Uploaded March 2020 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Ancient Irish, Welsh and Scottish Celts, Vikings, Greeks, Vedic Hindus and Anglo-Saxons all had secret techniques to get clairvoyant dreams (See the Future) with psychic visions from communicating with the spirits of the dead or with the gods. Very often the skills for receiving such prophetic dream visions were associated with an elite spiritual caste who were also the poets called bards, skalds, scops etc Such dreams could give them poetic inspiration from the spirits of dead poets. The ancient secrets of Celts and Vikings were also related to shamanic practices in which shamans deliberately evoke visions through various techniques such as sleeping on the skin of an animal.
The video specifically looks at an Irish rite known as Imbas forosnai performed by elite seer poets known as Filíd, also the tairbfheis, a rite to determine the High king at the Hill of Tara. In Wales there were the awenyddion and in Scotland they had a pagan rite of prophecy called Taghairm. I also look at several Anglo-Saxon and Norse Icelandic saga sources discussing Ulfhednar, Hammramr, Elves, haunted barrows and seers and compare them with the dreams described by Homer and Pausanias in Ancient Greece.
This channel depends on your support:
Patreon: patreon.com/survivethejive
SubscribeStar: subscribestar.com/survive-the-jive
Telegram: https://t.me/survivethejive
Crypto: bit.ly/3ysmtvk
Music in order:
Braindead collective - thumb piano shuffle
Baxter Jones - in dreams
Chris Zabriskie - what does anybody know about anything
Borg - Death of Winter
Bark Sound Production - Eld
Stark von Oben - Pan
Myling - Dödskult
Xurious - steppe expansion
Stark von Oben - Daijal
Kevin MacLeod - Moorland
Torulf - Freja
Borg - The Choosing Ceremony
Ormgard - Sjálfsforn
Borg - The May Queen enters the Circle
Kevin MacLeod - Dhaka
Gvashnahr - Through the astral void
Vanguard - A Brighter Dawn
Art by Christian Sloan Hall and Veli Nyström
Sources:
Chadwick, N., ‘Dreams in Early European Literature’, in: Carney, James, and David Greene (eds), Celtic studies: essays in memory of Angus Matheson 1912–1962, London: Routledge, 1968. 33–50.
Martin Martin A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1703)
O Rahilly, T. F., ‘Early irish history and mythology’ (Dublin 1946)
Ramos, Eduardo, ‘The Dreams of a Bear: Animal Traditions in the Old Norse-Icelandic Context’ (2014)
https://www.academia.edu/8461445/The_Dreams_of_a_Bear_Animal_Traditions_in_the_Old_Norse-Icelandic_Context
Tendulkar, S. and Dwivedi, R., “Swapna’ in the Indian classics: Mythology or science?” (2010) ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215360
Vaschide and H. Piéron, ‘PROPHETIC DREAMS IN GREEK AND ROMAN ANTIQUITY’ (Oxford : 1901) archive.org/stream/jstor-27899218/27899218_djvu.txt
The Wooing of Emer by Cú Chulainn (Author: [unknown]), p.303 (paragraph 78.) https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T301021/note038.html
00:00 Intro dream sequence
02:29 St. Martin of Tours' vision on the tomb
05:24 Gender and dream visions
07:38 Norse seers
09:51 Celtic seers and barrows
13:19 Norse barrow visions
15:53 Anglo-Saxon barrow beliefs
18:08 Sleeping on skins in Scotland
20:02 Sleeping on skins Ancient Greece
21:01 Indian dreams
22:59 Ancient Greek prophetic dreams
24:40 Ending
Ancient Irish, Welsh and Scottish Celts, Vikings, Greeks, Vedic Hindus and Anglo-Saxons all had secret techniques to get clairvoyant dreams (See the Future) with psychic visions from communicating with the spirits of the dead or with the gods. Very often the skills for receiving such prophetic dream visions were associated with an elite spiritual caste who were also the poets called bards, skalds, scops etc Such dreams could give them poetic inspiration from the spirits of dead poets. The ancient secrets of Celts and Vikings were also related to shamanic practices in which shamans deliberately evoke visions through various techniques such as sleeping on the skin of an animal.
The video specifically looks at an Irish rite known as Imbas forosnai performed by elite seer poets known as Filíd, also the tairbfheis, a rite to determine the High king at the Hill of Tara. In Wales there were the awenyddion and in Scotland they had a pagan rite of prophecy called Taghairm. I also look at several Anglo-Saxon and Norse Icelandic saga sources discussing Ulfhednar, Hammramr, Elves, haunted barrows and seers and compare them with the dreams described by Homer and Pausanias in Ancient Greece.
This channel depends on your support:
Patreon: patreon.com/survivethejive
SubscribeStar: subscribestar.com/survive-the-jive
Telegram: https://t.me/survivethejive
Crypto: bit.ly/3ysmtvk
Music in order:
Braindead collective - thumb piano shuffle
Baxter Jones - in dreams
Chris Zabriskie - what does anybody know about anything
Borg - Death of Winter
Bark Sound Production - Eld
Stark von Oben - Pan
Myling - Dödskult
Xurious - steppe expansion
Stark von Oben - Daijal
Kevin MacLeod - Moorland
Torulf - Freja
Borg - The Choosing Ceremony
Ormgard - Sjálfsforn
Borg - The May Queen enters the Circle
Kevin MacLeod - Dhaka
Gvashnahr - Through the astral void
Vanguard - A Brighter Dawn
Art by Christian Sloan Hall and Veli Nyström
Sources:
Chadwick, N., ‘Dreams in Early European Literature’, in: Carney, James, and David Greene (eds), Celtic studies: essays in memory of Angus Matheson 1912–1962, London: Routledge, 1968. 33–50.
Martin Martin A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1703)
O Rahilly, T. F., ‘Early irish history and mythology’ (Dublin 1946)
Ramos, Eduardo, ‘The Dreams of a Bear: Animal Traditions in the Old Norse-Icelandic Context’ (2014)
https://www.academia.edu/8461445/The_Dreams_of_a_Bear_Animal_Traditions_in_the_Old_Norse-Icelandic_Context
Tendulkar, S. and Dwivedi, R., “Swapna’ in the Indian classics: Mythology or science?” (2010) ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215360
Vaschide and H. Piéron, ‘PROPHETIC DREAMS IN GREEK AND ROMAN ANTIQUITY’ (Oxford : 1901) archive.org/stream/jstor-27899218/27899218_djvu.txt
The Wooing of Emer by Cú Chulainn (Author: [unknown]), p.303 (paragraph 78.) https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T301021/note038.html
00:00 Intro dream sequence
02:29 St. Martin of Tours' vision on the tomb
05:24 Gender and dream visions
07:38 Norse seers
09:51 Celtic seers and barrows
13:19 Norse barrow visions
15:53 Anglo-Saxon barrow beliefs
18:08 Sleeping on skins in Scotland
20:02 Sleeping on skins Ancient Greece
21:01 Indian dreams
22:59 Ancient Greek prophetic dreams
24:40 Ending
