Dream Symbols

Water, weather and the elements in dreams

Water is the most universal dream symbol there is, and for Jung it stood for the unconscious itself: the vast, dark, life-giving element beneath the small dry island of the ego. Its state is the message. Calm water is a psyche at rest; deep water is depth the dreamer has not yet explored; a rising tide, rain that will not stop, or a storm breaking overhead is feeling arriving faster than it can be held.

The ocean is water without a far shore, emotion and the unconscious at their largest scale, with the moon above it as the oldest image of the psyche's cycles and of the feminine, reflective, receptive side of things. Rain is gentler: release, cleansing, grief that is finally being allowed to fall. A storm gathers the whole theme into one image of inner weather, and is often the dream's way of saying that a pressure has built past the point of containment.

These dreams reward attention to the dreamer's position. Standing on the shore, swimming, sinking, watching from a window: each is a different relationship to what is welling up.