case just the 0:23:39.840 --> 0:23:43.359 other night, shouldn't have watched that horror movie messed up 0:23:43.359 --> 0:23:45.680 my dreams all night long, gave me a terrible night 0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:49.879 of sleep. But I'm not blaming it on a satanic force, 0:23:51.040 --> 0:23:52.800 but true what chimes in on this idea of like, 0:23:53.000 --> 0:23:56.040 you know, prophetic dreams and how they're managed, and she 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:58.520 says that, yeah, it then falls to authority figures to 0:23:58.600 --> 0:24:03.160 employ these categories as needed to quote, protect their respective 0:24:03.160 --> 0:24:06.920 creeds against challenges to orthodoxy from the random mental effusions 0:24:07.240 --> 0:24:11.560 of neophytes. So that means that, you know, in more 0:24:11.640 --> 0:24:14.960 sort of balanced situations, if someone's saying, hey, God spoke 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:17.560 to me in a dream, then you would have someone 0:24:17.600 --> 0:24:20.639 in a position to say so come forward and say, well, 0:24:21.080 --> 0:24:23.639 I don't know that that's God's voice. Perhaps that is 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:25.800 the potato you ate, or you know, there are other 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:28.000 reasons we have the dreams that we have and perhaps 0:24:28.000 --> 0:24:31.200 that's what it was, or even potentially dipping into number 0:24:31.200 --> 0:24:34.119 two and saying, you know, there are other forces that 0:24:34.160 --> 0:24:36.560 may influence our dreams and they are not all divine. 0:24:36.840 --> 0:24:38.920 Now, one last thing I think is worth emphasizing about 0:24:38.920 --> 0:24:41.760 the Quakers is I think Struve selects them because they 0:24:41.760 --> 0:24:45.719