Interpreting Divine Dreams: A Child’s Journey

Since ancient times, in societies throughout the world, mankind has interpreted some dreams in the context of religion – from invoking the gods into their dreams in incubation temples, to recording dream narratives in holy scriptures of religions that thrive in today’s world. This paper acknowledges that the role of dreams has diminished in many faiths, most noticeably in western Christianity, but asks whether this ancient relationship between dreams and religion can contribute to contemporary dream research. Specifically, it focuses on one type of dream that is found in the Old Testament, Qur’an and Hadith: the visual symbolic message dream. This is a dream that is believed to have a divine origin, and requires interpretation of its symbols to uncover its message. According to these holy texts, these dreams often made a significant impact on the life of the dreamer following its interpretation. For example, both the Old Testament and the Qur’an detail Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams; here, Joseph concluded that the dreams of seven lean cows eating seven fat cows, and seven withered ears of corn swallowing seven healthy ears of corn, foretold of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. He suggested that Pharaoh could avoid this disaster by asking people to store grain during the years of abundance. Pharaoh heeded the advice, and in so doing, averted the famine and changed the course of history. This paper explores the relevance of such scriptural narrative dream accounts to the dream life of contemporary children. It draws on 94 interviews with Christian, Secular and Muslim children aged 9-11 years, about their dreams that they believed had a divine connection. The interviews elicited similar patterns of both dream content and ways of responding to their dreams that spanned the different sample groups. It found that just over one quarter of the children (n=25, 26.6%) had responded as Joseph had done, interpreting symbols in the dream that revealed a message from the divine. In this presentation I will explore the children’s dream content, and the processes by which they undertook their interpretation. Using this information, I will consider the relevance of the symbolic dream narratives to dream research, exploring the answers to the following questions: Firstly, to what degree did the scriptural accounts influence the children’s dream content and their response to their dream? Secondly, should religion have a more substantial place in contemporary dream research than it currently enjoys — do the scriptural narratives embody features that concur with some areas of psychological research, and are these reflected in the experience of these children’s dream life?