Dreams and Dream Stories | Page 3

therefore, surprising that the greater number of these dreams, and,
especially, the most vivid, detailed and idyllic, have occurred to me
while on the continent. At my own residence on the banks of the
Severn, in a humid, low-lying tract of country, I very seldom
experience such manifestations, and sometimes, after a prolonged
sojourn at home, am tempted to fancy that the dreaming gift has left me
never to return. But the results of a visit to Paris or to Switzerland
always speedily reassure me; the necessary magnetic or psychic tension
never fails to reassert itself; and before many weeks have elapsed my
Diary is once more rich with the record of my nightly visions. Some of
these phantasmagoria have furnished me with the framework, and even
details, of stories which from time to time I have contributed to various
magazines. A ghost story,* published some years ago in a London
magazine, and much commented on because of its peculiarly weird and
startling character, had this origin; so had a fairy tale,** which
appeared in a Christmas Annual last year, and which has recently been
re-issued in German by the editor of a foreign periodical. Many of my
more
--------------- * "Steepside" ** "Beyond the Sunset" ----------------
serious contributions to literature have been similarly initiated; and,
more than once, fragments of poems, both in English and other
languages, have been heard or read by me in dreams. I regret much that
I have not yet been able to recover any one entire poem. My memory
always failed before I could finish writing out the lines, no matter how
luminous and recent the impressions made by them on my mind.*
However, even as regards verses, my experience has been far richer and
more successful than that of Coleridge, the only product of whose
faculty in this direction was the poetical fragment Kubla Khan, and
there was no scenic dreaming on the occasion, only the verses were
thus obtained; and I am not without hope that at some future time,
under more favorable conditions than those I now enjoy, the broken
threads may be resumed and these chapters of dream verse perfected
and made complete. It may, perhaps, be worthy of remark that by far
the larger number of the dreams set down in this volume, occurred

towards dawn; sometimes even, after sunrise, during a "second sleep."
A condition of fasting, united possibly, with some subtle magnetic or
other atmospheric state, seems therefore to be that most open to
impressions of the kind. And, in this connection, I think it right to add
that for the past fifteen years I have been an abstainer from flesh-meats;
not a "Vegetarian," because during the whole of that period I have used
such
----------- * The poem entitled "A Discourse on the Communion of
Souls; or, the Uses of Love between Creature and Creature, Being a
part of the Golden Book of Venus," which forms one of the appendices
to "The Perfect Way," would be an exception to this rule but that it was
necessary for the dream to be repeated before the whole poem could be
recalled. (Ed.) --------------
animal produce as butter, cheese, eggs, and milk. That the influence of
fasting and of sober fare upon the perspicacity of the sleeping brain was
known to the ancients in times when dreams were far more highly
esteemed than they now are, appears evident from various passages in
the records of theurgy and mysticism. Philostratus, in his "Life of
Apollonius Tyaneus," represents the latter as informing King Phraotes
that "the Oneiropolists, or Interpreters of Visions, are wont never to
interpret any vision till they have first inquired the time at which it
befell; for, if it were early, and of the morning sleep, they then thought
that they might make a good interpretation thereof (that is, that it might
be worth the interpreting), in that the soul was then fitted for divination,
and disencumbered. But if in the first sleep, or near midnight, while the
soul was as yet clouded and drowned in libations, they, being wise,
refused to give any interpretation. Moreover, the gods themselves are
of this opinion, and send their oracles only into abstinent minds. For the
priests, taking him who doth so consult, keep him one day from meat
and three days from wine, that he may in a clear soul receive the
oracles." And again, Iamblichus, writing to Agathocles, says:--"There
is nothing unworthy of belief in what you have been told concerning
the sacred sleep, and seeing by means of dreams. I explain it thus:--The
soul has a twofold life, a lower and a higher. In sleep the soul is
liberated from the constraint of the body, and enters, as an emancipated

being, on its divine life of intelligence. Then, as the