http://www.shamanism.org/articles/ShamanicTheoryDreams-Harner.html
A CORE SHAMANIC THEORY OF DREAMS
FIRST PRINCIPLE: Spirits are real.
SECOND PRINCIPLE: Spirits produce dreams.
THIRD PRINCIPLE: These spirits have a variety of characteristics, along with different kinds and degrees of power, and differing preoccupations.
FOURTH PRINCIPLE: Spirits producing dreams can be: personal souls; helping spirits, including guardian spirits; or they can be non-helping ones, such as suffer- ing beings or other intrusive spirits.
FIFTH PRINCIPLE: “Bad” dreams or nightmares can be beneficial warnings from one’s soul or helping spirits, or may be manifested by non-helping spirits.
SIXTH PRINCIPLE: Persons of substantial spiritual power tend to be resistant to receiving unsought dreams from non-helping spirits.
SEVENTH PRINCIPLE: Major helping spirits can manifest as Big Dreams and convey important spiritual power and information.
EIGHTH PRINCIPLE: The above principles apply to all kinds of dreams, including sleeping, waking and day dreams, and visions.
NINTH PRINCIPLE: To learn the meaning of their dreams, people can merge with a helping spirit to call back dreams for study, or they can take shamanic journeys to their most important divinatory spirit helpers to obtain information.
TENTH PRINCIPLE: These journeys should include the extensive study of metaphors, especially as they pertain to the meaning of spirit communications and thus to the meaning of dreams.
