Competing Keys

Traditions read dream images in quite different ways (as omens of the future, as messages from gods or the dead, as reflections of bodily state, or as expressions of the unconscious), and a single image can bear opposite meanings in different systems. The atlas records the readings various traditions give rather than proposing one true meaning.

Each entry gathers what the main interpretive traditions have made of a given image, from the ancient omen-books to the modern psychological schools, keeping their different assumptions in view. Dream interpretation as a method sits alongside the other divinatory systems.