Lucius’ Lucid Dream
Book 11 of the Metamorphoses and Religious Conversion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.v1i2.16722Keywords:
altered states of consciousness, Apuleius, conversion, lucid dreamingAbstract
In Book 11 of Apuleius’ novel Metamorphoses the protagonist, Lucius, transformed into an ass due to misusage of witchcraft encounters Isis through a dream while sleeping at a remote beach in central Greece. This incident results in the retransformation of Lucius into a man and his subsequent dedication to Isis. However, the information we have from the text regarding both what preceded and followed Lucius’ dream suggest that, instead of arguing that Lucius had a mystical experience that led to his conversion, it could be well argued that what he experienced was a lucid dream, i.e., an altered state of consciousness. This article suggests that such alterations of human consciousness may lead to religious conversion when the subject that has such experiences believes that supernatural agents may provide a solution to her/his problems.
References
Blackmore, S. 1991. “Lucid Dreaming: Awake in Your Sleep?” The Skeptical Inquire 15(4): 362–70.
Bowersock, G. W. 1994. Fiction as History: Nero to Julian. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press.
Bulkeley, K. 1994. The Wilderness of Dreams: Exploring the Religious Meanings of Dreams in Modern Western Culture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
—2008. Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History. New York and London: New York University Press.
Burkert, W. 1987. Ancient Mystery Cults. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Buxton, R. 2009. Forms of Astonishment: Greek Myths of Metamorphosis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Corrington Paterson, G. 1986. The Divine Man: His Origin and Function in Hellenistic Popular Religion. New York: Peter Lang.
Foster, J. K. 2009. Memory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Freud, S. 2008. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by Joyce Crick. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gollnick, J. 1999. The Religious Dreamworld of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: Recovering a Forgotten Hermeneutic. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Graf, F. 2006. Apollo. London and New York: Routledge.
Graf, P., and D. L. Schachter. 1985. “Implicit and Explicit Memory for New Associations in Normal and Amnesic Subjects”. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory, and Cognition 11: 501–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.11.3.501
Griffiths, J. G. 1975. Apuleius of Madauros: The Isis Book (Metamorphoses, Book XI). Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Harland, P. A. 2011. “Pausing at the Intersection of Religion and Travel”. In Travel and Religion in Antiquity, ed. P. A. Harland. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1–26.
Hobson, J. A. 2002. Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kahan, T. L., and S. LaBerge. 1994. “Lucid Dreaming as Metacognition: Implications for Cognitive Science”. Consciousness and Cognition 3: 246–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ccog.1994.1014
Kahn, D., E. Pace-Schott and J. Allan Hobson. 2002. “Emotion and Cognition: Feeling and Character Identification in Dreaming”. Consciousness and Cognition 11: 34–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ccog.2001.0537
Kenaan, V. L. 2004. “Delusion and Dream in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses”. Classical Antiquity 23(2): 247–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ca.2004.23.2.247
Kilborne, B. 1986. “Dreams”. The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 4, ed. Mircea Eliade. New York: Macmillan, 482–91.
LaBerge, S. 2009. Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life. Boulder, CO: Sounds True Inc.
LaBerge, S., and J. Gackenbach. 1986. “Lucid Dreaming”. In Handbook of States of Consciousness, ed. B. B. Wolman and M. Ullman. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 159–98.
Lincoln, J. S. 2003. The Dream in Native American and Other Primitive Cultures. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Ludwig, A. M. 1969. “Altered States of Consciousness”. In Altered States of Consciousness: A Book of Readings, ed. Charles T. Tart. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 9–22.
Martin, L. H. 1987. Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—1994. “Religion and Dream Theory in Late Antiquity”. In The Notion of “Religion” in Comparative Research: Selected Proceedings of the XIth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Rome 3rd-8th September 1990, ed. U. Bianchi. Rome: «L’ERMA» di Bretschneider, 369–74.
—2005. “Aspects of ‘Religious Experience’ Among the Hellenistic Mystery Religions”. Religion and Theology 12(3-4): 349–69.
Mason, H. J. 1999. “The Metamorphoses of Apuleius and its Greek Sources”. In Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context, ed. H. Hofmann. London and New York: Routledge, 103–12.
Mazzoni, G. A. L., and E. F. Loftus. 1996. “When Dreams Become Reality”. Consciousness and Cognition 5: 442–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ccog.1996.0027
Nock, A. D. 1933. Conversion: The Old and New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Pachis, P. 2000. “Crossing the Boundaries and Initiation in the Hellenistic Mystery Cults”. ?????? 10 (n.s.): 187–220.
—2003. “The Hellenistic Era as an Age of Propaganda: The Case of Isis’ Cult”. In Theoretical Frameworks for the Study of Graeco-Roman Religions, ed. L. H. Martin and P. Pachis. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 97–125.
Pakkanen, P. 1995. “Interpreting Early Hellenistic Religion: A Study Based on the Cult of Isis and the Mystery Cult of Demeter”. PhD dissertation, University of Helsinki.
Perry, B. E. 1926. “An Interpretation of Apuleius’ Metamorphosis”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 57: 238–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/282773
Pilch, J. J. 1995. “The Transfiguration of Jesus: An Experience of Alternate Reality”. In Modelling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its Context, ed. P. F. Esler. London and New York: Routledge, 45–61.
Price, R. F. and D. B. Cohen. 1988. “Lucid Dream Induction. An Empirical Evaluation”. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming, ed. J. Gackenback and S. LaBerge. New York and London: Plenum Press, 105–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0423-5_6
Rambo, L. R. 1993. Understanding Religious Conversion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Relihan, J. C. 2007. Apuleius’ The Golden Ass: Or, A Book of Changes. Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge: Hackett.
Sandy, G. N. 1999. “Apuleius’ Golden Ass. From Miletus to Egypt”. In Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context, ed. H. Hofmann. London and New York: Routledge, 81–102.
Schlam, C. C. 1992. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius: On Making an Ass of Oneself. Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press.
Shumate, N. 1996. Crisis and Conversion in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Smith, S., and J. Watson. 2005. “The Trouble with Autobiography: Cautionary Notes for Narrative Theorists”. In A Companion to Narrative Theory, ed. J. Phelan and P. J. Rabinowitz. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 356–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470996935.ch24
Stromberg, P. 1993. Language and Self-Transformation: A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Strichling, B. L. 2007. Dreaming About the Divine. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Tart, C. 1969. “Introduction”. In Altered States of Consciousness: A Book of Readings, ed. C. Tart. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1–6.
—1988. “From Spontaneous Event to Lucidity. A Review of Attempts to Consciously Control Nocturnal Dreaming”. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming, ed. J. Gackenback and S. LaBerge. New York and London: Plenum Press, 67–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0423-5_5
Tatum, J. 1979. Apuleius and the Golden Ass. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.
Thielman, S. B. 1998. “Reflections on the Role of Religion in the History of Psychiatry”. In Handbook of Religion and Mental Health, ed. H. G. Koenig. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 3–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-012417645-4/50068-7
Turcan, R. 1996. The Cults of the Roman Empire. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell.
Tylor, E. B. 1871. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom, vols. I–II. London: John Murray.
Van Nuffelen, P. 2011. Rethinking the Gods: Philosophical Readings of Religion in the Post-Hellenistic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511997785
Walde, C. 1999. “Dream Interpretation in a Prosperous Age? Artemidorus, the Greek Interpreter of Dreams”. In Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming, ed. D. D. Shulman and G. G. Stroumsa. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 121–42.
White, R. J. 1975. Artemidorus: The Interpretation of Dreams. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press.
Winkler, J. J. 1985. Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’ The Golden Ass. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press.
Witt, R. E. 1971. Isis in the Graeco-Roman World. London: Thames & Hudson.
Bowersock, G. W. 1994. Fiction as History: Nero to Julian. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press.
Bulkeley, K. 1994. The Wilderness of Dreams: Exploring the Religious Meanings of Dreams in Modern Western Culture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
—2008. Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History. New York and London: New York University Press.
Burkert, W. 1987. Ancient Mystery Cults. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Buxton, R. 2009. Forms of Astonishment: Greek Myths of Metamorphosis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Corrington Paterson, G. 1986. The Divine Man: His Origin and Function in Hellenistic Popular Religion. New York: Peter Lang.
Foster, J. K. 2009. Memory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Freud, S. 2008. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by Joyce Crick. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gollnick, J. 1999. The Religious Dreamworld of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: Recovering a Forgotten Hermeneutic. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Graf, F. 2006. Apollo. London and New York: Routledge.
Graf, P., and D. L. Schachter. 1985. “Implicit and Explicit Memory for New Associations in Normal and Amnesic Subjects”. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory, and Cognition 11: 501–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.11.3.501
Griffiths, J. G. 1975. Apuleius of Madauros: The Isis Book (Metamorphoses, Book XI). Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Harland, P. A. 2011. “Pausing at the Intersection of Religion and Travel”. In Travel and Religion in Antiquity, ed. P. A. Harland. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1–26.
Hobson, J. A. 2002. Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kahan, T. L., and S. LaBerge. 1994. “Lucid Dreaming as Metacognition: Implications for Cognitive Science”. Consciousness and Cognition 3: 246–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ccog.1994.1014
Kahn, D., E. Pace-Schott and J. Allan Hobson. 2002. “Emotion and Cognition: Feeling and Character Identification in Dreaming”. Consciousness and Cognition 11: 34–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ccog.2001.0537
Kenaan, V. L. 2004. “Delusion and Dream in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses”. Classical Antiquity 23(2): 247–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ca.2004.23.2.247
Kilborne, B. 1986. “Dreams”. The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 4, ed. Mircea Eliade. New York: Macmillan, 482–91.
LaBerge, S. 2009. Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life. Boulder, CO: Sounds True Inc.
LaBerge, S., and J. Gackenbach. 1986. “Lucid Dreaming”. In Handbook of States of Consciousness, ed. B. B. Wolman and M. Ullman. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 159–98.
Lincoln, J. S. 2003. The Dream in Native American and Other Primitive Cultures. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Ludwig, A. M. 1969. “Altered States of Consciousness”. In Altered States of Consciousness: A Book of Readings, ed. Charles T. Tart. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 9–22.
Martin, L. H. 1987. Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—1994. “Religion and Dream Theory in Late Antiquity”. In The Notion of “Religion” in Comparative Research: Selected Proceedings of the XIth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Rome 3rd-8th September 1990, ed. U. Bianchi. Rome: «L’ERMA» di Bretschneider, 369–74.
—2005. “Aspects of ‘Religious Experience’ Among the Hellenistic Mystery Religions”. Religion and Theology 12(3-4): 349–69.
Mason, H. J. 1999. “The Metamorphoses of Apuleius and its Greek Sources”. In Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context, ed. H. Hofmann. London and New York: Routledge, 103–12.
Mazzoni, G. A. L., and E. F. Loftus. 1996. “When Dreams Become Reality”. Consciousness and Cognition 5: 442–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/ccog.1996.0027
Nock, A. D. 1933. Conversion: The Old and New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Pachis, P. 2000. “Crossing the Boundaries and Initiation in the Hellenistic Mystery Cults”. ?????? 10 (n.s.): 187–220.
—2003. “The Hellenistic Era as an Age of Propaganda: The Case of Isis’ Cult”. In Theoretical Frameworks for the Study of Graeco-Roman Religions, ed. L. H. Martin and P. Pachis. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 97–125.
Pakkanen, P. 1995. “Interpreting Early Hellenistic Religion: A Study Based on the Cult of Isis and the Mystery Cult of Demeter”. PhD dissertation, University of Helsinki.
Perry, B. E. 1926. “An Interpretation of Apuleius’ Metamorphosis”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 57: 238–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/282773
Pilch, J. J. 1995. “The Transfiguration of Jesus: An Experience of Alternate Reality”. In Modelling Early Christianity: Social-Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its Context, ed. P. F. Esler. London and New York: Routledge, 45–61.
Price, R. F. and D. B. Cohen. 1988. “Lucid Dream Induction. An Empirical Evaluation”. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming, ed. J. Gackenback and S. LaBerge. New York and London: Plenum Press, 105–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0423-5_6
Rambo, L. R. 1993. Understanding Religious Conversion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Relihan, J. C. 2007. Apuleius’ The Golden Ass: Or, A Book of Changes. Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge: Hackett.
Sandy, G. N. 1999. “Apuleius’ Golden Ass. From Miletus to Egypt”. In Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context, ed. H. Hofmann. London and New York: Routledge, 81–102.
Schlam, C. C. 1992. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius: On Making an Ass of Oneself. Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press.
Shumate, N. 1996. Crisis and Conversion in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Smith, S., and J. Watson. 2005. “The Trouble with Autobiography: Cautionary Notes for Narrative Theorists”. In A Companion to Narrative Theory, ed. J. Phelan and P. J. Rabinowitz. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 356–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470996935.ch24
Stromberg, P. 1993. Language and Self-Transformation: A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Strichling, B. L. 2007. Dreaming About the Divine. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Tart, C. 1969. “Introduction”. In Altered States of Consciousness: A Book of Readings, ed. C. Tart. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1–6.
—1988. “From Spontaneous Event to Lucidity. A Review of Attempts to Consciously Control Nocturnal Dreaming”. In Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming, ed. J. Gackenback and S. LaBerge. New York and London: Plenum Press, 67–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0423-5_5
Tatum, J. 1979. Apuleius and the Golden Ass. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.
Thielman, S. B. 1998. “Reflections on the Role of Religion in the History of Psychiatry”. In Handbook of Religion and Mental Health, ed. H. G. Koenig. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 3–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-012417645-4/50068-7
Turcan, R. 1996. The Cults of the Roman Empire. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell.
Tylor, E. B. 1871. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom, vols. I–II. London: John Murray.
Van Nuffelen, P. 2011. Rethinking the Gods: Philosophical Readings of Religion in the Post-Hellenistic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511997785
Walde, C. 1999. “Dream Interpretation in a Prosperous Age? Artemidorus, the Greek Interpreter of Dreams”. In Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming, ed. D. D. Shulman and G. G. Stroumsa. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 121–42.
White, R. J. 1975. Artemidorus: The Interpretation of Dreams. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press.
Winkler, J. J. 1985. Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’ The Golden Ass. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press.
Witt, R. E. 1971. Isis in the Graeco-Roman World. London: Thames & Hudson.
Published
2015-04-29
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Roubekas, N. P. (2015). Lucius’ Lucid Dream: Book 11 of the Metamorphoses and Religious Conversion. Journal of Cognitive Historiography, 1(2), 171-185. https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.v1i2.16722
