Hervey de Saint-Denys was a French aristocrat who in 1867 published a book called “Les Rêves et les moyens de les diriger” (“Dreams and how to guide them”). I have just finished reading it and thought I’d write a few words. My edition, in French, is almost 400 pages long. An English translation exists.
I was a bit disappointed. The French have a way of saying in a paragraph what could be said in a sentence. This is too often the case here, where elaborate speculation too often overwhelms the reader when one or two practical examples would suffice.
Despite the title, there is no or very little guidance about how to get lucid. The author seemed to have a natural ability for this, which he felt was simply brought on by keeping a dream journal. Most of his lucids seem to be DILDs. He never mentions anything that could count as a WILD.
In fact, the issue of lucidity and lucid dreams don’t take up that much room in the book: more attention is given to speculation on the nature of dreams, if we dream throughout the night, why it’s so difficult to remember dreams... It’s interesting to read intelligent speculation on these subjects dating from 1867, but advances in the 20th century now mean that a lot of these questions have been re-formulated.
The term “lucid dream” is often attributed to Frederick van Eeden in 1913. However, Saint-Denys clearly uses the term “rêves lucides” several times (part III, chapter II), so it seems to have been the Frenchman who actually coined the term.
In conclusion I’d say that if you are seriously putting together a collection of books on lucid dreams, “Dreams and how to guide them” should be a part of it (even if you don’t read the whole thing but just dip in here and there). If not, all the basics you need to know are in EWOLD.
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