How ancient China classified dreams: the six and the ten
More than two thousand years ago, Chinese texts were already sorting dreams into kinds. The Rites of Zhou named six, Wang Fu of the Eastern Han named ten, and the Huangdi Neijing linked some dreams to the state of the body. These schemes explain where a dream comes from; they do not judge it lucky or unlucky.
The six dreams of the Rites of Zhou
The Rites of Zhou (“Officer of Dream Divination”) lists: ordinary dreams (正梦), startling dreams (噩梦), dreams of longing (思梦), waking-thought dreams (寤梦), joyful dreams (喜梦) and fearful dreams (惧梦).
The Eastern Han commentator Zheng Xuan explains each. An ordinary dream comes when nothing has stirred the mind and one dreams peacefully on one's own. A startling dream comes from shock. A dream of longing carries what one was thinking about while awake; a waking-thought dream carries what one talked about while awake. Joyful and fearful dreams come from joy and fear.
Wang Fu's ten kinds
In the Qianfu Lun, Wang Fu lists ten kinds of dreams: literal, symbolic, spirit-born, thought-born, person-dependent, externally triggered, seasonal, reversed in meaning, illness-born and temperament-born.
In other words, ancient writers themselves accepted that not every dream comes true as it appears: some mean the opposite, and some simply come from illness or worry.
The Huangdi Neijing: dreams and the body
The Lingshu chapter “Yinxie Fameng” ties some dreams to the body: when yin energy is in excess one dreams of wading through great water in fear; when yang is in excess, of great fire; when energy gathers in the upper body, of flying, and in the lower body, of falling; when very hungry, of taking things, and when overfull, of giving things away. This is classical Chinese medicine, not a modern diagnosis, but it shows how early people thought the body could shape dreams.
The Liezi: what we think by day
The Liezi says that what the spirit meets becomes a dream and what the body meets becomes an event, so what we think by day and dream by night are both things spirit and body have met. It lines up with the modern finding that dreams continue our waking concerns.
How DreamSeer uses these schemes
When we read a dream, we first look for a matching line in Zhou Gong's Book of Dreams. If no line matches directly, we explain which of the six or ten kinds the dream belongs to and why, rather than inventing a lucky or unlucky verdict.
Related dreams
References
- 《周礼·春官·占梦》及郑玄注
- 王符《潜夫论·梦列》
- 《黄帝内经·灵枢·淫邪发梦》
- 《列子·周穆王》
For entertainment only. Not medical or psychological advice. If nightmares trouble you for a long time, please talk to a professional.
Updated: 2026-10-09