Communication with the Deceased in Dreams: Overcoming the Boundary between This World and the Otherworld or Its Conceptualization Strategy?

Abstract

Starting from the concept of death in contemporary Serbian culture (in the context of thanatological and anthropological studies), the author focuses on the analysis of communication with the deceased in dreams, which is still perceived as an important form of contact with the otherworldly. The analysis of material collected during field research at various locations in Serbia and in Serbian communities in Romania (from 2017 to 2024), supplemented by dream narratives from the internet, has shown that based on the main messages conveyed by the deceased to the living, dreams can be divided into: (1) dreams about “the unappeased deceased” (who lack something in the otherworld, usually due to an omission by the living related to funerary rituals); (2) dreams in which the deceased show the otherworld and provide verbal assessments of it; (3) dreams in which the deceased inform of their departure or final passing into the world of the dead; (4) dreams in which the deceased demonstrate their presence in the world of the living, i.e., providing information pertaining to the sphere of the dreamer’s social reality; (5) dreams in which the deceased convey their messages, advice or warnings to the living; and (6) dreams interpreted as the deceased person’s call to the dreamer to join them in the otherworld. Basic element analysis of the spatial world image, projected via the dream, highlights the importance of the locus perceived as a border space. Dreams about the deceased seem to be ambivalent in this respect, given that, on the one hand, they are perceived as an important means of communication between this world and the otherworld, and on the other hand, through the ideas on which they are founded and that they further transmit, they are also part of the narrative strategies of the boundary between this concept of two worlds.