Religious Dream Imagery in the Light of Cognitive and Evolutionary Theory

Dreams and dreaming are universal human experiences that form notable cultural themes in most folk traditions, traditional societies, and world religions. Scholarly attention has long emphasized the significance of dreams and dreaming in the study of beliefs and practices related to religious phenomena. Indeed, even in the early days of anthropology scholars proposed that dreaming was a primary source of religious belief and practice. By adopting some key observations and tenets of the naturalistic approach of cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion (CESR), this research article uses explanatory models of the salience, recurring structures, and functions of supernatural dreaming. These include imageries of supernatural/human agents, ritual actions, the use of experience, and more broadly, purported cultural transmission (factors) associated with dream representations. The article aims to address (a) lesser-known aspects of the cognition of supernatural agents in religious dreaming; and (b) lesser-known or unknown aspects of dream imagery about ritual interactions. These aims are also related to (c) the context of the cultural transmission factors of dream beliefs more broadly. These topics of religious dreaming are primarily addressed with reference to several research projects among Nepalese Hindus, ranging from pilgrimages to counterintuitive dreams and Covid-19 pandemic dream research.