1. If dreams are prophets, and if the visions seen in dreams are riddles of their future fortunes to anxious men, they would in that case be full of wisdom, though certainly not clear. In sooth their lack of clearness is their wisdom.
“For the gods keep man’s life concealed.”
To obtain the greatest things without labour is a divine prerogative, whereas for men, not merely “in front of virtue” but of all fair things,
“The gods have set sweat.”
Now divination must be the greatest of all good things, for it is in knowledge and, in a word, in the cognitional part of his faculties that God differs from man, as does man from the brute. But whereas the nature of God is sufficient unto Himself for knowledge, man through divination attains to much more than belongs to our human nature. For the mass of mankind can know only the present . . .
but not the affairs of the gods, which the common language of poetry shows are ruled by Zeus, the oldest in time and in knowledge. Philosophy confirms that the gods are nothing else but minds, intelligences, and one who is worthy to rule over gods does so because of the superior force of wisdom. For this reason also the wise man is akin to God.
2. Let the foregoing be proof that divinations are amongst the best of the vocations of man; and if all things are signs appearing through all things, inasmuch as they are brothers in a single living creature, the cosmos, so also they are written characters of every kind, just as of those in a book some are Phoenician, some Egyptian, and others Assyrian. . . .
Just as men learn to read books—each in his own way, some only a phrase, others the whole story—so they learn to read signs in the universe, signals of the relationship between the parts of a great whole. What is called magic is actually the attraction of one thing through the agency of another. One wise man knows that he has present with him the pledges of things which are for the most part far away.
Men learn to use this magic, and to find what binds the parts together, just as the musicians learn which notes come next in a particular harmonic series, or as the mathematician manipulates the parts of a problem from outside of it. But there is also discord in the cosmos, parts of the universe which agree and yet battle with other parts, and this struggle contributes to the unity of the whole. The unity resulting from opposites is the harmony of the whole. The man who places himself outside of it can no longer make any use of his wisdom, but uses the universe against itself.
The diversity of things in the universe and their relationship furnish the bulk of the subject-matter in the initiations and prophecies. And while it is not lawful to discuss initiations, there is no offense in explaining divination.
3. The whole of this art has already been praised as much as possible, but now it is time to appropriate the best part that is in it, and to linger over its speculative side. . . .
Obscurity is common to all forms of divination. Dreams should not be dismissed for this reason. Rather we should seek this branch of knowledge which is within us and is the special possession of the soul of each of us. For the soul holds the forms of things that come into being, only producing what is befitting, and reflecting as in a mirror the image by which a person grasps those things that remain there.
Therefore, as we do not understand the activities of the mind before the controlling force has announced them to the multitude, and whatever has not come to that controlling force is hidden from the living being; so then we shall not have a perception even of the forms in the first soul, before the impress of them comes to the imagination. And this very imagination seems to be a sort of life in itself, a little lower down in the scale, and having its basis in a peculiar property of nature. It has even its own sense-perceptions, for we see colours and we hear sounds, and we have an overpowering sense of touch, at times when the organic parts of the body are at rest. Perhaps this form of sense-perception is the more hallowed. In this way we constantly enter into relationship with gods who give us counsel and answer us in oracles, and take care of us in other ways. So then, if any one, in his dreams, receives the present of a treasure, I shall not be at all surprised; or if a man quite uncultured should fall asleep and, meeting the Muses in his dream and exchanging question and answer with them, should become a cunning bard. This has happened in our own time and does not seem to me very astounding. I pass over plots that have been revealed, and the number of people whom the dream in the guise of a physician has cured of illness. But whenever a dream opens up to the soul a path conducting it to the most perfect points from which to view existing things, a soul that has never yet aspired, nor has given its mind to the ascent, it would be indeed the climax of the occult force in existing things that this dream should override nature and unite to the realm of mind the man who has wandered so far from it that he knows not whence he has come.
And if any one deems the way upward a great undertaking, but disbelieves in the imagination, for that even by its means the happy union may ne’er be gained, let him listen to the sacred oracles which tell of the diverging paths, after hearing, of course, the whole list of the available resources for the ascent, in virtue of which it is possible to make the seed within us grow:
“To some,” it is written, “he gave the revelation of the light to be a lesson, Others even in their dreams, He made fruitful with his courage.”
Do you see? He makes a distinction between the happy possession of knowledge and its acquirement. One man learns, he means, while awake, another while asleep. But in the waking state man is the teacher, whereas it is God who makes the dreamer fruitful with His own courage, so that learning and attaining are one and the same. Now to make fruitful is even more than to teach.
Synesius then turns to the relation of man’s psyche to the total universe, depicting in great depth and detail the role of the imagination, of spirit in the life of the soul. Aside from the studies of Augustine, this is about the most sophisticated discussion of human psychology which has come down to us from antiquity. It goes beyond our present study, and we summarize only the necessary points.
Some men despise dreams and seek an art of divination above the common herd. But is not a man wise, precisely because he gains a greater share out of things common to all? It is the greatest good to look upon God by the imagination, for the imaginative spirit is the most widely shared organ of sensation, the first body of the soul. About it nature has constructed all of the functions of the brain. Sense-perception through the outer organs remains only animal in character, no perception at all, until it comes into contact with the imagination. This is the divine faculty which sees with its whole spirit and has power over all the remaining senses.
The man who thinks he knows best what he has seen with his own eyes has no way of knowing which images he sees are distorted. Then the imaginative spirit becomes diseased, and the extraneous bodies which have entered in must be purged and purified if the man is to see clearly again.
The imagination comprehends our spiritual nature, because it moves on the border between reason and unreason, between matter and that which has no body, between the divine and the demonic. It borrows from each extreme, thus imaging in one nature things that dwell far apart. This is difficult for philosophy to comprehend.
The imaginings of dreams, however, are similar to other life for which our soul prepares. The envelope of soul-matter is in turn god, demon of every sort, and phantom. Within it the soul enters a struggle to fulfill its own contract with the life of the universe, to descend to the regions ruled by the elements of matter, and to bring back up to the spheres what it has snatched from the extremes of fire and air. The imaginative spirit lives in all this enormous interval of space, and is able to accompany the soul as it rises, even until it reaches the highest point.
Thus, man’s imaginative spirit obtains true impressions of the life of the soul. It also influences that life, and can even draw the soul towards God; or, if the imagination is empty and inactive, it leaves a vacuum into which an evil spirit enters. To investigate the state of the soul and the spirit around it, we must pay attention to the visions which the imaginative spirit emits, particularly in sleep.
7. We, therefore, have set ourselves to speak of divination through dreams, that men should not despise it, but rather cultivate it, seeing that it fulfils a service to life; and it is to this end that we have so much occupied ourselves with the imaginative nature. The immediate need of it here below has been perhaps less clearly shown by our discourse, but a better fruit of a sane spirit is the uplifting of the soul, a really sacred gain; so that it becomes a sort of cult of piety to endeavour that this form of divination should be ours. Nay, some men already through some such motive, enticed by their passion for knowledge of the future, have had set before them, instead of a groaning board a sacred and modest one, and have hailed the joys of a couch pure and undefiled. For as to the man who would consult his bed as he does the tripod of the Pythian deity, far be it from him to make the nights spent in it witnesses of unbridled passion. Rather does he bow before God and pray to Him. What is collected little by little becomes much in the end, and that which happens through quite another cause terminates in a greater one. Thus those who did not set out at first with this object have come, in their advance, to love God and one day to be united to Him. We must not therefore disregard a prophetic which journeys to divine things, and has, dependent on it, the most precious of all things which are in the power of man. Nor indeed has the soul that is united with God less need here because of the fact that it has been deemed worthy to handle better things. Nor is it heedless of the animal in us.
Nay, from its vantage ground it has a steady and much more distinct view of things below than when it is with them and is mingled with the inferior elements. Remaining unmoved, it will give to the animal in us the appearances of things that come into existence. This is, according to the, proverb, “to descend without descending,” where the better takes unchallenged mastery of the worse. This art of divination I resolve to possess for myself and to bequeath to my children. In order to enter upon this no man need pack up for a long journey or voyage beyond the frontiers, as to Pytho or to Hammon. It is enough to wash one’s hands, to keep a holy silence, and to sleep.
“Then did she make all ablutions, and dressing in purified raiment Prayed she long time to Athene . . .”
8. We shall pray for a dream, even as Homer, perchance, prayed. And if you are worthy, the god far away is present with you. Nay, even what time the god sets little store on these matters, he comes to your side if only you are asleep; and this is the whole system of the initiation. In it no one has ever yet lamented his poverty, on the ground that thus he had less possessions than the rich. On the other hand, some of the ceremonies which deal with foreknowledge choose their priests from the most heavily assessed as the Athenians chose their trierarchs. And great expense there must needs be, and, no less, happy opportunity, if we are to obtain a Cretan herb, an Egyptian feather, an Iberian bone, and, by Zeus, some prodigy begotten and nourished in a hidden corner of earth or sea,
“Where that the sun god sinks neath the earth and where he arises.”
For surely this and much like it is said of those who practise external divination, and what ordinary person would be rich enough for this out of his own resources? But the dream is visible to the man who is worth five hundred medimni, and equally to the possessor of three hundred, to the teamster no less than to the peasant who tills the boundary land for a livelihood, to the galleyslave and the labourer alike, to the exempted and to the payer of taxes.
It makes no difference to the god whether a man is an eteoboutades or a newly-bought slave. And this accessibility to all makes divination very humane; for its simple and artless character is worthy of a philosopher, and its freedom from violence gives it sanctity. . . .
Almost with tongue in cheek, Synesius discusses the fantastic complications of other forms of divination or foreknowledge, compared with the great simplicity of the really divine work. If we give ourselves up to these other things, we not only need trunk-loads of equipment, but we have to be content if they make some concession to the remaining needs of life. And, seriously, these other practices are base, and hateful to God. For not to await voluntarily any one’s coming, but to set him moving by pressure and leverage, is even punished by law when it happens among men.
Of divination by dreams, each one of us is perforce his own instrument, so much so that it is not possible to desert our oracle there even if we so desired. Nay, even if we remain at home, she dwells with us; if we go abroad she accompanies us; she is with us on the field of battle, she is at our side in the life of the city; she labours with us in the fields and barters with us in the market place. The laws of a malicious government do not forbid her, nor would they have the power to do so, even if they wished it, for they have no proof against those who invoke her. For how then? Should we be violating the law by sleeping? A tyrant could never enjoin us not to gaze into dreams, at least not unless he actually banished sleep from his kingdom; and it would be the act of a fool to wish for that which is impossible of fulfilment, and of an impious man to make laws which should be contrary to nature and to God. To her then we must go, woman and man of us, young and old, from poor and rich alike, the private citizen and the ruler, the town dweller and the rustic, the artisan and the orator. She repudiates neither race, nor age, nor condition, nor calling. She is present to every one, everywhere, this zealous prophetess, this wise counsellor, who holdeth her peace. She herself is alike initiator and initiated, to announce to us good tidings; in such wise as to prolong our pleasure by seizing joy beforehand; to inform against the worst so as to guard against and to repel it beforehand. . . .
For whatever use and sweetness there is in hope, and whatever reality fear controls, all are found in dreams. In fact, there is nothing else that so entices men towards hope. This element is so abundant and so healing in dreams that men who have been bound by fear, when they awaken to dreams of hope, find themselves straightway unbound. Furthermore, it is not well to despair of dreams, when so often one is only confusing the weakness of the interpreter with the nature of the visions themselves. And since we have a pledge from the divinity in the promise of our dreams, we profit twice if we prepare to enjoy these greater things which the dream state can hold out to us. Not only do we have the pleasure of anticipation, but we can profit from the chance to examine them beforehand and prepare wisely for what we shall do.
9. Yet I have narrowly missed incurring a charge of ingratitude; for while I explained just now that it (i.e., divination by dreams) is a good thing wherewith to journey or stay at home, to trade or command troops, and that it helps all men and all things, yet I have never made public what it has done for me personally. Certainly no other thing is so well calculated to join in man’s pursuit of wisdom; and of many of the things which present difficulties to us awake, some of these it makes completely clear while we are asleep, and others it helps us to explain, And something of this sort happens. At one moment one seems like a man asking questions, at another the same man discovering and in process of thought. It has frequently helped me to write books, for it has prepared the mind and made the diction appropriate to the thought. Here it cuts out something, there it brings in new matter instead. It has befallen me already to be admonished by it also in respect of the whole style of my language, when it runs riot and flames up with novel forms of diction, in emulation of the archaic Attic, which is foreign to us, and this by the agency of a god who, at one moment tells me something, and again what something means, and at another shows me how to smooth down the excrescences growing out of my language. Thus it has restored my diction to a state of sobriety, and has castigated my inflated style. Moreover when I am engaged in the chase, it has suggested to me stratagems of the hunter’s art against those wild beasts who show skill alike in running and hiding; and when in weariness I have been on the point of abandoning the quest, the dream has enjoined upon me a blockade of the quarry, and has promised me fortune on an appointed day, so that we have slept in the open more happily and with confidence. And when the day appointed has come and fortune is with us at last, it has shown us swarms of netted game and of wild beasts that have fallen to our spears.
My life has been one of books and of the chase, except what time I spent as an ambassador. Would that I had not been compelled to see three unspeakable years lost to my life! But even in them I derived the greatest profit from divination, and that on many occasions, For plots directed against me it made ineffective, plots of ghost-raising sorcerers. It exposed these to me, saved me from them all, and helped me in the management of public office in the best interest of the cities, and it finally placed me, more undaunted than was ever any Greek, on terms of intimacy with the emperor.
One man may prefer one, another man another (system of divination), but dream divination is present to all, the good genius to every man, and one that contrives something for the minds of the awakened also. In this way is a soul a wise possession, that it is free from a whole flood of vulgar sensations which attract to it extraneous matter of every sort. Whatever ideas it has, and however many things it receives from the mind, all these, when left to itself, it makes over to those who are inclined towards that which is within, and it ferries across to them whatsoever comes from the godhead. For as it is itself of such a character, a cosmic god is also associated with it, from the fact that its nature comes from the same source.
10. Such categories of dreams, then, are more divine, and are either quite clear and obvious, or nearly so, and in no wise stand in need of the diviner’s science. But they may come to the help only of such men as live according to virtue, whether that he acquired by wisdom or engrained by habit, and if at a given moment they should come to any other, it would be with difficulty, though they might so come.
It is not for some trifling purpose that a dream of this higher order will come to the chance recipient. Further, a frequent and a very widely shared class will be the enigmatic. To this the science of divination must be applied, for its genesis was, so to speak, strange and portentous, and as it has sprung from such sources, its development is most obscure. Now its character is as follows. From all that nature possesses, all things that are, that have come into being and that shall be (since this too is a phase of existence), from all these things, I say, images flow and rebound from their substance. For if each perceptible thing is form coupled with matter, and if we discover an escape of matter in the combination, reasoning shows that the nature of the images also is canalized, so that in both cases perceptible things renounce the dignity of real being. Now the imaginative pneuma is a powerful reflecting mirror of all the images that flow off in this way. For, wandering in vain and slipping from their base, on account of the indefiniteness of their nature, and because they are recognized by no being of real existence, whenever these fall in with psychical pneumata, the which are images indeed, and have a seat fixed in nature, then they lean upon them and take their rest as though at their own hearthstone. Of those things, therefore, which have come into being, inasmuch as they have already passed into the activity of existence, the images sent forth are distinct, until in the fullness of time they become faint and evanescent. Of existing things, inasmuch as they are still standing, the images are more tenacious of life and more distinct, but those of future events are more indefinite and indistinguishable. For they are the advanced waves of things not yet present, efflorescences of unfulfilled nature, as it were, riddles of closely stored seeds, skipping away and darting out.
Thus also art is needed with a view to coming events, for the images which proceed from them are only shadowed, and the symbols are not as clear as in the case of already existing things. Nevertheless they are of a wonderful nature, even as they stand, wonderful in that they have come into existence from things that have not yet existed.
11. But it is high time that we should say of this art how it may help us. The best way is to prepare the divine pneuma in such wise that it may be worthy of the direction of mind and of God, and not be a recipient of obscure energies. And the best culture is the one leading through philosophy, which brings a calm from passions, for when once disturbed by these the pneuma is occupied, as it were a territory; and through a wise and temperate life, one that least maddens the animal nature and that has least tendency to bring it into the last body. For turmoil would reach even to the first body, but this ought to be kept unperturbed and unmoved. But since this is an easy prayer for every one to join in, but is of all things the most difficult to co-operate in attaining, then as we wish sleep to be unprofitable to none, come now, let us seek a definition even for indefinable things; in a word, let us put together an art of divining dream-images. Now it is something in this wise. When mariners sailing the sea come suddenly upon a rock, and presently disembarking see a city of men, as often as they see the same rock, they will take it as a sign of the city. And just as when, in the case of generals, we know from the scouts that they themselves will appear, though we do not see them (for that from the same indication they have always in the past appeared on the scene); so on each occasion we obtain from the dream-images a signal of the activity of coming events.
For these are forerunners of those same things, and like things are forerunners of like. Therefore it is the skipper’s fault if, when the same rock becomes visible, he fails to recognize it, or is unable to say to what land the ship is moving. . . .
But understanding dreams is not this simple. Aristotle and reason have asserted that in every case sense-perception creates memory, memory experience, experience in turn science. And there are many dream books which follow exactly this reasoning. But these are to be laughed at, because they are little use. This standard conforms to the nature of bodies, but it is not the case with the imaginative spirit. The imagination does not act like matter, putting together images one body after another out of elements which one logically expects to find associated together. Instead the imaginative spirit associates the most dissimilar things.
How then can completely dissimilar things be revealed by the same images? Obviously this is impossible. Some difference must exist, and if it does, let us ask first if we should naturally except a plane mirror, a concave one, and a distorted one to reflect exactly the same images. It is even more difficult in an individual character to capture that which is like a general image.
12. For this reason we must dismiss the idea that all men are under the same laws; rather must each man hold himself as material for the art. Let him inscribe on his memory the affairs in which he has been involved, and the nature of the visions which have preceded them.
. . . It would be a wise proceeding even to publish our waking and sleeping visions and their attendant circumstances; the wise thing to do, I say, unless the culture of the city is like to he too rustic for so novel an enterprise. We shall therefore see fit to add to what are called “day books” what we term “night books,” so as to have records to remind us of the character of each of the two lives concerned; for our argument already laid it down that a certain life exists in imagination, at one moment better, at another worse than the intermediate, according to the relation of the pneuma to health and disease. If in this way, therefore, we make profitable the observation by which the art is developed, and if nothing slips our memory, in other respects also the result will be a refined pastime; it will be paying oneself the compliment of a history of one’s waking and sleeping moments. . . .
Any one can see how great the work is, on attempting to fit language to visions, visions in which those things which are united in nature are separated, and things separated in nature are united, and he is obliged to show in speech what has not been revealed. It is no mean achievement to pass on to another something of a strange nature that has stirred in one’s own soul, for whenever by this phantasy (of dreaming) things which are expelled from the order of being, and things which never in any possible way existed, are brought instead into being—nay, even things which have not a nature capable of existence, what contrivance is there for presenting a nameless nature to things which are per se inconceivable? Again, it (the phantasy) neither makes these forms appear numerous and all present at the same moment, nor yet does it present them after an interval, but exactly as the dream itself might have them and pass them on to us; for we believe whatever it wills us to believe. To survive at all and without cutting a sorry figure amidst all this, would be proof of a masterly rhetoric. It conducts itself wantonly even against our understanding itself, becoming the cause of something more than thought. For we are not indeed insensible to the visions; rather are our approbations and partialities strong, and not least our detestations. And the many trickeries that are bound up with this, attack us in our sleep. Pleasure is at that moment most of all a thing full of charm, such as to impart to our souls loves or hatreds even in the waking state. If any one were to utter no lifeless words, but rather to accomplish that for the sake of which the discourse was seriously undertaken, he would need stirring language to put his auditor into the same condition and amidst the same thoughts as himself.
Now in dreams one conquers, walks, or flies simultaneously, and the imagination has room for it all; but how shall mere speech find room for it? So a man sleeps and dreams; he sees a dream, and arises from it still sleeping, as he thinks, and shakes off his dream while still recumbent. He philosophizes a little on the vision that has appeared to him, according to his knowledge; and this is a dream, but the other is a double dream. Accordingly he believes it not, and thinks that now he is awake and that what appears to him is really alive. Forthwith a fierce struggle ensues, and a man dreams that an attack is made on himself, then that he has left all behind and is waking up, again that he has made trial of himself and has discovered the deception. In some such way must the sons of Aloeus be suffering punishment for piling up the mountains of Thessaly against the gods. 4 But there is no law of Adrastea in the way of the sleeper, to forbid him from rising from earth more happily than Icarus, from soaring above the eagles, or reaching a point above the loftiest spheres themselves. So one looks steadily upon the earth from afar, and discovers a land not visible even to the moon. It is also in his power to hold converse with the stars and to meet the unseen gods of the universe. That which is difficult to describe then takes place easily, namely that the gods are visibly manifest, nor do the gods feel even a particle of jealousy. The dreamer has not even descended to the earth after a short interval; he is already there. Nothing is so characteristic of dreams as to steal space and to create without time. Then the sleeper converses with sheep and fancies their bleating to be speech, and he understands their talk. So new and so extensive a wealth of subjects is there for one who has the courage to let loose his language upon them.
13. I even think that myths take their authority from dreams, as those in which peacock, fox, and sea hold converse. But these are small things compared with the independence of dreams. And although myths are a very small part of dreams, nevertheless they were approved by the sophists as a preparation for the work of eloquence. And for these men to whom the myth is the beginning of their art, the dream ought to be its appropriate end. And there is this in addition, that one has not worked the tongue in vain, as in the case of myths, but that he has become wiser in judgement. Let every man, then, with leisure and ease proceed to write a narrative of whatsoever happens in his waking and sleeping states. Let him spend some of his time on this. Of the time so spent the greatest help will be found in his knowledge of letters. Let him put together the art of divination which we have extolled than which nothing could be of more varied service to him.
NOTE
Nicephorus Gregoras, in the early part of the fourteenth century in Constantinople, wrote a Commentary on this treatise of Synesius. In a letter to Joannes Cantacuzenus (Ep. 23), the substance of which is repeated in one addressed to Demetrios Cavasilas many years later (Ep.155), he extols this work in the following terms: ‘You know, I think, that I wrote a book long ago inspired by my profound gratitude towards the great Synesius. He wrote, as you are aware, a most remarkable work on Dreams. Just as nature made every effort, and with great success, to show in him a man of the highest order among the Greeks, in like manner this work is the best of all that he has written, and he made every effort that it should appear so. . . . He gives us his own personal evidence in the matter. God inspired him, and he had no recourse to his forces as a man, he tells us, in this work. He simply lent his pen to it. God did all. Thus the work is the production, so he writes, of a man possessed by a prophetic inspiration, and full of the Divinity. For this reason the greater part of the book has been composed in an obscure style, as were the oracles that the Delphic Tripod gave forth, and that were, as you know, full of prophetic phrases sedulously concealed and unintelligible to the ignorant, phrases which screened them as if behind a curtain of heavy obscurity. Yielding to numerous requests, we have sought to elucidate this work, to what extent it was possible, by the help of a varied Commentary.’ (Nic. Greg. Ep., ed. Guilland, Paris, 1927.)
There is nothing in this passage from the Letters of Nicephorus that is not contained in the text of De Insomniis, and a Letter to Hypatia (Ep. 154), concerning the manner in which it was written. But it is interesting as showing to to what an extent the works of Synesius were admired by the erudite of the fourteenth century, and also as indicating that at this time the work on dreams, which has been regarded by modern commentators with less favour than the other essays, was esteemed as the most important. One of the friends who urged Nicephorus to write a Commentary on it was Theodorus Metochites, the Prime Minister of the Emperor Andronicus II, who was the most learned man of the fourteenth century, and had instructed Nicephorus in Greek philosophy as well as astronomy, and had become his patron at the Court. Nicephorus, like Synesius, was an astronomer as well as a rhetorician, and wrote a work on the construction of an astrolabe, which, he tells his correspondent Cavasilas (Ep. 155), he laboured over with the same ardour that he put into his study of Synesius. It seems that Byzantium in the fourteenth century was not so far off in point of culture from Athens and Alexandria of the fourth and fifth.
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