How we research traditions

What is sourced and what is AI

This distinction is the most important thing on this page, because without it you could reasonably wonder whether we invent meanings.

The tradition pages, symbol pages, glossary and guide articles are written text. They are compiled from existing, publicly available sources on each tradition, edited by hand, and they do not change per visitor. What you read on a symbol page is the same for everyone.

The interpretation of your own dream is AI-generated. A language model reads your dream and applies the frame of the chosen tradition to it. The model is given the description of that tradition so it stays within that frame, but the text you get back is new and applies only to your dream.

In short: the tradition is source material, the application to your dream is machine work. Both are useful, but they are not the same kind of text and it would not be honest to hide that.

Who writes this

Dreamkin is made by one person in the Netherlands, with AI assistance in writing and editing. We are not initiates of Winti, Santería or any other tradition on this site, and we do not pretend otherwise.

That is precisely why this page exists. Honesty about where the text comes from is the only fair foundation for a site describing someone else's tradition.

What we never do

• No ritual instructions: no wasi, no ebbó, no offerings, no spells.
• No statements about which winti, Orisha or force belongs to you. Within every tradition that is determined by people with real knowledge.
• No predictions about illness, death or misfortune. Where a tradition holds such readings, we describe them as what the tradition says.
• No claim that a dream is a message from God, a winti or an ancestor. We describe how a tradition reads an image.

How we attribute sources

Where attribution is uncertain, we say so. Classical dream interpretation is often attributed to Ibn Sirin without qualification, while part of that corpus was compiled and expanded later. We therefore prefer "in the dream literature attributed to Ibn Sirin" over "according to Ibn Sirin".

The same holds for orally transmitted traditions. Winti and Santería differ by family, by line and by region. What we describe is a general reading, not a doctrine.

Every tradition page carries an "About this interpretation" block at the bottom setting out those caveats.

Corrections, and credit

If you practise or study a tradition and see that we have something wrong or skewed, tell us. Corrections from people with practical knowledge take priority over everything else on our list.

Mail hallo@getdreamkin.com. Let us know whether you want to be credited. Where we change a page after someone's input, we say so by name, unless you prefer to stay anonymous.

The traditions on this site

The selection is not arbitrary. We began with traditions living in the Netherlands for which almost no structured dream interpretation exists, Winti and Santería first, and with traditions holding a long dream literature of their own, such as the Islamic.

• Akan — In the Akan tradition of Ghana dreams are a recognised channel between the living, the ancestors and the spirit world. During sleep the sunsum, a person's spirit, is said to travel and meet.
• Buddhist — In Buddhism a dream above all shows the mind itself: what it clings to, what it fears and what it holds on to. The classical texts are sober about prophetic dreams, and the Tibetan tradition even uses the dream as a place of practice.
• Zhou Gong — The Chinese dream tradition is thousands of years old. The best-known dream book, the Zhou Gong Jie Meng, is still consulted today. Many readings are surprisingly favourable and play on sounds: fish means abundance, water stands for wealth.
• Christian — In the Christian tradition dreams appear throughout the Bible as a means of guidance, warning and comfort.
• Hindu — In Hinduism dreaming is a state of consciousness of its own, svapna, which the Upanishads already reflected on. Dreams can arise from the body and the day, but also from karma, from the ancestors or from the divine.
• Islamic — Islamic dream interpretation, ta'bir al-ru'ya, has a tradition over a thousand years old, with Ibn Sirin its best-known name.
• Jewish — In Judaism dreams have a long history, from Jacob's ladder and Joseph's dreams to a whole chapter in the Talmud. A dream counts there as one-sixtieth of prophecy: sometimes meaningful, often simply the thoughts of your own heart.
• Santería — In Santería, also called Regla de Ocha or Lucumí, dreams are read through the energy of the Orishas and the presence of the ancestors.
• Vodou — In Haitian Vodou dreams are one of the main ways the lwa and the ancestors speak with the living. A dream is therefore read not only as symbol, but as a possible visit: who is coming, and what is being asked?
• Wicca — In Wicca and nature-based practice, dreams are read through the elements, the moon's phase and the wheel of the year.
• Winti — Winti is the Surinamese spiritual tradition in which dreams are one of the ways the ancestors and the winti speak to the living.

The app holds more traditions than this site. Those follow here once they have had the same care as the eleven above.

Your dreams

People write things here they tell no one else. So: your dream is not shared, not sold, and not used to train AI models. What you type on this site without an account is not linked to you and not kept.

The privacy policy sets out exactly who can see what, how long it is kept, and how to export or delete everything.