The word ‘interpret’is, we discover, of unknown origin but probably comes from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘to spread among’. Therefore dream interpretation would mean ‘to spread our dreams among others’. The common factor that is shared by all dream interpreters is that the original material from which dreams are fashioned is hidden.

The renowned and extremely influential psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s work was based on the belief that dreams were disguised expressions of what went on below the surface of the mind. Carl Jung, who was originally a pupil of Freud’s, had a more spiritual perspective and said, ‘Dreams may give expression to ineluctable truths, to philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies… anticipations, irrational experiences, even telepathic visions and heaven knows what besides. ’Herbert Silberer, a contemporary of the two, took a much more mystical approach and studied the state between waking and sleeping. He formed the theory of Intraversion, which necessitates the descent of the individual into the soul/psyche from which a great deal of information and knowledge can be drawn.



With practice, the states between waking and sleeping (or indeed sleeping and waking) can also be a time when wishes and desires can be given substance and brought into reality in a particularly magical way. Briefly, the hypnagogic state is one which occurs between waking and sleeping, whilst the hypnopompic occurs between sleeping and waking. The best explanation of these two states comes from the realms of Spiritualism. The Astral Planes are those levels of awareness where the various thought-forms which have occurred are stored, and in the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states the mind has some access to those realms, without actually seeing spirit form.