"THE interpretation of dreams," said Sigmund Freud, "is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind." This may well be, but the skill also has its uses in the realm of meteorology. In this context, the earliest practitioner was Joseph, star of West End musicals and the Book of Genesis, who used it to predict the weather.
Pharaoh, you may recall, was troubled at the time by funny dreams: "Methought I saw seven kine come up out of the river," he told Joseph, "exceeding beautiful and full of flesh. But behold there followed these another seven kine so very ill favoured and so lean that I never saw the like in all the land of Egypt, and they devoured the former."
Then the scene changed, and Pharaoh was in a field of wheat and saw seven ears of corn on the same stalk, "all full and fair", and then there appeared another seven, thin and scraggy, smothering the first crop. Joseph, on the basis of this dream, predicted with extraordinary insight that Egypt would experience seven years of full and plenty, followed by seven years of drought and famine.
There are those who say that, even nowadays, our nocturnal weather images can provide us with a blueprint for the future. To dream of rain, for example, is said to foretell the rapid disappearance of one's most pressing troubles of imminent deliverance, as it were, from any "drought" in life. Blue sky, too, is good: it seems it only enters the sleeping minds of those who have great creative potential.
Cloudy skies, on the other hand, are indicative of obstacles in the way of your ambitions - and clouds that obscure the moon are particularly troublesome in this respect since they signify romantic problems. If, however, the sun breaks through the clouds within your dream, it is a sign of happiness to come, and may also mean that you are about to attract the spotlight and be much in the public eye.
To dream of fog denotes confusion. It suggests that the dreamer in his waking hours is somewhat lost, and does not have the foggiest idea what to do. But if a stroke of lightning should appear, it denotes a coming flash of inspiration - a brainwave that will solve whatever problems there may be.
Beware, however, if the lightning hits a tower, or strikes a church, or makes contact with the roof of any building: to dream of these presages arguments, false accusations, and failure in some important undertaking in that order. And if you dream of gales, it suggests anger, family difficulties, obstacles to success, and general woe.