In this installment of YIPPIE bibliographies, we take a sneak-peek look at an upcoming page that will eventually be on display to the public. As a Patreon supporter, you have access to the page one full year before the public does.

• Patreon Release Date: March 14th, 2024
• Public Release Date: March 14th, 2025.
• Patreon Release Date: April 7th, 2024
• Public Release Date: April 7th, 2025.

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March 14, 2025 Public release.

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April 7, 2025 Public release.

Dream Books for Divination and Playing the Numbers Bibliography is copyright 2024 by the Yronwode Institution for the Preservation and Popularization of Indigenous Ethnomagicology (Y.I.P.P.I.E.), and all rights are reserved. In other words, you may download The Dream Books Bibliography and print it out at home for your own use, but you may not further copy it, because the copyright holder controls the copying rights. Specifically, you may not mirror The Dream Book Bibliography to other web sites, you may not distribute it or publish it in print form (either for money or for free), and you may not electronically distribute it in e-lists, electronic forums, social media groups, or usenet (either for money or for free) without the express written permission of the copyright holder.

Thanks to my Patreon Supporters

This online bibliography began as a once-a week scan-catalogue-and-post project for social media, but moving it to a web site is a permanent way to house and display the collection. The number of dream books shown here will grow, while the stacked plastic containers of dream books on the floor of my bedroom will shrink and be moved aside. to make room for more. I undertook this lengthy task because it gives me a chance to go through my collection and select the books with the prettiest covers for folks to view -- but don't kid yourself that this bibliography will ever be complete. I simply have too many dream books for that.

Compiler's Notes on the Contents of This Bibliography:

Books are listed alphabetically by author's surname, but if an author has more than one title, the books for that author are in chronological order by publication date.

Dream Book Bibliography Part One

Dream Book Bibliography Part Two

For more information on how lucky dream numbers are used for lottery lay, click this link to read a brief article i wrote in 1996 about the game of Policy for "Hoodoo in Theory and Practice" by cat yronwode:

"Policy Players' Dream Books" by cat yronwode

The URL you are reading it at now is TEMPORARY. I will write several more parts to this bibliography for my Patrons on individual pages like this, and these will open to the public after one year, thanks to your kind financial support. I will compile all of the pages into one long page and unveil it to the public, with a new URL, at the Yronwode.org home page.

BOOK TITLES

Myra Moore [Pseudonym] "Myra Moore's Dream Book 1000 Dreams Revealed Presented with Red Letter." D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd., Dundee, Scotland, UK. No date, but distributed on a February 8th, probably 1921 (see below). 28 pages (24 pages with coloured paper wraps, but the interior is numbered 3 through 26). "Red Letter" was a weekly women's story paper that ran from 1899 to 1987. It consisted of a mix of short fiction, serialized novels, true stories, humour, factual articles, columns, and vignettes, mostly uncredited or attributed to pseudonyms and publisher's "house names." The pagination ran continuously through each entire one-year volume. The price of the paper was originally one penny per copy for 28 pages per week, increasing slowly through the years until it reached 6 pence for 32 pages in the 1960s. Various 28 page supplements, such as this dream book and in-depth presentations on non-fiction topics considered of general interest to women, were issued regularly at no extra cost to the subscribers. The unsigned cover features a watercolour painting of a mysterious dark-haired and veiled woman wearing a jewelled metal circlet, gold hoop earrings, and several strands of what appear to be green and brown cat's eye shell or glass anti-evil-eye beads. She stares fixedly, almost hypnotically, at the viewer. Cover 2 presents an unusual exegesis on the general meaning of dreams according to the days of the week. Page 1 (which is numbered page 3) through page 19 (numbered page 21) consist of dream meanings, without lucky numbers. There are nice block headings for each letter of the alphabet containing the letter as a large capital accompanied by a small line-art drawing in the style of a children's alphabet book, illustrating the first word for the letter. Being a Scottish dream book, it comes as no surprise that the letter H is represented by Haggis and the illustration depicts a man dressed in a tartan kilt presenting the Scottish national dish to a group of seated Englishmen in formal back suits who are seated at a dinner table. Pages 20 (numbered page 22) through half of cover 4 present "Your Birthday Dream." This is a list of all 366 days in the year (February 29th is included, for those born on that day) and what steps you should take to ensure having "the happiest dream possible" to wake up from on your personal anniversary. The prescriptions or magical spells are pretty wild: "Wear all night a key tied round your neck with a green ribbon," or "Wear a stocking with three holes in it on your right foot." Someone took a lot of time and had a lot of fun creating these bits of "instant folklore." Also on cover 4 is a half-page advertisement for the next week's issue of "Red Letter," which will contain a free gift booklet titled "Dorothy's Book of Etiquette." Dating this dream book took some research. I went into it knowing only one thing: the paper stock, art style, typesetting, and content pointed to a date before 1925. First, regarding the name "Myra Moore," i found no documentation of a person with that name working as a fortune teller, crystal gazer, card reader, dream interpreter, numerologists, or occultist in England or Scotland during the early 20th century and i assumed the name to be a fabrication. However, given the time period, the name Myra may have come from "The Mysteries of Myra," a huge hit silent film serial about the occult and the supernatural that was released in 15 cliff-hanger cinema chapters throughout 1916. The movie was also novelized as "The Mysteries of Myra" by Eustace Hale Ball, from the screenplay by the famed paranormal investigator Hereward Carrington and the well-known screen-serial author Charles Goddard, and was issued as a newspaper serialization in 1916 to coincide with the ongoing release of the film chapters. The star of "The Mysteries of Myra," was Jean Sothern (1893-1964), and her naturally blonde appearance could best be described as "naive and distressed," as if Mary Pickford or Lillian Gish was suddenly plunged into the Dark Dimension. The film was actually the first occult-horror movie ever made, and the convoluted plot followed Myra Maynard, whose father was an occultist, through a series of "mysteries" that included crystal gazing, hypnotism, mystic mirrors, occult rituals, dream omens, witchcraft, and voodoo. Despite the name "Myra," the unsigned artist's beautiful watercolour rendition of the fictitious Myra Moore on the cover of the dream book shows a dark haired woman who resembles and is clothed similarly to the great silent film star Theda Bara (1885–1955). Bara was a black-haired Jewish woman who, from 1914 to 1919, specialized in playing "darkly exotic" Egyptian, Greek, Spanish, French, Russian, Gypsy, and Vampire types such as Cleopatra, Carmen, Esmerelda, The She-Devil, The Tiger-woman, and Salomé. She starred in 40 full-length films for Fox studios during this five-year period, all but one of which were later lost in a warehouse fire where the reels were stored. All we have left of her large and popular body of work are plot synopses, contemporary reviews, still photos, and a few behind-the-scenes snapshots. In 1915 Bara co-starred in "The Two Orphans" with Jean Sothern, the actress who went on to star in "The Mysteries of Myra" in 1916. The link may be coincidence, but it is worth a smile. In 1917 Bara starred in "The Tiger Woman" as a Russian femme fatale, and she wore a very complex hat with a tassled veil, much like the one in the cover painting of "Myra Moore's Dream Book." The veiled hat was the creation of the London-based international couturier and milliner Lucile (Lucy Duff Gordon), who designed many of Theda Bara's on-screen vamp costumes. Lucile, by the way, specialized in draped cloth gowns of diaphanous layers with low necklines and slit skirts. She was the first designer to hire dress models, call them "mannequins," and have them parade them down what is now known as a fashion catwalk; the models were instructed to remain silent, lest their lower-class accents reveal to the elite dress buyers that they were members of the proletariat. Theda Bara wore this specific veil hat by Lucile in only this one movie, and i am certain that the cover artist was referencing it, which means that "Myra Moore's Dream Book" has to date from 1917 or later, in order for a publicity still to have been clipped from a newspaper or magazine and added to his or her swipe file or image morgue. Because the woman on the "Myra Moore's Dream Book" cover painting is less "Jewish looking" than Theda Bara, she also somewhat resembles Betty Blythe (1895-1972), an Anglo-Saxon Theda Bara impersonator. Blythe's first credited film role was released in 1917. Her natural hair colour was medium blonde, but in 1921 she wore a black wig when she was selected to play the "darkly exotic" title role in "Queen of Sheba." "Queen of Sheba" was originally written as a starring vehicle for the naturally "exotic" Theda Bara, but Bara quit (or was pushed out of) the Fox studio before filming began. Blythe was cast to replace Bara, and she did so by means of semi-successful mimicry. She did not have Bara's dark features, but she was able to more-or-less copy Bara's intense physical mannerisms, in a style i would describe as that of a sexually daring prom queen. She was also clothed in Theda Bara style costumes, like those Lucile had made famous for Bara. Blythe-as-Bara must have worked at the box office, because four years later, Blythe was again made up as a dark-haired vamp, to undertake the equally Bara-esque role of Ayesha in "She" (1925). Bythe did not normally appear as a Theda Bara look-alike, but in those two films, she definitely was costumed, made up, and posed for portraits in the manner of Theda Bara. Based on the name Myra, as well as the Theda Bara and Betty-Blythe-as-Theda-Bara cover image, i preliminarily dated "Myra Moore's Dream Book" to circa 1916-1925, or from Sothern's appearance in "The Mysteries of Myra," through Bara's entire early career, to Blythe's Bara impersonation in "She." The booklet bears no date of issue, but cover 4 carries a half-page advertisement for "Another Gift for You Next Week," namely "Dorothy's Book of Etiquette" to be "Given Free with Red Letter On Sale Tuesday, 15th Feb." Thus we learn that at this time the weekly "Red Letter" magazine had a Tuesday publication date, and since February 15th was "next week," that means that "Myra Moore's Dream Book" was published on February 8th of an unknown year. Assuming that i got the time period right, February 8th and February 15th fell on Tuesdays in 1916, 1921, and 1927. "Myra" and Bara were active in 1916, but the cover artist seems to be copying Bara's tassled veil from "The Tiger Woman" of 1917, Blythe only first impersonated Bara in 1921, and all three women were out of the publics's eye by 1927, so in the end i chose 1921 as the most likely year, based also in part on the use in the booklet of a hand-lettered version of a font called Cooper Black Outline, released in 1919, and the clothing styles on the women in the interior illustrations and back cover, with their slim skirts; sleeveless tops, bulky hats; flat chests; and spit curls. One last note: Myra Moore is actually a fairly common name, and, strangely, its connection to occultism and witchery continues, for even today, more than 100 years after "The Mysteries of Myra" and "Myra Moore's Dream Book," there is a dark-haired ghost hunter with 5 million followers on the internet who goes by the name "Myra Moore, the Paranormal Chic."									"Myra Moore's Dream Book" given free with "Red Letter" magazine; unknown artist Jean Sothern and Howard Estabrook in a publicity still for "The Mysteries of Myra," a film from 1916. Theda Bara in "The Tiger Woman," a film from 1917; in this publicity still she wears the tasseled veil referenced by the artist of "Myra Moore's Dream Book" in an elaborate hat created by the fashion designer and milliner Lucy Duff Gordon, who was professionally known as Lucile. Theda Bara wearing a headpiece of pearls in a publicity still for the 1918 film "Salomé." Betty Blythe impersonating Theda Bara in a publicity still for the 1921 film "Queen of Sheba," complete with pearl headpiece.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to nagasiva yronwode for above-and-beyond scanning and organizational help.