Dreaming is a culturally important and religiously significant experience in Buddhist Thailand, both in the past and the present. Dreams charged with religious salience are widespread in Thai society and culture, and Thais across the social landscape – men and women, monastics and laity, the wealthy and the impoverished – pay close attention to the possible religious meaning of dreams. Popular mass market guides for interpreting dreams (W. Jinpradit 1996) are prolific and widely available, as are guides written by Buddhist authorities (Phra Maha Cho Thasaniyo 2003). Thais regularly seek advise about how to interpret their dreams from a variety of religious virtuosos, including monks, nuns, astrologers, spirit mediums, and esoteric masters.
Past karmic fates and entanglements, future fortunes and prognostications, and life-changing insights and revelations are revealed in and through dreams (Quatrich Wales 1983). Deities, spirits and other supernatural entities visit and communicate with Thais in and through dreams. These revealed past fates and future fortunes, these divine declarations and injunctions can, in turn, profoundly guide, redirect and transform Thai religious lives.
The ubiquity of religious dreaming in Buddhist Thailand is widely noted in passing in the scholarly literature. In addition, the important role that dreams can play in validating religious roles, buttressing religious authority, clarifying religious insights, or initiating religious projects is similarly frequently noted in passing by scholars (Maud 2007, Pattana 2012, Preedee 2018). However, until recently religious dreams themselves were rarely a central focus of sustained examination (Stengs 2022; Jackson 2025). The principles and techniques of interpreting dreams religiously have also rarely been carefully unpacked. Likewise, the cultural, social and interpretive work through which dreams help fuel a variety of religious ends has rarely been studied. Only occasionally have scholars richly documented and closely analyzed dreams, their subsequent interpretation and reinterpretation, and their unfolding social and cultural entanglements with pre-existing religious mythologies, vocations, rituals and communities (Lux 1971, Morris 2000).
This laboratory will bring together scholars interested in exploring a variety of previously under analyzed topics and questions related to religious dreaming in Buddhist Thailand.

1. The content and form of Thai religious dreams. Is there a common set of narrative forms, themes, tropes and plots in Thai religious dreams? How is the genre of religious dreams similar to or different from other associated phenomenon within the Thai oneiric space of hypnomantic knowledge, such as meditative visions, possession trance, ecstatic reverie and liberating insights?
2. The interpretation of Thai religious dreams. What shared principles, rules, and techniques of dream interpretation are utilized when Thais seek to understand the religious significance of their dreams? What types of authoritative voices and perspectives are turned to in the interpretation of religious dreams, and to what degree are these authoritative voices collaboratively coordinated in the interpretation of religious dreams? What are the symbolic scripts of authoritative religious dream interpretation, whether textually or performatively enabled? How are the interpretations of religious dreams consolidated, confirmed and authenticated?
3. The social uses of Thai religious dreams. How are religious dreams used to claim, consolidate or increase religious knowledge, expertise, authority, charisma and legitimacy? How are religious dreams used to foster social solidarity, communal belonging, cultural prestige, and social status? What are the wider set of sociocultural dynamics which enable religious dreams to achieve these various religious goals and benefits?
4. The cultural elaboration of Thai religious dreams. How are religious dreams instantiated within the wider material, symbolic, narrative and ritual landscape of Thai religious life? Through what techniques and methods are religious dreams and their interpretations turned into enduring features of Thai religious communities and biographies, as well as the stories and practices which define these communities and biographies?