Rat
What you sense as sick or negative, so can depict your fears or anxieties, frightening instincts or urges, physical sickness or anxieties about health. Perhaps also feelings of sexual repulsion, or using sex to gain material aims. But this was caused by the fallacy that rats carried the plague and are unclean, but rats are very clean.
It was found out by historical research that it wasn’t the rat that brought the plague to Europe but the gerbil was the culprit. Sometimes a rat in your dream can remind you of love that was betrayed, or intuitions about a person being a ‘rat’ or ‘ratting on you’ – doing things behind your back or underhandedly – or deserting a relationship when difficulties arise.
The rats can point to threatening things going on that you are not clear about, or a view of the underhanded side of yourself or others – the evil side of human nature, its dirt and squalor, or time gnawing away at your life. The unacceptable parts or oneself. In some dreams the rat has the character of most rodents, the gnawing inquisitive searching out of things. It can therefore relate to one’s anxieties, self questioning and worrying mind that disturbs or eats away at things like peace of mind or confidence.
Because we may have associations with rats used in laboratories they may suggest healing and sacrifice.
Pet rat: Quite different to general rat associations; vulnerability, instinctive intelligence, the caring feelings or drive to care; responsibility for caring. The rat is an intelligent creature, is a great survivor and explorative.
In China where various types of rat are cooked and eaten, the astrological symbols are replaces by animal symbols. The rat (sometimes referred to as a mouse) is the first of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. People born in this year are expected to possess qualities associated with rats, including creativity, intelligence, honesty, generosity, ambition, a quick temper and wastefulness. People born in a year of the rat are said to get along well with “monkeys” and “dragons”, and to get along poorly with “horses”.
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Here the rats in this Hindu temple are venerated, and are being fed.In Indian tradition, rats are seen as the vehicle of Ganesha the elephant god, and a rat’s statue is always found in a temple of Ganesh – the elephant god the remover of all obstacles. In the north western Indian city of Deshnoke, the rats at the Karni Mata Temple are held to be destined for reincarnation as Sadhus (Hindu holy men). Rats are eaten by some people in India also. |
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Idioms: Rat on someone; rat race; smell a rat; feeling ratty; cornered rat; rats leave a sinking ship.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I confronting or remembering something that I feel is repulsive or evil?
Am I in a relationship that I intuitively feel difficulties about?
Am I being a rat in a relationship or situation? Is a worry or irritation eating away at me?
See animals – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions
Comments
Ppl in my home aunt and her kids my son her step kids .. Bunch if kids, we call Eric (an x of mine) to tell him about the mouse and rat infestation in the kitchen ( you can smell them) he was not gonna come and fix the problem he refused .. the little baby mice and monkeys were biting on the tip of my toes I had to open their mouths one by one to get them off.. titi Denise was there with me trying to protect everyone from the black shadow .i was trying to hurt it hit it capture it wait till the right time of night to get it .. I Kept trying to fix my sofa the cushions were wet cause I had them outside all the time (wet sofa cushions that were in front of my house ) constantly rearranging them .. At end Jessy ( kids mother) comes and I tell her what’s happening it’s sunny we’re on the lawn the black shadow comes flying down from up I had to save someone else from it and kill him and he got really small and a badge color ..
I had a dream that rats were chasing me around in the garden. I never dream. I was really terrified in my dream and no one would help me in my dream.
I had a dream that i was outside of a house and that millons of rats came outside from the house. They immediately died when they saw me and i grabbed one from the tail with my hand full of blood and put it in the trash can. The rat was grey and everything was really dark like a dark cloudy day, kinda creepy
In my dream, I had a something on my head that was alive. I could feel it moving around in my hair and when i would try and take it off my head, i could feel the creature biting and clawing me.
i managed to take it off and realized that it was a rat. I took the rat off my head without killing it and woke up immediately.
I have no idea what this means
Hi iv had this dream twice now! In my dream I have this big grey pet rat! Its the size of a medium dog! ( like a Staffordshire Bull terrier), its fur is fuzzy and ratty and it had these greeny gray eyes, at first I was abit scared & wary of my new pet, but it turned out to be lovely and really friendly, but I was still kinda repulsed by it, I didnt want to stroke it, I was walking in the park with my pet rat and my moms dogs, abit scared because I wasn’t sure how they’d all react to each other, but everything was fine? Why do I keep having this same dream, hooe u can shed abit of light to my wierd dream lol xx
I had a dream last night about me and someone else walking down a rual road, and on each side it had tons of dead rats (2or3 feet high) it was all the way down the road, and I remember asking why the rats we’re in the fields like that and the answer I got was “it’s because the soil needs nutrients”
Julie – That is how the cycle of life works – the death of things enriches and deepens the soil and so new growth can occur which when it dies etc, etc.
But the rats and your dream have a personal message. But the message depends what you associate with rats, see – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/association-of-ideas-with-dreams/#Working
So is it something sick or negative, feelings of sexual repulsion, or was it love that was betrayed? Whatever it was you have had a grand clear out, and this will increase the health of your body and mind.
Tony
I had a dream that a very tiny baby rat came out of the toilet or the drain of a shower (can’t remember but it was something in the bathroom). It ran away and hid in a pile of clothes in my closet. I grabbed a bucket and tried to hold the rat in there but it got out. When it got out, I tried to catch it and it bit me. I was so scared I got rabies but in the end didn’t catch this baby rat. What does this mean? By your comments it’s something I need to confront but what?
I dreamt about a grey rat on my nightstand and it was sniffing my stuff and making noises so i was trying to make it go away but it wouldn’t react to i started saying out loud “hey!! Hey!! Hey!!!” But still no reaction.
So i clapped and it jumped behind the curtains on to the bed and almost on me but passed theough me and left my room i was terrified and disgusted
What could this possibly mean?
Maria – Forget the grey rat – it is the feelings of disgust and terror that the dream is about.
You must have seen it shown in many films nowadays, where a figure or scene is produced that is a holographic image that you can walk through and is not physically real. Your dream images are all like that, they cannot harm you and are images describing your thoughts and emotions. If only people could grasp this they could face their dream images and understand them.
You probably associate the rat with something dirty, underhand, and infectious, so what is it in your experiences produces feelings like that? See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/secrets-power-dreaming/
Tony
I had a dream last night that rat was just sitting there looking at me. I wasn’t really afraid of it, but when I thought of all the disease they carry, and the issue it can be to get rid of them I tried to fan him away. He did not move. He wasn’t moving at all, it just looked straight at me.
I dream of my two year old daughter eating a a dead rat and another rat is on her side. What does this mean? Thanks
Everything above was correct in how I am feeling outside of my dreams. Not only am I undergoing a sort of betrayed love where someone deserted my relationship when difficulties arose, but also I have felt sexually used by someone I love and who apparently cared for me. I have been feeling repulsed by his actions and also his underhand feelings. I feel as though my peace of mind no longer exists and also that my confidence is lowering because of what he has done. It made me feel so emotionally vulnerable. I wish we could fix what we had but everything has been made so difficult. He wants to let it all go and me, of course, I feel something gnawing at me every day, its making me a cold person, its so hard to put it past me, I don’t even know what to do anymore.
I came here because I had a dream last night. The biggest conflict in my dream was the rats that had intruded my home. There were two; I soon found out. The one I saw first and the most was very large, almost like a small dog, and black. This one I would always try to find and kill but every time I came into contact with it I would barely injure it because it would always come trying to crawl up my leg and either bite my hands or my feet. Which it never did.
At one point in the dream before I woke, I heard a rat behind me and I suddenly turned around and tried to kill it. I held it down with my foot and I eventually crushed it, killing it. Once it was dead, I looked at it and notice it wasn’t the black rat. It was more of a gray and cream colored one. It was also smaller. I looked around for the other and came in contact with two pairs of glowing eyes in the dark. The first one I made out to be the larger rat, its eye’s red. The second pair of eyes were staring directly at me. I made it out to be a cat however, its eyes were white.
At that point I woke myself up.
Now that I know what rats mean in dreams and how it relates to my life at the moment, I would like to know what all these other symbols may mean such as the cat, the smaller rat that I killed and my relationship with the black rat.
Savannah – Please read http://dreamhawk.com/news/avoiding-being-my-own-victim/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/secrets-power-dreaming/
Maybe also http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/martial-art-of-the-mind/
Tony
Dream: Whilst in a fast food restaurant where my mom was the owner, I saw a skinless burning black rat running fast across the restaurant over my feet. Then, the rat tried to attack me when I tried to escape by goingon the other side of the restaurant. This is the 2nd time I had this dream. Please help me!.
Myself and a group of others were trying to catch some tiny invisible creature. We finally managed to catch it as it ran down my sleeve were the creature pretty much lodged itself on my arm. As I took my jacket off i noticed that it was actually two rats fighting each other on my arm, sometimes my arm got bit or scratched in the process. They would not let go of as I desperately tried to get them off. Then the weirdest part. The rats stopped fighting and merged as one, with one giant eye on their face, and an eye on each leg. The strange rat then hopped off my arm and transformed back into the normal rats, looked at me and ran off. Any ideas?
Ryan – I am uncertain about the meaning of this dream, but will say what I think it might mean.
The group of people represent something that has caught your attention of quite a lot. But it has been so small and insignificant it was hard to decide what it was. But the dream says quite clearly it is an internal conflict involving your abilities to express yourself in some way. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/arm/
The important thing the dream says is that the conflict, that you have struggled with should not be tried to get rid of because it is a form of awareness – the eyes. So instead of seeing it as a problem see it as a way to deal with the issue. There are various ways of doing this. One is to work with the associations – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/association-of-ideas-with-dreams/#Working. Another is to use http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/questions-2/#Summing
Tony
I dream constantly that I’m being attacked by huge rats. And mostly, they always aim for my neck and I wake terrified, scared and sweating. What does that means…?
I recently had a dream that my boyfriend and I were moving and there were these huge black rats on the wall and in the closet. They didn’t bite me or try to attack me. They were just hanging out. What could that mean?
Danielle – You have heard of the saying ‘a skeleton in the closet’ – which suggests there is a problem from the past you have not dealt with. Well a rat in the closet is also something you have not dealt with. This is not a dangerous things, but may be old feelings that are a shadow on your plans for togetherness. Or if they were in the house you are moving into make sure it is an okay place.
Tony