(1) A black hole or dark depths - for example, an unlit cellar or a deep well or oceanic depths - may represent the unconscious. This blackness mav be frightening, so long as the unconscious remains alien and unfamiliar. However, black can also be warm and comforting - which is whv insomniacs arc sometimes advised to close their eyes and imagine themselves wrapped.round in black velvet.
If you begin to trust your unconscious (which means trusting Nature), each previously horrifying or disgusting part of your unconscious will show itself in a new light, as something vou need for personal fulfilment. Putting vour consciousness
into the unconscious - becoming aware of it - means putting more and more light into the darkness.
If a star or other bright light appears in the blackness, this may be seen as a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, that is, as a symbol of the ‘illumination’ - new wisdom or insight - that may be achieved by dwelling a while in the unconscious and making its better acquaintance.
(2) Black (particularly for white people) may symbolize evil.
If so, bear in mind that, as a general rule, what appears in your dreams is always some part of you, and that the so-called ‘evil’ (and therefore repressed) parts of you are really evil only if, because of neglect, they become rebellious, or if you let them take control away from your conscious self. These ‘evil’ things are transformed into good things - creative, and bringing fuller life, happiness and wholeness - when conscious and unconscious interact and establish a harmonious working relationship.
NB It is only Judaism, Christianity and Islam that have a thoroughgoing dualism of good and evil, and a matching moral dogmatism. In the earliest known forms of religion, and in traditions (such as the Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist traditions) that have not cut themselves off from their early roots, good and evil are opposite but equally necessary’ components of reality; and in mystical traditions (including Jewish, Christian and Islamic mysticism) even God is described as a coming together of opposites - good and evil, but also masculine and feminine.
(3) A person dressed in black may represent vour shadow.
(4) A black-skinned person (if you are white-skinned) may represent either the shadow or closeness to Nature.
(5) A black animal probably represents some unconscious repressed drive or emotion.
If the animal is fierce, this possibly means that something yrou have repressed is now urgently pressing you to give it your conscious attention and let it have some expression in your w aking life.
(6) Blackness (as in a black night, etc.) may simply signify’ diminished visibility, in which case the meaning of the dream may have something to do w ith a loss of orientation in your life. Do vou feel you don’t know’ which w’ay to go; or that you don’t hav e the energy’ or will to go in any direction? If so, make a pact w ith v our unconscious to die effect that, if it will tell you where you have the potential - and the need - to go, you will respond accordingly in your life. Then pav close attention
to the dreams that follow. (If you go the next few nights without dreaming - or, more precisely, without recalling any dreams - this probably means that you are backing out of the pact and setting up a defence against what you fear your unconscious might have to tell you.)
(7) Black may symbolize despair or deep depression.
If so, follow the advice given in (6) above.
(8) In many parts of the world black is associated with death.
It is possible, therefore, that this is what the colour signifies in your dream. Bear in mind, however, that death in a dream may refer to something internal: the ‘death’ - or the giving up - of something within you (for example, some irrational fear, or other negative attitude or emotion). See also Death.... A Dictionary of Dream Symbols
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Depicts how you see the relationship with your husband; your relationship with your sexuality; sexual and emotional desire and pleasure; how you relate to intimacy in body, mind and spirit; habits of relationship developed with one’s father.
Example: ‘My recurring dream—some disaster is happening. I try to contact the police or my husband. Can never contact either. I try ringing 999 again and again and can feel terror, and sometimes dreadful anger or complete panic. I cry, I scream and shout and never get through! Recently I have stopped trying to contact my husband. I managed once to reach him but he said he was too busy and I would have to deal with it myself. I woke in a furious temper with him and kicked him while he was still asleep’ (Mrs GS).
The husband here depicts Mrs S’s feelings of not being able to get through’ to her man. This is a common female dream theme, possibly arising from the husband not daring to express emotion or meet his panner with his own feelings.
For Mrs S this is an emergency. Although the dream dramatises it, there is still real frustration, anger, and a break in marital communications.
Example: There were three of us. My husband, a male friend and 1, all nding small white enamel bikes. My husband proceeded slowly, first, with his back to us. Then my friend followed. Suddenly my friend ahead of me turned and gazed fully at me. He gave a glonous smile which lit up the whole of his face. I felt a great sense of well-being surge through me’ (Joan B).
The triangle: the example shows typical flow of feeling towards another male.
The other male here depicts
Joan’s desire to be attractive to other men. This is a danger signal unless one fully acknowledges ihe impulse.
Example: ‘I was with my husband and our three children. About 2 or 3 yards to our right stood my husband’s first wife —she died about a year before I first met him. I remember feeling she no longer minded me being with him, so I put my arms around him from the back, and felt more secure and comfortable with him’ (Mrs NS).
The first wife: the dreamer is now feeling easier about her husband’s first relationship.
The first wife represents her sense of competing for her husband’s affections, even though his ‘first woman’ was dead.
Example: ‘My dead husband came into my bedroom and got into bed with me to make love to me. I was not afraid. But owing to his sexual appetites during my married life with him I was horrified, and resisted him with all my might. On waking I felt weak and exhausted.
The last time he came to me I responded to him and he never came back again. This happened three times.
The last time I don’t think it was a dream. I was not asleep. I think it was his ghost’ (GL). Dead husband: in any experience of an apparently psychic nature, we must always remember the unconscious is a great dramatist. It can create the drama of a dream in moments. In doing so it makes our inner feelings into apparently real people and objects outside us. While asleep we lightly dismiss this amazing process as a dream’. When it happens while our eyes are open or we are near waking, for some reason we call it a ghost or psychic event. Yet the dream process is obviously capable of creating total body sensations, emotions, full visual impressions, vocalisation—what else is a dream? On the other hand, the dream process is not dealing in pointless imaginations. Many women tend to believe they have little sexual drive, so it is easier for GL to see her drive in the form of her husband. But of course, her husband may also depict how she felt about sex in connection with his ‘sexual appetites’.
It is a general rule, however, that our dream process will dramatise into a past life, or a psychic’ experience, emotions linked with trauma or sexual drive which we find difficult to meet in the present.
Example: ‘I dreamt many times I lost my husband, such as not being able to find the car park where he was waiting, and seeing him go off in the distance. I wake in a panic to find him next to me in bed. These dreams persisted, and then he died quite suddenly. He was perfectly healthy at the time of the dreams and I wonder if it was a premonition of me really losing him’ (Mrs AD). Cannot find husband: many middle aged women dream of ‘losing’ their husband while out with him, perhaps shopping, or walking in a town somewhere. Sometimes the dream ponrays him actually killed. Mrs AD wonders if her dream was a premonition.
It is more likely a form of practising the loss, so it does not come as such a shock.
The greatest shocks occur when we have never even considered the event—such as a young child losing its mother, an event it has never practised, not even in fantasy, so has no inbuilt shock absorbers. As most of us know, men tend to die before women, and this information is in the mind of middle-aged married women. Mrs AD may have unconsciously observed slight changes in her husband’s body and behaviour, and therefore readied herself.
Other woman’s husband: one’s own husband, feelings about that man, desire for a non-committed relationship with less responsibility. ... A Guide to Dreams and Sleep Experiences
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