Gate

Similar to door – entrance to something different – or to someone else’s life, as in marriage; change, depending on the dream. See: Door.

A threshold, like that between conscious self awareness and our total experience – such a gate needs to open and close. Open to allow selected memory – closed to prevent massive flooding of impressions; the gate can also portray the passage from one period of life, or level of maturity, to another. Therefore, to stand before adolescence, parenthood, death, might be shown as facing a gate in a dream.

But often a gate is an opening you can pass through into your own or other people’s private space. So it can be a way in or out of such private space or feelings, therefore a barrier. So closed gate can separate one part of your or feeling from another life from another, as happens when you enter someone else property. What are you shutting out or letting in?

The gate can also portray the passage from one period of life, or level of maturity, to another. Therefore, to stand before adolescence, parenthood, death, might be shown as facing a gate in a dream.  There is also the Guardian of the Gate or doorway. See the guardian

Going through the gate may be a change from one situation to another. Or if you are on one side and with someone else on the other side it can means there is still a barrier between you, or something you need to pass through. Therefore we are told there are gates to Heaven, and in some dreams there is passage throughthem. In mythology the dog has symbolised the guardian of the gates of death.

Example: ‘I continue on my path, and suddenly the nettles disappear and the path is clear. Ahead the wall has curved round to face me, but there is a gate in it, and I can see my dog waiting for me on the other side.’ Mrs M. G.

Example: I am very afraid that someone/ a part of the crowd wants to get ahold of me for something I or my friends wrote in the newspaper. I have a long pole which I use to keep them away to beat them, but it is a close call. There does not seem to be anyone from the police helping us/to protect us. Just someone closing the gate at the last moment. Some of the people really want to get their hands on us. I seem to be taunting them.

Example: I saw a man walking toward what looked a bit like a castle, but was a monastery or spiritual centre. I was both the observer and the man walking to the gated huge wall. As I watched I saw that a man was walking to the gate from within the monastery. So the scene was of a man approaching the gate from outside, and a man approaching the gate from inside. As they got near the gate I realised that the man seeking entrance was the same as the one who would let him in. They were reflections of each other.

The man who approached the gate reached into his coat or cloak for a gift to give as a sign of his desire to be admitted. As he did this the man inside reached into his pocket for the key to open the gate. Their movements were reflections of each other. The giving and receiving, the request and the opening, were one and the same. So the man met who he already was, though he had sought it so long.

Useful questions and hints:

Are you closing the gates of your life or love, or leaving them open?

If the gate is acting as a barrier what sort of barrier does it suggest?

What is the difference between the feelings or activity that is on the difference side of the gate and the side you are on?

See Talking with the dead – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Edgar Cayce