© Kamla-Raj 2016 J Sociology Soc Anth, 7(3): 175-183 (2016) Exploring the Realities of the Unknown: Dreams and their Interpretations Rendani Tshifhumulo University of Venda, Sociology Department, Thohoyandou, Limpopo Province, Box 5050, Thohoyandou, South Africa 0950 Telephone: 015 962 8404, E-mail: <rendani.tshifhumulo2@univen.ac.za> KEYWORDS Figures. Images. Mind. Symbols. Supernatural. Venda Culture ABSTRACT Dreams have been considered important throughout history by most cultures. Dreams are considered prophetic or to have an ominous significance. This paper explores the reality of dreams in prophetic functions within the Tshivenda speaking people in South Africa. Ten students from the School of Human and Social Sciences were interviewed qualitatively on their experiences on dreams and the understanding of interpretations thereof. The researcher was motivated by a dream, which was experienced by a minor in the family and it came to pass within three months. Dreams in this study are categorized into those that emanate from continuous thoughts of a human being and those that are supernatural from divine intervention. The second category is the one that can come to pass, either as it is or as interpreted. INTRODUCTION This paper seeks to construct knowledge on dreams and their social interpretations as relat- ed to Vhavenda speaking people. Dreams are successions of images, emotions, and sensa- tions that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Hall defined dreams as “a succession of images, predominantly visual in quality, which are experienced during a sleep”. A dream, commonly, has one or more scenes, several characters in addition to the dreamer and a sequence of actions and interactions involv- ing a dreamer. It resembles a motion picture of a dramatic production in which a dreamer is both a participant and an observer. Since the events of a dream do not actually take place, the dream- er experiences it as though he was seeing some- thing real (Faraday 1972, from Osore 2011). Os- ore added that dreams have survival value to the human species at its present age. It is as- sumed that dreams can bring out all hidden tal- ents and potentialities one never knew one pos- sesses. One of the great physicists who ever lived got his breakthrough in a dream and a the- ory of relativity was born. Many ancient societies like Egypt and Greece have for years considered a dream as a super- natural communication or an omen of divine in- tervention whose message people with certain powers could unravel. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Calvin Hall spend time studying content analysis of dreams, but it in spite of the univer- sal and common experience of dreaming, its pur- pose and mechanism is still unknown (Menczer 2014). Freud in Gordon (1998) retrieved the dream from the domain of soothsayers and diviners. He looked beyond the physiological descrip- tion as mere bodily and sensory stimuli. Freud recognized the cogent determinants of dreams. He emphasized the significance of dreams as a royal road to knowledge of the unconscious ac- tivities of the mind. He argued that the dream is embedded in the unbroken ‘enhancement’ of the memory material. Freud considered the free as- sociations of the dreamer to be of decisive im- portance. He regarded dreams to be the most important complement of the theory of neuro- ses (Gordon 1998). Gordon (1998) asserts that provided one can remember the dreams, one can have confidence that one is in touch with the subconscious, and if one can associate to them mentally and use amplifications to find their meanings, one is on speaking terms in touch with the unconscious. Objectives Very few scholars throughout the centuries have written about dreams and their interpreta- tion. Among other authors are Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung on whose work psychoanalysis was founded and published in the 1900s. Schon (2003) argued that dreams deserve attention as an aspect of importance. Schon (2003) explained that is should be realized that the interpretation