Gates of horn and ivory  

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The gates of horn and ivory are a literary image used to distinguish true dreams (corresponding to factual occurrences) from false. The phrase originated in the Greek language, in which the word for "horn" is similar to that for "fulfill" and the word for "ivory" is similar to that for "deceive". On the basis of that play on words, true dreams are spoken of as coming through the gates of horn, false dreams as coming through those of ivory.

English writing

The gates of horn and ivory appear in the following notable English written works:

• David Gemmell's epic novel "Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow", chapter sixteen. This is referenced when Odysseus talks to Xander about his vision of the future, and what his wife Penelope had taught him about dreams and their gates in the past on page 268.
• Edmund Spenser's epic poem "The Faery Queene" (1590, English) in book 1, stanzas XL and XLIV, in reference to a false dream being brought to the hero (Prince Arthur/the Knight of the Red Crosse).
• Alexander Pope's mock-epic The Dunciad (1743), in Book III: "And thro' the Iv'ry Gate the Vision flies."
• E. R. Eddison's romance The Worm Ouroboros (1922), in Chapter 2: "...belike the dream was a true dream, sent thee through the gate of horn".
• E. M. Forster's short story The Other Side of the Hedge. The reference from Forster comes when the main character of the story observes the two gates; The Other Side of the Hedge is usually read as a metaphor of death and Heaven.
• A. A. Milne's three-act play "The Ivory Door" is a condemnation of religious dogma and false belief.
• T.S. Eliot's poem "Sweeney Among the Nightingales". The line "And Sweeney guards the horned gate" is likewise a reference to this image.
• Eliot's poem Ash-Wednesday. The lines "And the blind eye creates / The empty forms between the ivory gates" similarly refer to this concept.
• William Empson's poem 'Letter III': '...offspring of Heaven first born, | Earth's terra firma, the Hell-Gate of Horn'
• H. P. Lovecraft's short story "Celephaïs" alludes to the gates of ivory as the portal through which children see the world of wonder, which their adult minds, made wise and unhappy by knowledge of the real world, will reject as fanciful.
• Ursula K. Le Guin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea
• Robert Holdstock's novel Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn. In the Holdstock novel, the main character grapples with a traumatic event that has two very different manifestations, one true and one false.
• Derek Mahon's poem "Homage to Malcolm Lowry". "Lighting-blind, you, tempest-torn / At the poles of our condition, did not confuse / The Gates of Ivory with the Gates of Horn."
• Margaret Drabble's novel The Gates of Ivory
• W.H. Auden's poem "Horae Canonicae"
• Seamus Heaney's poem "To a Dutch Potter in Ireland" in The Spirit Level (poetry): "Then I entered a strongroom of vocabulary / Where words like urns that had come through the fire / Stood in their bone-dry alcoves next a kiln // And came away changed, like the guard who'd seen / The stone move in a diamond-blaze of air / Or the gates of horn behind the gates of clay."
• Lord Dunsany's poem "The Gate of Horn" appears in his 1940 book "War Poems". It is about his leaving his native Ireland and its false dream of neutrality in WW2 to volunteer in Kent to fight the Germans if they invade, and the hope of a true dream of victory.
• The Ivory Gate, a novel by Walter Besant, describing a solicitor with a split personality. The utopian thoughts of his alter ego are said to occur "before the Ivory Gate".
• Frank Bidart's long poem, "The First Hour of the Night" makes use of both the gates of ivory and horn to question certainty in fact and memory.
• The gates are also depicted as part of the Dream world in the graphic novel "The Sandman" by Neil Gaiman

Music

• American progressive metal band Fates Warning's The Ivory Gate of Dreams, a 22-minute-long song on their album No Exit (1988).
• In 2015, Canadian melodic death metal/metalcore band The Agonist released the video for the song called "Gates of Horn and Ivory", as the first single from their upcoming record Eye of Providence.