God of dream

Do any of these work?
http://www.bellaonline.com/subjects/7882.asp

Gods

Gods associated with dreams and dreaming.

Hypnos

[offsite link]
Greek god associated with prophetic dreams.

Lugh

[offsite link]
God of all crafts and arts, including journeys, prophecy and healing.

Somnus

[offsite link]
Information on the Roman Somnus and Greek Hypnos with pictures and prayers.

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ETA: Just realized Lugh/Somnus links don't work but hopefully it'll give you a starting point for further research! AND, FIXED SPACING ISSUES ON PASTED INFORMATION!!!!!! Note, this isn't my information--cut and pasted from link provided above.

*headdesk* Lugh is Irish, not Greek. I have no idea why he would have a connection with prophetic dreams, though. And while I'm certainly not an expert in the field, I was a Celtic Studies major for a year. I know of no Celtic god whose specific portfolio was dreams.

If you want dream gods that aren't Greek, try searching the cultures and mythologies of places like Egypt. I seem to recall seeing reference to Egyptian dream gods while browsing wikipedia, though we all know how reliable that is. You might also try looking into the beliefs of the indigenous peoples of Australia.

- Joe

I can tell you that Ancient Egyptian mythology has no one god responsible for influencing or generating dreams. Dreams were important in Egyptian culture, indicating good or bad things. Dream temples existed for many different gods, the only requirement being faith in that god and a ritual cleansing to attain purity.

Scylding said:

*headdesk* Lugh is Irish, not Greek. I have no idea why he would have a connection with prophetic dreams, though. And while I'm certainly not an expert in the field, I was a Celtic Studies major for a year. I know of no Celtic god whose specific portfolio was dreams.

If you want dream gods that aren't Greek, try searching the cultures and mythologies of places like Egypt. I seem to recall seeing reference to Egyptian dream gods while browsing wikipedia, though we all know how reliable that is. You might also try looking into the beliefs of the indigenous peoples of Australia.

- Joe

Click to expand...

Yeah, I know that--the SPACING* in my quoted excerpt from the website messed up when I pasted. So no need to bash your head.

As a pagan, I only know Lugh as being associated with the pagan festival/holiday Lughnasadh and don't know how he's associated with dreams. The information posted was from an external website after a quick Google search. (Just trying to help!)

I think many deities loosely factor into dreams--or related--but none are as closely or directly associated as Morpheus.

*fixed now...

IN Norse mythology, Huginn & Muninn (Thought & Memory) were the ravens of Odin who flew at night and recalled to Odin what they saw.

Yeah, I know that--the SPACING* in my quoted excerpt from the website messed up when I pasted. So no need to bash your head.

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Yeah, I could have been less sharp about that, couldn't I? I apologize. Kneejerk reaction from a Celtic nerd...who apparently doesn't know Egypt like he'd like to, either. I need to go re-read Gods and Men in Egypt.

- Joe

Baku is a Japanese spirit said to "eat bad dreams", i.e. nightmares thus preventing them. It is also said to ensure that one's first dream in the new year is one of good fortune. More extensive info: http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/baku.html

Inguma appears to be a spirit/god of the Basques that causes nightmares and even kills through dreams.

Zakar seems to be the Babylonian one.

Scylding said:

Yeah, I could have been less sharp about that, couldn't I? I apologize. Kneejerk reaction from a Celtic nerd...who apparently doesn't know Egypt like he'd like to, either. I need to go re-read Gods and Men in Egypt.

- Joe

Click to expand...

Wikipedia indeed has references to certain Egyptian deities being responsible for dreams. This is misleading and not accurate. While one may look to a god for a favorable dream or guidance through a dream, there is not a single one that is directly responsible for shaping them.

So, not your fault.

Dreams were very important to the Egyptians. Though they did not have a specific god controlling dreams, they considered them to be very telling.

I would go ahead and just make something up.

Koreans put tons of importance on dreams. Koreans still believe in "Birth dreams."

I wouldn't say because a culture doesn't have a specific God in the pantheon for dreams that it is not important to that culture. Dreams have been important in many cultures, but the kind of high specialization you're looking for often comes with a long-holding agricultural society.

So I wouldn't jump to conclusions about the correlation between the lack of a God and the importance of what the God represents. It just means that culture hasn't really gotten around to it or that the domain is held by a variety of Gods and not yet parsed into an individual wrapper.

It's the same kind of thinking that goes into people thinking because a word is lacking that people can't tell the difference--which is not true at all. Japanese before the word "Midori" could distinguish between blue and green. Look up the Eskimo incident with "snow" and you'll see a similar kind of misunderstanding.

As I can prove it, look up "Dream Time" and you'll see that culture doesn't have a specific god for it and it's very, very important to their cultural make up.

What is true of if you have a Dream God is that probably that there is a large amount of specialization within the culture. So instead of a God of the Mind or of art, you *need* a God of Dreams. I would expect lots of minute job specialization at that point without the need for a powerful central government. (You get that with industrialization, which has even higher job specialization.)