Artémidore d\' Éphèse

Artémidore d' Éphèse (known as of Daldis or Daldien) is a Greek writer and oniromancian, born with Éphèse at second century BC. He travelled in all the Mediterranean basin. Its work in Greek entitled Onirocriticon condenses all the ancient knowledge on the divination by the Rêve and will be useful during centuries of reference book on the question. It was read and read again by Freud.

Artémidore d' Éphèse and the onirocritique one

In addition to practicing the Onirocritique, Artémidore had read all the old many treaties and had attended Devin S, thus learning how to know the dreams which are told here and there. Far from being a Charlatan, Artémidore is convinced to make useful work and scientist. He explains himself on his art with all the more of frankness why certain parts of its work are not intended for the public, but with his/her son only, the such whole of book IV. In this section, he endeavors to go more at the bottom of the science of the dreams in order to give to his son tools for interpretation which will make of it “an interpreter of the dreams better than all or at least not lower than any other”.

In fact, the documentation of Artémidore is impressive and does not comprise less than three thousand dreams. Its faith in the predictive value of the Rêve S is of the same order as that of primitive towards a ritual of magic, which one showed that the failure to produce the anticipated effect does not cause to invalidate the belief, but is allotted to a defect in the execution of the ritual. It is thus as regards Oniromancie. The dream is by definition always true. The fact that a dream is not carried out as envisaged does not mean that the science of onirocritic is vain, but that the interpreter of the dreams did not take account of all the elements of the dream or that he interpreted them in an incorrect way. One indeed needs much perspicacity to be a good soothsayer and to testify to a higher skill to decipher the enigma S than ingénie to propose the divinity by interposed dream to us.

As example, Artémidore evokes the dream of the Capitaine of Navire which, stray following a Tempête, had been seen in dream asking whether it would never arrive at Rome. The answer had been “ου”, that is to say the Greek word meaning “Not”. It was there an answer one cannot clearer, seems it. However, this honest captain had however arrived well at Rome, but 470 days later. Was the dream faulty? Not, explains Artémidore, because, in the mathematical marking system employed in Greek, the letter Omicron is worth 70 and the Upsilon is worth 400, for a total of 470: the dream had thus predicted truth well, because there is “no difference between even saying the figure and saying the name of the letter which expresses the number”.

The interpretation of the dreams

The base of its interpretation rests on a very elaborate system of classification of the dreams. The Rêve S are divided into two big classes: the dream not divinatoire (ενυπνιον) and the dream divinatoire (ονειρος).

The first class is divided in its turn into somatic dreams, which relate to only the body, psychic, relating to only the heart and mixed, relating to both. But this class hardly interests the Onirocritique, considering which they do not predict the future.

The dream divinatoire is divided into two main categories:

first is consisted the theorematic dreams, where the vision coincides with its achievement, as to dream that a remote friend comes to visit you and that this one precisely arrives the next day. These dreams do not require a great skill on behalf of their interpreter. And the dreamer is quickly fixed on their realization.
the other main category is consisted the allegorical dreams : in fact “the dreams mean certain things by means of other things: in these dreams, it is the heart which, according to certain natural laws, implies obscurely an event” or “which indicates the achievement meant by means of enigmatic symbols”. It is seen that, for Artémidore, the dreams raise well of a scientific study considering the symbols with the means of which they are expressed concern natural laws.

These allegorical dreams are divided into five species, according to the person or the group of people concerned with the dream. It can be: the dreamer alone, someone else, the dreamer and someone else, public in general, universe.

Each one of these species is subdivided in its turn in subspecies according to the relationship between the dream and its achievement. Certain dreams predict many things by means of many things, few things by means of little, much by the means of little, little by the means of much.

Lastly, these subspecies are divided in their turn into four types: goods with the inside and the outside, for example to see the merry gods in his dream and to withdraw a happy achievement from it; bad with the inside and the outside, as to dream that one falls into a chasm; goods with the bad inside but with the outside, as to dream that one receives from a death a perfume or a pink; bad with the insides but good with the outside, like dreaming, for a slave, whom it serves in the army, because only a free man can be useful in the army.

Thus we have two classes of which subdivisions corresponding to five categories whose principal one, that of the allegorical dreams, comprises five species, themselves divided into twenty subspecies and those in eighty types.

But it is not all. Interpretation must also take account of the field to which the Symbole belongs. In accordance with its precursors, Artémidore distinguishes six fundamental data likely to appear in any type of dream: the Natural , the Law, the Habit, the trade, the Name S and the Time. Each one of these data can be positive or negative. In theory, all the visions of dream in conformity with the one of these six fields are of good omen, and conversely. It is necessary to put at the credit of Artémidore the fact that it resists to unduly increase the number of these categories and makes fun of the analysts who identify “sometimes eighteen, sometimes hundred, sometimes a hundred and fifty” of these fundamental data. For him, characteristics like the joy, sadness, hatred, the disease, etc, are not fundamental data, but raise all of the “natural” data.

Influence on the contemporary authors

Freud contributed to rehabilitate Artémidore, even if it deviates some radically as for the value from the dreams: for the psychoanalyst, the dream does not announce the future but speaks about our past.

Michel Foucault makes a Exégèse Onirocriticon in the first chapter (To dream its pleasures) of the third volume of sound Histoire of sexuality (the concern of oneself). Being interested in the chapters relating to the sexual dreams, Foucault will use the work of Artémidore for his work of genealogy of the Sexualité. In the first part of this chapter, he affirms that “Artémidore does not say if he is well or not, moral or immoral, to make such act, but if he is good or bad, advantageous or frightening to dream that it is made. The principles which one can work out thus do not carry on the acts them-even, but on their author, or rather on the sexual actor as it represents in the oneiric scene, the author of the dream and which it makes predict by there the good or the evil which will arrive to him”.

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