Is the Duke of Zhou's dream book reliable? Starting from the six dreams of the Rites of Zhou

Dream divination was an ancient office

The Chinese took dreams seriously very early. The Rites of Zhou, in its section of the Spring Office, has a post for a "dream diviner" who observed sun, moon and stars and distinguished the airs of yin and yang to judge what a dream meant. The book sorts dreams into six kinds: the regular dream, calm and arising of itself; the nightmare, born of fright; the dream of longing, from thinking of someone; the waking dream, in which things said or thought while awake enter the dream; the joyful dream, from happiness; and the fearful dream, from fear.

There is something very modern in this scheme of six: it first asks why the dream came, from fright, longing or the day's talk, and not at once what it foretells.

Famous dreams in the old books

The old Chinese books record a number of famous dreams. In the Book of Documents King Wu Ding of Shang dreamed of a worthy man, and on waking had people search for him by the dream's likeness and found Fu Yue. In the Analects Confucius in old age sighed, "It has been long since I dreamed of the Duke of Zhou", which tells that he felt he had grown old and far from his ideal. In the Zhuangzi, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly and on waking could not tell whether Zhuang Zhou had dreamed the butterfly or the butterfly was dreaming Zhuang Zhou. In the Book of Songs someone dreamed of bears and snakes, and the diviner said that bears foretold a son and snakes a daughter.

Some of these dreams give a political act an extra justification, some use a dream to speak of philosophy, some are plain folk omens. So the ancients never had only one way to read a dream, "an omen"; there were stories in them and reflections on life.

The Duke of Zhou's dream book came later

The Duke of Zhou's Dream Interpretation we know today is a popular book compiled by later people in the name of the Duke, not by the Duke himself. As early as the Tang dynasty, manuscripts unearthed at Dunhuang contain several dream books, and the entries mostly read "dream of such a thing, it means such a matter", one verdict to a line. Such books collect the experience and associations passed down in different places, and different ages and editions often contradict one another.

When one book calls the same thing lucky and another calls it unlucky, it shows that the entries are not "discoveries" but the associations and wishes of the people of the time.

What is in the Dunhuang dream books

In the early twentieth century, several dream books copied around the Tang dynasty were found in the Dunhuang library cave. Most are arranged by category: heaven, earth, sun and moon; mountains, waters, plants; birds and beasts; human affairs and objects; ghosts, spirits and the Buddhist and Daoist realms. Under each are entries, one by one, of the form "to dream of such a thing means such a matter".

Reading them one notices a few things. They are very colloquial, like folk experience rather than scholarship. They carry the lives of the people of the time: grain, livestock, official posts, sickness, travel, which were what they cared about most. The same image often turns up under different categories with differing sayings, which shows that the compilers stitched together sayings from many sources without any one governing principle.

So rather than "standard answers for reading dreams", they are better seen as precious material: they show what people more than a thousand years ago worried about and what they hoped for.

How to read the old sayings today

When you meet "to dream of this means that", you can take three attitudes. First, as culture: it tells you how the ancients thought, a heritage that is interesting to read and need not be believed. Second, as association: the saying is itself the association of one person or a group, and whether yours is the same only you know. Third, as a reminder: some sayings hold common sense about life, as in "dream of losing a tooth and look after the family", which need not be a prophecy and can be a reminder to ring someone at home.

What not to do is to be frightened by a saying, or to slacken in what you ought to do because of one. The dream is yours, and its meaning should grow out of your own life.

Where "dream of this, it means that" falls short

First, it treats the dream as a notice from outside, while sleep research shows that the material of a dream comes from your own memory and feeling.

Second, it ignores the dreamer. Take the same snake: for someone afraid of snakes and for someone who keeps them, the feeling in the dream is wholly different. The feeling is the clue in reading a dream.

Third, the entries hand out luck and ill-luck with one stroke, which can make people anxious by day or lax about what they should do.

What can be borrowed

In the old dream tradition two things are still worth keeping: the attitude of the Rites of Zhou of asking first why the dream arose, and the idea of the "dream of longing" and the "waking dream", that a dream is often a continuation of the day's concerns.

Our dream reading goes this way: it consults no dictionary and announces no lucky or unlucky signs. It first listens as you tell the dream, and then you look together at what lies underneath the pictures, what this dream is doing, and what is special about the night itself.