St Augustine
Moving forward around 750 years to 415 CE, we come to the first description of the content of a lucid dream. St Augustine (354 – 430 CE) recorded two dreams of one of his patients; the Roman physician, Gennadius.
In the first dream a guide appears, and then on the following night the guide returns and Gennadius recognizes him. When questioned, the guide tells him that they met in his dream from the previous night, and that he is again dreaming, and that this is what it is like after death.
The Dark Ages
Lucid dreaming largely disappeared from Europe during the medieval dark ages, as Christian doctrine and practices were often suspicious of dreams culminating in Thomas Aquinas’ declaration that dreams were temptations sent by demons.
People would certainly still be having lucid dreams during this time but to openly talk about them or worse write down those experiences would have drawn the wrath of the church.
This dogmatic attitude that dreams were something irrelevant to be ignored, persisted for over 800 years, and is one of the main reasons why dreams are largely still dismissed as irrelevant in western cultures today.
Renaissance & The Age of Enlightenment
The explosion of new thought, culture and scientific development brought about by the Renaissance revived interest in lucid dreams.
Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) one of most famous figures in western philosophy kept a journal of his dreams and lucid experiences in his notebook Olympica. Although it seems these were his private writings and were not published at the time, possibly as they conflicted with his rationalist philosophy.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) was a renowned lucid dreamer of the Renaissance, and can be credited with the first recorded use of lucid dreams to do productive work and carry it over into the real world. In his Religio Medici he tells us “in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests and laugh my self awake at the conceits thereof”.
Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703) also mentions a moment of lucidity in his famous diary. On his entry of 15 August 1665 he records a dream; “that I had my Lady Castlemayne in my arms and was admitted to use all the dalliance I desired with her, and then dreamt that this could not be awake, but that it was only a dream”.
Later Thomas Reid (1710 – 1796) spoke of using lucid dreams to control nightmares of being pursued over the edge of a cliff by a wild beast.
“I thought it was worth trying whether it was possible to recollect that it was all a dream, and that I was in no real danger. I often went to sleep with my mind as strongly impressed as I could with this thought, that I never in my lifetime was in any real danger, and that every right I had was a dream. After many fruitless endeavours to recollect this when the danger appeared, I effected it at last, and have often, when I was sliding over a precipice into the abyss, recollected that it was all a dream, and boldly jumped down”