A dream containing a whirlwind would normally be a nightmare. Have you been feeling some powerful prompting lately? Are You afraid of it? Why? Perhaps it wants to lift you out of your accustomed mode of life to a "higher" level of existence. Determine to stay with the nightmarish image the next time it appears in a dream, to take a closer look at the psychic force it symbolizes.

A symbol of ageing and deterioration, rust may mean that you are due or overdue for a rejuvenation spring-cleaning, abandoning of negative attitudes. Something rusty may symbolize some psychic component -instinct, skill, a personality trait

that has "rusted" through neglect and disuse.

Basic Meaning: Symbolizes inner turmoil and confusion.

(1) Strong sudden changes in your life causing disruption in daliy activities.

(2) One is caught in an emotional storm, not staying calm.

{3} Normally a nightmare. Have you been feeling some powerful prompting lately? And are you afraid of it? Why? Perhaps it wants to lift you out of your accustomed mode of life on to a "higher" level of existence. Determine to stay with the nightmarish image the next time it appears in a dream, to take a closer look at the psychic forces it symbolizes.

Reference: Eric Ackroyd

May symbolize some external catastrophe that you see looming over constantly. May cause guilt complex arising from early childhood out of some imagined crime, and causing you to conjure up pictures of future punishment. May symbolize internal, unconscious forces that threaten to destroy the conscious ego -

which would mean a loss of control, psychic chaos.

(1) Is the dragon guarding a treasure, or a cave which might contain treasure? If so, the cave probably represents your unconscious, the treasure represents yourself, the dragon that stands between you and your true self represents the fearsomeness of the unconscious for one who is still afraid of what may be lurking there.

(2) For Jung, the first stage of the individuation process is the conscious ego's heroic struggle to lift itself out of the original all-encompassing unconsciousness and to establish control of unconscious forces. This finds symbolic representation in the legendary dragon-slayer, St George (St George = the ego; the dragon = the unconscious).

(3) The dragon may represent the devouring aspect of (your relationship with) your mother. 'slaying the dragon" may therefore mean putting an end to whatever in your attachment to your mother is detrimental to the process of finding your own psychic individuality. Once the individual has achieved liberation from the "dragon", the feminine side of the manspsyche and the masculine side of the womanspsyche will no longer appear in threatening form, but as an indispensable companion and guide in further stages of self-development.

(4) A dragon may represent the generative power of (Mother) Nature; the unconscious, felt as womb pregnant with new possibilities of life.

(5) A winged dragon may symbolize some kind of transcendence, some passing from "lower" to "higher" level of personal maturity.

(6) A dragon may be a symbol for your sexuality, particularly if it your sexuality - frightens you. Is your fear irrational; or does sexuality threaten to rule your life? In either case, don't kill the "dragon"; if necessary tame it. (In China, "chi" is good, life-giving energy and the channels it runs along are called "dragon-lines", which are said to follow underground water and underground magnetic fields).

{1} Many dreams repeat or allude to childhhood experiences and impressions. Nearly all such dreams have a therapeutic purpose, giving us a clearer view of ourselves, perhaps showing us some attitude or pattern of behaviour that has been with us since childhood, and perhaps, even showing us the original cause of it.

Unfulfilled instinctual desires provide the energy for many of our dreams, and the fact that an instinctive desire remains unfulfilled may be connected with the traumatic experience in childhood. That experience has probably been repressed because it was traumatic - causing guilt, anxiety, fear of punishment. See Repression Your dreams may, therefore, be helping you to uncover the source of these blockages which inhibit the free flow of the natural forces within you.

{2} Recurring dreams may represent soem psychic disturbance or problem that orginated in chilhood. Here are some examples:

Dream of being naked may sometimes represent recollections of, and perhaps longing for, the paradise of childhood when one walked around unclothed without embarrassment. {Sometimes these dreams, as Freud said, express a deisre for someone of the opposite sex to present himself/herself in the nude, and stem from sexual frustration}.

Dreams of flying or falling may derive from childhood enjoyment of swings and see-saws. They may express straightforward yearnings for the remembered joy of childhood, but they may also reflect one's problematic adult life. A problem is not a thing; rather, it is a relationship - for example, a relationship of conflict either between your external circumstances and your inner wishes {in which case the solution consists in either removing yourself from the circumstances or modifying your wishes} or between one part of your psyche and another {in which case the solution is to integrate the part that has been neglected}.

Dreams of failure stem from childhood fears of disapproval from parents. However, the fact that your dreams contain these recollections suggests that you have programmed yourself for anxiety. If so, begin by loving the child that is still within you: reassure it, tell it that everything is all right and that there is no such thing as failure where there is love.

{3} Dreams which contain recollections of yourself as a free and happy child may indicate a desire to find your true self. The child is then a symbol of the complete and permanent inner freedom and joy which are enjoyed only when you have become acquainted with all the forces within you - both conscious and unconscious - and have established harmonious relationships among them.

{4} The child may represent the primitive psyche {see Archetypes}which your conscious ego needs to get acquainted if wholeness is to be achieved. This primitive psyche is the mind of humankind in its infancy, before the development of self-consciousness and reasoning. This original awarenes is stil within us, but buried in the unconscious.

Reference: Eric Ackroyd

(1) A fight may represent conflict in a real-life domestic or work situation.

(2) The conflict may be within you, between opposing forces in the psyche. An obvious candidate is a clash between what you want to do and what you feel you ought to do. In this case, bear in mind that conscience is usually socially constructed and consists of the prohibitions and ideals that were imprinted in your psyche during your early years.

(3) The conflict may be between what we are in fact and what we are potentially. Jung sees conscience as the voice of inner wisdom that will lead us to our true selfhood.

(4) If the conflict is between conscious ego and unconscious, the aggressor in the dream fight will probably represent the part of you that is demanding release from the dungeons of the unconscious. It will not hurt you unless you deny it expression. Identify it, and then welcome it as a talent or energy that can contribute to your well being. Change the conflict into a dialogue, a respectful exchange between your conscious and unconscious. (Is this not the way to handle such situations in our waking lives, instead of aggression?).

Where there is unresolved inner conflict, there is a tendency to project the unconscious protagonist to other people, often with dire consequences in personal relationships.

(5) More specific inner conflicts are those between opposite psychic qualities or forces, such as masculinity and femininity, thinking and feeling.

Reference: Eric Ackroyd

(1) By virtue of its sexual associations, dancing may represent a coming together - courtship - of the masculine (animus) and feminine (anima) side of one's nature. See anima - animus HERE

(2) Joining a dance probably means relating cooperatively with the other person or group. What does that person or group symbolize? It may be some part of you: your hidden self, with its mulitude of emotions, instinctive impulses, ideas, ideals, beliefs/prejudices, attitudes, ambitions, etc.

(3) Perhaps it is the "dance of life". Participating/not participating in the dance would then mean relating harmoniously with Nature (or your unconscious)/being out of step with it. (Dancing clumsily may signify that you are "out of step".)

(4) If the dance is a frenzied solo performance, it may represent some kind of "possession", indicating that some psychic element (unconscious)is threatening to take you over. If this is the case, you need to identify the causes of any compulsive behaviour you observe in yourself; and then to come to terms with it - which will usually mean either making space in your life for some hitherto repressed part of you; or getting rid of (repressed) guilt-feelings; or both.

Dancing may be a sexual symbol, representing sexual intercourse.

Reference: Eric Ackroyd

The 'totality" of the conscious and unconscious life. The mind considered as an organic system reaching all parts of the body and serving to adjust the total organism to the needs or demands of the environment.

The ego, the subject of consciousness, comes into existence as a complex quantity which is constituted partly by the inherited disposition (character constituents) and partly by unconsciously acquired impressions and their attendant phenomena ... Analytical psychology differs from experimental psychology in that ... it is far more concerned with the total manifestation of the psyche as a natural phenomenon - a highly complex structure....Carl Jung

To Jung, the psyche, like the living body, is a self-regulating system

The Swiss psychologist, C. G. Jung, taught that the human mind or psyche is complex and is composed of parts, much like the physical body. He coined the word "complexes" for various unconscious parts of the psyche.

Complexes are the focal and nodal points of psychic life (Jacobi, 1973, p. 37). He also divided the unconscious into two distinct regions, the personal and the collective. "Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of complexes, the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially of archetypes".

In mythology - (Greek: 'soul"), in classical mythology, princess of outstanding beauty who aroused Venus" jealousy and Cupid's love. The fullest version of the tale is that told by the Latin author Apuleius in his Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass). According to Apuleius, the jealous Venus commanded her son Cupid (the god of love) to inspire Psyche with love for the most despicable of men. Instead, Cupid placed Psyche in a remote palace where he could visit her secretly and, by his warning, only in total darkness. One night Psyche lit a lamp and found that the figure at her side was the god of love himself. When a drop of oil from the lamp awakened him, he reproached Psyche and fled. Wandering the earth in search of him, Psyche fell into the hands of Venus, who imposed upon her difficult tasks. Finally, touched by Psyche's repentance, Cupid rescued her, and, at his instigation, Jupiter made her immortal and gave her in marriage to Cupid. The sources of the tale are a number of folk motifs; the handling by Apuleius, however, conveys an allegory of the progress of the Soul guided by Love, which adhered to Psyche in Renaissance literature and art. In Greek folklore the soul was pictured as a butterfly, which is another meaning of the word psyche.

And Childhood Recollections

{1} If the child in your dream is you as a child, the significance of the dream may have to do with a childhood experience. But don't be too ready to understand it this way {see Childhood Recollections at bottom}.

{2} The child may be a symbol of your true self, that which is essentially you and which you are capable of unfolding. That fact that your real self is represented by a child suggests that your true self is a beautiful unspoilt product of Nature; that it is worthy of unreserved love; and that it needs the nourishment of your love if it is to grow and unfold all its loveliness.

{3} If the child has some divine aura {e.g. if it is the Christ-child}, waht is symbolized is as in {2} above. The aura represents the transcendent nature of the self: it is much more than your conscious ego or your present image of yourself; it holds together the opposites that are within you {e.g. conscious and unconscious aspects, "head" - intellect and "heart" - intuitiveness and compassionate giving, extroversion and introversion, masculine and feminine}, and it is your ultimate goal and fulfillment.

{4} The child may represent {the possibility of} a new beginning, a new development in your psyche - a new attitude to life, a new set of values, a new balance of your psychic forces, a new reconcilation of previously conflicting forces. The child in you is the growing-point in you.

{5} There is a child in all of us - our emotional self - that often needs reassurance, to be told that all is well and there is no cause for fear, or anger, or guilt, and that love makes all things good and dissolves all pain. At the same time the child sometimes needs to be chided and corrected if it is eventually to - as it should - grow up.

(1) Personal relationships in dreams are always important. They fall into two categories: first, those that refer to actual awakening life relationships; secondly, those that depict relations between the conscious ego and other parts of the psyche. Meetings with strangers will nearly always belong to the second category: the strangers will parts of your psyche that you have not yet got to know very well. And even where there is no doubt that the dream is asking you to take a serious look at an actual real life relationship, you should bear in mind that the quality of your extrenal relationships may be determined by the way your conscious ego relates - or fails to relate - to the other parts of your psyche. For example, a man who does not acknowledge the feminine side of his own nature may have a very unsatisfactory - perhaps very superficial - relationships with women. In other words, when a dream shows you in a relationship with an actual real-life person, it may be inviting you to look at the relationship with a view to understanding yourself better: How you relate to other people reveals yourself (e.g. are you proecting on to the other person some unacknowldged characteristic of your own?)

Patterns in dreams correspond to patterns in your conscious life, or else - occasionally - a dream may present a pattern for you to follow in your life instead of old patterns. For example, a man may relate in dreams to very feminine women. This may represent an established pattern in his waking life, in which case he is being asked to reassess that pattern in his waking life. Perhaps he is attracted only to very feminine women because he is proecting on to women his own repressed femininity and needs to integrate his anima. On the other hand, a dream of relating to a woman in a very bold and assertive manner may be the unconscious way of telling a man he needs to display his masculinity more.

An antagonistic or belligerent relationship in a dream probably indicates a need to be reconciled with the other, whether the other person is another person or another part of yourself.

In the dream do you control, or want to control, the relationship? Perhaps the dream is a descriptive one simply describing how, in fact, you do behave; in which case, your unconscious is probably asking you to review your situation. Perhaps you need to learn to let go, and trust people more. On the other hand, the dream may be a prescriptive one, telling you what you ought to be doing: perhaps you have been too weak and unassertive in the past. Do you tend to be, in your dreams, a mere observer, watching other people relate? Well, it is a good thing to observe, whether what you are observing is external relationships or internal relations between parts of yourself. But the process of self-discovery may be accelerated if you resolve to participate more in future dreams. Try it. Relating with your shadow may be much more revealing than just looking at it.

(2) There may be an impersonal or spatio-temporal relationships between dream items or between one epsiode of the dream and the next. For example, an earlier dream episode may symbolize whatever is the cause of what is symbolized in the following dream episode. (But do not assume this casual relationship always exists between different parts of a dream). If a person is taller than you (in a dream), this may mean you see that person as superior to yourself. If the person in the dream represents some part of your psche, the meaning would then be that your conscious ego tends to submit to this other psychic component.

Reference: Eric Ackroyd

Basic meaning: Unconscious fears that are repressed and need to be acknowledged

Symbolism in Dreams

The Jung/Freud Approach

Dragon

(1) Is the dragon guarding a treasure, or a cave which might contain treasure? If so, the cave probably represents your unconscious, the treasure represents yourself, the dragon that stands between you and your true self represents the fearsomeness of the unconscious, for one who is still afraid of what may be lurking there. This is a repression of the unconscious contents

(2) For Jung, the first stage of the individuation process is the conscious ego's heroic struggle {the hero/heroine journey of mythology} to lift itself out of the orginal all-encompassing unconsciousness and to establish control of unconscious forces. This finds symbolic representation in the legendary dragon-slayer, St George (St George = the ego; the dragon = the unconscious).

(3) The dragon may represent the devouring aspect of (your relationship with) your mother. 'slaying the dragon" may therefore mean putting an end to whatever in your attachment to your mother is detrimental to the process of finding your own psychic individuality. Once the individual has achieved liberation from the "dragon", the feminine side of the manspsyche and the masculine side of the womanspsyche will no longer appear in threatening form, but as an indispensable companion and guide in further stages of self-development.

(4) A dragon may represent the generative power of (Mother) Nature; the unconscious, felt as womb pregnant with new possibilities of life.

(5) A winged dragon may symbolize some kind of transcendence, some passing from "lower" to "higher" level of personal maturity.

(6) A dragon may be a symbol for your sexuality, particularily if it - your sexuality - frightens you. Is your fear irrationsal; or does sexuality threaten to rule your life? In either case, don't kill the "dragon"; if necessary tame it.

(In China, "chi" is good, life-giving energy and the channels it runs along are called "dragon-lines", which are said to follow underground water and underground magnetic fields).

Source: Eric Ackroyd

One Dream Symbols:

Unity, oneness (conscious and unconscious integrated).

Two Dream Symbols:

The number two may be a symbol for conflict: for example, between two parts of yourself (which may be represented in the dream by yourself Dream Symbols:

the dream ego and an adversary, or by hostile brothers, sisters, twins).

(2) Two may also symbolize a union or partnership: for example, of conscious and unconscious or masculine and feminine elements in the psyche. Such union or partnership is always fruitful and creative. (In Indian philosophy one is an arid number; two male and female can create. A Hindu god is always represented as two-in-one, a union of male and female).

Three Dream Symbols:

The number three may symbolize completeness and fulfillment; or anything that may contribute to your personal fulfillment for example, the resolving of conflict between two opposing psychic forces.

(2) Jung says three may signify that something is nearly but not quite complete; or that what is lacking in you can be supplied only by some part of your unconscious elf that you find too frightening to acknowledge and use (Even God, he says, is not quite complete without the Devil).

Four Dream Symbols:

Wholeness; the completely integrated human psyche.

Five Dream Symbols:

Five is a number for change (being the next number after four, five is starting over again).

Six Dream Symbols:

May be number for completeness. Six is a multiple of three (same as three). (2) May symbolize conflict.

Seven Dream Symbols:

is also a number for completeness.

(2) The number seven may also signal time for change as in the 'seven year itch".

(3) Sixes and sevens, of course may symbolize conflict.

Eight Dream Symbols:

has the same significance as four, of which it is a multiple: wholeness; the completely integrated human psyche.

(2) It also symbolizes infinity or eternity; or the endless cycle of death and rebirth.

Nine Dream Symbols:

The number nine is a symbol of completeness, may represent personal fulfillment (in Greek mythology the number nine symbolizes the Goddess, the highest personal fulfillment of the feminine psyche).

Ten Dream Symbols:

one and zero; the same as one.{see 432 for more info on the number nine}

All other numbers are either a multiple of numbers already listed, therefore, having the same meaning, or, can be added together to get a number already listed (example, 117 = nine). Look at the personal significance of any number in a dream for its relationship.

The story of the crow determining the number of people entering and leaving a barn is a possible link to the origin of numbers within the psyche of all of Nature's life. The crow (which the farmer wanted to get rid of and which had taken up residence in his barn) could recognize the number of people entering and leaving the barn and knew when all were gone and could re-enter the barn safely. He could do this up to the number of four people. After that, the fifth and beyond, he saw as "many" and when five went into the barn and only four left, he could not determine beyond the number four, thus the fifth person did him in.