In the ancient world, dreams were closely bound with knowledge revealed from a divine source. Dreams foresaw coming events, instructed heroes to act, and revealed hidden knowledge about people and the world. Some dreams were clear messages. Others were shrouded by symbols. The latter required the professional translation skills of a dream interpreter. Over centuries the revelatory status of dreams shifted. Medieval people saw in dreams struggles between the body and the soul, God and the devil. Romantic writers and artists in the 19th century considered dreams as gateways into the secrets of selfhood – often encountering there dark and frightening urges. Psychoanalysis took this notion of selfhood a step deeper, analyzing dreams as expressions of buried sexual wishes, often rooted in childhood sexual desires. Despite these shifts, dreams continued to be probed for portentous content and as reflections of deeper social and individual truths. Such a persistent relationship between dreams and revelations draws the modern mind close to characters distant from us in space and time – the biblical Jacob, the Roman emperor Constantine, the early science fiction writer H.G. Wells. The perceived revelatory power of dreams links the Matrix’s Neo with Cicero’s Scipio Africanus in explorations of the structures of the universe, Paul Simon with Nathan the Prophet over issues of social and cultural reform, the Terminator’s Sarah Connor with H.G. Well’s Cooper on pending terrestrial destruction – and both with a long line of prophets of doom. Much is revealed in dreams – though figuring out what precisely is being foretold is often a complicated and culturally rooted endeavor. At the end of all interpretation stands those two gates, one made of ivory for false dreams and one of horn for dreams that are true. It is often next to impossible to tell through which gate our dreams have passed.           

The following examples will be examined: Paul Simon: “The Sound of Silence”; Book of Genesis: Jacob’s Dream of the Ladder; Eusebius and Lactantius: Conversion of Constantine; H.G. Wells: “A Dream of Armageddon”; Ernest Hemingway: “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”