{"id":3356,"date":"2011-10-27T08:57:15","date_gmt":"2011-10-27T12:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2011-10-26T05:11:26","modified_gmt":"2011-10-26T09:11:26","slug":"the-beautiful-dream-spy-of-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/the-beautiful-dream-spy-of-madrid.html","title":{"rendered":"The beautiful dream spy of Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Self-portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola, court painter of Philip II<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Lucrecia de Le\u00f3n was a guest of the Spanish Inquisition, one of the investigators told her, \u201cYou are so beautiful a dead man would rise up and make you pregnant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since women are absent from so much of the history written by men, it is remarkable that \u2013 thanks in part to the Spanish Inquisition \u2013 the record of no fewer than 415 dreams of a young doncella<\/em>\u00a0(lady of high birth) of Madrid have survived from the time of the Spanish Armada. They were transcribed between 1587 and 1590, by clerics who listened to her accounts of her night adventures while an armed courier waited in the street ready to gallop to the holy city of Toledo to carry the latest dream installment to the head of the powerful Mendoza clan, second only to the Habsburgs in Spain. One of the priests who wrote down her dreams was terrified when she gave him an exact description of his cell and what he had been doing there during the night, proof of her powers as a vidente<\/em> (seer) who made astral journeys during the night, sometimes guided by a dream figure who held a lion by a leash.<\/p>\n

The reason Lucrecia\u2019s dreams were so prized was that she had a gift for seeing the future and discovering what was going on behind closed doors, in the royal palace or the house of Sir Francis Drake in England. Her dreams were exploited as sources of military intelligence and as political propaganda, in a time when dream visions were still greatly respected. Some of them were painted; others were performed as theatre for high society in the town house of a dowager duchess who may also have been an English agent. Lucrecia\u2019s story is a fascinating chapter in the history of women as well as the history of dreaming.<\/p>\n

She was not arrested or tried as a witch; she was locked up because her dreams – often very unflattering to Philip II – were being used as political propaganda against the king. She was quietly released from captivity, and vanishes from the records. Her fuller story is told in my Secret History of Dreaming<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Lucrecia de Le\u00f3n was a guest of the Spanish Inquisition, one of the investigators told her, \u201cYou are so beautiful a dead man would rise up and make you pregnant.\u201d Since women are absent from so much of the history written by men, it is remarkable that \u2013 thanks in part to the Spanish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,20,30],"tags":[645,646,647,648],"class_list":["post-3356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dreams","category-history-of-dreaming","category-precognition","tag-lucrecia-de-leon","tag-philip-ii","tag-spanish-armada","tag-spanish-dreams"],"yoast_head":"\nThe beautiful dream spy of Madrid - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/the-beautiful-dream-spy-of-madrid.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The beautiful dream spy of Madrid - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When Lucrecia de Le\u00f3n was a guest of the Spanish Inquisition, one of the investigators told her, \u201cYou are so beautiful a dead man would rise up and make you pregnant.\u201d Since women are absent from so much of the history written by men, it is remarkable that \u2013 thanks in part to the Spanish…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/the-beautiful-dream-spy-of-madrid.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-10-27T12:57:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-10-26T09:11:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2011\/10\/Sofonisba_Anguissola_79-231x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The beautiful dream spy of Madrid - Dream Gates","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/the-beautiful-dream-spy-of-madrid.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The beautiful dream spy of Madrid - Dream Gates","og_description":"When Lucrecia de Le\u00f3n was a guest of the Spanish Inquisition, one of the investigators told her, \u201cYou are so beautiful a dead man would rise up and make you pregnant.\u201d Since women are absent from so much of the history written by men, it is remarkable that \u2013 thanks in part to the Spanish…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/the-beautiful-dream-spy-of-madrid.html","og_site_name":"Dream Gates","article_published_time":"2011-10-27T12:57:15+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-10-26T09:11:26+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2011\/10\/Sofonisba_Anguissola_79-231x300.jpg"}],"author":"Robert Moss","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/the-beautiful-dream-spy-of-madrid.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/the-beautiful-dream-spy-of-madrid.html","name":"The beautiful dream spy of Madrid - 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Robert Moss","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/#\/schema\/person\/941740e4115cce34706832d06aa76b6b","name":"Robert Moss","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/777\/7770e3a2cde4458084d9a31237336b92x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/777\/7770e3a2cde4458084d9a31237336b92x96.jpg","caption":"Robert Moss"},"description":"Robert Moss describes himself as a dream teacher, on a path for which there has been no career track in our culture. He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3356"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3459,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions\/3459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}