Gates of Horn and Ivory

In Book 19 of the odyssey, Penelope narrates her dream of the twenty geese slaughtered by the eagle, and then — before Odysseus (still in disguise) can interpret it for her — she introduces the distinction that will govern the Western tradition of dream theory for two and a half millennia. “My friend, dreams are things hard to interpret, hopeless to puzzle out, and people find that not all of them end in anything. There are two gates through which the insubstantial dreams issue” (Od. 19.560 ff., Lattimore 2009). True dreams come through the gate of horn; false dreams through the gate of ivory.

The distinction is load-bearing not because it resolves the interpretive problem but because it names it. The Odyssey does not promise that every dream speaks truth; it insists that dreams differ, that some speak and others deceive, and that the discernment between them is the work of the dreamer and the reader of dreams together. This is precisely the discernment that carl-jung and his lineage will elaborate as the prospective versus reductive function of dreams, and that the ancient incubation traditions at Asklepian sanctuaries will ritualize.

The gates of horn and ivory stand at the origin of the depth tradition’s confidence that the soul speaks in image, and that the image requires — and rewards — disciplined reading.

Relationships

• odyssey
• active-imagination
• synchronicity
• mundus-imaginalis
• epiphany

Primary sources

• odyssey (Homer, Book 19)