THEMES & FOLKLORE

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DREAM INCUBATION

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Attempting to induce revelatory dreams is known as dream incubation, and usually involved sleeping in a sacred space or area with the hope of receiving divine guidance or assistance. These spaces could include caves, temples, sanctuaries, groves, tombs, hillsides, wells and even churches, shrines and altars: any place that was thought to have a special connection with divinity.  It is a process that has been part of many cultures and religions throughout human history; in Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism, in ancient China and Mesopotamia and beyond.  For many believers, religion, wellbeing and medicine were all intimately connected. When orthodox methods of care failed, individuals turned to the divine for help, seeking knowledge causes and cures they assumed were not just purely physical, but also moral and spiritual in nature.

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DIAGNOSTIC DREAMS

Though the methods of the cult of Asclepius may seem superstitious in our era, the practice of dream interpretation was tightly intertwined with the growth of medicine in the ancient world. The order or guild of physicians that emerged in Greece became known as the Asclepidae; some believed them to be the descendants of the god in his human form. The practice inspired and guided many of the intellectual forefathers of scientific medicine; including the Greek physician Hippocrates, and the Romans Rufus and Galen. The original Hippocratic oath required physicians to swear by the gods of healing; Apollo, Asclepius and his daughters, Hygieia and Panacea. These ancient writers tended to view dreams as a very important diagnostic tools. The idea, presented in this story, that sicknesses of the body can be most clearly seen in dreams when removed from the distractions of daily life, is drawn from the Hippocratic text On Regimen. This text, attributed to Hippocrates, may have been written by a different individual, but they would have been part of the same tradition. 

However, this places the dreams of Asclepius at a crossroads in Greek thought. In the majority of Greek myths, dreams are presented as visits, either from dream-spirits, or from real individuals; humans or gods. Naturalistic explanations began to develop with the growth of philosophy and natural science from the 8th century BCE, and by the fifth century, reference to dream spirits had declined considerably. The Hippocratic view mentioned above, as an exploration of the inner life, is a naturalistic interpretation, but many of these influential physicians did have dreams of their own, which they believed to have been visits or messages from Asclepius, including Galen. And even as belief in dreams as external visitations declined, belief in prophetic dreams remained alive; even Aristotle believed that some dreams were genuine guides to future events.

SERPENTS AND PHARMAKONS

In Greek thought, a pharmakon is a substance which is both poisen and cure, an idea embodied in the ambiguous power of the serpent to deal death and give life.  A herb that brings the dead back to life appears in numerous stories in greek mythology. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, there is a story of a fisherman finds a herb that bring his dead fish back to life, and so he eats it himself. He receives immortality at the cost of becoming part-man, part-fish. This man, as it happens, was also called Glaucus, though no myths have linked him to the son of King Minos.

Some ancient writers have suggested that the herb was actually sown by Cronos, the Titan and father of the Olympian Gods. The herb therefore fits into the mythical pattern of ongoing conflict between the intentions of Zeus and the Olympians on the one hand and the powers that predate them on the other. In another story, the power to raise the dead came from the blood of a Gorgon, which was given to Asclepius by Athena. As the Gorgons were described by Hesiod as descendents of the primordial Gods, this also reflects that basic instability; though the Olympians rule the Earth, there are clearly other powers that defy their order.

The story has echoes in later legends. Alexander the Great was said to have had a dream about snakes and reviving herbs during his invasion of Harmatelia, in present-day India. The Harmatelian soldiers tipped their weapons with snake venom, which caused his soldiers a grim and painful death. Legend has it that Alexander dreamt he saw a snake carrying a specific plant in his mouth. When this herb was applied to the wound of one his soldiers, they recovered, and this discovery allowed his armies to overwhelm the defenders. This is most likely an apocryphal tale designed to heighten the divine significance of Alexander and his campaign, and may, therefore, have drawn from the legend of Asclepius or Polyidus.

Most of the important features of this tale also appear in a Grimm fairy tale called the Three Snake Leaves (Aarne-Thompson type 612). As in the Greek myth, one snake revives another with a special plant (the three leaves) and a human takes it to revive another human. The lasting impact of the herb myth is perhaps unsurprising, given the appeal that the prospect of immortality tends to bring. Through the Christian era, in which God ordained a natural life and death for each person, many people still ardently sought after the philosopher’s stone to provide them with the elixir of life and eternal youth.