The Beliefs Of The Dark Ages
Three people were most influential in beliefs about dreams in the Dark Ages. Jerome had mistranslated and told Christians to refrain from observing dreams, Macrobius’ Commentary warned of the incubus and succubus (two sexual predator demons attracted to dreams), and Aquinas warned about the connection between demons and dreams. Demons became a prominent concern for Western Christianity.
Later, Gaspar Peucer wrote theories that demons were actually the sources of most dreams, maybe even all dreams, including the joyful dreams. He believed that joyful dreams were the result of a trickster demon. He warned that the very investigation of dreams was dangerous and that to do so was to invite disaster. He made it clear that dreams of true divine content were only sent to the holy leaders of the church, and that if a common person were to have such a dream, it is a contrivance from a particularly tricky demon who could pose as God or a messenger of God.
These concerns about demonic influences in dreams are reiterated by many more influential leaders in the church as time went on, and it was widely believed that demons were the instigators of dreams. It was considered a sin to believe in a dream, or even investigate a dream. Dreams were not allowed to be discussed, under penalty of severe torture or death. Many prayed for the lack of ability to recall dreams so that it would be easier to be free of demonic influence. Dreams were actively suppressed in order to escape the devil, especially “wet” dreams, which were thought to be especially demonic in nature.
Dreams were banished, and many people were tortured and killed simply for having a dream. This also had a terrible effect on the collective creativity and culture of the population. There was a very noticeable lack of creativity in the arts, literature and other areas of a creative society during that time in history. Robert L. Van De Castle says in his book Our Dreaming Mind (1994). “Our stature as human beings seems to shrivel whenever dreams are banished, or whenever an effort is made to restrict the range within which they operate. We need dreams to enlarge our individual and collective aspirations… The lesson to be learned from these tragic dream-dismissing periods of history seems inescapable. When we fail to honor that which is illuminated in our dreams…we will spend more of our daylight hours dwelling in the dark cells of self-imposed solitary confinement.”
The mistrust of dreams has remained in most Western Christian denominations, especially the Catholic religion. Fortunately, this banishment of dreams was not enforced in the most recent centuries, beginning with the 1700s, but it has not been until now that dreams are fully liberated from centuries of bad rapport endowed upon them by the Inquisition, the religious leaders of Christianity, and scholars of the ancient times. Dreams are now free to be examined by anyone who wishes to examine them. The potential of dreams can now be re-visited.