Russians are waiting for a night of prophetic dreams: how to see wealth and overcome nightmares

Dreams on the night of Ivan the Long (June 1) in Rus’ were considered prophetic. Their meaning was interpreted by special “sorcerers” according to old books. Today, interest in ancient Russian dream books has revived, not only in their homeland, but also overseas, where oneirology, which studies dreams, is considered a full-fledged science, and not an esoteric practice. In Russia, experts in the so-called “village magic”, as well as somnologists – specialists in sleep disorders, undertake to interpret dreams.

We asked to interpret the old belief of both those and others.

– All the dreams seen on the night of June 1 will come true, – the village healer grandmother Efrosinya assures, – They have come true all my life, and I have gone 96 years old.

According to an old belief, good dreams seen on Ivan the Long (on the first day of summer, the Orthodox honor the memory of the holy Apostle John the Theologian, who was popularly called the amulet of the fields or Ivan the Long) will bring health, prosperity and good luck. The bad ones are the opposite. If you believe the healers with knowledge of ancient Russian magic, if you saw a nightmare, you should not despair, you just need to lie down, fall asleep again and try to see a “good dream”.

– Good dreams are dreamed by those who, on the last day of spring, rendered a good service to someone, and also tidied their house clean, decorated the upper room with birch branches, baked pies and left a treat for the brownie at night along with a pot of milk, prayed at night, and in the morning in the church gathered.

– And who are the bad ones?

– More often to villains who on the night of Ivan Dolgoy make conspiracies to damage someone else’s crop, family or health. If you do the evil eye on the night of the Long Evil Eye, it will remain for a long time, it is difficult to remove it. Therefore, before going to bed, it is imperative to read a prayer for protection from any evil spirits. And with roosters rather to church.

It was considered a good sign in Russia on the night of the first summer day to see in a dream a rotten swamp (for money), a dead man (for good news), a fight (for a quick profit), a pig (for a quick marriage), a head separated from the body (to honor) , death with a scythe (to an addition to the family), bows (to a generous patron).

Any dreams involving birds, especially black woodpeckers, croaking crows and white doves, were considered unkind (to future misfortunes and illnesses). Killing birds in a dream – to war or natural disaster. Seeing a white horse in a dream – to death (in pagan times, a white horse symbolized the goddess of death, the mistress of the Kingdom of the Dead). A three-legged white horse is especially dangerous in a dream – it is to the death of the sleeping person or the person very close to him. Any dream with teeth should be alarming, this is a bad sign in any scenario (in Rus’, teeth in a dream were considered an urgent call from the other world, so people believed that a person is connected with the power of mother earth through teeth). Falling teeth – to a tragic death among friends. Falling out with blood – among relatives or one’s own death. Knitting legs (when you want to walk or run in a dream, and your legs seem to fall through) meant mortal danger, so the earth called the sleeping person to itself. But if in a dream it was possible to escape, the threat was removed.

“If you see something bad, lie down and sleep some more,” grandmother Efrosinya consoles. – It would be nice to see that you are cleaning up someone else’s house – this is to new possessions and to enrichment. And generally a good sign. But if someone else cleans up in your house, this is bad, then you should definitely sleep more. With such a dream, one does not get out of bed.

“Old dream books are even studied by students,” they report at the philological faculty of the country’s main university, “since this is a significant part of Russian folklore. They actually lived in the old days: they predicted the future, predicted the invasion of the enemy, epidemics or a bad harvest. Dreamers or fortune tellers who work with magical books on the interpretation of dreams, judging by the interpretations that have come down to us, are great masters of colorful images and multi-meaning predictions, which, depending on the circumstances, can be interpreted in different ways.

But foreign oneirologists (oneirology in a number of countries is considered a branch of research medicine that studies the influence of dreams on the functioning of the brain and body) experimentally proved that everyone sees dreams, but only people with high IQ remember them. This is explained on the basis of the statement that at night the brain is unloaded from daytime activity, filtering out unnecessary information “into the basket”. That is, if a person in the waking state does not know anything, is not interested in anything, and in general the baggage of his knowledge is small, then during sleep his brain has nothing to analyze and utilize. And if he dreams of anything, then these are primitive short visions, and even those are forgotten upon awakening.

“Through dreams, our brain smooths out the negative emotions of the day, gets rid of toxins, in computer language, reboots,” Russian somnologists say. – Therefore, insomnia is by no means an innocent disorder, as many people mistakenly think. Good sleep is very important for our brain and its normal functioning, so the main thing is that you sleep soundly at least 8 hours a day. And if you had a bad dream, it’s not scary, the main thing is not to transfer these “signs” into reality.