ex lux ad cardo [dream]

asmello

New Member

First of all, this is probably not an accurate transcription of the sentence. As tagged, this comes from a dream, so please bear with me and focus on the vocalisation.

I reckon some context should help. I'm a hobbyist lucid dreamer, and sometimes my dreams become extremely vivid and detailed. So even though I usually forget everything soon after I wake up, same as everyone else, sometimes I get to keep interesting fragments.

At one time, I lucid dreamed I was entering a lecture room, constructed from the template of my English classroom plus some generic university features. There were a few people I knew, some I didn't, and they all looked remarkably weary and hopeless. There were a lot of schematics on the blackboard, plenty of physics equations and more than a few cosmological diagrams. I'm not sure if any of it actually made sense, but intuitively I understood that it was some deep research about space, at the galactic scale, based on some new evidence found from faraway observations.

There was an overall, rash, conclusion, partially written over the carefully laid out content, and it was a bleak one. It instantly filled me with dread, and since I was lucid, I knew it was utterly important to remember once I was awake. So I set out to write it down over an empty spot on the blackboard. The theory was that, by writing it down consciously and while under a feeling of urgency, I'd stimulate my memory centre hard enough to commit it to memory.

I managed to write down "ex lux...", before, as it usually happens, my lucidness reached a critical threshold and I woke up. The rest I was able to remember, too, but only fuzzily. The "ex lux" part I'm sure is Latin, and it feels right that the rest should be, too. I'm sure the second part looked and sounded a lot like "ad cado" or "ad cardo". I'm a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, so I have a natural aptitude for Latin-like sounds, and sometimes I can infer a phrase's meaning from analogy with Portuguese, but my actual knowledge is extremely limited.

I appreciate any help at all to get to a meaningful version of this sentence and extract its meaning, and sorry for the lack of concreteness. I hope that this story is at the very least entertaining to you.
 

Pacifica

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Ex means "from/out of" and lux means "light". However, they're ungrammatical put together, because the preposition ex requires a specific inflexion for the word that follows it, the ablative, which in this case would be luce.

Ad means "to" or "towards".

Cado means "I fall".

Cardo means a "hinge/pivot/pole", but is ungrammatical following ad, which would require it to be in the form cardinem (accusative).

My conclusion is: you dream in Google-Translatese or perhaps even Intertranese.
 

asmello

New Member

Thank you, Pacifica, so much! This is very helpful.

I'm not surprised this is completely ungrammatical. By definition most of our analytical brain is unplugged while dreaming, even while lucid dreaming, which is why it is said that you can't read inside a dream. Well, you actually can, but you get stuff like this. And, like I said, I have very little knowledge of Latin to begin with, so there's not much substrate to build from.

Can you give me some examples of sensible constructions of this phrase? Would "ex luce ad cado" be correct, and, if so, how does it translate as a whole?

From light towards... fall?

Does some variation on cado make better sense here? Given the context, I'm tempted to interpret this in reference to a black hole or some form of decay (i.e. falling).

Sorry if I'm abusing your patience, but I find learning this stuff very interesting.
 

Pacifica

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Ex luce ad cado translates to "From light towards I fall", so it doesn't make much sense. "From light towards a fall" could translate to ex luce ad casum/ruinam.
 

asmello

New Member

Ex luce ad cado translates to "From light towards I fall", so it doesn't make much sense. "From light towards a fall" could translate to ex luce ad casum/ruinam.

That's interesting, ex luce ad casum actually feels and sounds remarkably right. Of course I can't claim that it was the original statement in my dream - I know for a fact that what I was writing began with ex lux, but then I was already doing some form of transcription to get that, so who knows what the original writing was.

If you or anyone else think of any other alternative, I'm all ears, but I'm satisfied with this result. Thank you, again! One more annoying mystery solved in my life.
 

Araneus

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I tried to 'get into' lucid dreaming a few years ago. I managed to achieve lucidity a couple of times, but woke up pretty quickly from sheer excitement... My plan was to try to fly in my dream once I became lucid, but annoyingly, that was quite difficult. Gravity was still a thing.

I didn't do anything special to achieve the lucid state at the time, I believe it just came naturally as a result of reading and thinking a good deal about it while awake. Later I just forgot about the whole thing. Have you been using any kind of techniques that you could share? It would be interesting to try it again.
 

Pacifica

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I tried to 'get into' lucid dreaming a few years ago. I managed to achieve lucidity a couple of times, but woke up pretty quickly from sheer excitement...
LOL!
 

asmello

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I Have you been using any kind of techniques that you could share? It would be interesting to try it again.
Not really. I've always had an interesting relationship with dreams; even before I started lucid dreaming I would have dreams in a kind of persistent dream world, which I mapped out over the years. So after I watched Inception I was eager to explore it lucidly.

I read some research on it and, like you, I found that simply going to sleep with lucid dreaming in mind was enough to get started. That backfired at first, though - when I asked myself if I was dreaming, while within the dream, I found it was so detailed and realistic that I decided I wasn't. When I actually woke up I was shocked to realise I'd been mistaken.

A few days after that, when I had mostly given up the endeavor, I accidentally became aware of a dream and was able to implement the usual experiments - I turned the lights on and off, and then summoned a mirror and got through it. The other side was sadly the same, except that as soon as I stepped out my parents appeared and killed me. I later found out that every time I abuse my control over the dream someone ends up attacking me - if I the dream doesn't collapse on its flawed logic and I wake up.

I can't really control when I get to achieve lucidity, and I seldom try anymore, but I've become better at balancing influence and stability. It's like balancing on a rope, you simply improve as you practice. If anything I recommend not to make changes too directly, but to nudge the dream where you want to go.

Ironically, due to lucid dreaming, sometimes my dreams become very life-like and vivid, so much that I find it hard to tell if they're really dreams. The logic is still fragile, but the environments are detailed, sensations are very powerful and none of the usual tests work. One day I dreamed I was talking to a psychoanalyst and he asked me if I thought I was dreaming. After much deliberation and careful observation I answered no. The dream played out for several more minutes and I never figured it out.

So lucid dreaming carries a risk of becoming insane, but it's a very powerful experience. If you want to try again, be careful, but the usual tips should help. Just veer away from using memories - that's a fast track into madness.
 

Araneus

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Sure, I guess that's funny, but finding that you are perfectly conscious within a dream, and thus able to do whatever you want within that dream, and explore the surroundings your subconscious has created, is quite amazing. You do need to stay calm and collected in order not to wake yourself up. At least that was my experience.
 

Araneus

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asmello, thanks a lot for that answer. I'll try to be a bit more mindful about it in the coming days, and see what happens. If I find myself in a lucid dream, I'll focus on remaining calm, and not doing anything drastic. Just look around carefully.

I have for some years had dreams where I am in a very detailed and lifelike 'dreamworld', where different towns and places near to where I live exist, but are all fundamentally different from their real-life counterparts, in that there are streets, houses, buildings, etc. that are not there in real life. Many towns/cities seem larger in this 'dreamworld' than in reality. I don't have such dreams often, but it has happened perhaps once every two months the last five years or so.

Perhaps I could manage to become lucid in one of these dreams, and then explore a bit. That would be extremely interesting. Especially since the places seem to remain unchanged from one dream to another.

I remember that in the few, short lucid dreams I've had, it seemed like my field of vision grew, in a way, in all directions, so that I was able to take in a very large portion of my surroundings at a time. Which was especially astounding considering how detailed and lifelike everything was. Is that something you recognise from your dreams?
 
 

Godmy

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This thread is awesome, because it proves that the world still works behind normal laws of physics, no supernatural, no talking in tongues and people who couldn't talk Latin beforehand, can't miraculously do it in a dream either. (that is not meant as any offense, I'm just put to peace, that's all :D)
 

asmello

New Member

I remember that in the few, short lucid dreams I've had, it seemed like my field of vision grew, in a way, in all directions, so that I was able to take in a very large portion of my surroundings at a time. Which was especially astounding considering how detailed and lifelike everything was. Is that something you recognise from your dreams?

Yes, that's the usual "vivid" experience I mentioned, though there are varying degrees. I'm glad to meet someone who knows what that's like. I've found that when, for whatever reason, I manage to sleep very soundly and deeply, so as to lose touch with my sleeping body, it's like my consciousness transfers over more fully to the dream reality and I experience it more intensely. Since the dream exists entirely inside my mind, I'm able to expand my consciousness and know stuff outside of my point of view. I can force that, to a degree, using lucid control, but I think it works by triggering adrenaline or something like that, so there's an increased risk of waking up and not falling asleep again.

My persistent dreamworld was largely inspired by real places and towns, sometimes mixed and matched in funny ways, but places are indeed much larger and labyrinthine. There's one town in particular which is unlike anywhere I've ever been. It feels like a large first-world city, and I usually attend a university there that I think is inspired by Harvard, but it's got a sort of distinct layout and some very unique landmarks. I'm not sure where to place it in the map, though, since I've never crossed borders into another "zone" from there.

Like I said, however, I don't have a strong control of when I get to experience this. It's actually rare, specially nowadays, because of my accelerated lifestyle. Watching inspiring movies or reading wonderful books helps triggering interesting dreams, and I've had much less of that lately. But also, dreaming used to be an escape from reality, and now that I've gotten a better handle over my life I don't need to resort to it so much. It's still very enjoyable, of course, just not as necessary.
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

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I once had a lucid dream where I was walking along a street in Manhattan, but the cars were driving on the left. So I thought, 'As I'm aware I'm dreaming, I should be able to manipulate this and flip it round.' But I found I couldn't. I don't know what this says about lucid dreaming.
 

asmello

New Member

This thread is awesome, because it proves that the world still works behind normal laws of physics, no supernatural, no talking in tongues and people who couldn't talk Latin beforehand, can't miraculously do it in a dream either. (that is not meant as any offense, I'm just put to peace, that's all :D)

I'm glad! I do believe that dreams can have an eerie forecasting quality to them, but not because of supernatural phenomena but simply because people's brains are very powerful computers and sometimes they find subtle patterns that are too complex to model with our conscious minds. The more people understand that, the better we can research and exploit this quality.

Around the time I had the dream that motivated this thread, there was an overarching theme of pessimism to my dreams, which I attributed at the time to the rise of Hate around the world. Despite the media ridiculing and underestimating him, I was fearful that Trump would get elected, and that later the same pattern would repeat in my country. So I planned my future accordingly. I'm so very glad I did, as everything I thought would happen came to pass. o_O
 
 

Godmy

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I once had a lucid dream where I was walking along a street in Manhattan, but the cars were driving on the left. So I thought, 'As I'm aware I'm dreaming, I should be able to manipulate this and flip it round.' But I found I couldn't. I don't know what this says about lucid dreaming.
Well, the brain is supposed to make a dream as a kind of simulation of situations that haven't happened yet but still could, so you train your reactions beforehand (and not get eaten by a tiger or w/e), so I guess the brain puts some safeguards there against you changing the conditions, hacking the dream. But I learnt that when the dream goes way I don't want to, I often can just close my eyes, revert the time, imagine that some deciding moment happened differently and the dream then slowly adapts to my new idea ; P But it takes some training...
 
 

Matthaeus

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The subconscious truly is underestimated and not yet fully explored! Scientists say that we use, what? 5%, maybe tops 10% of our brains, well who knows what we could unleash if we used the full 100%? Scary to even imagine....
 
 

Godmy

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Scientists say that we use, what? 5%, maybe tops 10% of our brains, well who knows what we could unleash if we used the full 100%? Scary to even imagine....
That 5%-10% brain usage is a science myth. In fact, we use 100%, but not in the same time, since different parts of the brain do different things and you don't all possible tasks simultaneously ever, so in the given time, you don't use more than 5% or 10%, but evolutionary, it would be impossible to evolve 95% of grey matter that is useless, that would be truly a miracle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_the_brain_myth

I had also been buying into this myth for a long long time... and until today new sci-fi movies (Lucy) get created to exploit this [pseudo] concept... :-/
 

Pacifica

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as soon as I stepped out my parents appeared and killed me
Wow, that's interesting!

(And the entire discussion is, too.)
 

asmello

New Member

I had also been buying into this myth for a long long time... and until today new sci-fi movies (Lucy) get created to exploit this [pseudo] concept... :-/

This myth annoys me to no end! Specially since movies pretend it's true and never make any effort to educate people.

It's possible, though, to optimize the way our brain works. Evolution always finds a way, but not necessarily the most efficient. Our knees bend the wrong way and there are blood vessels in front of our retinas (which have to be edited out by our brains). So I'm optimistic that we haven't yet achieved the full potential of our brains. But sadly, like career athletes, whatever we discover we'll probably have to work very hard to get results.
 
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