Question IV: On divination from dreams

CONCERNING dreams it should be noted, from D. Bonaventure, 3. part. Centil. sect. 23., and the little work, Declaratio terminorum Theologiae, and in 2. d. 7. part. 2. quaest. 3. ad argumenta, and d. 23. art. 2. quaest. 2. ad argumenta, that they come about from many causes. First, from the singular Providence of God, such were the dreams of Joseph. Second, from the constellation of the sky and the impression of the air. Third, from the affection and disposition of the human body. Fourth, from prior anxieties. Fifth, from the act of demons.

From God indeed come dreams for unfolding the Divine will: Such was the dream of Joseph about the Virgin not to be abandoned, about the flight into Egypt, about the return; more even about the way to be turned aside, Matth. 1. and 2.; and these are good, since they come from God.

About these you have Numbers 12, Job 33, Genesis 40 and 41, Daniel 2, 4 and 7, Judges 7, 3 Kings 3, Esther 10, and also 2 Machab. 15, and elsewhere monitions and examples. Yet if there is not probability that those dreams are from God, it will not be permitted to give faith to them, for knowledge of future contingents cannot be had from elsewhere. Therefore they are prohibited in Deuteronomy 13, where he decrees that they are to be punished with death; and Ecclesiasticus 34, where it is said: Dreams lift up fools: Unless the visitation be from the Most High, give not thy heart upon them: For dreams have led many into error, and they have fallen who hoped in them. So it is proved by the Saintly Doctor in 2. d. 7. loc. cit. Yet it can be a venial fault if they are believed out of levity, or not firmly.

It is MORTAL also to place any vain things under the bed of the sick, e.g. horns, letters, that they may catch sleep: For these have effects from an implicit at least pact with the devil.

It is discerned, moreover, whether dreams are from God or from the devil by those signs by which also revelations are, as Delrius notes, lib. 4. disq. mag. cap. 3. quaest. 6. Pererius lib. 1. in Danielem, quaest. 3., and lib. 2. de magia quaest. 3. Suarez Tom. 1. de Relig. lib. 2. de superstit. cap. 13. Fagundez lib. 1. in primum praeceptum, cap. 39.

But two signs are chief. The first is from the effect toward which they move: for if they excite to a good work, they are good. Second, from the affections which they cause, namely if they cause alacrity, or the devotion of fasting, it is a sign that they are good. Yet in these one must walk cautiously and humbly, with the judgment also of a prudent confessor.

IF dreams are from some impression and influx of secondary causes, for instance heat, or a very humid, turbid air, they avail nothing; for they are accustomed to stir the humors violently, whence dreams mostly arise indicating the humors predominant in us. For thus the bilious seem to gaze upon conflagrations, the sanguine upon wounds, the melancholic upon dark things, for instance smoking globes, or dense fog, funerals, and the dead. But the phlegmatic see white things, for instance snows: if one thinks himself flying through the air, it is a sign of a tempered symmetry; if he thinks he finds treasures, it is a sign of possessing a deficit. Finally the Saintly Doctor concludes that these are signs of infirmity from some humor predominating. But it belongs to physicians to observe these, as Ciruelo teaches, de superstit. 2. p. cap. 6. Perer. supra de magia, quaest. 7. Azor. tom. 1. lib. 9. cap. 17. Less. lib. 2. cap. 43. d. 8. Suarez tom. 1. de Relig. lib. 2. de superstit. cap. 13. Fagundez num. 20. Tanner. d. 5. quaest. 7. d. 1.

TO these dreams from the abundance of the dominating humor belongs that dream in which one sees and feels at night a specter rushing upon him and oppressing him, which physicians call the Incubus, and it is called Ephialtes, as the Saintly Doctor says, loc. cit. Centil. For it arises from a thick and foul humor rushing into the brain and intercepting the passages of the animal spirits, as the Saintly Doctor teaches with Galen, lib. 3. de locis male affectis, cap. 4.; and this is a sign of thick and melancholic blood, and there is danger of epilepsy if one suffers it frequently; and this is also called phantasma, from Cicero Visum: Marobius treats of these at length, lib. 1. in somnium Scipionis.

Dreams are also accustomed to break in from cares and anxieties, which indicate only past causes, and propose nothing of the future to be divined.