Among the Yoruba people, dream is generally regarded as a sign or symbol for something else. It may be interpreted either as a good or bad sign. In spite of the spiritual, metaphysical and emotional importance the Yoruba attach to dream, dreaming is widely believed to be a foolish exercise. This view is borne out of the popular saying among the Yoruba: Ala go (dream is foolish). This position rests on the belief that a dream is only a partial message that cannot mean anything by itself until it is supplemented by additional information that only the dreamer or the interpreter can provide.

The Yoruba also believe that one’s past experience can also manifest resurface in a dream. One of the most popular Yoruba proverbs attests to this view:

Someone who has a dinner of gaari soaked in water
And dreams of swimming in the river
must have been swimming right from the previous night

Literally, the proverb above is to show that somebody who had a dinner of gaari soaked in water must have taken a lot of water more than when he had taken something else for dinner. In other words, there is a connection between the most recent reality of the dreamer and his or her dream. It is a situation of reality re-presenting itself within the compass of the unconscious.

Another element in Yoruba perspective on dream relates to the need not to divulge one’s dreams to other people, especially those people that may not be one’s supporters. It is believed that telling a good dream to enemies can change that dream into a bad reality or that telling a bad dream to a spiritually wicked person may make that dream come to fruition.

DREAM TYPOLOGY

There are basically two types of dreams and the singular criterion used in this typology is the interpretation ascribed to the dream. However, the interpretation is determined by a number of factors. A dream is good if the events and actions in the dream are interpreted as good. On the other hand, a dream is considered bad if the events and actions in the dream are interpreted as bad . Often, the episodes in a dream are determined or interpreted on the basis of the socio-cultural situation of the dreamer. For instance, a village farmer who has never seen an aircraft is not expected to readily dream of getting involved in an air crash while a boy living in the urban environment will hardly get involved in a rural situation. When either of this happens, the dream is considered so unusual that it deserves special consideration.

Some of the dream events common among the Yoruba are the following: eating, beings chased or pursued by masquerades or wild animals, counting money, being bitten by a snake or scorpion, swimming in a river, bathing in the bathroom or by the river bank, climbing a hill or a tree, falling from a high place like a tree or mountain top, working in a farm, walking through a farm, sexual intercourse, miscarriage, giving birth to a baby, getting sick, weeping, attending a joyous party, hunting or being hunted, flying in space, riding on a horse, sighting a snail, etc.

DREAM INTERPRETATION

Among the Yoruba, dreams are interpreted from three perspectives. The first is shen direct meaning is ascribed to the events or actions in the dream, like when someone dreams that an individual has died and the person later dies. There are a lot of people who make this type of literal or direct connection between dream event and real event. In this case the dreamer is functioning as a clairvoyant person who is given a special gift to see what is expected to happen in the community.

The second perspective is when the reverse or opposite meaning is ascribed to the events and actions in the dream. For instance, when somebody dreams of counting money, this may be interpreted as a manifestation of foreshadowing of poverty. People whose dreams manifest the opposite of what is to happen can sometimes interpret their dreams without going to experts after experiencing the coming to pass of the opposite of what their dreams indicated.

Thirdly, symbolic meaning is ascribed to the events of a dream. This is the most sophisticated and complex of dream interpretations. For instance, a person who dreams of plucking or gathering fruits is told to expect some blessings on the job or in his or her social life. This interpretation rests on metaphorical connection between the sign and its referent. Fruits are considered as signs of good things that are slated to happen to the dreamer, because fruits are sources of life and bringers of good taste.

The meaning has nothing or very little to do with physical plucking or gathering of fruits. The interpretation is determined by a number of factors such as mythic-religious belief, taboos, superstitions, and psychological attitudes to images that are life-advancing or life-negating. The interpretation of dreams in the following section is based on these factors: Dream Event (in bold) and Interpretation among the Yoruba (in italics).

Eating: This is interpreted to be a bad omen, because it may mean that the food one likes to eat may be poisoned by someone else.

Being chased: This is interpreted usually as a bad sign. The masquerade or the by animals or animal is a manifestation of evil forces. In practical terms, one’s masquerades enemies are planning evil against the person involved.

Counting money: This is often interpreted as a foreshadowing of poverty. The dreamer may be having a vicarious experience of wealth and mistake this for reality by relaxing, or it could mean the possibility of a sudden wealth that has no basis in the dreamer’s efforts and can also lead back to poverty if the dreamer does not embark on productive activities.

Swimming in river: This is interpreted as a struggle to survive or surmount a problem. Swimming through the river before the end of the dream may signal potential success while failing to do this may suggest serious problems ahead for the dreamer.

Bathing in the house: This is interpreted as washing away ill luck or failure. Bathing in one’s house suggests some element of control by the person .

Seeing a snail: This is often suggested to mean that one’s progress will be slowed

Sexual intercourse: This suggests that one’s progress may be negated or the possibilityof spiritual weakness.

Hunting : If the dreamer kills the game, it is interpreted as acquiring some success. If otherwise, this means the beginning of failure in the dreamer’s efforts.

Getting married: This may mean that the person is married already in the Spirit world and may remain unmarried for ever in the physical world. For the already married person, this could mean a gradual transition to the ancestral world where reunion is a form of marriage.

Being soaked by rain: This is often interpreted as a sign of blessing to the dreamer

Interpreting dreams is generally regarded as a spiritual gift and only those gifted are versed in the art of dream interpretation. Some highly talented Ifa priests sometimes do dream interpretation. The interpretation highlighted above is simply an aggregated one, as the historical or social context or background of the dreamer may provide an additional insight. Serious attention is paid to dream interpretation by the Yoruba people to the extent that people consult spiritualists, herbalists, and diviners for interpretations of their dreams. In many ways, dream interpretation, like divination, requires collaborative decoding by both the dreamer and the interpreter: the former provides additional contexts for his dream while the latter provides paradigms for establishing correlation between a fantastic image and reality, between the world of real signs and the world of metaphors.

The unpredictable nature of dreams and almost lack of control over events in the dream renders for now any scientific mode of dream interpretation unprofitable. Attempts by natural and medical sciences to explain off the dream process as an "incomprehensible or perverse product of an inefficient, poorly oxygenated brain" as Brebbia and Altshuler have once said does not help to account for the puzzling process of dreaming and the manifestation of dream events in the physical world. Therefore, the movement of events and actions from the dream world to the physical world may still have to be explained from the standpoint of cosmic and metaphysical perception of a people or culture. It is the combination of these that account for the Yoruba worldview of dream and dream interpretation.

References

Berger, R.J. (1963) "Experimental Modification of Dream Content by Meaningful Verbal Stimuli in British Journal of Psychology vol 109: 722-740.

Brebbia, D.R. & K. Altshuler. (1965) "Oxygen Consumption Rate and Electroencephalographic Stage of Sleep" in Science Vol 17: 1621.

Ogunremi, O.O. (1983) "Sleep, Dreams and Drug Research: Contributions to Medical Sciences." University of Ilorin Inaugural Lecture Series. University of Ilorin Press