WEBVTT - Dreamfall into the Dark, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:14.880 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. If 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:15.920 my name is Robert. 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:17.799 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.880 In the last episode, we discussed the power of dreams 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:25.520 to impact the waking world, with a particular focus on 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:29.360 times and places where the mystique of dreams seems to 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:34.080 have held particular sway over prominent intellectual and or theological 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.519 circles in a given society. So you know, what does 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:41.440 it mean for a people when the gateway of prophetic 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:46.080 dreaming is open wider and what factors seem to contribute 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:51.159 to these upticks in dream fascination In particular, In the 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:54.640 last episode, we discussed European Romanticism in the eighteenth and 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:59.800 nineteenth centuries, as discussed by authors Lynn A. Strove and 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:03.600 Jennerer Ford in their respective works. In this episode, we're 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:05.880 going to continue looking at some of the times and 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:09.240 places that Struve singles out in her twenty nineteen book 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:11.920 The Dreaming Mind and the End of the Ming World, 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:15.680 drawing in additional sources as well. Now, I believe the 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:18.720 plan is to get into Struve's thoughts on the late 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:23.720 ning Dynasty dream culture in Part three of this series. 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.600 But to kick things off here, I thought we might 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:31.400 discuss another movement another time in place that she highlights, 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:34.800 and that is Quakerism of the mid seventeenth century, with 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:40.520 religious and political strife in England, pushing immigrants out, religious 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:44.120 dissenters out of England and into a new hotbed of 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.960 religious and political strife in the New World. Now, I 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:51.280 don't know, this is definitely one of those cases, and 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:52.640 this is going to continue to be the case with 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:56.120 some of the examples we draw on. Certainly we would 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:58.280 love to hear from anyone out there who has actual 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:02.680 roots in Quakerism. I know I have a cousin that 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:06.120 is a Quaker. So this is very quake Quakerism still 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:08.760 is very much alive, but we're going to be dealing 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:13.640 with mid seventeenth century Quakerism in particular. Here Streuve points 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.040 out that the majority of Puritans of the time period 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:21.359 considered Quakes heretical. It rejected the traditional Puritan power structure 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:24.480 in favor of a meeting structure where anyone in the 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:28.240 group could openly share their own account of seeking God 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:33.280 through Christ, and accounts of dreams factored into these oral presentations, 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:36.920 and sometimes these were written down as well. Quaker dream 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:40.480 testimonials lost much of their prophetic qualities, but continued to 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.000 be important into the nineteenth century. 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:46.760 So I tried to do some digging to learn a 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:49.720 bit more about the role of dreams in Quaker history 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:53.120 and the more general historical context, and I came across 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:55.680 a lot of references to what looks like a highly 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:59.680 relevant and well regarded academic book on the subject. It's 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:04.040 by Carla Jerona called Night Journeys The Power of Dreams 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:08.079 in Transatlantic Quaker Culture, University of Virginia Press in two 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:10.520 thousand and four. I was not able to read this 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:13.040 book itself, but I read a couple of academic reviews 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:15.320 of it to get a sense of its arguments and 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:18.120 major themes. So one of the reviews I'm going to 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:20.560 reference was by Robert Cox in the Journal of the 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:23.880 Early Republic Winter two thousand and five, and the other 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:26.880 was by Michelle Lisa Tartar in the Journal of Quaker 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:29.440 Studies two thousand and seven. But before I get into 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:31.280 this book directly, I think it'd be good to do 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:34.239 a little bit of background on the Quakers. So the 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:39.120 Quakers are officially known as the Religious Society of Friends, 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:42.000 and this tradition was founded in England in the mid 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:46.520 seventeenth century by a man named George Fox. So I 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:49.800 was reading about him in a book excerpt published in 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.640 The New York Times by historian named James Walvin. The 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:56.120 book is called The Quakers, Money and Morals. And before 0:03:56.160 --> 0:03:59.000 going any further, I just have to note a physical 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.480 detail Waldning includes in the description of George Fox, which 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:05.400 is that he was described at the time as a 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:07.960 man with hair like rats tails. 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:13.040 I'm having trouble picturing that, because rats tales don't really 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:16.360 look like hair hair. They are by their very nature hairless. 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:19.720 Maybe he had kind of like a wet look and 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:22.680 had kind of like white or grayish hair. 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:25.800 Perhaps it was an ambiguous evocation for me as well, 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:28.279 But I'll keep trying to picture it as we go on. 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:31.919 So George Fox was born in sixteen twenty four. He 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:36.720 was the son of devout Puritan parents in Leicestershire, which 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:39.599 is a city in the English Midlands. His father was 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:45.080 a somewhat wealthy weaver, and in sixteen forty three George 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:49.800 Fox had an unpleasant experience seeing friends drinking alcohol at 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:54.640 a local fair, and so the teenage Fox, after this experience, 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:58.119 heard the voice of God Almighty telling him to leave home, 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:02.080 abandon his friend's and in his family, and seek the truth. 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:06.800 And after this he spent several years a sort of itinerant, 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:10.520 just wandering the country with his Bible in hand, seeking 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:14.120 enlightenment of some sort, and apparently harassing local priests and 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.600 ministers along the way. One example is in sixteen forty 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.480 nine he was arrested and jailed for getting up in 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.479 the middle of a church service in Nottingham and arguing 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.800 with the minister about his interpretation of the Bible. Now, 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:31.560 in defining Fox's early preachings and the Quaker's early beliefs, 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:36.360 it's kind of interesting because several sources I've read mentioned 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:40.000 that they're more easily defined in opposition to other beliefs 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:44.000 than in the positive substance of themselves. But one thing 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:47.200 seems to be that Fox's theology developed to include a 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:51.800 belief in the necessity of inner spiritual rebirth. Sometimes this 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:54.560 is known as born again theology. It was very much 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:57.520 about having the inner light of God or the inner 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:01.680 light of Christ revealed within yourself and experiencing God directly, 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:05.520 and Fox also came to preach a message that was 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:11.520 basically against the institutional structure of Christianity. It seems Fox's 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:14.719 unique thesis was that you do not need a church 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:18.720 or a congregation or a cleric to act as any 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:22.920 kind of intermediary or interpreter between you and God, that 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:27.080 you should interact with God honestly and directly on your 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:27.839 own terms. 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.359 And I think already we can see how this is 0:06:31.400 --> 0:06:33.800 going to line up with the importance of dreams, the 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:36.160 idea that there's some sort of direct communication. We saw 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:40.080 that already with the example of Fox having heard the 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:45.520 voice of God. And as we've been discussing already in 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:51.400 this series, there's this longstanding human tradition of potentially interpreting 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:52.760 dreams as such as well. 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:55.359 That's right, so we will get there. But another thing 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:57.880 I should note before we move on is that this 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.440 is happening in England in the sixteen forties, which is 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:03.640 the same time as the English Civil War, or directly 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:07.160 after the English Civil War, in the Interregnum period, and 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:13.080 this is a time of major change, political, social, cultural 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:16.560 upheaval in England. I want to read a brief passage 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:19.840 from Walven summarizing the cultural climate in England at the time, 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:23.720 quote Fox was not alone in suffering turmoil in the 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:27.720 sixteen forties. The entire nation was racked by personal and 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:30.920 social agitations that had been whipped up by a bloody 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:35.000 and vengeful civil war. That decade and the interregnum years 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.800 of the sixteen fifties formed what Christopher Hill has described 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:43.560 as the greatest upheaval in English history. Old assumptions and beliefs, 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:47.040 old certainties were shattered by the convulsion of religious and 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:51.040 political freedoms, which had scarred most people in some way 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:54.760 or other. The traditional acceptance that all English people belong 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:58.080 to the National Church and must worship as a matter 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:02.920 of obligation was destroyed forever. And another feature of this 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:05.680 period that Walvin notes is that this is a time 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:09.320 when there was a sudden dissolution of the strict censorship 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:13.160 laws that had up until then controlled the printed word. 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:17.040 There was kind of a sudden explosion in different kinds 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.360 of materials that could be disseminated in print, including books 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:24.600 and tracts that advocated radical and unorthodox points of view 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:28.160 in civil and religious life. Now, the people around George 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.640 Fox when he was traveling and preaching in the sixteen 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.000 forties or sixteen fifties. These would mostly include members of 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:38.760 the Church of England, the mainstream Protestant church in England 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:42.839 at the time, and also Puritans, people who dissented from, 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:46.079 or at least wanted to reform the Church of England, 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:49.120 largely on the grounds are to oversimplify, but largely on 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:51.640 the grounds that it was not removed enough from its 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.800 Roman Catholic roots and not sufficiently based on Sola scriptura. 0:08:55.960 --> 0:09:00.640 That Church of England was not Protestant enough. I mentioned 0:09:00.720 --> 0:09:04.000 that Fox was jailed at least one time for interrupting 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:06.640 a church meeting in Nottingham. He was jailed other times, 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:09.400 I think for blasphemy of various sorts. Fox made a 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:12.160 lot of people angry, but he also won a lot 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:14.839 of converts, if that's the right word. At least you 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:18.760 could say he persuaded a lot of people to see 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:23.400 their relationship with God in his way, and his movement 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:26.400 spread rapidly in England and also to the colonies in 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:29.400 North America in the sixteen fifties. In fact, the colony 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:33.480 of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, who was a 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:37.120 wealthy English Quaker to serve as a safe haven for 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:41.520 Quakers who were sometimes viciously persecuted in England. Now once again, 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:44.839 it's sometimes easier to say what Quakers don't believe than 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:48.800 what exactly they do believe. But though there's some variation, overall, 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:54.160 Quakers were known for rejecting hierarchy and rejecting the enforcement 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:58.360 of orthodoxy and religious matters, and they were also known, 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:00.600 though this might not have been a direct result of 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:03.920 their theology, they were known for at certain times, but 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:07.720 not always, having many members who supported radical social and 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:12.360 political causes such as pacifism, advocating for women's rights, and 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:15.280 the abolition of slavery. One thing that I think is 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:17.960 worth noting with relevance to the role of dreaming is 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:22.800 the format of Quaker religious meetings, which very often were 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:26.480 just sort of like gatherings of the religious society of Friends, 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:29.440 the friends that would typically allow anyone to speak men 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:33.640 and women alike, rather than just having a minister sermonized 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:35.400 top down to the congregation. 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:40.079 Yeah, and I believe streve mentions that of the various 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:44.760 written dream reports that would survive, a lot of these 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:45.480 were by women. 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:48.240 That's right. So that brings us back to a couple 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.440 of the reviews I wanted to talk about of that 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:53.400 book by Karla Girona, Night Journeys, The Power of Dreams 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:57.960 in Transatlantic Quaker Culture. Not only did early Quakers believe 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:04.559 that dreams contain and genuine revelatory prophetic content, the culture 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:10.640 of Quakerism in the North American colonies was substantially downstream 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:15.079 from the contents of dreams, or what they might call 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:15.920 night journeys. 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:18.880 I don't know why night journeys is just such a cool 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.720 term for dreams. I mean, it just ties in with 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:24.280 a lot of what we're talking about here, But then 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:27.319 it also sounds like it could be like an eighties 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:28.920 rock anthem. I don't know. 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:31.480 Where the dream warriors don't want to dream no more, 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.280 except they did want to dream more. They in fact, 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:37.960 wanted to dream quite a lot and discuss all their dreams. 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:42.360 So Cox sort of summarizes Jerona's point as quote, dreams 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:46.320 are not only models of culture, they are models for it. 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:48.640 And I think a way of understanding this better is 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:52.520 that while we today often think of dreams as simple 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:59.240 reflections of individual internal psychological states and fixations, in the 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:03.520 case of early American Quakerism, during the colonial and revolutionary periods, 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:08.640 dreams were quote a collective endeavor. So the way I 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:11.600 understand it is that for these seventeenth and eighteenth century 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:15.520 Quakers there was not only an emphasis placed on prophetic 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:20.240 visions received through dreams, but the development of a collaborative 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:27.040 prophetic dream culture where stories of other Quakers prophetic dreams 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:30.760 would be shared either in meetings or disseminated and circulated 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:36.840 in print, and then interpreted by the community. Coxwrites, quote 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.200 more than any of their sectarian peers, Quakers developed a 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:44.640 uniquely intense practice of recording and circulating their prophetic dreams 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:48.960 within their meetings and beyond, each minister sharing in the 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:53.520 discussion and interpretation, each dreamer and each auditor imparting his 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:57.960 or her own shades of meaning, dialectically collectively shaping a 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:02.520 common Quaker identity in the problem. So this really captured 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:06.200 by imagination because it's sort of describing a scenario where 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:11.360 dreams are such a common topic of conversation and a 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:16.640 common subject of printed material circulated within the Quaker community 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:20.480 that they really kind of become a major facet of 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.120 what the culture is, a lot of what it meant 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:27.239 to be a Quaker in these times came from discussing 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:29.760 dreams and what you thought you learned from them. 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:33.000 Yeah, which is something that I honestly did not know 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:37.920 about Quakerism until we started getting into this research here. 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:41.160 But there's another side to it too, which is, as 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:45.840 with many religions that contain the possibility of individual revelation, 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.280 whether that's through dreams or visions, or you know, you 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.120 believe in God speaks to you directly or whatever, there's 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:54.880 evidence of a kind of push and pull effect with 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:59.760 radical beliefs emerging through supposedly prophetic visions and dreams, and 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:04.000 then kind of taming or watering down process that comes 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:09.120 through interpretation or through selective publication. So if you think 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:11.640 about it, there's kind of an inherent tension between the 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:18.760 wild individual agency of democratized dream revelation. Again, thinking like 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.000 somebody could have a dream and share it with us, 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:25.840 and that may well be God himself speaking to us. 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:29.000 There's that, and then there's also just like the practical 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:32.880 necessities of maintaining a stable social group, or the self 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:36.640 interested motives of leaders in maintaining their positions of power. 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:39.680 Yeah, I think it's easy to imagine for any of 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:41.680 you out there who are a part of say like 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:47.880 a modern Protestant or Catholic denomination, Like imagine going into 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:52.640 church one day and it being announced, Okay, from now on, 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:57.400 starting right now, everybody can have an input on what 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:01.000 we believe and what our individual relationship with God happens 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:04.080 to be. And also a second part of that, dreams 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:06.920 count as well. Whatever's happening in your dreams, bring that 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:10.560 into the conversation. Like I think for people who who 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.840 have not had had any either aspect of this be 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:18.000 part of their religious and organized religious experience, that would 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:20.480 seem chaotic. That would that you would wonder what does 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:22.160 that mean that my faith is now going to be 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:26.640 like a Wikipedia article where anyone can edit it and 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:29.640 they can cite dreams, or is it going to be 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:33.080 something to where organically something will emerge to sort of 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:34.760 keep it in check, kind of like you see with 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:37.040 many mainstream Wikipedia pages. 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:40.720 But there's another layer of difficulty there too, because it's 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:45.680 not just like, oh, William had this opinion about what 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.400 we should believe, and that comes from William. Beliefs potentially 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:53.680 come directly from the divine. The creator of the universe 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:56.119 is telling you this through your dreams. 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.880 Yeah, when anyone in a given congregation, any given group, 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:04.200 is opened up to the like direct communications from the 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:08.280 divine or you know, certainly things that are interpreted or 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:12.080 reinterpreted or presented as such. Yeah, that brings a whole 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:13.120 new way to everything. 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:25.200 Now, it's one thing if these supposed revelations are just 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:30.440 about you know, theological beliefs, understanding of the nature of 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:32.720 Christ or something. Not to say that's not important, but 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:36.080 that's you know, a different kind of subject matter than 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:41.400 dream revelations supposedly from God that are things like maybe 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.560 we should overthrow the government, or maybe we should all 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:47.840 stop going to work, or something like that. Where it 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:50.400 turns out that a lot of these early dream revelations 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:56.440 in Quaker friends meetings did have direct political connotations and 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:01.680 direct political implications. There was often ay for dreams of 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:05.040 the early Quakers to be interpreted as granting license to 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:08.840 revolt against church and state, and one thing documented in 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:13.480 this book is that in response, influential Quaker ministers often 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:19.520 kind of counteracted these radical explosions of dream revelation that 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:24.400 threatened political or social stability by guiding collaborative dream work 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:30.679 sessions and by controlling the publication of prophetic dreams to 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:34.359 sort of like steer them toward different interpretations, often having 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:39.119 more to do with individual morality and regulation of personal 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:44.040 behavior rather than having these radical political implications. And this 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.320 was especially true apparently for the dreams of women. To 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:49.200 illustrate this, I'm going to quote from the review by 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.000 Lisa Tarder now, who writes, quote, At the beginning of 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:56.520 the Quaker movement, such dreamings were experienced and expressed as 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:01.159 apocalyptic prophesying, replete with symbolic language, which they promoted friends 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:06.800 religious enthusiasm, often attacked political leaders and addressed contemporary issues, 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:11.119 similar to their public tradition of prophesying. Seventeenth century friends 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:14.520 shared their visions and dreams quite often and in public. 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:18.919 But then by the eighteenth century there was a transition 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:22.879 to a more corporate dream work within Quaker culture that 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:27.120 was facilitated by leaders of specific Quaker groups who assumed 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:32.120 control of the publishing of these dreams, and they regulated 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:36.159 and sort of censored how dreams were discussed in Quaker print. 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:41.280 Tartar writes, quote. No longer confrontational or enthusiastic, this newly 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.760 shaped corpus of dreams sought to regulate Quaker behavior and 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:49.320 self discipline was more introspective in nature and focused on 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:53.560 the individual, but extended to community wide meaning. And so 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:57.600 she says that leaders at the time saw dreams as 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:00.800 powerful tools that like, if you selected the ones to 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.600 publish and share with other Quaker groups, and if you 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:07.159 interpreted them the right way, they could be used to 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:11.000 encourage unity among the friends, to make everybody sort of 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:13.480 like you know, fit together and function well as a 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.600 social group. But you had to be careful to avoid 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:22.600 letting prophetic dreams rock the boat too much, basically, And 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:24.880 this is interesting to me because it seems this would 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:29.240 probably be the case for any religion that allows new 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:35.840 beliefs or new theology to evolve from individual direct experiences 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:38.399 that people have, whether that's they believe to be waking 0:19:38.480 --> 0:19:42.199 visions or just sort of verbal revelations God speaking to 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:45.040 people or through dreams. There's always going to be this 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:48.320 battle going on within a religious culture that believes in 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:52.359 these kinds of revelations. Anyone can present the contents of 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:55.440 their own mind and their own imagination as a kind 0:19:55.480 --> 0:20:00.120 of new scripture carrying the terrifying authority of the Almighty. 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:04.359 But then these dreams have to be quote interpreted, and 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:08.120 there will be various pressures guiding that process of interpretation, 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:14.000 often trying to resist the radical authority that leaps like 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.600 lightning out of the mind of a single parishioner. 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:19.359 Yeah, this is fascinating, and I mean you can even 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:23.639 compare it to to situations where individual ideas and opinions 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.240 within a given movement or a given group, you know, 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:31.960 are not tied to dreams and visions. But even in 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:34.960 those situations, like say like a protest environment environment, like 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:38.760 a protest movement, is there going to be an effort 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:42.760 to sort of amplify certain voices and demands within that group? 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:46.040 Is there going to be an effort to like to 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:49.239 lessen the impact of other ideas? And then and then 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:51.720 also how do you make it all actionable? Like what 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:54.240 ultimately is the sort of the what are you going 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:56.679 to end up nailing to the church doors? In other words? 0:20:56.720 --> 0:20:59.440 You know, mm hmm, But it is interesting, yeah, that 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:04.200 you bring up like through publication and selective publication, there 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:08.760 is kind of like a theological hierarchy that comes into 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:13.359 play here, determining exactly what sort of gets presented, what 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:16.919 actually gets put forth For further discussion. 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:18.040 Yeah, exactly. 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:23.119 Struve in her book rights that in the cases she covers, 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:30.000 including those early on involving Euro American dream mystique and 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:32.760 also the example get to here in a minute, there 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:36.680 is ultimately a trichotomy of opinions concerning the nature of dreams, 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:42.960 fed by various influences, including philosophy, religious doctrine, and folklore. 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:47.119 And they are one dreams as residue of thought and 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:50.440 or byproducts of bodily processes. We've just we've talked about that. 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.960 The second area dreams is seen as being caused by 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:58.200 demonic or satanic forces. And then three, in rare cases 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:02.080 with exceptional individuals, they are divine visions or messages. And 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:04.600 with the Quaker example, of course, we see item number 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:10.840 three taken and democratized. It's no longer the chosen few 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.359 who have the vision. It's everyone who has insight into 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:18.280 the vision, everyone who's potentially hearing the words of God. 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:21.040 Yeah, that is interesting, and it seems like so Struve 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:24.080 is saying with those that trichotomy you mentioned basically that 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:26.600 every place you look in history there is sort of 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:30.119 a three way understanding of dreams, where there's some understanding 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:34.480 that they might just be essentially natural, you know, nothing 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:37.840 much to them. They're either something arising from the digestion 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:40.480 of beef in your gut, or they're just what you 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:42.720 were thinking about in the day. Second thing is they're 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:46.080 from an evil spiritual entity, and the third is they're 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:50.000 from a good spiritual entity. And so yeah, it seems 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:54.080 like the Quakers really opened the floodgates on option number three. 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:57.760 Yeah, and it does make me wonder like today are 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:00.640 we are we still living in an age where predominantly 0:23:00.720 --> 0:23:03.879 the floodgates are open on item one, like like they 0:23:04.000 --> 0:23:07.000 are we in? You know, can I this doesn't cover everybody. 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:10.400 You're gonna still have certain areas and parts of society 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:12.919 where two and three are gonna have more weight. But 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:15.080 for the most part, yeah, do we just sort of 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:18.800 default too? Well? You know, I shouldn't have eaten that potato, 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:21.439 or I shouldn't have like in my case just the 0:23:21.480 --> 0:23:25.000 other night, shouldn't have watched that horror movie. Messed up 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:27.280 my dreams all night long, gave me a terrible night 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:31.520 of sleep. But I'm not blaming it on a satanic force, 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:34.399 but true what chimes in on this idea of like 0:23:34.640 --> 0:23:37.639 you know prophetic dreams and how they're managed, and she 0:23:37.720 --> 0:23:40.159 says that yeah. It then falls to authority figures to 0:23:40.240 --> 0:23:44.760 employ these categories as needed to quote protect their respective 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:48.560 creeds against challenges to orthodoxy from the random mental effusions 0:23:48.840 --> 0:23:53.200 of neophytes. So that means that, you know, in more 0:23:53.240 --> 0:23:56.600 sort of balanced situations, if someone's saying, hey, God spoke 0:23:56.640 --> 0:23:59.200 to me in a dream, then you would have someone 0:23:59.200 --> 0:24:02.280 in a position to say so, come forward and say, well, 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:05.240 I don't know that that's God's voice. Perhaps that is 0:24:05.280 --> 0:24:07.440 the potato you ate, or you know, there are other 0:24:07.480 --> 0:24:09.560 reasons we have the dreams that we have and perhaps 0:24:09.640 --> 0:24:12.800 that's what it was, or even potentially dipping into number 0:24:12.840 --> 0:24:15.760 two and saying, you know, there are other forces that 0:24:15.800 --> 0:24:18.200 may influence our dreams and they are not all divine. 0:24:18.480 --> 0:24:20.520 Now, one last thing I think is worth emphasizing about 0:24:20.560 --> 0:24:23.359 the Quakers is I think Struve selects them because they 0:24:23.400 --> 0:24:27.359 do conform to her general idea that times and places 0:24:27.359 --> 0:24:32.560 where there is a sudden, sudden profusion of writing about dreams. 0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:38.520 This often coincides with times of extreme social and cultural change, 0:24:38.560 --> 0:24:41.440 where there's a lot of like churn and who has 0:24:41.520 --> 0:24:44.520