Curtain Curtains

The ability to reveal or hide something, such as we do with our feelings or thoughts, perhaps even memories. Curtains can also be part of decorations to beautify, or to separate one area from another. So they can depict privacy, home-making, luxury or poverty depending upon the dream.

Curtains can be used to obscure something and keep privacy. Curtains link with feelings about the end – death. Curtains can be a sign of hiding from your own shortcoming.

Curtains that rise as in a theatre are about revealing things that had been hidden until then, a new start. Such curtains hide the workings of stage life, and when risen usually only reveal a stage set. So they can be a re veiling symbol in dreams.

They might also represent the ability to shut the world out, or to remain withdrawn in sleep, and sometimes the veil between life and death, or sensory impressions and extra sensory impressions. Curtains can also be a hiding place or the means of keeping something hidden.

Example: I crept about obviously and the audience loved it. The piano guy isn’t too happy as he is getting blown up. I realize the play is reaching its finale and I was disappointed that I’d have to take my curtain call in the unflattering guise of a spy and villain instead of the lovely bride.

Example: I was in a room with my aunt and uncle. It was dark outside and there was some kind of air raid going on with glowing missiles flying through the sky. I was terrified and tried to draw the red curtain across the window to block them out. The window was a right angle shaped one in the corner of the room. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t cover the whole window. As fast as I pulled the curtain across, the other end would be exposed, showing the missiles. I was becoming more and more frantic and my aunt and uncle just sat at the table playing cards, completely unperturbed and indifferent to my fear. D. K.

This dream from a girl in her teens clearly shows how she is dealing with her fears concerning the world. Her distress is even more intense because the fears of external threats which appear very real to her are totally ignored by her family. The curtains depict how much she tries to shut these feelings out of her mind, and how unsuccessful this is. The dream is probably dealing with her difficulties in facing life as an adult, and the demands it may place upon her.

Curtains can also be the slight thing that is the separation between the living and the dead. And sometimes it pulls aside or one reaches through it to find a wonderful contact.

Example: I am happily walking down an interminable straight road of small terraced houses. On approaching one in the middle of a terrace, the net curtain is drawn back and a hand continually beckons. It is that of my GRANDMOTHER, dead fifty years ago!

Example: Then I felt a lot about the curtain and realised that it wasn’t a great barrier between life and death, but a very fine  veil which we can even feel each other through – as my mother’s hand was so real and palpable to me. Then I began to really feel my mother’s presence and wept at the strength of it.

I was still holding my mother’s hand and gradually a felt change occurring. I was overwhelmed by the feeling of love and the being of Christ there with me and holding me. He said “I held your hand a long time ago when I made you mine. But I have never let go of you.”

Example: I experienced a powerful subjective imagery of standing before large heavy curtains. It was like dreaming while awake. I moved to the curtains and pulled them apart. This revealed the immensity of a clear night sky, filled with brilliant stars. As I looked at this natural splendour, a star fell to earth, leaving me with a sense that something wonderful had happened that I must go in search of. As occurs in dreams, there was a sudden shift, and I was a herder of flocks, a shepherd, looking for the star that had come to earth. Others were searching too, and when we found what we were looking for, I was astonished to discover it was a baby.

Profoundly felt imagery and feelings flooded my awareness. I realised I was experiencing the New Testament story of the birth. But this did not seem to interfere with the flow of what poured into my feelings. My whole body felt the wonder of the baby and I fell to my knees before it. I knew as if intuitively, that all the cosmos had somehow come alive as this helpless vulnerable child. I was so overwhelmed, all I could say over and over, between sobbing cries was, ‘A baby’ – ‘A baby.

Drawn curtains can represent night, privacy or blindness to something. While drawing a curtain can, as in the theatre, suggest the end of something, privacy or drawing a veil of secrecy or forgetfulness over something.

Opening a curtain suggest realising or ‘seeing’ something previously hidden, secret or unrealised. It can also mean removing barriers or limiting factors in yourself.

Black curtains can signify an attempt to completely hide what is going on to enemies, as in the British ‘black out’, or it might relate to death.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I hiding or revealing something in this dream – and what am I hiding or revealing or realising in life?

If the curtains are open what is being revealed and what am I realising?

If the curtains are barriers to realisation, what am I refusing, or hesitating to see or understand?

See Talking with Dead – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Archetype of the Paradigm