Bride

This usually relates to feelings about or desire for marriage; love; receptivity and fertility; or integrating parts of your personality previously not expressed. The bride also depicts ones soul – the open and receptive qualities that are fertile and ready to open into new life and creativity.

The bride is a wonderful and powerful image, holding in it enormous feelings, potential and life. The following dream illustrates some of this power.

Example: A young woman, a bride, was given a bunch of flowers. The flowers were covered up, or wrapped, in paper, or newspaper. This was removed, or I removed it, and the flowers looked rather wilted and lifeless. As soon as they were uncovered however, life seemed to come into them. The buds opened before our eyes, blooming into lovely white flowers. The flowers had many petals, and lots of fine moving stamens. The flowers seemed to be constantly moving within, and everybody cried out, “Oh, orchids!” As I looked at them I experienced intense joy.

It is this opening to the fertility and flood of life energy that a bride depicts. The flower represents this perfectly because it is an expression of the profound forces of nature as they open ready to become fertilised and help to create new life. But this opening need not be toward a man, it can be in relationship to your own potential and creative power.

Of course the bride in a dream links with marriage, but not necessarily a marriage of the body. It frequently links with your own growth to wholeness, and it does this with the ease or difficulty shown in the dream marriage ceremony. The marriage, if it takes place shows the integration of your male and female characteristics, and thereby an achievement of greater maturity. See Archetype of the Anima – Archetype of the Animus

Some of the classic difficulties faced or depicted by the dream bride are to do with – for the male – the challenge of surrendering independence and youthful manhood in service of life and the female principle. And for the woman, the finding within oneself of the ancient female power that can accept and meet the male as a woman – i.e. receptive, fertile and nurturing. This does not relate to the outer life, but to the inner power of the male and female recognising and enhancing each other. The example under relationship and dreams clearly shows a man involved in this struggle. See: Beware of Love; Growing Up to Love.

Female dream: Your marriage and what it means to you; feelings, fears or hopes about marriage; feelings about your daughter. The bride also depicts all those perhaps unlived dreams, beauty and love within you; all your womanhood perhaps never linked to and recognised by a man.

If getting married: Integration of inner aspect of yourself never previously known or expressed, especially if bride/groom is oriental or black.

Male dream: Frequently depicts your relationship with your own feelings and non rational nature, as well as being an indication of how you relate to real marriage and the integration of your female characteristics. See Archetype of the Anima

Useful Questions and Hints:

If I am the bride, is this about my hopes for or involvement in marriage – or is it showing what stage of unity I have with my male characteristics?

If I am a male dreamer what is my relationship with the bride, and what does that say about the way I relate to women or my own female characteristics?

What feelings accompany the dream and what do they suggest about myself?

See Characters and People in Dreams and Stand in role