The Cradle

You are listening to radio “Belarus”. This is the “Cradle” project dedicated to the ethnic and cultural peculiarities of the Belarusian nation. In this program, we are to touch upon issues of specific cultural manifestations of the Belarusian people – from the traditional culture to the peculiarities of national psychology and day-to-day life.

In the flow of literature that’s filling up the book shops are many versions of dream-books. Many of them are dubious. However, others have their roots in the national cultures. The Belarusian people also have their national dream-books completed by our folklorists that include interpretations of dreams written down from the people’s words in the 19th century.
Dreams’ interpretations complete an interesting part of the folk creativity. As famous Belarusian folklorist Nikiforovski wrote in the 19th century, “dream-books from the Moscow market didn’t influence the Belarusian interpretations of dreams.” It means that even for that time, this part of the Belarusian ethnic culture was well-preserved and pure.

Of course, only naïve and credulous person will connect the images from his dreams with their interpretations in a book and wait when the promised will finally come true. A serious and interested reader will find rich folk associations that can inform us about some very special features of the Belarusian national character. The tries of folk dreams’ interpretations give us the idea of the way the human thought followed as well as about national psychology and the experience of the people.
Dreams’ interpretations represent a special genre of folk creativity, a part of our ideology. Each nation has collections and books like this. This proves that a dream is a very important thing and one of the most mysterious parts of the human psyche. This phenomenon was interesting for our ancestors from the viewpoint of its cognitive character. Modern psychologists counted that a man spends about one third of his life sleeping. It amounts 25 years on average. And we are dreaming for about 6 years. Not by chance, this phenomenon logically found its reflection in the human world view.
Dreams, just like thoughts, represent an inseparable part of psychic and nervous activity of a human. Connection of dreams with the past and the present of a person is natural and sustainable, but in the early period of history people started associating the images of their dreams with the future. They believed that our dreams foretold upcoming events in an allegoric form, and one had to decipher them using special codes. Those codes however were known to only few people – sorcerers, shamans, priests – and represented a kind of sacral knowledge.

Explanation of dreams, their inner, hidden, allegoric sense, can be observed in virtually all ethnic cultures, irrespectively of the level of their cultural development. The images they saw in their dreams disturbed people, evoked a great interest and sometimes anxiety, they searched for explanation for their visions and at the same time use these explanation to look into the future, find predictions or recommendations in them. They believed, a dream was a mystic symbolic sign that contained metaphors of certain phenomena and situations of daily life.
Certainly, a dream is a mystery. But how can a mystery correlate with the ideology of a person or even the whole nation? As a matter of fact, from the dreams’ interpretations we can see that there were two worlds in the imagination of the Belarusian people. I mean the spiritual world and the material one. The both ones were equally real for them and none has doubts in the reality of the world, dreams lead to. A dream was just a way of getting to the invisible, other world.
Dreams represent a universal phenomenon. But they contain the features of archaic mentality connected with the pre-Christian period of history. For example, there are instructions telling one how to see the true dreams in the preface of the Belarusian dream-book. The Eastern religious and philosophical systems, like yoga, have the similar structure of preparation for meditation. For instance, the Belarusian people considered that one shouldn’t eat meat, cabbage, peace, beans and other “heavy meals” before going to bed. As we know, yogis are vegetarians, in this way, they prepare for meditation that is the way to see some true things invisible for a common eye. The advice to drink neither tea, nor coffee or alcohol reminds us the prohibition of stimulant drinks in the yoga system. At first sight, it seems that there is nothing easier than airing a room before sleeping. However, this simple action is an element of a complicated system. One also should not quarrel and argue before going to bed – this rule correlates with the yoga’s ethic that prepares a man for deep trance and true meditation.

And now, let’s turn right to the Belarusian dreams’ interpretations.
If one quarrels in his dream – he will become reconciled with his enemy.
If one laughs in his dream – he will cry as people will mock at him.
If one kisses a pretty girl in his dream – he will face with falsehood.
If one sees a human blood in his dream – someone of his relatives will visit him soon.
If one eats honey in his dream – he will feel bad.
If one cries in his dream – he will be happy.

Thus, we can see that according to our ancestors’ imaginations, these dreams’ interpretations have much in common. They are connected by the principle of mirror. The events seen in the dream should be interpreted from the point of view of the opposite.
A dream is weakening of the rational. The emotional sphere of a person manifests itself mostly in such transitional states. A man who passes to that invisible world is a poet to some extend. The poetical thinking is a way out to the world where his emotional nature starts speaking. Some interpretations of dreams sound like lines of unfinished poems.
To see wild birds means to receive a present. To catch them – to meet a joy.
To see a kerchief means to receive a letter. To lay a kerchief means to write a letter. If the kerchief is black, the news will be bad.
If you loose your way in your dream and then find, you’ll escape from the woe, if not, you’ll get in troubles.
If you sing in your dream, will cry waking.

In the world philosophy and literature are several points of view concerning dreams. There is the Freudian interpretation through the sexual experience of a man. There is a famous formula by Shakespeare “Dream is an illusion of the death”. We should note that Shakespeare is closer to the Belarusian dreams’ interpretations. Indeed, our ancestors thought that dream is a temporary death. He thought that therefore people saw their dead ancestors in dreams. IT was natural as the dead people are a part of that invisible world. For the same reason, they met angels and devils, God and St. Mary in their dreams. Many dreams are explained as prediction of death and disease that should face the person in the near future. Here are some examples.
If you see burial in your dream, funeral will be indeed.
If you see your mother in your dream, she will die soon. If you see your mother who has already died, it means, she came to take you. 
If you see weeding, funeral will be in the same house.
If you see guests in your house, a dead man will be there.
If you see a priest, you’ll have to deal with devil.

In our dreams, we can see people, things, animals, and very often they are those from our real life. However, their metaphoric interpretation can be rather unexpected. For instance, I would like to tell you in what way the Belarusian people explained appearance of fishes in their dreams. In fact, in the mythological worldview, a fish is connected with water and at the same time it bears symbolism related to the other world. For example, fish is voiceless, but dumbness and silence were attributes of the dead.
This is why the Belarusian people associated fishes with the souls of the dead as well as future children. Not by chance, the image of a fish is connected with both death and childbirth. On the one hand, if a person dreamt himself catching fish in muddy water, it predicted serious illness. On the other hand, for a woman, holding fish in her hands predicted pregnancy. In some regions of Belarus they even tried to predict the sex of the future baby according to the kind of fish the future mother dreamt.

As for Freudian approach to the Belarusian dreams’ interpretation, here we face with some problems. As a matter of fact, in the collections of the 19th century, we will not find a lot of erotic motifs. However, we can’t say that there were no such moments at all. Re-telling erotic dreams was censured as in the 19th century, the Belarusian people were Christians. As we know, Christianity envisages some moral prohibitions concerning this sphere.
Psychologists noted that people themselves revise the content of their dreams having wakened up. That’s why, we can suppose that the folklorists just had no opportunity to write down descriptions and interpretations of such dreams.

I think that here we should touch upon one more question disturbing many people. Why do people see so many tragic and unpleasant things in their dreams?
As a matter of fact, psychologists consider that a dream is a kind of preparation of a man to wakening, to the continuation of the real life. Indeed, some extraordinary situations often take place in our life. We get in troubles, we face with woe and loose our relatives. And coming into our consciousness, a dream helps a man to get prepared for facing with some unpleasant situations as in the real life our mind protests against them. We often try not to pay attention to it. For example, listening about someone’s tragedy we think: “It’ll never happen to me!” However, our sub-consciousness is more realistic in this sense. And it reveals these facts to us. At the same time, in this way, we get unintentionally prepared for some unexpected things.
However, from time immemorial people tried to avoid dreaming fearful, tragic and unpleasant things or, at least, neutralize the negative emotions provoked by their dreams. Thus, in Belarus, they said: having dreamt a “bad” dream, one should knock the wall and say: “Let the dream go where the night has gone”. They also recommended to re-tell the plot of the dream to anybody before afternoon – thus, the unpleasant situation will never repeat in the reality.

Well, dear friends, today, we talked about the Belarusian traditions of dreams’ interpretations. I hope that you were interested!