The Power of Stones and the Meaning of Dreams

About this book

Which stone was said to guard its wearer from enemies? Which to win love, a great lord’s favour, victory or wealth? And what did people of the twelfth century think it meant to dream of birds, gold, a wedding or a lost tooth? This book answers both questions from one old manuscript: the Book of Stones by Marbod of Rennes and the Dream Book of Daniel, copied by monks at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury and kept today at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (MS 466). Translated in full into clear modern English.

Marbod, a bishop and poet (about 1035–1123), put an old story into Latin verse: the legendary Arabian king Evax sent the emperor Nero a book on the nature, colours and power of gems. Sixty stones follow, one after another: diamond, magnet, emerald, sapphire, carnelian, coral and the rest, each with what the Middle Ages believed about it. Some guard the wearer or the house. Some win love and goodwill. Some give victory, honour and wealth, and some, it was said, open the future to a person who holds them. The Dream Book of Daniel is a table in the scribe’s own order: the dream on one side, its meaning on the other, 143 entries in all.

Near the end of the Book of Stones the scribe wrote a few words in a simple cipher, each vowel replaced by the next letter. Nine of them are here, and the notes tell you what they say.

Translated into modern English by BlusaBooks, directly from the pages of the manuscript; the text is in the public domain. Marbod’s verse is rendered as prose, verse by verse, and nothing is left out. The beliefs of the period are kept as the scribe wrote them, and our explanations stand only in the notes at the foot of the page. No manuscript images are reproduced.

What is inside

• The complete Book of Stones: 60 gems, from the prologue to the final lines.
• The complete Dream Book of Daniel: 143 dreams and their meanings, in the scribe’s order.
• A foreword on the manuscript, its authors and how the book was translated.
• 77 notes on strange stones, places and words.
• Nine words the scribe hid in cipher, and their decipherment.
• A commentary in plain words: what the stones and dreams promised, by wish (protection, love, victory, wealth, the future).
• PDF, A5 page size (148 × 210 mm), 44 pages, readable on phone, tablet and computer.

Who it is for

Readers of medieval lapidaries and gem lore, of dream dictionaries and old dream books, of grimoires, folklore and the history of magic, and anyone who has wondered what a stone or a dream was believed to mean long before our time.

A historical source: the book gives a twelfth-century text and what historians know about it. It shares old knowledge and promises no results. What it says about stones and illness is a medieval belief, not medical advice, and dream meanings are those of the Middle Ages. Digital PDF, delivered for download after payment.