Purse

Something in your nature you value and try not to lose. Your sense of identity and power to be socially acknowledged as an effective person. Sometimes it represents a woman’s sexual feelings, the vagina. See: Bag if USA purse.

 Losing your purse can often signify that you have lost your way in life and you need to reconsider the direction you are going in life. It can also mean losing your power – as without money or cards you sometimes feel powerless. So check yourself to see if you have lost such qualities such as patience, love, generosity, forgiveness, and other moral principles. Therefore, losing the bag is like saying you feel undermined or helpless. But the bag or purse also has many things you value, and so its loss points to feelings of losing something that you might miss intensely.

A purse or handbag often carries your means of getting about in the world and being effective. It also may contain personal things you would not want anyone else to see. So it can depict your sense of power or helplessness, depending upon whether or not you posses or lose it, and also your personality, your identity.

In some dreams the purse or bag has definite links with sexuality or the vagina. What you are doing with the bag in such a dream indicates unconscious feelings about your sexual activities and feelings.

Whether the key word is losing, finding or emptying, this is the important message of the dream. Having defined it, you could helpfully ask yourself what you have lost, found or got rid of.

If you found a purse, remember that it is intimately linked with another person, so it is like having a strong link with that person. How do you handle it?

If the purse is given to you, depending upon your gender, it could be a sign of intimacy, or an offer of friendship.

Carrying a purse in a dream may signify the secret place of important possessions, which are being closely held.

 Example: We are arguing. I get away. I think the man is upstairs. My mother comes out and catches the woman going through her purse. They get into a fight. My mother is sitting on a chair and the woman is standing in front of her and I either feel my mother is going to bite this woman’s breast or I see her do it. I feel a sense of danger.

Example: A rather shadowy man gave me a leather pull-string purse or pouch. In the pouch was powder that the man suggested I pour onto my rather stained trousers. Immediately the powder started working like yeast, cleansing and purifying my trousers in a spreading action. I knew that this yeast, or pollen, had also penetrated my body, and was gradually working through me, purifying and healing. – Adrian

Example: A young college girl who had decided to have sex with anyone dreamed: I found myself with my boyfriend in a street lighted by a red lantern. I believe the town was Las Vegas. The next minute I was adrift on an angry sea holding tightly to my purse. I knew I had a valuable jewelled cross in my bag which I must not lose. A little boy, however, assured me it was all right to release my purse and put it down. When I reached shore, I discovered to my great horror that I had lost the purse.”

The red lantern indicated a “red light” district and symbolized not only danger, but the free love to which she had agreed to through the advice of ^“the little boy.^“ The little boy represented immaturity of thought. Las Vegas heightened the warning that she was gambling with her inner life. The little boy in the dream was ^“the one^“ with whom she was having sexual experiences. Alone and ^“at sea” with the angry waves showed the ^“drift^“ of her soul. The loss of the purse and the valuables, especially the jewelled cross, pinpointed the purpose and message of the dream—to re-evaluate her life and to return to the safety of the shore and feelings arising from her core, even though it meant a crucifying of the sexual urges she had felt.

Idioms: hold the purse strings; you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Useful questions or hints:

What happened to your purse/bag in the dream?

Did you find the purse/bag?

Did someone give you the purse/bag?

Were sexual feelings indicated in the dream?

What do you feel in regard to the purse?

See Working with associations – Makes Inner – Your Core Self – Being the Person or Thing