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You might not think much of your dreams now, and you may not place too much meaning on them, but our ancestors didn't take them so lightly. In fact, in ancient times, dreams were anything but meaningless. As you'll see, there have been many interpretations throughout history, and dreams were once believed to be divine messages, evil illusions, and a reflection of our true, inner desires.

Messages from the Gods...

For much of early human history, dreams were often seen as something sacred. It was once widely believed that the soul left the body in order to experience what it did during the dream state. Even though our ancestors likely experienced the same themes we do whenever they drifted off, they interpreted them deeply, and took them to be prophetic, symbolic, a foretelling of the future. 

In some cultures, such as those in the Greco-Roman world, dreams contained intricate instructions that guided healers. Ancient Greek physician Claudius Galenus, better known as Galen, even performed surgery based on what his dreams had told him. People once slept in temples in hopes they would receive a healing dream or be graced by a divine being, a practice then known as "incubation." One such site was the Temple of Asclepius in Pergamon, which had long been a popular pilgrimage destination since its first sanctuary was founded in 200 BCE. Roman orator Aelius Aristides, for one, was a frequent visitor, and spent years undergoing treatments at the temple.

Dreams guided rulers as well. Nabonidus, King of Babylon, and Thutmose IV, eighth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, both followed their dreams as if the messages from them were commands given by the Gods. The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian poem and one of the world's oldest documents, showed as well that dreams were once thought to be foretelling in nature.

... Or Messages from the Devil?

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It wasn't until around the 16th century that people started interpreting dreams differently. Instead of thinking they were divine messages from the Gods, they believed the opposite—that dreams were illusions sent by the devil. This belief was especially prominent throughout Europe, and Christian churches thought of dreams as sins, and that they shouldn't directly connect them with the Gods without intermediation and confirmation from a priest. Most stayed split between both ideas until the scientific theory of dreams started to rear its head further.

Freud's Interpretation and Looking Inwards

When Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, he was one of the first to see dreams as something less divine and more as reflections of our hidden desires, thoughts, and feelings, a form of wish fulfilment. Despite some of his arguments being disproved over time, his ideas helped spark an entirely new direction of how scientists viewed dreams, and what they meant.

Though we now have a better understanding of what our dreams mean and how they occur, it's still an area full of mystery and interpretation. But here's an interesting thing to note: without science and philosophy to guide our modern understanding of dreams, would we still place so much meaning on them, to the point that we would believe they were sacred and divine?