It has been truthfully observed, that half the life of even the most miserable is as unruffled as that of the most happy of men, for that portion is spent in sleep—in the enjoyment of quiet repose—in peace and in security. A quiet reliance upon Providence, a conscience void of offence, temperance and regularity, every person can command, and these are the only requisites to secure sound and pleasant sleep and pleasant dreams. In these every one has happy moments—and in this life we cannot expect more than transient gleams of sunshine—a mixture of sours and sweets, whose agreeable or distasteful flavor depends much more upon ourselves than is commonly imagined.

Addison, the virtuous and religious Addison; often dwells in his writings upon dreams—published many of his stories as the result of them—sometimes treated of them seriously and earnestly, and at others brought all his powers of ridicule into play to expose their absurdity. “Dreams,” he says, “are an instance of that agility and perfection which is natural to the faculties of the mind, where they are disengaged from the body. The soul is clogged and retarded in her operations when she acts in conjunction with a companion that is so heavy and unwieldy in her motions. But in dreams it is wonderful to observe with what sprightliness and alacrity she exerts herself. The flow of speech makes unpremeditated harangues, or converses readily in languages that they are but little acquainted with. The grave abound in pleasantries, the dull in repartee and points of wit. There is not a more painful action of the mind than invention; yet in dreams it works with that ease and activity that we are not sensible of when the faculty is employed. For instance, I believe every one, some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters, in which case the invention prompts so readily that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the compositions of another.” In another part of the same paper he gives the two following problems: “Supposing a man, always happy in his dreams and miserable in his waking thoughts, and that his life was equally divided between them—whether he would be more happy or miserable? Were a man a king in his dreams and a beggar awake, and dreamed as consequentially, and in continued unbroken schemes, as he thinks when awake—whether he would be in reality a king or a beggar, or rather, whether he would not be both?”

Addison was of opinion that some useful instruction might be derived even from a dream: “Since we have so little time to spare, that none of it may be lost, I see no reason why we should neglect to examine those imaginary scenes we are presented with in sleep, only because they have less reality in them than our waking meditation. A traveler would bring his judgment in question, who should despise the directions of his map for want of real roads in it, because here stands a dot instead of a town, or a cipher instead of a city, and it must be a long day’s journey to travel through two or three inches. Fancy in dreams gives us much such another landscape of life as that does of countries, and though its appearance may seem strangely jumbled together, we may often observe such traces and footsteps of noble thoughts, as, if carefully pursued, might lead us into proper course of action. There is so much rapture and ecstacy in our fancied misery, that though the inactivity of the body has given occasion for calling sleep the image of death, the briskness of the fancy affords us a strong intimation of something within us that can never die.”

Addison, however, could treat with a happy ridicule all those everyday dreams with which most persons are so familiar and gives several cases from imaginary correspondents, some dissatisfied with the non-fulfilment of their nocturnal visions, and others annoyed at being disturbed in the midst of their delightful reveries. “I have received,” says Addison, “numerous complaints from several delicious dreamers, desiring me to invent some method of silencing those noisy slaves, whose occupations lead them to take their early rounds about the city in the morning, doing a deal of mischief and working strange confusion in the affairs of its inhabitants. Several monarchs have done me the honor to acquaint me, how often they have been shook from their respective thrones by the rattling of a coach or by the rumbling of a wheelbarrow; and many private gentlemen, I find, have been bawled out of vast estates by fellows not worth three-pence. A fair lady was just upon the point of being married to a young, rich, handsome, ingenious nobleman, when an impertinent tinker, passing by, forbade the banns; and a hopeful youth, who had been newly advanced to great honor and preferment, was forced by a neighboring cobbler to resign all for an old song. It has been represented to me that those inconsiderate rascals do nothing but go about dissolving of marriages, and spoiling of fortunes, impoverishing rich, and ruining great people, interrupting beauties in the midst of their conquests and generals in the course of their victories; a boisterous peripatetic hardly goes through a street without waking half a dozen kings and princes to open their shops, or clean shoes, frequently transforming sceptres into paring-shovels and proclamations into bills. I have by me a letter from a young statesman, who in five or six hours came to be Emperor of Europe, after which he made war upon the Great Turk, routed him horse and foot, and was crowned lord of the universe in Constantinople; the conclusion of all his successes is that, on the twelfth instant, about seven in the morning, his Imperial Majesty was deposed by a chimney sweeper. On the other hand, I have epistolary testimonies of gratitude from many miserable people, who owe to this clamorous tribe frequent deliverance from great misfortunes. A small coalman, by waking one of these distressed gentlemen, saved him from ten years’ imprisonment; an honest watchman, bidding a loud good-morrow to another, freed him from the notice of many potent enemies and brought all their designs against him to nothing. A certain valetudinarian confesses he has often been cured of a sore throat by the hoarseness of a carman and relieved from a fit of the gout by the sound of old shoes.

“A citizen who is waked by one of these criers, may regard him as a kind of remembrancer, come to admonish him that it is time to return to the circumstances he had overlooked all the night time; to leave off fancying what he is not, and prepare to act suitably to the condition he is really placed in.”

That may be called a dream which proceeds either from the spirit of the phantasy and intellect united together, or by the illustration of the agent intellect above our souls, or by the true revelation of some divine power in a quiet and purified mind; for by this our soul receives true oracles, and abundantly yields prophecies to us; as in dreams we seem both to ask questions and learn to find them out. Also many doubtful things, many policies, many things unknown, unwished for, and never attempted by our minds, are manifested to us in dreams; also the representation of things unknown and unknown places appear to us, and the images of men, both alive and dead; and things to come are foretold, and also which at any time have happened are revealed, which we know not by any report. And these kind of dreams need not any interpretation, as those which belong to divination, not to foreknowledge; and it comes to pass that they who have dreams for the most part understand them not; for, as to have dreams is from the strength of imagination, so to understand them is from the strength of understanding. He, therefore, whose intellect being overwhelmed by too much commerce of the flesh, is in a deep sleep, or his fantastic power or spirit is too dull and unpolished, so that it cannot receive the species and representation which flow from the superior intellect; this man is altogether unfit for the receiving of dreams and prophesying by them. Therefore it is necessary that he who would receive true dreams, should keep a pure, undisturbed and imaginative spirit; and so compass it that it may be made worthy of the knowledge and government by the mind, for such a spirit is most fit for prophesying and is a most clear glass of all images which flow everywhere from all things. When, therefore, we are sound in body, not disturbed in mind, our intellect not made dull by heavy meats and strong drink, not sad through poverty, nor provoked through lust, nor incited by any vice, nor stirred up by wrath or anger, not being irreligiously and profanely inclined, not given to levity, nor lost in drunkenness; but chastely going to bed, fall asleep, then our pure and divine soul being free from all the evils above recited, and separated from all hurtful thoughts, and now freed, by dreaming, is endowed with this divine spirit as an instrument, and receives those beams and representations which are darted down as it were, and shine forth from the divine mind into itself, in a deifying glass. It does more certainly, more clearly and efficaciously, behold all things, than by the vulgar inquiry of the intellect and by the discourse of reason. The divine person instructing the soul, being invited to their society by the opportunity of the nocturnal solitariness, neither will that spirit of genius be wanting to him when he is awake, which rules all our actions. But there are four kinds of true dreams, viz.: the first, matutine, i. e. between sleeping and waking; the second, that which one sees concerning another; the third, that whose interpretation is shown to the same dreamer in the nocturnal vision; and, lastly, that which is related to the same dreamer in the nocturnal vision. But natural things and their own co-mixtures likewise belong unto wise men, and we often use such to receive oracles from a spirit by a dream, which are either by perfumes, unctions, meats, drinks, rings, seals, &c. Now those who are desirous to receive oracles in or through a dream, let them make themselves a ring of the sun or Saturn for this purpose. There are likewise images of dreams, which being put under the head when one goes to sleep, effectually give true dreams of whatever the mind hath before determined, of which as follows:

Thou shalt make an image of the sun, the figure whereof must be a man sleeping upon the bosom of an angel; which thou shalt make when Leo ascends, the sun being in the ninth house in Aries; then you must write upon the figure the name of the effect desired, and in the hand of the angel the name and character of the intelligence of the sun, which is Michael.

Let the same image be made in Virgo ascending, Mercury being fortunate in Aries in the ninth, or Gemini ascending, Mercury being fortunate in the ninth house in Aquarius; and let him be received by Saturn with a fortunate aspect, and let the name of the spirit (which is Raphael) be written upon it. Let the same likewise be made, Libra ascending, Venus being received from Mercury in Gemini in the ninth house, and write upon it the name of the angel of Venus (which is Annael). Again you make the same image, Aquarius ascending, Saturn fortunately possessing the ninth in his exaltation, which is Libra, and let there be written upon it the name of the angel of Saturn, (which is Cassi-al). The same may be made with Cancer ascending, the moon being received by Jupiter and Venus in Pisces, and being fortunately placed in the ninth house, and write upon it the spirit of the moon (which is Gabriel).

There are likewise made rings of dreams of wonderful efficacy, and there are rings of the sun and Saturn, and the constellation of them is when the sun or Saturn ascend in their exaltation in the ninth house of the nativity, and write and engrave upon the rings the name of the sun or Saturn, and by these rules you may know how and by what means to constitute more of yourself. But know this, that such images work nothing (as they are simply images), except they are vivified by a spiritual and celestial virtue and chiefly by the ardent desire and firm intent of the soul of the operator. But who can give a soul to an image, or make a stone, or metal, or clay, or wood, or wax, or paper to live? Certainly no man whatever; for this arcanum doth enter into an artist of a stiff neck; he only hath it who transcends the progress of angels and comes to the very Archtype himself.

He who is desirous of receiving true oracles by dreams, let him abstain from supper, from drink, and be otherwise well disposed, so his brain will be free from turbulent vapors; let him also have his bedchamber fair and clean, exorcised and consecrated, then let him perfume the same with some convenient fumigation, and let him anoint his temples with some efficacious unguent and put a ring of dreams upon his finger; then let him take one of the images we have spoken of and place the same under his head; then let him address himself to sleep, meditating upon that thing which he desires to know. So shall he receive a most certain and undoubted oracle by a dream, when the moon goes through the sign of the ninth revolution of his nativity, and when she is in the ninth sign from the sign of perfection.

This is the way whereby we may obtain all sciences and arts whatever, whether astrology, occult philosophy, physic, &c., or else suddenly and perfectly with a true illumination of our intellect, although all inferior familiar spirits whatsoever conduce to this effect, and sometimes also evil spirits sensibly inform us intrinsically and extrinsically.