(2) A box may also represent yourself, your own psyche. Opening the box would signify a resolve to get to know yourself.
If the box contains something precious, it probably represents your true or essential or deep self, a rich store of energies and powers and wisdom and love.
(3) If the box in the dream fills you with fear - like Pandora’s box, from which all kinds of pestilential things came - there are at least three possibilities:
(a) It may symbolize your unconscious. The powers, instinctual drives and buried emotions that are kept out of sight in the unconscious layers of the psyche are things that have at some time in the past - possibly in
childhood - frightened you or been associated with frightening experiences. The wav forw ard is to cultivate their acquaintance and give them their proper place in your conscious life.
(b) If you are a man, the box may represent the negative aspect of woman (or the feminine) as the feared femme fatale luring you to destruction, or the possessive and devouring mother depriving you of your independence. In that case, you need to become acquainted w ith the feminine side of your own nature (anima) and / or come to terms with and deal with your (buried) feelings towards your mother (for anima).
See also Woman. (For man, woman is an ambivalent reality, desired and feared. In mythology Pandora exemplifies this ambivalence - as do most goddesses. ‘Pandora’ means ‘all-giving’ or ‘all gifts’ and w’as probably originally a name given to the Earth Goddess, giver of all life. It w’as only later - at a stage of development w here male deities were the supreme gods and female deities had been demoted to subservient roles - that Pandora was seen as a symbol of woman as the source of evil.)
(c) It may represent any source of disaster. Is there anvthing w ithin you or in vour home or working environment that is threatening you or making you anxious?