Posts Tagged ‘dream dictionary interpretation’
Carpenter
This depicts your ability to shape desires or ideas, and how you build something in your life from raw materials. It illustrates your power of reasoning, and how your control emotion. See: Wood; tree; Roles.
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Carpet
Sometimes depicts one’s financial state, bare floorboards being poverty. So it can be the colour or design that are important, or the comfort or lack of it in life – do you feel satisfied with self? Carpets can also be a cover up or depict a feeling of being walked on.
A carpet in a much used room can also indicate, like a swimming pool, your shared experience with another person or family, or your own collective experience, as it is on the carpet that so much takes place in your life. It is difficult to create an image that summarises the mass of time and events you share with family or loved ones – or even your own lonely existence, but a carpet does that.
Under the carpet: Things about the way we have lived that we do not wish to acknowledge. Things we have pushed out of sight without dealing with the mess. A hidden place within us.
Wet or Damaged Carpet: This may represent what you are standing or standing in. Is your attitude ‘wet’ or damaged in some way. Is the carpet in your own home or somewhere else? Note where and explore it.
Idioms: Sweep something under the carpet; on the carpet; roll out red carpet; rug pulled out from under ones feet.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What do you feel or associate with the carpet? See Associations Working With
What is the theme of the dream?
Do you fee; you are being walked on?
See Emotions and Mood in Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Easy Dream Understanding
Carnival
Dropping social or moral restraints; letting go; creativity; social connections; sexual opportunity.
Carrot
A carrot is a food, and there is food for the mind, food for thought, food for the body, and spiritual nourishment. We can digest information or experience, the latter being food for our growth as an individual.
What is it you are taking into yourself if you eat a dream carrot? In other words what feelings of thought do you take when you eat a carrot? Is it thought of health, or do you not like carrots – in which case you are taking in negative influences.
Some people have an association with carrots being good for the eyes, so be aware of that as a possibility. Also it may represent something to temp an animal. Promise of reward, as used with Donkey. See: Food
Sometimes represents the penis. It can also depict what you have to pull out of yourself through hard work, or ‘digging’. Or fruits of the earth culled from worldly experience.
Example: A powerful wave of emotion flushed through me leading me to bang on the floor with anger and frustration. I was shouting out that I was pissed off about forever chasing a carrot or rainbow and never getting the reward. A fucking carrot dangled to keep the workers labouring on till they are too old to work. And at the end of it no satisfying reward for their life of labour. They are just dumped. If it isn’t sex that is dangled as the reward it is financial riches or some dream. Politics, religion, all dangle these dreams in front of us and give nothing – just a fucking mirage. Nothing real at the end of it.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What do I associate with the carrot? See Associations Working With
What part did the carrot play in the dream?
What was happening in the dream?
See Being the Person or Thing – Processing Dreams
Carried Carry Carrying
General carrying: Using your ability to deal with something. It can also point to what you are ‘carrying’ in life – such as carrying a grudge or taking responsibility or your child or elderly person. It might also show you supporting or giving your strength to someone or something. This usually suggests you posses, or are carrying something within yourself. What it is depends very much on what you are carrying.
In some dreams carrying something might simply refer to your life situation, as when we use the phrase, ‘I carried on.’
We also carry hopes, attitudes, a grudge, a plan in ones mind, a love for someone. All the time we carry about with us the sum total of all we think and feel – the burden of being who we are, so what you are carrying in the dream is important to understand. See Inner World
Being carried: A desire to drop responsibility or a return to childhood in a relationship. I could also show you being in a dependent relationship or lacking any personal motivation.
Some things and the influence from other people motivate us and so we are carried by them over rough patches, or influences, often subtle, carry us forward.
Example: Because he was my favourite singer, I got excited when I saw him and went to hug him. He gladly accepted my hug with much enthusiasm and we began talking. This was nice because he was very humble and it felt like we somehow knew each other and had this connection. Later in the dream, He ended up carrying me around the house for some reason.
If it is an object like a chair or carpet that we are carried on or by, or an animal, try to define what the object suggests or the animal represents.
Carrying someone: Treating someone else, or some part of yourself, as a child or invalid; feeling you are ‘carrying the load’ in life, work or a relationship; over zealous as depicted by idiom ‘carrying things too far’.
One can of course be ‘carrying’ a baby as when one is pregnant. And some things we carry are tasks that we willingly undertake and are part of our life-work – what we are working at in our character and learning.
Carry usually suggests you posses, or are carrying something within yourself. What it is depends very much on what you are carrying.
Example: My father died when I was 3 – 1973. I recently dreamt I was carrying my father’s coffin at his funeral. On the way to the church I dropped the coffin and the lid fell off exposing his face at the advanced stage of decomposition. I replaced the lid so as not to grieve my mother further. But I followed my father’s spirit into the gaps of the coffin. Rosina.
Here Rosina is still carrying powerful feelings about her father, and they are not healthy.
We are all carried every day of our existence. We seldom acknowledge it, but we are carried by Life. We take it for granted, yet we ought to be grateful for such a living presence. The You that you call yourself, with a name, is only a tiny thing. It is moved and tossed around by all manner of drives, ambitions, emotions, fears, temptations, worries, love and desire with its pains and hopes; it is something we take so seriously and get carried away into awful situations; we take many sorts of pain killers to deal with ourselves. Things such as alcohol, coffee, medical drugs and street drugs, are all used as a sort of crutch, and yet we are still prone to break down, as can be seen by the number of people who need antidepressants or are totally lost in themselves. See Avoid Being Victims
If it is a positive living thing: Can you acknowledge that you have this energy or feeling, and can use it to your own benefit?
If it is a dead thing: The example above shows how we can carry a lifeless thing around in our memory, or our feelings. If such a thing appears in your dream, ask yourself where in your body or feelings are you carrying this deadness. Why do you need to hold on to something that is not living and growing? Can you now let go of it?
If it is an object: Is this a useful object? Does it suggest a burden or a possibility. Is it useful in some way? You need to ask yourself what it is you are carrying around. Is it a waste of energy, such as old memories that are not productive? If so can you let go of it? If it is a useful thing, what talent or skill do you have that you may not be using?
Idioms: Carried away; carry a torch; carry it off; carry on; carry the can.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What feelings are so much a part of me that I constantly carry them around? (If this is difficult to answer ask someone who knows you well.)
If looked at as an analogy, what does the thing being carried suggest?
What can I learn about myself from this?
What does what I am carrying suggest – bucket and spade suggest holiday with children for instance?
If I am being carried – who or what is carrying me?
What can I learn about myself from this?
Try using Secrets of Power Dreaming – Key Words – Acting on your dream
Cartridge
See: Bomb.
Carve
Similar to carpenter. To work on yourself and carve out inner qualities. Leave indelible marks, memories, fears, regrets, on your feelings or thoughts. To work hard at difficult situations and carve a niche for yourself.
Case
See: Bag.
Cash
Casket
Secret hidden memories. Wonders hidden in ourselves. Special things. See: Coffin for burial casket.
If this is a small container for valuables or objects, it often relates to long held memories that are important or precious, or to qualities or skills you have that you need to be aware of.
Being in the casket might mean the things are not used much.
Is there a jewel in the casket? Are you wearing it? What type of jewel is it?
Marcus Aurelius the Roman emperor and stoic philosopher said, ‘Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there.’
Hopefully each of us at some time has an experience that shows us there is much more to life than we commonly experience or understand. When we touch that moment vistas open, meanings are grasped, the hidden becomes revealed. That jewel of experience is buried within each of us, and in some dreams we find it in a casket and wonder at its brilliance.
If the jewel is buried or boxed, it suggests you are still largely unaware of your own wonderful potential. Wearing the jewel indicates that you have unfolded some of your expanded possibilities. You may have developed greater intuition, or experienced your central self.
Useful Questions and Hints:
If I describe myself as the things or things in the casket, what would I say? For help doing this see Standing in Roles.
Have I been keeping things inside myself that I need to bring more fully into my everyday life?
Does what is in the box relate to anything in my waking life, and if so how?
Try using Talking As – Being the Person or Thing – Processing Dreams
Cassette
Can simply be the sort of pleasure we feel on listening to music; the impressions left on us by events, people – therefore memory. But often memory integrated by the unconscious into insights; information we have gathered; the impression we might leave behind at death – what remains of us; the impression we would like to give others.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Does the cassette have music on it, and what associations or memories have you with the music?
What are you doing with the cassette?
What is happening to the cassette?
Try using Associations Working With – Talking As – Acting on your dream
Castle
Feelings of security or insecurity; our defensive attitudes; the way we defend ourselves against ‘attack’. Our past attitudes which may have been necessary in childhood to defend ourselves while strengthening our identity or our way of defending against the remembering or experiencing of childhood pain. See: defence; defence mechanisms.
Castles often have memories or associations with fairy tales or myths, and so can point to important changes going on in you. The castle of the Sleeping Beauty for instance that is a wonder of information. If, in reading the story, you have no previously discovered the ideas relating to an unconscious, hidden part of you, with its promise of greater love, wisdom and beauty, then you have just heard the legend. But you have not heard the legend unless feelings have stirred in you telling you there is a ‘sleeping beauty’ to discover. The legend is the dim, subtle, difficult to prove feelings and hopes within us, that suggest a greater beauty sleeps and can be found. The legend is those hopes that tell us there is more in life if we would only search for it.
It is a legend because most people believe there is no truth in it; a story fit only for children. While the prince represents our conscious mind, our intellect and worldly experience, that feels incomplete, that knows a longing for this ‘other half’. He is more than just our ‘conscious mind’ however. He is a particular state of consciousness; for he dares to search for a Myth. His longing, his incompleteness makes him brave, ready to test the truth or falsity of the Legend. He is certainly not an indifferent consciousness, who stumbles accidentally on the Beloved. He has to cut his way through the terrible briars and thorns surrounding the hidden castle. In these brambles others have been lost and died, for they are all the confusion, pain and ignorance that surround and hide our own ‘Sleeping Beauty’. To reach her we have to face, to experience, to cut through this hedge of ignorance, fear and cynicism that has grown around our own happiness and completeness.
But the Prince breaks through, and stands in amazement at the sleeping court. Then, finding the Beloved of his quest, he kisses her awake, and the court wakes also. So, when we dare to face the attitudes of mind, the events, the pains and fears that have cut us off from wholeness, then we enter our innermost self and find how much of us has remained alive yet asleep; in us yet unconscious. Kissing with our consciousness that which slept and was unknown, it comes into our awareness and awakens in us. Then they marry and live happily ever after. For when consciousness unites with its source, it finds completeness and happiness, and eternal life. This interpretation may give a slightly false impression unless a further comment is added. Namely, it would appear that the princess has to go to sleep in us so that the critical intellect can develop. When this development has taken place, then the two aspects of self, the rational and irrational can marry.
Example: ‘I stood outside a castle. It was closed and guarded by soldiers in armour. Wondering how to get in I thought that if I dressed and acted as a soldier I would be allowed entrance. It worked and inside Christ met me and said he had important work for me to do.’ Sonia.
The closely guarded secret is Sonia’s own impulses to do some sort of socially creative work. She doesn’t want to own her impulse as her own. It is much easier if she can say ‘Christ told me to do this.’ In this way she avoids direct encounter with opposition and has a feeling that she has greater authority than her own. Joan of Arc might well be seen in this light.
Also we might be convinced, or possessed by, a set of beliefs, as for instance religious convictions. And I am talking here about convictions of any sort that make a person completely rigid, and unable to take in or listen to any new experience or idea.
Sometimes we use such convictions like castle walls, to defend ourselves against anxiety, against uncertainty, against actually meeting the vulnerable and perhaps young and lovely self we were before the castle walls went up.
Example: ‘I went to the top of the turret and saw all the men getting ready to defend the castle if attacked. They had arrows and a lot of men were standing on little ledges on the outside of the wall, with no protection and I knew they were very brave to face an attack as sooner or later they would have been hit.’ Anna R.
Here the wall is obviously to do with defending the dreamer against attack. Such a wall might be made out of our aggressive feelings, with religious dogma which might defend us against fears and uncertainty, or from tightly controlled behaviour and emotions. But it can also be made out of the courate and conviction or the dreamer.
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:
Am I aware olf any defensive attitudes or feelings in this dream?
Am I trying to get in or out of the castle?
Is there any feeling or mystery or spiritual in the dream?
What were you doing or feeling in the dream?
Try using Talking As – Processing Dreams – Avoid Being Victims
Castrate Castration
This represents a fear of not coping sexually. Losing sexual confidence or desire. Cutting off deeper feelings, sympathies, ambitions and energies. To cut off the penis or testicles illustrates the action of repressing the feelings, emotions and urges represented by them. This cutting off may be done by a fear, by feelings of guilt about sexuality, conviction of inferiority, dread of pain or being repulsed or thought repulsive.
Trauma and or/ fear regarding sexual drive, possibly leading to ‘cutting off’ full sexual flow. It might also point to fear of the responsibility which develops with sexual maturity, or the many difficulties in facing the pains and adjustments, which come with rejection by the opposite sex, or through competition for work and wealth, standing without parental support, making decisions, discriminating in the world of ideas and exercise of will.
Sometimes there is a powerful link here with the mother/father relationship from childhood. For some reason there may have been a disturbance in regard to the need to possess ones mother sexually, and so a self restraint about expressed sexual feelings. Sometimes it also suggests ones father was not a sexually potent male. In other words unsure of himself in regard to women, and perhaps still emotionally dependent. Castration also means you are no longer a threat to anyone, and do not have to face a woman’s full sexual and emotional needs.
For a woman it can mean a disturbance during childhood caused by parents not supporting or encouraging the child’s inner development. The penis envy that was so strongly supported in Freud’s theory has been seen differently by others. Karen Horney for instance states that, “Penis envy might occur occasionally in neurotic women, but stated that “womb envy” occurs just as much in men: Horney felt that men were envious of a woman’s ability to bear children. The degree to which men are driven to success may be merely a substitute for the fact that they cannot carry, nurture and bear children. Horney also thought that men were envious of women because they fulfill their position in society by simply ‘being’, whereas men achieve their manhood according to their ability to provide and succeed.”
The need for ones father’s or mother’s love or approval can be a factor leading toward homosexuality or lesbianism.
Example: Hear a recording of a well known recording artist (Tom ***) a homosexual who became straight through facing his unconscious tendencies. RECORDING.
Castrating oneself: Denying one’s own sexual drive, or introverting anger because of sexual drive. It might also suggest the conflict of choice between being feminine or masculine.
Being castrated: This suggests a real trauma that deeply influences your sexual relationships. This includes feeling that your innate being has been repressed or brutalised by another person.
Castrating another person: Your own sexual pains or trauma may lead to the unconscious killing out of sexuality in your children or others.
Example: ‘On looking at my son I see his penis has been completely cut off. I feel terribly upset, but notice that on each side of the remaining hole, special pieces of tissue have been implanted. These are budding, just like a plant, and I know, or am told, that a whole penis will grow.’ Edmond U.
Edmond did in fact frequently ‘cut off’ his own sexuality by abstinence. The dream graphically shows that sexual drives are like a living process.
Psychological castration: Peter had grown up in a Christian culture that, at the time, looked upon sex as something not to be spoken about. Underlying that attitude was that restraining sex was somehow a spiritual discipline. Also, while in his early teens, Peter’s mother had pushed a strong fear into him that sex could kill him. She probably did this because tuberculosis was a killer disease at the time, and a strong sex drive was one of the signs of the illness, and she was scared that Peter had caught TB. Consequently Peter avoided sex until overwhelmed by his own desires. In fact it took most of his adult life to find normal loving and sexual feelings.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Can I recognise how I cut off or repress sexual feelings or relationship?
What has led me to the situation of my sexual nature being so injured? (Defining this is important as it helps to recognise the causes and leads to an emergence from the condition.)
If I really am honest about my early feelings about my mother and father, how would describe my relationship with them in terms of my sexuality? Also, dare I imagine sex with my mother – if I do what feelings stand in the way?
Try using Stand in role – Avoid Being Victims – Talking As
Cat Cats
Catching mouse – Cattery – Claws – Cat’s Tail
Fear of –
Kitten –
Because a cat is often an easy source of physical contact and affection it can depict the need to be cared for and warm affection, even sexual love accompanied with intense warm feelings.
But cats live by their own wits and do not need an owner to walk or care for them, just food and comfort. So a cat can represent a form of street wisdom learned through stress.
You may have felt a lot of affection from a cat, and so associate it with sensual, or even sexual pleasure. It can also represent your need to care for someone or be cared for, to have close physical contact.
Example: ‘I went to the fridge to get out some mincemeat to feed the cat. It came in. As it fed I had a strong urge to touch it, such strong feelings of love were pouring out of me. The animal looked up at my face as I wanted to kiss it. The lips had pink lipstick on. I kissed it, it’s paw came up around my arm, I could see the black claws. We were rolling around on the floor, it felt very sexual.’ Monica.
A male cat can represent male sex drive.
For some women cats are a substitute baby, it is therefore used in many dreams to represent a woman’s urge or need to care for someone, or directly her need to reproduce, or be involved in sex. Therefore it is often used to signify a woman’s creativity, which is a very real part of a woman’s makeup. It is obviously linked with sexuality as that is a woman’s creative process, but it doesn’t have to be sexual as it can flow in any direction she chooses. So it can flow into creating a real or dream baby, or become a creative project or business idea.
The cat can therefore also link with refined female sexuality or ruttiness unless the cat is markedly a tom. See A Woman’s Creative Power
The term ‘catty’ refers to a spiteful woman, showing one’s ‘claws’, jealousy, anger or vindictiveness in a relationship. In this aspect it might refer to ones mother; independence; stealth; fertility. So if the cat in your dream is angry it might depict yourself if female, or feelings about a female friend.
Because cats are independent and often alone, they may represent the secret part of yourself, or independence. See: Kitten; Animal;
In a man’s dream it may refer to a woman or to the female, intuitive side of his nature. The cat can be your intuition and feelings, perhaps warning you, through its sensitivity to moods, or unseen dangers. In some dreams it indicates cattiness – showing one’s ‘claws’, jealousy, anger or vindictiveness in a relationship. It might refer to your mother, independence, stealth, or fertility.
In some dreams the cat definitely represents the fear of bad news or general fears, especially if it is a black cat.
If you have bred cats it may well represent your own, perhaps unconscious, desires to have a baby.
Jungians see the cat as representing a deep psychological secret, a hidden side of ones nature, the shadowy less obvious or outwardly displayed side of your nature. This is most likely because cats go about their business without any attempt to explain themselves or to accommodate us poor humans. Also they are creatures of the night very often, and live a dark life. Prior to the custom of neutering a cat and, in the US, removing its claws, this dark life was often very noisy and obviously sexual and aggressive. Left to itself the cat is a master predator
The cat is thought to have first been domesticated in Egypt about 2000 BC, and all modern cats are said to be descendents of them. They are desert creatures and so do not pant in the heat as dogs do, and are also easy with freezing desert nights. They do not like rain though. The Egyptian name for cat was ‘miu’ or he or she who mews. Although the cat never became a fully acknowledged god figure as the jackal and hippo did, it was perhaps the most popular. She was known as Bastet or Bast, and a household goddess, the protector of women, children and domestic cats. She was also known as the goddess of sunrise, music, dance, pleasure, as well as family, fertility and birth.
But there was a negative side known as Sekhmet the goddess of war and pestilence, though later tamed by Ra to become the protector of humans.
EXAMPLE: My husband died over a year ago, and I live alone, no pets. Yet I dreamt I opened my front door and there was a cat waiting to be let in. It was my cat, and I knew I hadn’t fed it for ages or looked after it. I felt awful that I had neglected it for so long. The strange thing was that the next day as I walked around the supermarket, I kept wanting to go to the cat-food section to buy food. – Winnie P. – Exeter
In losing her husband Winnie has lost her source of given and receiving affection.
EXAMPLE: I was with a young boy and went to his house. I believe his mother was there and a cat. The vivid part was that the cat spoke to me. It spoke in a rather female voice, very clearly. As it spoke I felt great amazement. I had lots of thoughts about how it had learned language – that it could speak because of human language – what did language do to its psyche – and so on. I didn’t reach any conclusions. I noticed as it spoke that it had tiny lips, but they were perfectly formed like a woman’s. They had lipstick on – or at least were red and attractive. Ben.
Ben’s dream has a mixture of sexual attraction, femininity and the ability to express in it.
EXAMPLE: I am sitting in the hotel staff room eating lunch at a large dining table. One by one I am joined by perhaps a dozen women. The atmosphere is pleasant, easy and light hearted. I enjoy the feeling of being the only male among a dozen attractive women. Then I notice a strange thing. One by one all the girls around me turn into cats, but carry on laughing and talking as if nothing is happening. I find this interesting and not alarming. I am aware each girl turns into the sort of cat that is right for her – a vivacious redhead becomes a purring orange tabby; an aloof, slightly superior lady becomes a Siamese; the only ex-girlfriend of mine present becomes a black witches familiar.
I remember turning to my left and asking: “Tell me Rebecca, how did you do this?” The Rebecca cat giggles with a human voice and says: “He doesn’t have a clue, does he?” As I look at the Rebecca cat I realise she still has her human eyes. This I realise is true of all the cats, they have human eyes in feline faces. As I realise this one says: “I think he’s beginning to understand now” and laughs. Paul C. Teletext.
This graphic dream so well illustrates how our human personality exists within our animal drives and urges.
Example: I was with a young boy and went to his house. I believe his mother was there and a cat. The vivid part was that the cat spoke to me. It spoke in a rather female voice, very clearly. As it spoke I felt great amazement. I had lots of thoughts about how it had learned language – that it could speak because of human language – what did language do to it – and so on. I didn’t reach any conclusions. I noticed as it spoke that it had tiny lips, but they were perfectly formed like a woman’s. They had lipstick on – or at least were red and attractive. Ben.
Ben’s dream has a mixture of sexual attraction, femininity and the ability to express in it.
The next example illustrates how we might not be caring for the natural and instinctive side of us.
Example: ‘I am given an animal to look after, usually somebody’s pet while they are away on holiday. I then completely forget the animal, go away and when I return the animal is either dead or very dried up or has been got at by another animal and is in the throws of dying. When I wake from the dream I feel most dreadful and it is only when I am fully awake and realise it is not true do I feel better.’ Lynda E
Example: Recently a neighbor brought a newborn kitten to my home hoping we would care for it. My daughter, Sydney, cleaned the blood off and put her In a box. Meanwhile, I left work at five armed with doll bottles and powdered milk. One evening after feeding her, I was wondering if she would live beyond her current three days old. Before I was fully asleep that night, I saw a picture of her at about seven weeks old, running and playing. She stopped, looked at me and said, “Of course I’m going to live!” Her name is Betsy and she has developed into a big, beautiful kitty that we all adore. Martha Folin
Alley cat:: Sexuality; promiscuity; down on luck.
Black cat: Depends what dreamer associates with it – so may be good luck or bad luck and evil – i.e. events working for or against one; anxiety. The belief of a black cat being evil is a throwback to times when people persecuted women accused of being witches. Their cats were also seen to be evil. Of course if you believe that cats are bad luck, then it may symbolise that for you.
Black cats are invisible in darkness and can apparently appear mysteriously. So they often represent something that arises from the unknown or unconscious. It can therefore indicate a woman’s creativity, which is a very real part of a woman’s makeup. It is obviously linked with sexuality as that is a woman’s creative process – and the black cat therefore suggest her creative potential is emerging from an area she did not known about previously. See Woman’s Creative Power
Bobcats: Bobcats, like other wild animals that are adaptable and can live on the outskirts of human territory, are very ‘street wise’ or capable of surviving despite heavy human hunting.
So in your dream it can depict your survival instinct, and your ability to fight back with real cat zeal. It represents intelligence and patience. Like most cats it is not a pack animal and so is solitary in its habits – and also brings up it ‘kittens’ alone. See cats.
Cat’s claws: Spitefulness; desire to hurt; hidden aggression; clinging, or ‘getting ones claws in someone’.
Cat having kittens: Desire for or feelings about babies or ones own babyhood; fertility.
Cat Cattery: If it is a cattery for breeding it could refer to your feelings about having a baby – or if you breed cats then look at Easy Dream Interpretation. In general it suggest you are having a rest from, or not taking responsibility for your female qualities.
Cat catching mouse: A problem solving activity in you; cat and mouse situation in work or relationship.
Cat’s tail: The tail is a very expressive part of a cat; a very visible and active part, so represent the expression of your instinctive feelings.
Fear of cat: Fear of the female in oneself; fear of females; difficulty in meeting feelings and intuition; sense of danger. See: Animal phobias at the end of the animal section.
Group of cats: Group of women; relating to the different moods or feelings.
If allergic to cats: If you are allergic and dream of a cat it would signify a negative and threatening reaction to a situation or relationship.
Kitten: Feelings about vulnerability or babyhood; feelings about caring for someone or something vulnerable; parental urges, perhaps protectiveness.
Neighbouring cat and kitten: It could be that you have developed a link with a child that is not your own. If the cat and kitten were not from the same family as yourself, it may show you are making a relationsnhip with a new partner and their child.
Speaking cat: Ability to express feminine feelings, intuition or sexuality; a realisation of feelings of physical hunger or emotional or sexual attraction. See last example below.
White cat: Can represent your feminine intuition and a link with the natural beauty in you.
Wild cat: Stealth, ferocity, intelligence, cunning, ability to survive. Like most cats it is not a pack animal, so suggests living and bringing up children alone.
See: First example under the general information at the end of the separate animal definitions.
Idioms: Copy cat; bell the cat; cat and mouse; cat’s whiskers; cat out of the bag; cat and dog life; cat on hot bricks; something the cat brought in; a cat’s paw; cat among the pigeons; while the cat’s away.
Useful questions are:
What is happening or what am I realising in my relationship with the dream cat(s), and how does that relate to my life?
If I take out the word ‘cat’ from my dream description, and replace it with what I feel about this cat, what would I write?
If there are elements of caring or love in this dream, am I looking after that side of my life?
If this is about a kitten, what are my feelings or desires about my childhood, or about a baby?
See Easy Dream Interpretation; Talking As; Processing Dreams
Cataclysm
Looked at from the point of view that dream images represent our own life and feelings in some way, the end of the world, and the fears that go with it, depict the powerful and threatening inner and outer changes that accompany major transitions. The transition from childhood to adolescence for instance is the end of the world that existed for the whole lifetime of the individual up until that point. Such points of transition occur several times in the life of anyone who dares to grow and adapt. Menopause for women, the leaving home of children, the loss of a job, retirement, can all be represented by the end of the world – or a world. See: Atom Bomb.
Catacomb
An exploration of your inner contents or past experiences and their effect on your present life. A descent into the unconscious, so meeting feelings about death and rebirth, deception and wisdom. A search for your inner roots, lasting values, underlying abilities. The unconscious link with forebears.
Usually refers to feelings connected with death as in the example. It suggests, even in this, a womb like condition, and birth or a child may also figure in the same dream. A place of power or hidden forces, where a connection may be made with our unconscious, our inner link with other people and the energies of our body.
Example: ‘I was in some kind of cave or crypt. My father told me and my family of his coming death. He was calm and caring but my mother, sister and myself were grief stricken and for some reason went to buy him gifts.’ Clare M.
Example: I had this dream about me and a girl my age in a dark ancient crypt and we were fighting/battling giant spiders and looking for something, once we were near done with the searching of the something she put hints in wanting to have sex and we ran through the cave/crypt looking for a place to have sex, upon finding the right spot we ran into a large spider than the rest and I found myself holding a butcher knife and I killed the spider, afterward a spectre or ghost appeared and I found myself standing with the girl in a mansion study.
The dark ancient crypt shows that you have found a way into your unconscious. You are with a girl – your female half – because in our inner world, of which dreams are a mirror, you are both male and female. To become a whole person you need to enter the girl fully and marry her – i.e. unite with her. But there are feelings in the way. You have not fully become independent of the influence of your mother. The fact that you killed the spider shows you have taken a big step toward independence. The ghost is probably an old trauma or experience that is still ‘haunting’ you.
Example: It seemed a terrifying thing to be dead and descends into a crypt, lifeless and without motivation. Here I felt or experienced a very strong sense almost like a dead body, if it had awareness, might feel in a crypt. This is quite difficult to describe. I suppose what I was experiencing was a sort of ready made or social image of death. The sort of fears we have about it. It had in it the sense of dust, decay and cobwebs – the quiet dead silence of the tomb. But here, right in the midst of death, I had the sense of eternal life, of resurrection. It seemed to me as if you could not have one without the other, and this was the meaning in Christian doctrine where it says you must die to be reborn.
I am not sure if it was at this point that many images of the mixture of death and birth came on me. I had the experience that one needed to be bitten by the snake and die before one can be reborn into that transcendent life. But what came next was a long experience of exploring the view of life arising out of being a biological bag of water, wind, and shit. This went on for image after image of rampant wet sexuality or eating, of seeing nothing in life except physical existence. Again it is difficult to describe because of the huge variety of the images and scenes.
I suppose the underlying thing I was searching for in this series of feelings and images of the very physical side of life, such as eating and fucking, and the question was, is this all there is? There was an underlying morbidity in what I saw and felt. But I think this was my view. I wanted to find the transcendental in all the aspects of life, but it was difficult within the way I was looking at these feelings or parts of life experience.
I thought, or at least I came to the conclusion, that they expressed the preoccupation with the body and the physical that most of us have in present times. We are preoccupied with the physical and with examining it in detail. We are all trying to arrive at an understanding of the meaning of things, of death, through this minute examination of the physical world.
The longer I was involved in these images, the more it seemed ridiculous in the light of everyday knowledge that all things rely on each other, and that everything exists as an integrated part of the cosmos. The theme of the dream then changed. The day before this session I had a long conversation with B. She had described some of the people she works with or cares for in the old people’s home. B. had described how frightened some of the people are of dying. Although they had lived a long and varied life, they had still not come to terms with death. In the dream I realised I was looking for some way of communicating certainty about the goodness of death to B. I wanted to be able to look her in the eye and tell her she would be cared for.
Tracing it back, when we go into death through the jaws of the hunter, the lion, what do we meet? If we go back far enough we discover not anger or lust, but the lion’s desire to feed its cubs, or to survive. We find ourselves back in, back behind things. Behind the snake, behind this tiger, behind the human being, behind the decay. If we go back far enough we find ourselves in the awareness of the pack, in the species, in the formative forces of survival and reproduction that lies behind things. We find ourselves in that mystery, in the jungle where the essence of life pervades the various forms. From that place the viewpoint that we are nothing but a physical form, that we are a small cog in the wheels of life, that we must put up with what we have, seems ridiculous.
From that place we look at ourselves and see what a fantastic piece of equipment our body and mind is. As a conscious person we are right in the middle of everything. To say, “Oh God, we are nothing but a piece of slime, a helpless pawn in the hands of destiny,” is ridiculous. We are the culmination of everything that has existed before. We are that growing tip, that exploring awareness, in touch with unimaginable potential. We are everything that can be. What can we do?
Useful Questions and Hints:
Am I meeting deeply buried memories from childhood, or the repressed parts of myself?
Do I have any feekings this might represent past lives?
Do I have unconscious fears or dreads of some sort?
See Unconscious – Acting on your dream – What we need to remember about us