Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Into the vault we go once more
Speaker 1: for dream Fall into the Dark, Part two, which originally
Speaker 1: published six twenty twenty three. Please enjoy Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: In the last episode, we discussed the power of dreams
Speaker 2: to impact the waking world, with a particular focus on
Speaker 2: times and places where the mystique of dreams seems to
Speaker 2: have held particular sway over prominent intellectual and or theological
Speaker 2: circles in a given society. So you know, what does
Speaker 2: it mean for a people when the gateway of prophetic
Speaker 2: dream is open wider and what factors seem to contribute
Speaker 2: to these upticks in dream fascination in particular. In the
Speaker 2: last episode, we discussed European Romanticism in the eighteenth and
Speaker 2: nineteenth centuries, as discussed by authors Lynn A. Struve and
Speaker 2: Jennifer Ford in their respective works. In this episode, we're
Speaker 2: going to continue looking at some of the times and
Speaker 2: places that Struve singles out in her twenty nineteen book
Speaker 2: The Dreaming Mind and the End of the Ming World,
Speaker 2: drawing in additional sources as well. Now, I believe the
Speaker 2: plan is to get into Struve's thoughts on the late
Speaker 2: Ming Dynasty dream culture in part three of this series.
Speaker 2: But to kick things off here, I thought we might
Speaker 2: discuss another movement another time in place that she highlights,
Speaker 2: and that is Quakerism of the mid seventeenth century, with
Speaker 2: religious and political strife in England, pushing immigrants out, religious
Speaker 2: dissenters out of England and into a new hotbed of
Speaker 2: religious and political strife in the New World. Now, I
Speaker 2: don't know. This is definitely one of those cases, and
Speaker 2: this is going to continue to be the case with
Speaker 2: some of the examples we draw on. Certainly we would
Speaker 2: love to hear from anyone out there who has actual
Speaker 2: roots in Quakerism. I know I have a cousin that
Speaker 2: is a Quaker. So this is very quake Quakerism still
Speaker 2: is very much alive, but we're going to be dealing
Speaker 2: with mid seventeenth century Quakerism in particular. Here Struve points
Speaker 2: out that the majority of Puritans of the time period
Speaker 2: considered quake heretical. It rejected the traditional Puritan power structure
Speaker 2: in favor of a meeting structure where anyone in the
Speaker 2: group could openly share their own account of seeking God
Speaker 2: through Christ. And accounts of dreams factored into these oral presentations,
Speaker 2: and sometimes these were written down as well. Quaker dream
Speaker 2: testimonials lost much of their prophetic qualities, but continued to
Speaker 2: be important in to the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: So I tried to do some digging to learn a
Speaker 3: bit more about the role of dreams in Quaker history
Speaker 3: and the more general historical context, and I came across
Speaker 3: a lot of references to what looks like a highly
Speaker 3: relevant and well regarded academic book on the subject. It's
Speaker 3: by Carla Jirona called Night Journeys, The Power of Dreams
Speaker 3: in Transatlantic Quaker Culture, University of Virginia Press in two
Speaker 3: thousand and four. I was not able to read this
Speaker 3: book itself, but I read a couple of academic reviews
Speaker 3: of it to get a sense of its arguments and
Speaker 3: major themes. So one of the reviews I'm going to
Speaker 3: reference was by Robert Cox in the Journal of the
Speaker 3: Early Republic Winter two thousand and five, and the other
Speaker 3: was by Michelle Lisa Tartar in the Journal of Quaker
Speaker 3: Studies two thousand and seven. But before I get into
Speaker 3: this book directly, I think it'd be good to do
Speaker 3: a little bit of background on the Quakers. So the
Speaker 3: Quakers are officially known as the Religious Society of Friends,
Speaker 3: and this tradition was founded in England in the mid
Speaker 3: seventeenth century by a man named George Fox. So I
Speaker 3: was reading about him in a book exerpt published in
Speaker 3: the New York Times by historian named James Walvin. The
Speaker 3: book is called The Quakers, Money and Morals. And before
Speaker 3: going any further, I just have to note a physical
Speaker 3: detail Walten includes in the description of George Fox, which
Speaker 3: is that he was described at the time as a
Speaker 3: man with hair like rats tales.
Speaker 2: I'm having trouble picturing that because rats tales don't really
Speaker 2: look like hair hair. They are by their very nature hairless.
Speaker 2: Maybe he had kind of like a wet look and
Speaker 2: had kind of like white or grayish hair.
Speaker 3: Perhaps it was an ambiguous evocation for me as well.
Speaker 3: But I'll keep trying to picture it as we go on.
Speaker 3: So George Fox was born in sixteen twenty four. He
Speaker 3: was the son of devout Puritan parents in Leicestershire, which
Speaker 3: is a city in the English Midlands. His father was
Speaker 3: a somewhat wealthy we and in sixteen forty three George
Speaker 3: Fox had an unpleasant experience seeing friends drinking alcohol at
Speaker 3: a local fair, and so the teenage Fox, after this experience,
Speaker 3: heard the voice of God Almighty telling him to leave home,
Speaker 3: abandon his friends, abandon his family, and seek the truth.
Speaker 3: And after this he spent several years a sort of itinerant,
Speaker 3: just wandering the country with his Bible in hand, seeking
Speaker 3: enlightenment of some sort, and apparently harassing local priests and
Speaker 3: ministers along the way. One example is in sixteen forty
Speaker 3: nine he was arrested and jailed for getting up in
Speaker 3: the middle of a church service in Nottingham and arguing
Speaker 3: with the minister about his interpretation of the Bible. Now,
Speaker 3: in defining Fox's early preachings and the Quaker's early beliefs,
Speaker 3: it's kind of interesting because several sources I've read mentioned
Speaker 3: that they're more easily defined in opposition to other beliefs
Speaker 3: than in the positive substance of themselves. But one thing
Speaker 3: seems to be that Fox's theology developed to include a
Speaker 3: belief in the necessity of inner spiritual rebirth. Sometimes this
Speaker 3: is known as born again theology. It was very much
Speaker 3: about having the inner light of God or the inner
Speaker 3: light of Christ revealed within yourself and experiencing God directly.
Speaker 3: And Fox also came to preach a message that was
Speaker 3: basically against the institutional structure of Christianity. It seems. Fox's
Speaker 3: unique thesis was that you do not need a church
Speaker 3: or a congregation or a cleric to act as any
Speaker 3: kind of intermediary or interpreter between you and God, that
Speaker 3: you should interact with God honestly and directly on your
Speaker 3: own terms.
Speaker 2: And I think already we can see how this is
Speaker 2: going to line up with the importance of dreams, the
Speaker 2: idea that there's some sort of direct communication. We saw
Speaker 2: that already with the example of Fox having heard the
Speaker 2: voice of God. As we've been discussing already in this series,
Speaker 2: there's this long standing human tradition of potentially interpreting dreams
Speaker 2: as such as well.
Speaker 3: That's right, so we will get there. But another thing
Speaker 3: I should note before we move on is that this
Speaker 3: is happening in England in the sixteen forties, which is
Speaker 3: the same time as the English Civil War. Or directly
Speaker 3: after the English Civil War in the interregnum period. And
Speaker 3: this is a time of major change, political, social, cultural
Speaker 3: upheaval in England. I want to read a brief passage
Speaker 3: from Walven summarizing the cultural climate in England at the time.
Speaker 3: Quote Fox was not alone in suffering turmoil in the
Speaker 3: sixteen forties. The entire nation was racked by personal and
Speaker 3: social agitations that had been whipped up by a bloody
Speaker 3: and vengeful civil war. That decade and the interregnum years
Speaker 3: of the sixteen fifties formed what Christopher Hill has described
Speaker 3: as the greatest upheaval in English history. Old assumptions and beliefs,
Speaker 3: old certainties were shattered by the convulsion of religious and
Speaker 3: political freedoms, which had scarred most people in some way
Speaker 3: or other. The traditional acceptance that all English people belonged
Speaker 3: to the National Church and must worship as a matter
Speaker 3: of obligation was destroyed forever. And another feature of this
Speaker 3: period that Walvin notes is that this is a time
Speaker 3: when there was sudden dissolution of the strict censorship laws
Speaker 3: that had up until then controlled the printed word. There
Speaker 3: was kind of a sudden explosion in different kinds of
Speaker 3: materials that could be disseminated in print, including books and
Speaker 3: tracts that advocated radical and unorthodox points of view in
Speaker 3: civil and religious life. Now, the people around George Fox
Speaker 3: when he was traveling and preaching in the sixteen forties
Speaker 3: or sixteen fifties, these would mostly include members of the
Speaker 3: Church of England, the mainstream Protestant church in England at
Speaker 3: the time, and also Puritans, people who dissented from, or
Speaker 3: at least wanted to reform the Church of England, largely
Speaker 3: on the ground, sorry to oversimplify, but largely on the
Speaker 3: grounds that it was not removed enough from its Roman
Speaker 3: Catholic roots and not sufficiently based on Sola scriptura. Church
Speaker 3: of England was not Protestant enough. Now, I mentioned that
Speaker 3: Fox was jailed at least one time for interrupting a
Speaker 3: church meeting in Nottingham. He was jailed other times, I think,
Speaker 3: for blasphemy of various sorts. Fox made a lot of
Speaker 3: people angry, but he also won a lot of converts,
Speaker 3: if that's the right word. At least you could say
Speaker 3: he persuaded a lot of people to see their relationship
Speaker 3: with God in his way, and his movement spread rapidly
Speaker 3: in England and also to the colonies in North America
Speaker 3: in the sixteen fifties. In fact, the colony of Pennsylvania
Speaker 3: was founded by William Penn, who was a wealthy English Quaker,
Speaker 3: to serve as a safe haven for Quakers who were
Speaker 3: sometimes viciously persecuted in England. Now, once again, it's sometimes
Speaker 3: easier to say what Quakers don't believe than what exactly
Speaker 3: they do believe. But though there's some variation, overall, Quakers
Speaker 3: were known for rejecting hierarchy and rejecting the enforcement of
Speaker 3: orthodoxy and religious matters, and they were also known, though
Speaker 3: this might not have been a direct result of their theology,
Speaker 3: they were known for at certain times, but not always,
Speaker 3: having many members who supported radical social and political causes
Speaker 3: such as pacifism, advocating for women's rights, and the abolition
Speaker 3: of slavery. One thing that I think is worth noting
Speaker 3: with relevance to the role of dreaming is the format
Speaker 3: of Quaker religious meetings, which very often were just sort
Speaker 3: of like gatherings of the religious society of Friends, the
Speaker 3: Friends that would typically allow anyone to speak men and
Speaker 3: women alike, rather than just having a minister sermonized top
Speaker 3: down to the congregation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe streve mentions that of the various written
Speaker 2: dream reports that would survive, a lot of these were
Speaker 2: by women.
Speaker 3: That's right. So that brings us back to a couple
Speaker 3: of the reviews I wanted to talk about of that
Speaker 3: book by Karla Girona, Night Journeys, The Power of Dreams
Speaker 3: in Transatlantic Quaker Culture. Not only did early Quakers believe
Speaker 3: that dreams contained genuine revelatory prophetic content, the culture of
Speaker 3: Quakerism in the North American colonies was substantially downstream from
Speaker 3: the contents of dreams, or what they might call night journeys.
Speaker 2: I don't know why night journeys is is such a
Speaker 2: cool term for dreams. I mean, it just ties in
Speaker 2: with a lot of what we're talking about here. But
Speaker 2: then it also sounds like it could be like an
Speaker 2: eighties rock anthem. I don't know where the.
Speaker 3: Dream warriors don't want to dream no more, except they
Speaker 3: did want to dream more. They in fact, wanted to
Speaker 3: dream quite a lot and discuss all their dreams. So
Speaker 3: Cox sort of summarizes Jirona's point as quote, dreams are
Speaker 3: not only models of culture, they are models for it,
Speaker 3: and I think a way of understanding this better is
Speaker 3: that while we today often think of dreams as simple
Speaker 3: reflections of individual internal psychological states and fixations, in the
Speaker 3: case of early American Quakerism, during the colonial and revolutionary periods,
Speaker 3: dreams were quote a collective endeavor. So the way I
Speaker 3: understand it is that for these seventeenth and eighteenth century Quakers,
Speaker 3: there was not only an emphasis placed on prophetic visions
Speaker 3: received through dreams, but the development of a collaborative prophetic
Speaker 3: dream culture, where stories of other Quakers prophetic dreams would
Speaker 3: be shared either in meetings or disseminated and circulated in print,
Speaker 3: and then interpreted by the community. Coxwrites, quote more than
Speaker 3: any of their sectarian peers, Quakers developed a uniquely intense
Speaker 3: practice of recording and circulating their prophetic dreams within their
Speaker 3: meetings and beyond, each minister sharing in the discussion and interpretation,
Speaker 3: each dreamer and each auditor imparting his or her own
Speaker 3: shades of meaning, dialectically collectively shaping a common Quaker identity
Speaker 3: in the process. So this really captured my imagination because
Speaker 3: it's sort of describing a scenario where dreams are such
Speaker 3: a common topic of conversation and a common subject of
Speaker 3: printed material circulated within the Quaker community, that they really
Speaker 3: kind of become a major facet of what the culture is.
Speaker 3: A lot of what it meant to be a Quaker
Speaker 3: in these times came from discussing dreams and what you
Speaker 3: thought you learned from.
Speaker 2: Them, Yeah, which is something that I honestly did not
Speaker 2: know about Quakerism until we started getting into this research here.
Speaker 3: But there's another side to it too, which is, as
Speaker 3: with many religions that contain the possibility of individual revelation,
Speaker 3: whether that's through dreams or visions or you know, you
Speaker 3: believe in God speaks to you directly or whatever, there's
Speaker 3: evidence of a kind of push and pull effect with
Speaker 3: radical beliefs emerging through supposedly prophetic visions and dreams, and
Speaker 3: then a kind of taming or watering down process that
Speaker 3: comes through interpretation or through selective publication.
Speaker 2: So, if you think.
Speaker 3: About it, there's kind of an inherent tension between the
Speaker 3: wild individual agency of democratized dream revelation. Again, thinking like
Speaker 3: somebody could have a dream and share it with us,
Speaker 3: and that may well be God himself speaking to us.
Speaker 3: There's that, and then there's also just like the practical
Speaker 3: necessities of maintaining a stable social group or the self
Speaker 3: interested motives of leaders in maintaining their positions of power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's easy to imagine for any of
Speaker 2: you out there who are a part of say a
Speaker 2: modern Protestant or Catholic denomination, like imagine going into church
Speaker 2: one day and it being announced, okay, from now on,
Speaker 2: starting right now, everybody can have an input on what
Speaker 2: we believe and what our individual relationships with God happens
Speaker 2: to be. And also a second part of that, dreams
Speaker 2: count as well. Whatever's happening in your dreams, bring that
Speaker 2: into the conversation. Like I think for people who are
Speaker 2: who have not had had any either aspect of this
Speaker 2: be part of their religious and organized religious experience, that
Speaker 2: would seem chaotic. That would that you would wonder, what
Speaker 2: does that mean that my faith is now going to
Speaker 2: be like a Wikipedia article where anyone can edit it
Speaker 2: and they can cite dreams, or is it going to
Speaker 2: be something to where organically something will emerge to sort
Speaker 2: of keep it in check, kind of like you see
Speaker 2: with many mainstream Wikipedia pages.
Speaker 3: But there's another layer of difficulty there too, because it's
Speaker 3: not just like, oh, William had this opinion about what
Speaker 3: we should believe, and that comes from William. Beliefs potentially
Speaker 3: come directly from the Divine. The creator of the universe
Speaker 3: is telling you this through your dreams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when anyone in a given congregation, any given group
Speaker 2: is opened up to the like direct communications from the
Speaker 2: Divine or you know, certainly things that are interpreted or
Speaker 2: reinterpreted or presented as such. Yeah, that brings a whole
Speaker 2: new way to everything.
Speaker 3: Now, It's one thing if these supposed revelations are just
Speaker 3: about you know, theological beliefs, understanding of the nature of
Speaker 3: Christ or something. Not to say that's not important, but
Speaker 3: that's you know, a different kind of subject matter than
Speaker 3: dream revelations supposedly from God that are things like maybe
Speaker 3: we should could overthrow the government, or maybe we should
Speaker 3: all stop going to work or something like that. Where
Speaker 3: it turns out that a lot of these early dream
Speaker 3: revelations in Quaker Friends meetings did have direct political connotations
Speaker 3: and direct political implications. There was often a tendency for
Speaker 3: dreams of the early Quakers to be interpreted as granting
Speaker 3: license to revolt against church and state, and one thing
Speaker 3: documented in this book is that in response, influential Quaker
Speaker 3: ministers often kind of counteracted these radical explosions of dream
Speaker 3: revelation that threatened political or social stability by guiding collaborative
Speaker 3: dream work sessions and by controlling the publication of prophetic
Speaker 3: dreams to sort of like steer them toward different interpretations,
Speaker 3: often having more to do with individual morality and regulation
Speaker 3: of personal behavior rather than having these radical political implications.
Speaker 3: And this was especially true apparently for the dreams of Women.
Speaker 3: To illustrate this, I'm going to quote from the review
Speaker 3: by Lisa tartar Now who writes quote At the beginning
Speaker 3: of the Quaker movement, such dreamings were experienced and expressed
Speaker 3: as apocalyptic prophesying, replete with symbolic language. They promoted friends
Speaker 3: religious enthusiasm, often attacked political leaders, and addressed contemporary issues,
Speaker 3: similar to their public tradition of prophesying. Seventeenth century friends
Speaker 3: shared their visions and dreams quite often and in public.
Speaker 3: But then by the eighteenth century there was a transition
Speaker 3: to a more corporate dream work within Quaker culture that
Speaker 3: was facilitated by leaders of specific Quaker groups who assumed
Speaker 3: control of the publishing of these dreams, and they regulated
Speaker 3: and sort of censored how dreams were discussed in Quaker print.
Speaker 3: Tartar writes, quote no longer confrontational or enthusiastic, This newly
Speaker 3: shaped corpus of dreams sought to regulate Quaker behavior and
Speaker 3: self discipline. Was more introspective in nature and focused on
Speaker 3: the individual, but extended to community wide meaning. And so
Speaker 3: she says that leaders at the time saw dreams as
Speaker 3: powerful tools that like, if you selected the right ones
Speaker 3: to publish and share with other Quaker groups, and if
Speaker 3: you interpreted them the right way, they could be used
Speaker 3: to encourage unity among the friends, to make everybody sort
Speaker 3: of like you know, fit together and function well as
Speaker 3: a social group. But you had to be careful to
Speaker 3: avoid letting dream prophetic dreams rock the boat too much, basically.
Speaker 3: And this is interesting to me because it seems this
Speaker 3: would probably be the case for any religion that allows
Speaker 3: new beliefs or new theology to evolve from individual direct
Speaker 3: experiences that people have, whether that's they believe to be
Speaker 3: waking visions or just sort of verbal revelations got speaking
Speaker 3: to people or through dreams. There's always going to be
Speaker 3: this battle going on within a religious culture that believes
Speaker 3: in these kinds of revelations, anyone can present the contents
Speaker 3: of their own mind and their own imagination as a
Speaker 3: kind of new scripture carrying the terrifying authority of the almighty.
Speaker 3: But then these dreams have to be quote interpreted, and
Speaker 3: there will be various pressures guiding that process of interpretation,
Speaker 3: often trying to resist the radical authority that leaps like
Speaker 3: lightning out of the mind of a single parishioner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is fascinating, and I mean you can even
Speaker 2: compare it to to situations where individual ideas and opinions
Speaker 2: within a given movement or a given group, you are
Speaker 2: not tied to dreams and visions. But even in those situations,
Speaker 2: like say like a protest environment environment like a protest movement,
Speaker 2: is there going to be an effort to sort of
Speaker 2: amplify certain voices and bands within that group? Is there
Speaker 2: going to be an effort to like to lessen the
Speaker 2: impact of other ideas? And then and then also how
Speaker 2: do you make it all actionable? Like what ultimately is
Speaker 2: the sort of the what are you going to end
Speaker 2: up nailing to the church doors? In other words?
Speaker 3: You know, mm hmm, But.
Speaker 2: It is interesting, Yeah, that you bring up that like
Speaker 2: through publication and selective publication, there is kind of like
Speaker 2: a theological hierarchy that comes into play here determining exactly
Speaker 2: what sort of gets presented, what actually gets put forth
Speaker 2: for further discussion. Yeah, exactly, Struve and in her book
Speaker 2: rights that in the cases she covers, including those early
Speaker 2: on involving Euro American dream mystique and also the example
Speaker 2: get to here in a minute, there is ultimately a
Speaker 2: trichotomy of opinions concerning the nature of dreams, fed by
Speaker 2: various influences, including philosophy, really, doctrine, and folklore. And they
Speaker 2: are one dreams as residue of thought and or byproducts
Speaker 2: of bodily processes. We've just we've talked about that. The
Speaker 2: second area dreams is seen as being caused by demonic
Speaker 2: or satanic forces. And then three, in rare cases with
Speaker 2: exceptional individuals, they are divine visions or messages. And with
Speaker 2: the Quaker example, of course, we see item number three
Speaker 2: taken and democratized. It's no longer the chosen few who
Speaker 2: have the vision. It's everyone who has insight into the vision,
Speaker 2: everyone who's potentially hearing the words of God.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is interesting, and it seems like so Struve
Speaker 3: is saying with those that trichotomy you mentioned, basically that
Speaker 3: every place you look in history there is sort of
Speaker 3: a three way understanding of dreams, where there's some understanding
Speaker 3: that they might just be essentially natural, you know, nothing
Speaker 3: much to them. They're either something arising from the digestion
Speaker 3: of beef in your gut, or they're just what you
Speaker 3: were thinking about in the day. Second thing is they're
Speaker 3: from an evil spiritual entity, and the third is they're
Speaker 3: from a good spiritual entity. And so, yeah, it seems
Speaker 3: like the Quakers really opened the floodgates on option number three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it does make me wonder like today are
Speaker 2: we are we still living in an age where predominantly
Speaker 2: the floodgates are open on item one, like like they
Speaker 2: are we? You know, can I this doesn't cover everybody.
Speaker 2: You're gonna still have certain areas and parts of society
Speaker 2: where two and three are gonna have more weight. But
Speaker 2: for the most part, yeah, do we just sort of
Speaker 2: default too? Well? You know, I shouldn't have eaten that potato,
Speaker 2: or I shouldn't have like in my case just the
Speaker 2: other night, shouldn't have watched that horror movie messed up
Speaker 2: my dreams all night long, gave me a terrible night
Speaker 2: of sleep. But I'm not blaming it on a satanic force,
Speaker 2: but true what chimes in on this idea of like,
Speaker 2: you know, prophetic dreams and how they're managed, and she
Speaker 2: says that, yeah, it then falls to authority figures to
Speaker 2: employ these categories as needed to quote, protect their respective
Speaker 2: creeds against challenges to orthodoxy from the random mental effusions
Speaker 2: of neophytes. So that means that, you know, in more
Speaker 2: sort of balanced situations, if someone's saying, hey, God spoke
Speaker 2: to me in a dream, then you would have someone
Speaker 2: in a position to say so come forward and say, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know that that's God's voice. Perhaps that is
Speaker 2: the potato you ate, or you know, there are other
Speaker 2: reasons we have the dreams that we have and perhaps
Speaker 2: that's what it was, or even potentially dipping into number
Speaker 2: two and saying, you know, there are other forces that
Speaker 2: may influence our dreams and they are not all divine.
Speaker 3: Now, one last thing I think is worth emphasizing about
Speaker 3: the Quakers is I think Struve selects them because they
Speaker 3: do conform to her general idea that times and places
Speaker 3: where there is a sudden profusion of writing about dreams.
Speaker 3: This often coincides with times of extreme social and cultural change,
Speaker 3: where there's a lot of like churn and who has
Speaker 3: power and there's a lot of uncertainty and anxiety, which
Speaker 3: again would have been true about England in the sixteen
Speaker 3: forties that remember that passage from walvin Abound, like it
Speaker 3: being the greatest time of upheaval and English history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so you can definitely see those pressures in place.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, and then not only on the British
Speaker 2: side of the ocean, but then once they get to
Speaker 2: the new world, like, yeah, there are all sorts of
Speaker 2: new stresses and problems, like it is not it is
Speaker 2: not just this world of new opportunity. Obviously there are
Speaker 2: there's you know, an indigenous population, there are all these
Speaker 2: other groups. There's just sort of the you know, the
Speaker 2: potentially harsh nature of the reality of a colonial life
Speaker 2: and so forth. Now, with all of that in mind,
Speaker 2: it's it's interesting that one of the other main examples
Speaker 2: that she makes in the book that Struth makes concerns
Speaker 2: Southism in the Ottoman Empire. And as we get into
Speaker 2: this here and discuss it, I think it'll become like
Speaker 2: more obvious how this particular example falls in line with
Speaker 2: what we've been discussing, but also some of the things
Speaker 2: that seem to make it unique if I'm understanding everything correctly. So,
Speaker 2: dreams are of great importance in Islam, especially as referenced
Speaker 2: in the Qur'an and the revelations of the prophet Muhammad.
Speaker 2: In Sufism, a more mystical branch of Islam, dreams are
Speaker 2: even more important given the emphasis on quote direct experience
Speaker 2: of the divine and on achieving is static union with
Speaker 2: God through dreams, visions, and trance unquote. The interest in
Speaker 2: dreams was, according to Struve, generally prognostic, and there were
Speaker 2: various manuals for dream interpretation, but they also probed their
Speaker 2: dreams and journaled the contents of their dreams as a
Speaker 2: way of seeking quote indications of their current spiritual state unquote,
Speaker 2: which you know to a certain extent, Like that kind
Speaker 2: of jives with the way we see dreams today, right though,
Speaker 2: And I guess in a non spiritual sense, like you
Speaker 2: could look at your dreams and you could learn something
Speaker 2: perhaps about the state of your own mind if you had,
Speaker 2: you know, the ability or the tools to sort of
Speaker 2: dig through like the nonsense that is inherent in our dreams.
Speaker 2: But again in Sufhism, particularly Ottoman Sufhism. Here, according to
Speaker 2: his story of dreams were seen as sacred bestows rather
Speaker 2: than subjective, and it all contributed to an intense intellectual
Speaker 2: focus on the contents of dreams. Under the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 2: intellectuals of the day look to dreams for solutions, for inspiration,
Speaker 2: and also for introspection. Quote. Every change in daily life
Speaker 2: was believed to have a counterpart in dreams or to
Speaker 2: possess another worldly dimension. So I did a bit more
Speaker 2: reading on the subject of Sufi Ottoman dreaming, and according
Speaker 2: to scholar Osgen Fhelik in twenty twenty three, quote, the
Speaker 2: study of dreams in the Ottoman and greater Islamic worlds
Speaker 2: is still in its early emergent stages unquote. So it
Speaker 2: seems like that's an important caveat to make here that
Speaker 2: there is. It seems to be quite a bit more
Speaker 2: on all of this for academics to consider and to analyze. Now.
Speaker 2: Felick had previously edited a volume titled Dreams and Visions
Speaker 2: in Islamic Society, in which Alexander D. Denesh shares that
Speaker 2: the Arab mystic Iban al Arabi, who lived eleven sixty
Speaker 2: five through twelve forty, suggested that quote, the only reason
Speaker 2: God plays sleep in the animate world was so that
Speaker 2: everyone might know that there is another world similar to
Speaker 2: the sensory world.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting, though, I wonder if I'm interpreting this right.
Speaker 3: So it would mean that under Ibn al Arabi's view,
Speaker 3: that God gave us dreams so we would know that
Speaker 3: the material world is not all there is, that there
Speaker 3: is another world, and dreams are like one demonstration of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is which is quite quite fascinating to
Speaker 2: see this stress especially. I mean, I can't help but
Speaker 2: think about things that I've read in the past concerning say,
Speaker 2: witchcraft persecution in Europe, and the idea that like that, this,
Speaker 2: this world of the alleged occult was perhaps a focus
Speaker 2: for witchcraft persecutors because it gave them some idea of like,
Speaker 2: here is the supernatural world, and if the infernal version
Speaker 2: of that is real, then so is the divine. But
Speaker 2: here this stress seems to be like look no further
Speaker 2: than the world of dreams, Like that is kind of
Speaker 2: the proof right there again if I'm understanding this correctly.
Speaker 2: But according to even l RB here, the dream state
Speaker 2: allows one to probe mysteries of God and creation that
Speaker 2: are normally quite invisible to us. Densh describes this view
Speaker 2: as one detailing dreams as an instrument of cognition that
Speaker 2: enable people to better understand not all only the inner
Speaker 2: workings of the waking world, but to better understand the
Speaker 2: next world as well. For as even al Arabi would
Speaker 2: frequently quote, the prophet said that people are asleep and
Speaker 2: when they die, they awake. So dreams are like this
Speaker 2: hidden window. Now, the author stresses that while not all
Speaker 2: Muslims of the time would have agreed with even al
Speaker 2: Arabi on this, they would at least still value the
Speaker 2: importance of dreaming and of waking visions in the Muslim life.
Speaker 2: Pre modern Muslims, Danish writes, saw dreams as things that
Speaker 2: revealed not only hidden personal insights, but hidden aspects of
Speaker 2: the wider universe, things otherwise hidden, citing the words of
Speaker 2: the prophet, with his death, tidings of prophecy would end,
Speaker 2: but quote true dreams would endure, and with this in mind,
Speaker 2: believers in the Sufi school of Islam saw dreams as
Speaker 2: a kind of a font of continued revelations. It's kind
Speaker 2: of like the main font of revelation is now closed.
Speaker 2: It's the message is complete, but there's kind of this
Speaker 2: continued signal that will be open to those you know
Speaker 2: who will listen to it, who can receive these true dreams.
Speaker 2: So Denesh writes that the result is kind of twofold
Speaker 2: here for this particular example. First of all, a devout
Speaker 2: Muslim could expect the guidance of God in dreams, and
Speaker 2: two Sufi's in particular made broad use of dreams and
Speaker 2: dream lore quote from training Sufi disciples and prognostication to
Speaker 2: confirming the special status and authority of individual Sufi masters,
Speaker 2: as well as authenticating spiritual genealogies and mystical orders. At
Speaker 2: the same time, Deniesh points out that dreams and visions
Speaker 2: were and still are seen by Muslims as not only
Speaker 2: cosmological and social, but also reflections of the dreamers inner
Speaker 2: world quote expressions of both inner and outer voices. So
Speaker 2: again coming back to this, this this idea that yeah,
Speaker 2: dreams may reveal things about the world unseen, they may
Speaker 2: reveal things about the future, but also they may reveal
Speaker 2: things about yourself, which again that kind of compares rather
Speaker 2: favorably with sort of the secular way that that many people,
Speaker 2: certainly in the West, few dreams today.
Speaker 3: So I'm understanding this as the difference being that many
Speaker 3: Muslims would view dreams not as a source of sort
Speaker 3: of new theology that would change anything revealed in the
Speaker 3: Qur'an or anything like that, but that it would offer
Speaker 3: sort of specific guidance that is more particular to your
Speaker 3: time and place in history.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's that's my understanding. And now, as with
Speaker 2: our example with the Quakers, you know, same here. If
Speaker 2: you have have a particular expertise in background in Islam
Speaker 2: or in Sufism, you know, we would love to hear
Speaker 2: from you and get your your your individual take on
Speaker 2: all of this. But based on what we've been reading
Speaker 2: in researching herea, it does seem like dreams important in
Speaker 2: Islam broadly, with a heightened importance in Sufism, and then
Speaker 2: during the Ottoman Empire particularly so particular focus of time
Speaker 2: and place, though it is kind of a broader period
Speaker 2: of time. We'll get into details on that in just
Speaker 2: a second. Even more focus on the power of dreams now.
Speaker 2: Danish also drives home though that, Yeah, it is important
Speaker 2: to note that dream cultures will vary from one Muslim
Speaker 2: society and one time to another. So yeah, don't again,
Speaker 2: don't take any of this as meaning like all Muslims,
Speaker 2: all Sufis, et cetera, believe this about any given dreams. Now.
Speaker 2: The book I reference covers different topics under this umbrella
Speaker 2: of dreaming, but there's another author in it, Gottfried Hagen,
Speaker 2: who singles out Ottoman dream culture as well. I just
Speaker 2: wanted to share a quick quote from Hagen on this quote.
Speaker 2: Throughout the pre modern era and probably much longer, people
Speaker 2: in the Ottoman Empire were firmly convinced of the reality
Speaker 2: of dreams. Now. Another interesting thing to think about, especially
Speaker 2: with this particular case, is that, you know, naturally one
Speaker 2: sees the importance of dream culture reflected in folklore as well,
Speaker 2: you know, because a lot of this is concerning I
Speaker 2: guess my understanding anyway, like the upper parts of like
Speaker 2: the Sufi system at the time. But beneath all that,
Speaker 2: you're also going to have sort of underlying folklore, right
Speaker 2: that is, I'm assuming working both ways, like folklore influenced
Speaker 2: by the prominent dream culture of the day, but also
Speaker 2: perhaps contributing to the general energy of it as well.
Speaker 2: I looked at a paper titled dream Motif in Turkish
Speaker 2: Folk Stories and sh Homanistic Initiation, and it discusses some
Speaker 2: examples of this, such as a motif of a young
Speaker 2: man or woman having an important dream, either after a
Speaker 2: traumatic event or after they pray to God for help
Speaker 2: following such an event. And then in the dream that follows,
Speaker 2: a holy man or holy men, and then sometimes it's
Speaker 2: a maiden offers the youth a cup of wine to drink,
Speaker 2: and this is sometimes described as like a love potion.
Speaker 2: They predict his future love or her future love. They
Speaker 2: give them a pseudonym under which to write poetry, and
Speaker 2: they offer guidance in the future. And then there's additional
Speaker 2: dream imagery that occurs in this motif, including the like
Speaker 2: the burning of the body like the mortal body, and
Speaker 2: the dream burns away and they awake with all this
Speaker 2: inspiration brought on by the dream. Now they're inspired to
Speaker 2: write poetry inspired by both this dream cup of wine
Speaker 2: and also inspired by God. The author rights quote the
Speaker 2: dream motif Complex and Turkish folk Stories provides a valuable
Speaker 2: case to illustrate how a ceremonial right, a shamanistic initiation right,
Speaker 2: turns into a fiction motif through long social and historical development.
Speaker 2: There is a striking resemblance between the initiation of a
Speaker 2: candidate into a shamanistic profession and the dream motif complex
Speaker 2: which initiates the candidate into the new life of an
Speaker 2: artist and lover. And the author here links these folkloric stories,
Speaker 2: including the one that I just shared and also some
Speaker 2: that are discussed elsewhere in this particular ride up to
Speaker 2: magico religious life of the Turko Mongol Shamans.
Speaker 3: But this is not particular to the Ottoman Muslim period in.
Speaker 2: Turkey, no no. But though the particular dream motif that
Speaker 2: is shared here I believe has some clear Islamic cultural
Speaker 2: cultural labeling, like the way that that the Holy Men
Speaker 2: are presented. They're presented, at least in this version of it,
Speaker 2: as Islamic kolu Men. Yeah. But I bring it up though,
Speaker 2: just to sort of try to dig at and explore
Speaker 2: the idea that yeah, that any given culture you're going
Speaker 2: to still have like these other folkloric energies going on
Speaker 2: as well, that are going to have certain stresses regarding
Speaker 2: let's say, the reality of dreams, the cause of dreams,
Speaker 2: and the prophetic nature of dreams as well. But to
Speaker 2: come back to the Ottoman dynasty specifically, which ultimately runs
Speaker 2: twelve ninety nine through nineteen twelve. According to Struve, one
Speaker 2: has a strong dream tradition of Sufi Islam, the influence
Speaker 2: of Turkish Shamanism, and by the sixteenth century one sees
Speaker 2: a particularly strong Ottoman empire quote as the empire was
Speaker 2: brought by successive conquests to nearly ring the Mediterranean Sea,
Speaker 2: and also on top of that the prominence of the
Speaker 2: Sufi Halvetti order and also growing excitement in the Muslim
Speaker 2: world over quote anticipation of the appearance of a messiah,
Speaker 2: the Mahdi, who would prepare the world for judgment day,
Speaker 2: a millennial belief affirmed in Sufism. So if I'm understanding
Speaker 2: everything correctly here, Struve seems to outline less of an
Speaker 2: external stress based inward gays and one more like deeply
Speaker 2: deeply rooted in religion and culture and then heightened by
Speaker 2: theological prominence and millennial excitement. So it was a like
Speaker 2: a high time of dream reports, dream journaling mythologizing dream
Speaker 2: lore and consultation of one's own dreams for daily guidance.
Speaker 2: Struve quotes the modern historian draworza Hevy on all of this,
Speaker 2: who is a historian with a particular expertise in Ottoman culture. Quote.
Speaker 2: Ottoman culture may be described as a dream culture in
Speaker 2: the sense that true or imaginary every change in daily
Speaker 2: life was believed to have had a counterpart in dreams,
Speaker 2: or to possess an otherworldly dimension. People seem to have
Speaker 2: used dreams for introspection, to interpret the past, to anticipate
Speaker 2: the future, and to calculate their moves. Dream Lore was
Speaker 2: a unifying discourse, uniting people in a bond of shared experience,
Speaker 2: knitting together insights from politics, medicine, and religion.
Speaker 3: Oh well, there is a kind of similarity with the
Speaker 3: Quaker example of the emergence of a sort of collective
Speaker 3: dream culture in a way where people would share and
Speaker 3: discuss their dreams and the meaning of dreams. And there
Speaker 3: was it was more than just like an individual private
Speaker 3: experience that you have, believing that it reflects the you know,
Speaker 3: the contents of your own mind. That there was something
Speaker 3: bigger and more collective to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was really taken by that as well, a
Speaker 2: unifying discourse, which there's so many things that are different
Speaker 2: about the Ottoman example in the Quaker example, but this
Speaker 2: does seem to be the thing that they both have
Speaker 2: in common in their own ways. And again both in
Speaker 2: both cases it's so different from the way we think
Speaker 2: about our dreams today, like since we often have this
Speaker 2: idea that it is at best this kind of thing
Speaker 2: we extrude that has if you tease it apart enough,
Speaker 2: going to have some sort of insight or about our
Speaker 2: own inner world. It's the kind of thing where if
Speaker 2: you imagine yourself going to work, if you're you know,
Speaker 2: among your coworkers and go like, hey, everybody, you want
Speaker 2: to hear about my dream last night? Like that would
Speaker 2: that would feel more like a social faux pas, right,
Speaker 2: that would seem like something you should not do, like
Speaker 2: nobody wants to hear that, or perhaps you're oversharing by
Speaker 2: mentioning it, you know, unless you have something I guess
Speaker 2: just the right calibration to share. Whereas in these accounts
Speaker 2: like the Drink, sharing your dreams was just was part
Speaker 2: of the culture and it brought people together rather than
Speaker 2: making them seem like you know, the office weirdo as
Speaker 2: it might be in today's world in the West. All right,
Speaker 2: on that note, we're going to go ahead and close
Speaker 2: this episode out, but we'll be We'll be back for
Speaker 2: at least one more episode dealing with this whole topic
Speaker 2: of dream mystique and dream fascination and dream culture, so
Speaker 2: be sure to tune in on Thursday for that. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, you can check out other core episodes of
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind and the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays
Speaker 2: we do a listener mail, on Wednesdays we do a
Speaker 2: short form artifact or monster effect, and on Fridays we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema.
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