על החלומות, ספר ב ט״זOn Dreams, Book II 16
א׳
1[110] So much for the vision drawn from earth—the vision of the sheaves and the interpretation put upon it. It is now fitting to examine the other, and to see how the rules of dream-interpretation explain it.
ב׳
2[111] He saw, the text says, another dream and told it to his father and brethren, and said “it was as though the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.” And his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream that thou hast dreamt? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to do obeisance to thee on the earth?” And his brothers were angry with him, but his father kept the saying in memory (Gen. 37:9–11).
ג׳
3[112] Well, the students of the upper world tell us that the Zodiac, the largest of the circles of heaven, is formed into constellations out of twelve signs, called zodia or “creatures” from which also it takes its name. The sun and the moon, they say, ever revolve along the circle and pass through each of the signs, though the two do not move at the same speed, but at unequal rates as measured in numbers, the sun taking thirty days and the moon about a twelfth of that time, that is two and a half days.
ד׳
4[113] He then who saw that heavensent vision dreamt that the eleven stars made him obeisance, thus classing himself as the twelfth to complete the circle of the zodiac.
ה׳
5[114] Now, I remember once hearing a man who had applied himself to the study in no careless or indolent manner say that it is not only men who have a mad craving for glory, but the stars too have rivalry for precedence and consider it right that the greater should have the lesser for their squires.
ו׳
6[115] How far this is true or mere idle talk is a question I must leave to the investigators of the upper world.
ז׳
7But we say that the lover of ill-considered aims, irrational contentions and vainglory is always puffed up by folly and claims to exalt himself not only above men but above the world of nature,
ח׳
8[116] and thinks that all things have come into being for his sake and that they must each of them, earth, water, air, heaven, pay their tribute to him as king. And so extreme is the stupidity under which he labours that he has not the reasoning power to see what even a brainless child could understand, that no craftsman makes the whole for the sake of the part, but rather the part for the sake of the whole, and that a man is a part of the all, so that as he has come into being to help to complete the universe it would be only right for him to subscribe his contribution to it.