Vulture

A relative waiting for you to die – or vice versa. Not usually a pleasant symbol and it can suggest people around you trying to live on you – or vice versa. Perhaps it indicates difficult feelings about dependants, or an environment of ill will or hopelessness.

Example: The Vulture is often associated with indiscriminate overeating. This warning dream which came to a woman contains three vultures that illustrate the message of overeating: “I am in an open grave. Three vultures are hovering over me. They resemble three relatives. I awaken frightened.”

The woman associated the relatives with a comment she had made the previous day. Because of their demands on her time, she had said, “They’ll be the death of me yet.” The dream recalled this statement, and the natural association of vultures with indiscriminate eating explained the rest of the dream. It was telling her, in no uncertain terms, that unless she lost weight and improved her dietary habits she would kill herself.

I am happy to say that the dream and her doctor’s warnings gave her the necessary willpower to achieve the desired results. Quoted from Dreams- Your Magic Mirror by Elsie Sechrist.

Herodorus Ponticus relates that great men of legend were always very joyful when a vulture appeared upon any action. For it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys only upon carrion, and never kills or hurts any living thing; and as for birds, it touches not them, though they are dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks mangle and kill their own fellow-creatures.

Example: I was sitting in my family room that leads to our pool. I looked out the window and there on the pool rail was a crow. He looked hurt and wasn’t moving too much. When I looked up again there was a vulture right next to the crow. The vulture seemed as if he was trying to peak and eat the crow. I ran outside and tried to shoo the vulture away but instead of him leaving he came and started to attack me. But after fighting with the bird he finally left. When I turned back round, I noticed that the crow wasn’t there anymore. The crow fell into my pool and was sinking to the bottom. I went to get a bucket to save the crow but when I came back the poor crow died. Please tell me what my dream means. I don’t think having crows and vultures in a dream is a good thing.

The dream suggests the crow is nearing death and vultures are natures sanitary cleaners, their stomach acid is exceptionally corrosive allowing them to safely digest putrid carcasses infected with botulinum toxin, hog cholera bacteria, and anthrax bacteria that would be lethal to other scavengers and remove these bacteria from the environment. So why have you got such a fight against death; for the dream is saying that something in your experience is dying and you have trouble accepting it. The end might be of a relationship (e.g. a divorce), having to change jobs or schools, or the end of your present living situation (e.g. a move).

Idioms: Charm the birds from the trees; a bird told me; the bird has flown; bird in the hand; bird of ill omen; free as a bird; odd bird.

Useful questions:

Is the bird in my dream expressing any of the important stages of growth such as babyhood, leaving the nest, or making a nest?

What quality or attitude is the bird expressing and how does that relate to me?

What is the rest of the dream indicating about the bird?