Oneiromancy

Oneiromancy is the art of drawing omens or lessons from dreams. It is attested in ancient Egypt, in Mesopotamia and in the Bible, and in the 2nd century the Greek writer Artemidorus of Daldis devoted a treatise to it, the Oneirocritica, which has inspired dream books down to the present day. It differs from psychoanalytic interpretation, which looks in dreams for the expression of the unconscious rather than a glimpse of the future. Dictionaries of dream symbols are its popular legacy.