"On Dreams" by Synesius - part 1

It has been an eventful and busy year that passed quickly and I regret not writing more on this blog. But that is easily remedied.

Since my last post I have intended to post extensively on Synesius's "On Dreams". I was first exposed to it a few years ago by Robert Moss, who has written about this gem in a number of places. I'd been meaning to look it up for a few years but somehow stumbled upon it through Google's repository of public domain books scanned from various university libraries. They had scanned a translation by Issac Myer that had evidently only had 100 copies printed 1888 and was found in the Harvard Library. Having had time to visit a few translations I must say that I especially like this one and wanted to post a corrected version of it for other dreamers to peruse. The language is sometimes a bit oblique, but for the purpose of expressing something subtle that other translations seem to gloss over.

Synesius is an interesting figure, if you are interested I suggest first having a look at the entry at the section of Robert's "The Secret History of Dreaming" which contains a good overview of the life of Synesius as it pertains to dreaming. Livius.org has a brief biography that is worth a look. It starts like this:

Synesius of Cyrene (c.370-c.413): Neo-Platonic philosopher, sophist, and bishop of Ptolemais in the Cyrenaica [...] was a member of a well-known and rich family of Cyrene, which claimed descent from the half-legendary founders of the city, members of the Spartan royal house. His family's wealth enabled him and his brother Euoptius to travel to Greece (before 392) and study in Alexandria (after 393), where Hypatia introduced them to Neo-Platonism.

Now, Hypatia is one of the most amazing people from the ancient world and worth looking into on her own right, but that is going a bit off the immediate goal of posting the opening part of the treatise. So, read the above and now, right to it...

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ON DREAMS

SAINT SYNESIOS

Translated, With Notes,

ISAAC MYER.

ONE HUNDRED COPIES PUBLISHED BY THE TRANSLATOR.

COPYRIGHTED l888, WASHINGTON, D. C.

PHILADELPHIA. 1888.

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ON DREAMS

BY

SYNESIOS

[1]

Translated with Notes,

By

Isaac Myer.

PREFACE.

A very ancient custom, and one which Plato especially uses, is to conceal under the form of a familiar subject the most serious teachings of philosophy; so that the truths the discovery of which has been most difficult will not again escape from the memory of men nor, being disseminated, receive the contaminations of the profane vulgar. Such is the design that I propose in this book. Whether my work conforms in all its parts to the antique mode of writing I leave to the judgment of industrious and enlightened readers.

[1] Synesios of Cyrene was born of a noble family circa A.D. 370. in Cyrene, a city of the Libyan Pentapolis, Egypt. At first a heathen he subsequently became a Christian. About 393 he became a pupil at Alexandria of the celebrated Hypatia. In 403 was made Bishop of Ptolemais which he did not accept till 410. He died circa 413 A. D. He is best known through his Hymns. The Roman Catholic Church canonized him as St. Synesios.

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I.

THE PROPHETIC FACULTY IS THE NOBLEST SUBJECT OF STUDY FOR MAN.

If dreams prophesy the future, if visions which present themselves to the mind during sleep afford some indicia whereby to divine future things, dreams will be at the same time true and obscure, and even in their obscurity the truth will reside. "The Gods with a thick veil covered human life."[2]

To obtain things of the greatest value without labor is a happiness which appertains only to the gods; but by men not only virtue but all blessings "can alone be achieved by sweat (labor)."[3] Now the prophetic power is the greatest of goods: it is through knowledge and the gnostic faculty that God differs from man, and man from the brute. God knows all by virtue of His own nature, but man by the aid of the prophetic power may add much to his natural knowledge. The vulgar man knows only the present; that which is future he can only conjecture. Kalkhas alone in the assembly of all the Greeks apprehended "the present, the future and the past."[4] In Homer, Zeus regulates the affairs of the gods, because he was "born first, and therefore knows more;"[5] because knowledge is the privilege of the aged. If the poet thus recalls Zeus' age, it is because the years bring with them that wisdom to which nothing else can be compared. If we think, from other passages, that the supremacy of Zeus was the result of the vigor of his arms, because Homer said, "He carried it by force,"[6] — we do not understand poetry, and cannot grasp the philosophy which it encloses, viz., that the gods are no other than pure Intelligences. After saying that Zeus is very strong, the poet immediately adds that he is the oldest, which signifies that Zeus is the oldest Intelligence. But the vigor of intelligence, is this any other thing than wisdom? Whoever may be the god who rules the other gods, it is because he is wise that he reigns. Because he is superior in wisdom, "he carries it by force," signifies that he knows more than the others. The sage has then a species of affinity with God, because he endeavors to approach Him by the faculty of knowledge, and exerts himself about intuitive thought which is the essence of God. These facts show plainly that one of the most noble subjects of research for man is the prophetic faculty.

[2] Hesiod. The Works and Days, 42.
[3] ibid. 287.
[4] Iliad, i. 70.
[5] ibid. xiii, 355.
[6] ibid. xv, 165.

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II.

THE UNIVERSE IS AN ANIMATED EXISTENCE WHICH IS CONNECTED TOGETHER IN ALL ITS PARTS. THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF PROPHESY.

All things, by their relation to each other, can give omens; because all together they are only different parts of one animal, the Universe.[7] The Universe may be compared to a book in which are inscribed letters of every description, such as Phoenician, Egyptian and Assyrian: the wise man deciphers these letters; and he is really wise who learns by and from nature, and another is wise in other things — this one more, and the other less. Thus for example one merely learns the syllables, another apprehends the general style, a third comprehends the whole discourse. Wise men see beforehand that which may happen; some by regarding the planets, others the fixed stars, others the comets and fires which traverse space. Some also prophesy by inspecting the entrails of victims or by listening to the songs of birds, or through watching their flight and their haunts. There are other omens by the aid of which they can predict the future, as words, or fortunate meetings; all are able to draw prognostications from everything. If a bird had our intelligence, man would serve it, as the bird serves man, for knowledge and divination: because we are as to them that which they are as to us, a race which, always renewing itself and as old as the world, is entirely qualified to give signs.
[7] This is the doctrine of the Makrokosm and Mikrokosm.

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Synesius was schooled in the Greek classics and hopes to follow that mode of exposition. In the preface he is putting forth philosophy as something familiar to be sure that it is not lost, but there is something deeper and profound.

In section I the subject of prophesy is brought to the fore and argued to be the highest faculty. The greatness of the gods are based upon their knowledge and intuition and not physical ability. The greatest are the wisest and ones who see more. To know more of the future would make us wise like the gods. When the gods are described as great it is meant that they are great in wisdom. Know the future to be wise and therefore be like God. This is the noblest subject for study.

Section II. The Universe is interconnected and thus signs can be read from it. Various forms of divination are available but as we are also of the Universe we too can be read for signs.

I'll post the next part as soon as I have a few moments free to get it ready.

What exactly is a shaman and what is his job?

I followed a link to an article at quora.com and decided to look around a bit. I had to register to read there and found some interesting questions. I wrote the following in response to one question but decided to post it here rather than in a closed forum.

What exactly is a shaman and what is his job?

This is a complex question about a very complex subject. First off, I'm suspicious of the idea that anyone can "exactly" pin down what a shaman is and, secondly, the idea of the "job" of a shaman might also be problematic. In some societies a shaman is a hereditary role and in others a shaman is initiated by great spiritual powers, sometimes in powerful dreaming or through great life crisis of many years and many trials. Does that sound like a "job" or something that can be "exactly" delineated? I'm more inclined to interpret the question as what role does a shaman play in a society and what kinds of experience are common to shamanic practitioners.

The wikipedia article mentioned here is a good introduction to the subject but is perhaps a bit overly academic and lacking in the perspective of shamanic practitioners. Mircea Eliade's book on the subject gives a good idea of the breadth and depth of the topic from a religion researcher's view. Michael Harner's works place shamanism in a context approachable by modern western laymen. And Ingerman and Wesselman have published "Awakening to the Spirit World: The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation" which goes into the experience of shaman practitioners in a very clear manner.

As far as I can tell all human societies have (or once had) people who fill the role of the shaman. A shaman is often on the fringes of society, yet can also have a leadership position. A shaman is often called by spirit to the role and often is in service to the community at large. They are often given the role of healer and as messenger between human society and beings from other realms or orders of being.

The shamanic world view sees our shared waking reality as one component of many layers of reality, or as one of a number of worlds. Is it very common to divide reality into at least three levels, the underworld, our middle-world and the upper-world, but many variations are possible. One task of the shaman is to travel between the different worlds, often to get information or perform some action like recovering a lost part of someone's soul for healing, or interceding with with a great spiritual power for the sake of the community.

Shamans are great dreamers and travelers into non-ordinary realities and it is common to see them describe our waking reality as a lesser version of the dream world. Shamans travel though time and space and will communicate with ancestors and follow the chain of events into the past to find the causes of problems. A shaman will travel into great hierarchies of imaginal realms, which are not to be confused with fantasy or hallucination but which are realities of a different order than our waking world. The shamanic world view sees all of reality as being alive and able to communicate. All of the things we see while waking are alive and infused with spirit. Not only that but there are orders of beings beyond the common understanding, beings like gods or angels or the spirit of animals or of natural forces.

Shamanic practitioners have developed a set of spiritual technologies that are now common to many religions and spiritual practices. A very basic one is the shamanic journey, the ability to move into other realities or non-local reality. It is often fueled by drumming or ecstatic movement or even by (dangerously, to my mind) ingesting some substance with consciousness changing properties. A journeying shaman will often be assisted by animal powers or spiritual beings or even ancestors or other shamanic practitioners. They will sometimes travel into the realms of the dead and often are called to assist the newly dead find their way.

Shamanic practitioners have developed spiritual power and use it as needed. They often develop rituals as a means of action or protection or to maintain good relationships with spiritual beings. They are often driven to create art as part of their work. Shamanic practitioners often work as healers or to heal communities, but not all of them act for the common interest and there are dark shamanic practitioners who use their power for personal gain.

This is just a start at trying to describe the complexity of the subject. It is not meant to be taken as a list of "shoulds" or "musts" but only as a rough sketch of the topic as I see it and as it relates to human experience. After years of immersing myself in the subject I can see that it spreads out in many interesting directions, many more than I will ever be able to study in one lifetime. The biggest aspect of shamanic reality is that it is open to direct experience. Most people can use drumming to visit some of the nearby spiritual realities that a shaman visits regularly and therefore they can form their own understanding based on their own experience. A journey fueled by drumming to the underworld to talk to a power animal will teach you more about the subject than any amount of reading about it will ever do.

Irv's Forbidden Love

Irv's Forbidden Love


A shy and romantical young robot named Irv
Whose gimbals had developed a dialetrical swerve
Whilst visiting Nith on the planet of Wotham
Fell for a toaster named Druzelvir Quothquam
And protested quite loudly, though it took quite the nerve,
That loving a toaster doesn't make one a perv!

A robot can love a shoe or a dove
Or a large piece of rock that falls from above
And lands in Elias on King Olliveira's Cap
And causes Sir Caldbeck to wake from his nap
For robots are not limned with our notions of love
They can fall for a tractor or an old tattered glove.

An itinerant clergybot, the grey Vondolet
Thought up a cruel trick to make Irving pay
That luran curan trickster had one up his sleeve
Twisted round his body, right down past his greave
If he played his cards right, by the end of the day
For him all the money, and for Irving, dismay!

A faux marriage license would throw Irv a curve
And delight tricksy Von, a tasty hors d'oeuvre
On Wotham, marrying toasters is strictly forbidden
It's the kind of love you'd have to keep hidden
Except at the remote Caerlaverock reserve
Where Grapevine Noma said, 'tis a Bassenthwaite preserve.

So Von made the papers and showed them to Irv
Whose joy was unbound, an exponential-ish curve
But Druzelvir wan't fooled, for toasters are smart
And she ripped into Von, and took him apart
She opened him up, right down to the nerve
Resold him for parts and seized his reserve

She chartered a rocket and the two got away
Far, far from Wotham, and it's now safe to say
They made it to Workington, or maybe Hart Fell
Where love isn't hobbled, but cheered with a bell
And cherished and honored, at least twice a day,
And that, by Barsanuphius, is all I have to say!

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I participate in the dream forum that Robert Moss runs at http://www.spirituality-health.com/ and we often do fun little exercises, like the Funny Dream Words game, where we take odd words we encounter in dreams. We mix them in a pot and have fun with them as a group, inventing fun and enlightening stories and sometime just silliness. This is one where I took a bunch of those words and wrote a little tip of the hat to Ted Giesel. Yes, I love Dr. Suess and miss reading them to my son! Any unusual words you encountered here were from the dream group or my own silliness.

The Light In Fire

The Light In Fire

Burning myself over coals one day
I find under my skin a glowing skin of embers
color of dark burnished amber
it crackles and crawls.

I exhale a fume of smoke and ash
I breath in and my inner skin glows brighter
I break through the crust of my old skin
I step out into a new vision of the earth.

The flames of inner light, often dim
sometime exceedingly bright
None can look at it long
and not come away changed.

I step into the gently falling snow
Watching each small blue star sizzle
and each become but a wisp, a line
a fading trail, the path of the past.

A cloud of steam trails behind me
rising from the dark burned bark
the charred remains, a silhouette
in the place where I once stood solid.

I step into a new world
molten glowing and hot
melting the old
illuminating the dark.

Swallowed whole by a salamander of fire
banked in its belly overlong
growing something new, a new skin
a new being, growing from the inside out.

Today is my new birth
a new being a new song
today I am the light in fire
today I burn in earnest.

Three Images

Three Images

The water laps at her feet
The grain is blown by the wind
forming waves.

The waves travel out in rings
touching everything
in the ring of dusk
that races round the world.

The water laps at her feet
and fish seek the dark
hiding their light
from the Moon.

The Moon turns once
is gone
an echo.

The water laps at her feet
and she takes the first step
into the clarity of water.

The water parts
she enters the water
the rain begins to fall.

The earth parts
she enters the earth
takes a step of centuries
and the Moon
never turns away.

The rain falls,
the waves race,
dusk again and dark.

The Moon turns once more
and the water
laps at her feet.

Following The Story Vine

I wrote this poem from a journey where I was looking for the source of stories.




Following The Story Vine

i.

Hummingbird circles my head
and asks me join him
as we seek the first creation of
all stories

I mirror his shape and
spin along in train
Time for us hummingbirds
is different
You huge ponderous mountains
move glacial wise
But we take our time
sweetly knowing
our hearts are bolder
and stronger than yours

My guide shows me the vine
thick stringy curling
Spooled out along the ground
Purple flowers like Victrola trumpets
Drinking the nectar makes
one drunk on the light of time

We followed it, a long extent
even longer for you
arrived at the tangled nexus of
thick vine trunks

A massive root struck into the ground
deep into Earth
tendrils encircling
going deep
We followed in hummingbird bodies of light
and went deeper deep
and back

ii.

We come to the Chamber of Creation
where the Sun was yellow soft and bright
not weak and harsh like today
The Creators were there
discussing contending laughing
creating the story of this world

Spreading time into infinite portions
debating on us, knowing
what will we be?
we human people?
(I care not, as hummingbirds are too
proud to take notice of
troublesome people
who are too slow to see true)

One of the Creators stands
at the head of the table
near the fire
and propounds the first tale
the creation of human people

iii.

"I draw them with mud
and bake them in the fire,
I cool them in the water
that secrets under the Earth

"The whole of their awakening
will be a forgetting and on
And their forgetting will
be the cause of their purpose

"I close them off from the
stars that sky the inner lands,
I turn their heads around
and around again

I wash their hearts in my spit
and bury them deep
waiting for the day
that day of luminal waking"

iv.

The Moon hears and is not best pleased
she wanted for a different beginning
but too late
to put Her seed of our story
in the cauldron
of the time
of creation

So she chose to follow us
from our deep dream of the fire
and to watch us all
each one

v.

The first Creator saw me watching
from the untold future
and laughed

"Tell MY tale" said he
and I fled
back to here
back to now

vi.

Maybe I will remain
a hummingbird
part of that proud and fierce clan
of warriors explorers and poets
and watch the Moon for signs
and omens
of a new seed tale.

The Dream of Eclipse

On the dream forum somebody asked about eclipses. Since I know a bit about the topic and had been mulling over how to explain the mechanics of eclipses, I posted a description. A lot of folks liked it so I felt that I should post it here and hope that other folks find it useful.

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I'm not a professional astrologer, but I've played one on TV. Well, not really, but long ago I started studying it as it seemed to be at the roots of a lot the western mystical traditions and it was also one of the most outrageous affronts to scientism, and even people who believed in ESP and ghosts and the afterlife would just go ga-ga over astrology for some reason, so I had to involve myself with it! It is a lot easier being an astrologer now since you can have computers doing the calculations, which are time-consuming and error prone when done by hand. Since I was born right after an eclipse I have always searched out anything I could about the meaning of eclipses to astrologers.

First, it is worth pointing out a few things about eclipses. They are not at all rare. We have something like 5-13 eclipses per year. It all has to do with the intersection of the plane of the Moon's orbit around the Earth with the plane of the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. Just think of the Sun in the center of a table and the Earth rolling around it in orbit, that is the plane of the Earth orbiting the Sun. Now, while the Earth is rolling around the table, orbiting the Sun, the Moon is also orbiting the Earth, but NOT on the table, the path it takes is slightly tilted and half of the Moon's orbit is above the table and half below. If you imagine the Moon orbiting the Earth 13 times while the Earth makes one circuit of the Sun then you have a good toy model of what is going on.



When the Moon is directly between the Earth and Sun that is a New Moon, when it is opposite the Sun to the Earth, that is a Full Moon. If during a New Moon the Moon is somewhere near the surface of the table, then it will block the light of the Sun from us and that is a Solar Eclipse. If during a Full Moon the Moon is somewhere near the surface of the table, then Earth will block the light of the Sun from striking the Moon, and that is a Lunar Eclipse. The trick here is that the Moon is only near the surface of our imaginary table twice during its orbit around the Earth, so most New and Full Moons are too high or too low to be in shadow or cause a shadow. Actually, if you can visualize this you will see that this time when shadowing can occur happens approximately twice a year. And, you can note that the pattern will be for Solar and Lunar eclipses to happen two weeks apart. Always. And they usually come in threes. Since there is a slight drift in these things and the Moon cycles are not exactly aligned with the year we sometimes only get 5 eclipses, and sometime we can have up to 13! Typically we get about 7 a year if I remember correctly.

To add to the complexity the Moon is not always the same distance from Earth and the how far into the penumbra the other sphere is will change the eclipse width and duration. Luna is indeed the Changeable One! By the way, the intersection points of the two planes are called the Moon's Nodes, sometimes the Head and Tail of the Dragon!

The other thing worth knowing about eclipses is the Saros Cycle. This is an effect of the orbit I tried to describe above, such that every 19 years a nearly identical positioning of the three planets will occur. But not exactly. If you track the return of a Saros over and over you will see it move slowly over the globe, starting at the South Pole and continuing until it passes beyond the North Pole. The complete cycle varies in length but is roughly 1400 years on average if I recall correctly. So, astrologers who study these things tend to see these things as part of very long term changes in life on the planet and associate certain behaviors with each Saros Cycle. It is worth noting that the most ancient societies were aware of these cycles, just imagine how long you would have to keep records to discover this! I can't even predict how high in the sky the Moon will be on any given night, so this is impressive to me.

Now, after all of the pedantic rambling we get to the point. First, there hasn't been a lot of study of this topic. Most astrologers are working in the personal realm and these are B I G cycles. Second, the meaning associated with eclipses is hard to correlate with the real world. I haven't been keeping up with the articles for the last number of years, but I don't recall a single instance of eclipse astrologers agreeing on the what a particular eclipse means. So I would find it hard to really answer your very good questions. Sometimes an eclipse seems to act like an explosive and sometimes it does nothing. I have yet to hear an astrologer give a good accounting of eclipses.

I'd be more inclined to look at this as a dream and see what we get. In the Dream of Eclipse we have the Sun and the Moon, the two primary planets in astrology. The Lights. They are the Father and Mother. Eclipses are special New or Full Moons. They occur only at the Nodes of the Moon, which many astrologers associate with karma and reincarnation. They occur in long term families, taking centuries to complete. They have to do with close alignment and light and shadow. They bring an unexpected darkening and shadow that surprise those who do not know of the pattern and cycle.

How would you read this dream?

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After rereading this I felt that there was one more bit worth adding. My use of penumbra was possibly misleading. There are a number of terms that are used concerning the shadow cast by the Earth or Moon (or anything, actually). If you search for 'umbra' you can find illustrations that show this, but for eclipses, the shape of the shadow is worth knowing.



The shape of the shadow depends on the size of the planet and on the size of the light source. If you imagine shining a penlight on an apple in a dark room you can see that the shadow of the apple will be larger than the apple, and as you move the apple closer to the wall the shadow size will get closer to the size of the apple. If you used a large spotlight instead of a penlight on the apple, the shadow only appears if the apple is close to the wall and at some point it is not seen at all. In the case of the penlight, the shadow fills a conical volume that expands the farther you go. In the case of the spotlight, the cone will be smaller the farther away you go.

Since the Sun is so much larger than Earth or Moon, the shadow cast will be a cone that gets smaller. If you are inside the cone of perfect shadow you will see a Total Eclipse, and if you are on the fringes you will see a Partial Eclipse. Just imagine that during a New Moon that the path from Sun to Moon is the handle of an artist's paintbrush and that the shadow cast is the brush-tip. If the Moon is close the tip will strike the Earth, if it is farther away it will not.

One more thing. Everything in this solar system orbits around the Sun and is smaller than the Sun. The Sun emanates a huge amount of light, radiating out in all directions. Everything in the solar system in the light of the Sun is casting a conical shadow behind it. Everything. A really clever creature could use this fact and the observations of eclipses over time to build the kind of model of the solar system we now have. The things the ancient sky watchers did gave birth to Astrology and her very clever daughter Astronomy. I often wonder how they did it, what technique did they use to get it all started? They didn't have our modern tools and methods. My best thought is that they left their bodies and traveled into the solar system to understand how it worked, then came back and used the journeys to help make sense of their observations of the sky.

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I have a good eclipse anecdote that I'd like to add. Back in the early 90s we were on the fringes of a big solar eclipse. It was to be a partial eclipse for a few hours for us. I was in school at the time and had to take a bus to campus when the eclipse was to start. The light took on a watery hue, slightly green and dimmer. Of course you cannot look at the sun directly but my wife and I were planning to make a camera obscura out of a cardboard box to view it. Being as busy as we were we didn't get to it before the eclipse. As I was riding the bus, noting how many people were a bit awed by the weirdness of the sunlight I eventually noticed that the handful of pinhole sized apertures in the bus window frames and the dimming of the light were somehow making camera obscura effects and projecting small images of the sun with a 'bite' taken out of on the floor of the bus! Even stranger, when I got to campus and walked under the trees, the thousands of pinholes made by the leaves of the many tree were making thousands of tiny eclipsed suns on the ground, and they would come and go as the spring breeze shook the leaves. As the hours went by I tracked the progress of the eclipse until the effect faded. It was strange and enchanting and I've never seen anything like it since.