Episode 245: Dreams
/Lay your head down, close your eyes, and drift off to dreamland as we talk about the mythological stories and figures that inhabit your dreams! Also, dream interpretation via...puns?
More information from We R Native.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of medical complications, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, drug use, sex, violence, death, feces/excrement, child endangerment, body horror, kidnapping, and cultural appropriation.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: It's our favorite time of year: MULTITUDE SURVEY SUMMER! Go to multitude.productions/survey to help us learn more about you and decide what's next for the collective.
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Find Us Online
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Transcripts are available at http://spiritspodcast.com/episodes. To buy merch, hear us on other podcasts, contact us, find our mailing address, or download our press kit, head on over to http://spiritspodcast.com.
Transcript
JULIA: Welcome to Spirits podcast a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Julia, Amanda's on holiday. Good for her. And this is Episode 245: Dreams. I am really, really excited. I've been thinking a lot about my dreams lately, and I think that you guys are going to have a dreamlike experience listening to this episode. Is that self-congratulatory? Maybe a little bit. I don't really mind, but I am going to congratulate the people who joined our Patreon this week, Alexandra, The stubby tech, and Richard. You guys help us make this podcast our jobs and let us keep making what is going to soon be 250 episodes. Wild. Absolutely wild. And they joined the ranks of our supporting-producer level patrons; Uhleeseeuh, Allison, Bryan, Debra, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jessica Stewart, Justin, Keegan, Kneazlekins, Megan Linger, Megan Moon, Phil Fresh, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, Scott, and Zazi. As well as our legend-level patrons, the patrons of our dreams; Audra, Clara, Drew, Jaybaybay, Ki, Lada, Lexus, Morgan, Morgan H., Mother of Vikings, Necroroyalty, & Bea Me Up Scotty. Now, this is the part usually where Amanda will ask me, "Hey, Julia, what are you watching, listening to, reading lately?" And I have been absolutely just vibing so hard with my library app on my phone. And I blew through this incredible book called "This Is How You Lose the Time War" by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone and, Oh, my God. If you like time travel, if you like letters between lovers, if you like just slow burn romance, where the people aren't in the same room, but somehow they're still falling in love? This is the book for you. It's extremely fun. It's very, very good. You know what else is also extremely good and very, very fun? Taking surveys. I know for some people, that might not be the case. But for me, I love giving feedback and it's the perfect time for you to give feedback because it is Multitude Survey Summer. You can go to multitude.production/survey to help us learn more about you and decide what's next for the collective and for Spirits. The survey takes about 15 minutes. It features a lot of emojis and it ends with a cute photo of everyone here at Multitude and I just think it's adorable. What more incentive do you possibly need? We have one of the best communities in all of podcasting. So, please help us make sure that we are making stuff that you love. Go to multitude.productions/survey today. Take that survey, we would super appreciate it and that's it for me. Please enjoy Episode 245: Dreams.
JULIA: So, Amanda, recently I was in the car with my husband and we were listening to a podcast, which was covering a dream episode of a certain TV show. It was the sopranos. Please don't judge me. And one of the hosts is talking about dream interpretation, which of course, kind of naturally led to a conversation between Jake and I about dreams and, like, what kind of dreams that you have and dream interpretation as a whole. So, I know that, like, kind of talking about your dreams is considered a conversation faux pas, like, I know a lot of times people say that hearing other people's dreams are boring as hell, but I actually really like hearing about people's dreams. And Amanda I know you're not really, like, a remember your dream kind of person, right?
AMANDA: That's correct. Very occasionally, that it happened to me this morning. In fact, I looked up and I was like, Oh, did I in fact stain my favorite bag last night by dropping it in a rain puddle? And I realized, "No, that's just the kind of fucking dreams I have".
JULIA: So, you have a pretty mundane dreams from what you can remember?
AMANDA: Yes, and mostly, I do not remember them, but what I do know is that since childhood, Julia, I've loved hearing about your dreams, they're fucking buck-wild. And I love them.
JULIA: I am a really vivid dreamer, and I tend to remember a lot of my dreams, at least for the first, like, couple of hours after waking up. I made it a habit during the pandemic, which I've since fallen off of that I would, like, write down the really interesting ones just to see. And so it's like, I remember one specifically where I'm walking through one of those, like really big aquariums, and it's one of those ones where it's like the tunnel and the whole aquarium tank kind of-
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: -surrounds you. And I keep, like, seeing some sort of aquatic animal following me in like the corner of my eye, and it was very creepy. But I remember that one.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: But this kind of conversation and the fact that I have always been really interested in my own dreams, which is, kind of sounds very narcissistic when I say it out loud. This kind of led me to thinking about, like, "What is it about dreams?". Like, why have we as people always been so interested about them? And how do dreams kind of influence mythology, as well as psychology and vice versa? So, I think this week, I would like to dive into the dreamscape and see what we can find out.
AMANDA: I can't wait, let's do it.
JULIA: So, to start with, let's kind of ask what we have to assume is not a hard question, but it's actually much more complicated when you start to really dig into it, which is scientifically, "Why do we dream?".
AMANDA: I have no fucking idea.
JULIA: We at the very least, have strong theories about how we dream. So, as people might know, we have various phases of sleep, five is the usual agreed-upon amount of phases of sleep, and the fifth stage of sleep is when we dream. So, this is REM sleep. So, that stands for Rapid Eye Movement.
AMANDA: Which, terrifying.
JULIA: Yeah, no, it's, it's very scary. I was reading the, like, symptoms of the different phases of sleep. And like, four out of the five of them had very scary, like, kind of like, "Yes, your, your body's paralyzed, and you cannot move during this phase of sleep". I'm like, "What?" No, I hate that.
AMANDA: The fact of sleep and the fact of dreaming is just a biological miracle in my mind, and I love how sometimes, I'll get, like, very deep into a Scientific American Article about something about the brain and just be like, "Wow, this is piloting this whole ship here? I don't know what the fuck it is". And I love that.
JULIA: And like even neurologists, and psychologists and stuff, don't know a ton about the brain. Like, we understand, like, certain things do certain things. But I feel like we don't know a lot as to like, why that thing is happening in the first place. We just know kind of a cause and effect thing, rather than a complete understanding as to what every function of the brain is for.
AMANDA: Yeah, I've heard people say that we know a lot more about space than we do about our own brains, which if that's not a metaphor for humanity, I really don't know what is.
JULIA: It just reminds me of the idea of, like, a internal cosmology and I love that.
AMANDA: Yeah, me too.
JULIA: REM sleep, the Rapid Eye Movement sleep, which is the fifth stage of sleep, it accounts for about 20 to 25% of your total sleep every night. And studies indicate that even if you don't remember your dreams, you probably experienced at least three to six dreams per night, each of which lasts for about five to 20 minutes in real time. Despite the fact that, like, in your minds they can feel like they're lasting much much longer.
AMANDA: Hey, Julia.
JULIA: Hey, what's up?
AMANDA: That's nuts.
JULIA: That's nuts huh?
AMANDA: That's nuts. That's nuts.
JULIA: I love that. We're going to, like, borderline Inception, I feel like a lot of this episode. And I'm not going to blatantly talk about Inception because we are not a movie podcast. And this is-
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: -not a myth movie night. But yeah, dreams are buck-wild.
AMANDA: I know. Also, if you use the show to get yourself towards sleep or to fall asleep. I mean, maybe not this one. There's 200 some odd episodes you can enjoy, but maybe not this one guys.
JULIA: Yeah, re-listen to another one I guess. Also, apparently Amanda 95% of dreams are forgotten by the time you get out of bed, which is wild. And that's for any average person.
AMANDA: That's nuts.
JULIA: But the "Why we dream?" is much more complicated than the "How we dream?". And the "How we dream" is pretty complicated to begin with. So, neurologists and psychologists have various theories. Some believe that it is simply a function of the brain that allows us to consolidate and process information that we gathered during the day. Some believe that it's just like random signals being sent by both the brain and the body while we sleep. And others give more of what I would, I guess I call, like, a, a philosophical value to dream. So, they believe that they represent unconscious desires or wishes, which I personally tend to disregard as the theory because I've had some fucked up dreams. And I know that's not my, like, unconscious desire or wish. I just know that that's probably just my brain processing, some grief or something like that.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: The thing is, people have been trying to interpret what dreams have meant for an incredibly long time.Though the field of dream interpretation as we know it now was more codified as a psychological study by Freud when he published his "The Interpretation of Dreams", which most experts nowadays have debunked thoroughly. Like most of Freud.
AMANDA: Like most of Freud.
JULIA: He was just extremely high and trying to work out his own shit, I feel like, so.
AMANDA: I once saw a play that, like, dramatized Freud's life, and I'm like, "That's even more fucked up than I thought it was, man".
JULIA: Yeah, I once held his pocket watch.
AMANDA: There you go.
JULIA: Yeah. Yeah, that was the cool thing from working at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division is just they had random objects. Like, Freud's golden pocket watch, and you're like, "Oh, okay, fair enough".
AMANDA: And Abigail Adams' hair.
JULIA: They did, they have that too. Even though we have, kind of, debunked Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, that hasn't stopped people from still attempting to interpret their dreams and seek deeper meaning in them. So, I'm not going to speak too much on modern dream interpretation in this episode, only because there are a variety of sources that you can look up online if you're particularly interested, and I find that a lot of them are contradictory to each other. So, would just get confusing to dive deep into that.
AMANDA: Right.
JULIA: But I would love to talk about how various cultures in antiquity have thought about dreams and how they've interpreted them themselves. So, we know that the Sumerians and the Mesopotamians as early as 3100 BCE, were interpreting their dreams. Most dreams were seen as forms of divination and as you can imagine, like, the dreams of Kings were taken very seriously.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: Of course, even the Epic of Gilgamesh. All right, Gilgamesh's dreams are seen as these prophetic messages from the Gods that required interpretation to discover their true meaning. So, for instance, Gilgamesh has a dream that would foretell the arrival of his rival-turned-friend-turned-lover, Enkidu. In the dream, Gilgamesh watches as an axe falls from the sky and a crowd forms around it to, like, kind of admire and worship the axe. So, Gilgamesh then approaches the axe, dislodges it from the ground and then throws it down in front of his mother, who is the Goddess Ninsun. According to the dream, "Embraces it like a wife".
AMANDA: Oh, okay.
JULIA: I don't know what that means but sure.
AMANDA: Well.
JULIA: So, Gilgamesh brings this dream to his mother, and he's like, "Mom, I had this dream. It's really fucked up. What does it mean?" And so, Ninsun believes that it heralds the arrival of someone powerful who Gilgamesh would struggle against, but would eventually become friends with and that they would accomplish great things together.
AMANDA: And would also have sex with.
JULIA: And then, also from Ninsun, She claimed that because he "Embraced him like a wife", it means he will never forsake you. Like-
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: -okay mom. Sure, that's what that means.
AMANDA: Yeah, they were just gal pals. Don't worry
JULIA: Just gal pals, just roommates. Lately, I've been joking around with Jake. We'll be laying in bed together and he'll look at me and he'll be like, "I really like you. Or like, I really love you". And I will look at him and be like, "What? I just thought we were roommates. What are you talking about?"
AMANDA: That's very good.
JULIA: But there's only one bed and I'm like, "I know it's a weird situation, but I've, I've gotten used to it. You're making things weird now".
AMANDA: Listen, one bed is a romance trope of a long and storied and, and a noble tradition.
JULIA: He doesn't know fanfiction though.
AMANDA: One day, he can't be perfect Julia. Then it'd be like, come on.
JULIA: Yeah, now it'd be too much then he'd be an 11 out of 10, and that's just be unacceptable.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So, a many of our examples of dream interpretation are inherently linked to either the Gods or to their religious presence here on Earth. So, priests in Ancient Egypt acted as dream interpreters with the importance of dreams being held in high regard and linked to messages from the Gods. The Greeks, and this is actually the first time I had heard of this, they, Greeks would construct these specific temples which housed the sick and they were kept there as, like, a way of treating them and to be cured. So, like part of this treatment, of course, was tied to the Gods because it's a temple. This idea of, like, divine grace being considered a way of treating disease and specifically they relied on the ritual of incubation, which is sleeping in a sacred area with the intention of experiencing a divinely inspired dream or cure.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Which I've never heard of before. I think that's really interesting.
AMANDA: Yeah, me too.
JULIA: It makes sense. We also know that the Greeks believed that dreams were prophetic or acted as omens. There was a particularly amusing belief from the philosopher, Artemidorus. Who lived in the second century AD and believed that dream imagery could be in fact, puns. And that by decoding those puns, you could reveal the true meaning of that dream. So, for example, Alexander the Great who had been warring with the Tyrians had a dream about a Satyr that was dancing on his shield. And so, Artemidorus believed that the Satry could be a pun for the phrase Sa Tyros, which means "Tyre Will Be Yours" and so believed that the dream predicted that Alexander would conquer the Tyrians.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Isn't that so good?
AMANDA: It's also such a, like, servant to the ruler being like, "No, no. You're going to win. No, no, you're right and a prophet".
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. I feel like no one who tells the ruler, "No, that's bad and it's not going to happen for you". They probably don't last long in court, you know?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: They don't last long as a philosopher.
AMANDA: Or like politics or corporate culture. Everything old is new again.
JULIA: Yeah, precisely. In China, dream interpretation has been an important part of culture codified by at least the 16th century when the "Lofty Principles of Dream Interpretation" was compiled by Chen Xiang. What I really love about the research that I've seen for the Chinese philosophers from this period, is that they got really into, like, the philosophy of dream. What is a dream? What separates dreams from reality? Etc.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: For example, here is a Taoist thought experiment. Here's the quote,"Once Chuang Tzu dreamed that he was a butterfly. He fluttered about happily, quite pleased with the state he was in and knew nothing about Chuang Tzu. Presently, he awoke and found that he was still very much Chuang Tzu again. Now, did Chuang dream that he was a butterfly? Or was the butterfly now dreaming that he was Chuang?
AMANDA: Oh, man.
JULIA: It's very like, "Well, what is reality and what is our imagination?" you know?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: I really like this stuff but also you get people who get into this in, like, a really annoying way and then get into the territory of, like, people who misunderstand the point of the matrix.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's a real, it's a real spectrum.
JULIA: Like, there's still a part of me that is the freshman philosophy student who would, you know, have a couple of beers and be like, "But what if this is all a dream?" or "What if this is all a simulation?", you know?
AMANDA: You're not a destructive billionaire, who's like, you know, making bad choices and turning Earth into his playground. Elon Musk's, you know, in, in an effort to, like, chase these things down. So, I think as long as you're just thinking and wondering about it, and your friends know when to put a hand on your shoulder and be like, let's talk about movies. That's totally okay.
JULIA: Yeah, but the problem is, all of those people probably were freshmen philosophy students at one point.
AMANDA: True.
JULIA: So, let's talk a little bit less about dream interpretation, and a bit more about what dreams and the creatures associated with them looked like in mythology. But first, we're going to quickly go grab a refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
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AMANDA: No one more, no one more.
JULIA: So, it's very similar to another cocktail that I think we talked about a while back, which is called the Golden Dream. But it's similar to, kind of, a classic Gin Martini with a twist. So, it's Gin, Vermouth, and then Benedictine liqueur with a couple of dashes of orange bitters. So, it's a martini but it's got that hint of herbal and citrusy pop, which I really like.
AMANDA: And you know that, you know, some monks worked on your liqueur so that's great.
JULIA: That's true, and if you have a couple of them, you'll probably be falling asleep. So, let's get going before that happens.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: So, let's start again with Greece because of course. So, there are two Gods worth noting when discussing dreams in the Greek Pantheon. There's Hypnos, of course, who is the personification of sleep who lives in the underworld in a cave that has a bunch of puppies at the entrance of that cave. He is married to Pasithea, who is the personification of both relaxation, hallucinations, and just altered states of consciousness.
AMANDA: I mean, sounds fun,
JULIA: She sounds fun. She sounds like she'd be a good time to hang out with.
AMANDA: Oh yeah.
JULIA: One of Hypnos' children, according to Ovid, is Morpheus who is the God associated with dreams. So, according to Ovid "No other is more skilled than he, in representing the gait, the features, and the speech of men. The clothing also and the accustomed words of each he represents". Because Morpheus was said to, like, appear and bring dreams at night. So, if you see a person in your dream or an object in your dream or something like that. It's most likely Morpheus.
AMANDA: That's fully terrifying.
JULIA: Yeah. and he can be, you know, whoever, whatever.
AMANDA: A perfect shapeshifter that is Godly is, like, terrifying.
JULIA: Yes, according to Ovid as well, Morpheus had two siblings that would sometimes enter the dreams with him. So, there was Phobetor or the frightener, who "Takes the form of beast or bird or the long serpent". Yeah, quite, quite a name. Quite a, quite a description. And there was also Phantasos or fantasy, who "Put on deceptive shapes of earth, rocks, water, trees, all lifeless things". So, these are your dream Gods from Greece and because it's also Ovid Rome.
AMANDA: The God impersonating lifeless things, is a new to me twist.
JULIA: Yeah, I love him. He's a real cool guy. So, on to one of my favorites, who we've talked about on the show before but I think it wouldn't be an episode about dreams if we didn't talk about the Baku. The Baku, as you might remember, is a Japanese spirit who is said to devour dreams. He had the body of a bear, the head of an elephant, the eyes of a rhino, the tail of an ox, and the legs of a tiger.
AMANDA: So cute, so stubby.
JULIA: Yes. Sounds like it's, usually a terrifying amalgamation of creatures but it's most likely that the appearance of the Baku is based on the real life taper which are adorable. They got those little noses. They're so cute.
AMANDA: So cute. So stubby.
JULIA: As I mentioned, the Baku acts as a guardian for humans and feeds on the dreams of humans. Though, they typically eat bad dreams. Children were told that they could evoke the name of the Baku in order to protect them from bad dreams. However, if one was to call on the Baku too often, the spirit would begin to eat not only the bad dreams but also the dreams and desires of that person as well. Leaving them forlorn and unmotivated.
AMANDA: I mean, this is a perfect piece of folklore, Julia. It's inventive. It's fascinating. It's tied to the kind of material reality of daily life and it has a, a parable tied to it. And like what a good thing to learn growing up, that it's okay to call for help but you can't do it all the time.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. It's, It's like the boy who cried wolf but better.
AMANDA: But good. but good.
JULIA: So, somewhat opposite to the Baku we're back over in Europe is the Mare. Now, the Mare has origins in both Germanic and Slavic folklore and its name seems to trace back to the Proto-Indo-European root of mer, which is something along the lines of to crush, or press, or opress.
AMANDA: Mostly, I'm impressed that Kate Winslet did that accent so well. But um, that's a joke about Mare of Easttown on HBO.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: Had to do it, had to do it.
JULIA: My, my mother-in-law really wants us to watch that and I read the description and like, "This seems too sad".
AMANDA: It was, it was fairly sad.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: Fairly sad.
JULIA: So, now, some of the stories about the Mare say that they would ride people's horses in the night so that the horses would be left exhausted and sweating by the morning. This evolved later into a kind of like Incubus-Succubus thing, like, but without the sex. In Swedish and Norwegian versions of the story, that said that they would sit on the chest of a sleeping man or animal and tangle their hair so that in the morning they would wake up with what they would call Mare Locks or Mare Braids. Which is basically like, when your hair gets really naughty after a restless night of sleep.
AMANDA: Terrifying. I mean, in both cases waking up with, with, you know, feeling like you've run, or feeling like you're sweaty and your hair. It seems like way too tangled for just like sleeping, it’s terrifying. And waking up and, like, checking on your horse in the morning and seeing that one of them has apparently been running all night long and yet is in the stable. Is like what the fuck?
JULIA: Yeah. Luckily, Mare Locks and Mare Braids is not a problem for you anymore, Amanda. Since you cut your hair nice and short.
AMANDA: Indeed, indeed.
JULIA: So, the Mare can't come get you and fuck up your hair.
AMANDA: Or they will and I won't know, which is kind of worse.
JULIA: Yeah. So, by the 13th century, there were more definitive stories about the Mare in Scandinavia, such as the fact that King Vanlandi Sveigðisson. It was said that he lost his life to a Mare that was sent to him by a Finnish sorceress as revenge for abandoning his Finnish wife.
AMANDA: Oh, damn.
JULIA: So, in the story, the moment that he falls asleep, the king was ridden by the Mare which stomped on his legs until they broke and then when his guards came in and tried to help by kind of like, grabbing his flailing feet, the Mare moved up his body and then pressed down on his head until it killed him.
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: Yeah, in case it wasn't clear at this point. The Mare gives us the English word for nightmare.
AMANDA: Nice, that makes a lot of sense.
JULIA: Yeah, which I think is very cool. I love the origins of words and the mythological origins of words.
AMANDA: Me too. Several times a month I'll text my sibling and dad group chat and just be like, "Guys, did you know that the word blank derives from blank?" And to their credit, they all tell me they think it's cool.
JULIA: Etymology. Very exciting, very cool. In Poland, the Mare is referred as the Mara which shares its name with the Goddess of Winter, who was later kind of demonized by Christianity. In that Polish version, it was said that the Mara was the soul of a sinful woman typically, but not exclusively. That was, like, the general like, "Ah, yes, this person died having not gone to confession or something like that".
AMANDA: Well, it's not pagan. It's fine.
JULIA: Well, it's not pagan. It's fine. It was said that the Mara could turn into animals or objects that it would then drain people of energy or blood during the night.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Fun couple of ways to protect yourself from the Mara, according to Polish folklore, you can drink coffee before you sleep, which I guess would help because you wouldn't fall asleep then.
AMANDA: That's true. It's also a thing like, do all adults just lose caffeine tolerance? Because the number of people who have after dinner coffees and then, like, theoretically fall asleep three hours later, I'm just like, "What are you doing?".
JULIA: I mean, usually they drink decaf, right? I know there's still a little bit of caffeine in decaf, but, like, typically, if you're having, like, an after dinner drink, I feel like it's a, like, just a beverage to go with your dessert and it's usually decaf.
AMANDA: I don't know. I, maybe I'm just, like, reading a lot of Victorian novels. It's like the dinner of bread, cheese and strong coffee. And I'm like, What? What's happening?
JULIA: Maybe I guess. Maybe that was a Victorian thing and they just weren't making, like, as caffeinated coffee. I don't know.
AMANDA: I don't know.
JULIA: So, anyway, drink that coffee before you sleep. No, Mara. You could sleep with a form of leather, like a belt. You can smear feces on your door, which seems maybe, or you can leave a bundle of hay in your bed and then sleep in another room. It is my personal favorite.
AMANDA: These are real like home alone levels of tricking the spirit.
JULIA: Yeah, it's very like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Home Alone. Where we're really going hard for these.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Along with usually draining people of energy or blood, the Mare or the Mara would bring nightmares or bad dreams, which makes sense since like, nightmares or having a restless night of sleep would most likely make you feel exhausted or like you have no energy in the morning. Like, makes sense.
AMANDA: Quite true.
JULIA: I also want to end this discussion about the Mare by sending you the picture of the Mare that which typically comes up. Like, if you Google it because it is a buck-wild painting titled; The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli from 1781. And I just need to hear your reaction to this painting, one second.
AMANDA: Okay, I'm ready.
JULIA: So, I have seen this painting before.
AMANDA: Oh, geez.
JULIA: And I guess I had never looked closely at it because I've never seen the horse until this moment.
AMANDA: Yeah, no. You got a, you got a horse with really scared eyes, down by this reposed person on a divan. Really like, artfully laden scarves. Got a cute little bracelet there. It's a nice dress. I'd wear that dress and then just a real, a real demon looking fella squatting on their chest.
JULIA: It looks like a gremlin.
AMANDA: Yeah, hey, that actually looks pretty sweet. I do enjoy the shadow of his horns in the center quadrant of the painting.
JULIA: I think their ears, but yeah, I, Oh, God.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: It's just the horse. The horse is throwing me for a loop because the horse just has these dead white eyes.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And it's little mane is, like, standing up on end. I don't know what's happening with that horse.
AMANDA: It's mane is, like, mirroring the hair of the demon creature which is funny, but both the demon and the horse, I mean, they look alike. Like, both of their eye, like, the Horse's eyes got nothing in there and then the demon's eyes are like, "What? What are you doing? I'm, I'm busy?" and there's a very cute little nose.
JULIA: Maybe the horse is, I have to assume the horse is also a Mare. Just in the form of a horse, who like-
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: -showed up to also give this woman nightmares or drain her of energy and found his friend here be like, "Come on, Dave. It was my turn".
AMANDA: The horse does have, kind of a little smile.
JULIA: He does!
AMANDA: Right? It's, it's a very cute.
JULIA: Yes. So, I will, I will link a photo of that in the show notes so that everybody can see this horse.
AMANDA: That'll be on our Instagram and, and for patrons too. It'll be the image in your, in your director's commentary.
JULIA: Great. Excellent. So, the next I want to talk about is one that I like. I think I kind of knew that it had folkloric origins, but I never really thought about it until researching this episode. And that's the Sandman.
AMANDA: Oh, of course.
JULIA: Which, I guess I really only think about the song when I hear the Sandman. But he was a folkloric figure that goes back to before the 1954 version of the song. So, typically, the Sandman was a feature of children's stories and was said to put people to sleep and give them beautiful dreams by sprinkling his magic sand in their eyes. This was a European, mostly Scandinavian, some Germanic, bleed over story. So, you know how like when you wake up, and there's like that little bit of grit in the corner of your eyes, some mornings?
AMANDA: Totally.
JULIA: That was supposed to be proof that the Sandman had come and worked his magic on you in the night before, put that little remaining sand in your eyes.
AMANDA: It really does seem like sand. So, that makes a lot of sense.
JULIA: Yeah. And he's like mostly benevolent but also there was an author named E.T.A. Hoffman, who wrote a more sinister version of the Sandman in 1816. Where the Sandman would throw sand in the eyes of children who wouldn't go to sleep and then that would cause their eyes to fall out of their heads. And the Sandman would collect those eyes and take them to the moon, where he had a nest full of eyes, and then he would feed some of those eyes to his children.
AMANDA: Oh, wow. That's a real, that feels like a dream.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Which just happened to me as you described that.
JULIA: Mmh-hmm. Mmh-hmm. It seems like a lot.
AMANDA: It seems like a tale invented by somebody who does not have children because he would not in fact, make it better if your kid doesn't want to go to bed and then you get into that whole thing. Best case scenario, they just be lying in their bed terrified to move. And then I guess the adults can like go on with their night.
JULIA: Yeah. I think that's kind of the point of these stories where it's like, if you don't stay in your bed, the Sandman is going to come and get you. I feel like that's always the, like, kind of Boogeyman version of all these stories. It's like if you don't behave, something's going to take you away. This more sinister version might be associated with a Romanian folklore character, which is na the elder, who would throw sand in the eyes of children who would not go to sleep to blind them and then capture those children in a bag that it carried.
AMANDA: Romania doesn't fuck around.
JULIA: Romania doesn't fuck around. This is the, like, Sandman version of Krampus.
AMANDA: Yes, it really is.
JULIA: Also, before people @ me. Yes, I know about the Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic. I know it exists. I have not read it. No. Yes, I will probably read it soon. You do not need to recommend it to me. I promise plenty of people have.
AMANDA: I feel like that that's a real, like, being a woman on the internet moment is, like, "Trust me at some point somebody has recommended every Neil Gaiman text to us. Don't worry".
JULIA: Yes, I know all about Neil Gaiman's works. I know everything that he has done. I just have not read all of them. It's 72 comics. I haven't gotten to it. I know they're compendiums, I haven't gotten to it. So, finally, I want to talk about dream catchers, which I think a lot of people at least our age know about them because of just like, cultural appropriation and people our age, like kind of, grew up in the height of the like everyone has probably had someone buy them a dream catcher at some point.
AMANDA: Yeah, from like an Urban Outfitters or some shit.
JULIA: Yeah, unfortunately. But for a really long time, I didn't know the actual story and the reason behind the dream catcher. So, I found a great resource from We Are Native, which is a Comprehensive Health Resource for Native Youth by Native Youth to provide content and stories about the topics that matter most to them. So, that's from their website. I will make sure to link the website and the story in the show notes because it seems like a really great resource from just looking around their website for a while but this is where I found the ojibwe story of the spider woman. So, this is the story directly from We Are Native. This is the way that the Old Ojibwe say spider woman helps bring grandfather son back to the people. To this day spider woman will build her special lodge before dawn. If you are awake at dawn, as you should be, look for her lodge and you will see how she captured the sunrise as the light sparkles on the dew which has gathered their. Spider woman took care of her children, the people of the land, and she continues to do so to this day. Long ago, in the ancient world of the Ojibwe nation, the clans were all located in one area called Turtle Island. When the Ojibwe nation dispersed to the four corners of North America, spider woman had a difficult time making journeys to all of those baby cradle boards. So, the mothers, sisters, and grandmothers weaved magical webs for the new babies using willow hoops and sinew. The shape of the circle represents how Grandfather Sun travels across the sky. The dream catcher filters out the bad dreams and allows only good thoughts to enter into our minds when we sleep. A small hope in the center of the dream catcher is where the good dreams come through, with the first rays of light the bad dreams will perish. When we see little spider woman we should not fear her but instead respect and protect her. In honor of their origin, many dream catchers have eight points where the web connects to the hoop. Eight points for spider woman's eight legs. Some people place a feather in the center of the dream catcher to symbolize breath or air from the cradle board, a baby can watch the air play with the feather and be happily entertained by the blowing feather. So, that is from We are Native. Check out their website, this is a very cool story. I really liked the idea of it being, like, you know, this way of protecting the people.
AMANDA: Totally and if you'd like to support native artisans, the by native hashtag on social media is a really good place to find pen makers. You can buy jewelry and beadwork and moccasins and all kinds of amazing wares from.
JULIA: Heck yeah. So, that's what I have in terms of dreams. I, I'm super interested to hear anyone's tales that we didn't cover today. Obviously, I know this wasn't comprehensive. Send us an email via our website at spiritspodcast.com and label your message dream traditions and maybe we'll do, like, a little follow up to this episode.
AMANDA: I would love that. Yeah. I'd love to hear, you know, the stories that you grew up with when you went to, you know, your caregivers or parents with a bad dream. I love that idea that it's like the most vulnerable that human beings get when we are asleep and often can't move or our senses are dulled to external stimuli. It really does feel otherworldly to be suddenly in a, you know, 3D environment way better than anything that technology has been able to make yet. And suddenly, stuff can happen in your dream that can't happen in the real world or you're disconnected from "How did I get here?", or you have that moment of realizing that the environment you're in is not reality. It's just like the trippy has to, for lack of a better word, feeling that I have run into. And so I am amazed that, like, as human beings we all just like, do this every night. And then we go about with our daily lives, like, it's small, but massively strange things about this particular lived experience that I find utterly fascinating.
JULIA: Yeah, I just, I really love and it makes me really happy to think about the fact that we've always been thinking about why our brains do this really, like, odd and entertaining thing almost every night. And the fact that people have been so enraptured in the concept of dreams. So, the fact that it is like, featured in almost every, like, fictional story that we tell, and it plays a huge role in almost all of the media that we, you know, we create and we read and watch and listen to.
AMANDA: Yeah, and the idea of a dream, a thing that you want to make for yourself that you're chasing after that you can envision for yourself that you would, you know, suddenly wake up and things would be as they should be. It's, it's like the richest metaphor or, you know, symbolic device that we have available to us. So, Julia, kudos on tackling us a wide subject and teaching me some things I didn't know. And I look forward to hearing what all the conspirators have to say.
JULIA: Yeah, it makes me happy. I'm glad. I am always happy that you will listen to my very, very creepy and cool dreams, Amanda.
AMANDA: Anytime and remember everyone.
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool. Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
JULIA: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us at Spirits podcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances and merch on our website. As well as a forum to send us your urban legends at spiritspodcast.com.
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JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude. A collective of independent audio professionals. If you liked Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions
AMANDA: And above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please share us with your friends, that is the very best way to help us keep on growing.
JULIA: Thank you so much for listening. Till next time.
Transcribed By: John Matthew Sarong
Edited By: Krizia Casil