Gates of Horn and Ivory-or-Dream Vision Poetry for Beginners
Unified Philosophy of the Mind -or The Human Condition in the Global Village
Dreams can show how to unify a philosophical theory of the mind, body and of nature. The philosophy of the dream is the philosophy of the mind. The ancient philosopher Socrates (via Plato) in his dialogue "Charmides", tells us to listen to his dream to see whether it comes through the gates of horn (truth) or ivory (deception).
Still today nearly 2400 years later, the Socratic method is critical of deception. As in Socrates time, today the dream remains a durable philosophical vehicle on the road to wisdom. Rene Descartes in a dream saw two books, one that unified science and the other a poetic anthology. Dream vision is poetic in nature, so let us turn to poetry to better understand the language of the dream.
In "Poetry for Beginners", Margaret Chapman & Kathleen Welton quote Gwendolyn Brooks who says; "poetry is life distilled." The dream allows you the reader to plug into the planetary poetic rituals of light (hope and happiness) and darkness (despair and sadness). As an archetypal form of ontological poetry, dream vision allows us to enter what has been called the "human condition."
The poetics of "1001 Nights in the Global Village" is dedicated to providing you the reader with a philosophical path to all the primary poetic gates of the dream and nightmare. These dream gates are a dramatic point of conscious entry to understand the distilled poetic quintessence of our inner and our outer world. There are many anthropological gates of the dream we can enter, here are some of the poetic entrances of the world of dream vision I have tried to show you the reader in the interpretations below;
Further Reading:
- Geza Roheim, "The Gates of the Dream"