From elsewhere: Prophetic visions and dreams among the people of the earth
Anthropological ethnographies sometimes postulate that new religious ideas may originate in individual dreams, visions, or madness. An illustration is given of the foundation of the Earth People of Trinidad, for whom dreams may still contain prophetic insight or knowledge. Their oneiric understandings have to be placed against their cultural baseline of village dream theory and the dreamlike visions of the Shouter Baptists. It is argued that the physical conditions of the community's daily life are perhaps conducive to visionary perceptions in a half-waking, half-sleeping state. Copyright 2004 by the Educational Publishing Foundation.