Dream Symbols 6: The House Part 1

Continuing in the dream symbols series, today I want to start a multi-part post about the rooms of the house.

Dreaming of a house often symbolizes dreaming about the self, the identity, the current life situation, or the current inner situation coming out into the external life by virtue of some element of the quality of the dream house.

Imagine, for example, that you dream of entering a relatively modest or humble house, which, in the dream, you know belongs to you, or that in the dream it is where you live. Its exterior promises little, it is small, and not particularly attractive. Nevertheless, as you enter through the unprepossessing front door, you are amazed to see an enormous entrance hall. As you have not yet even begun to get over your surprise at the size of this hall, thinking to yourself that it just isn’t possible that such a large hall exists in such a small house, you see a number of doors, each of which leads to a more opulently appointed room than the one before. Costly Persian rugs, old masters on the walls, Bohemian crystal, antique Chinese floor vases, Biedermeier chairs…you are stunned. How could something so beautiful - and of such grandeur - be found in this small, humble little house?

Then to your amazement you see an elegant staircase that leads to the next floor, and you specifically remember noticing when you saw the house from the outside, that it only had one storey. The staircase is curved and broad, and you are even more astonished that such a small one-storey frame house could have room for a second floor.

The point of this entire description is to demonstrate how the symbolism of a house in a dream of this nature may point to the dreamer’s growing inner life (the hugeness of the house inside), which the dreamer, however, may not yet have consciously assimilated.

Conversely, a dreamer who enters a fantastic mansion, and finds it poorly furnished inside, or totally bereft of furniture, lacking rugs and curtains, chipped paint, and so on, might need to consider what it is that is lacking in the dreamer’s inner life. Is he/she pompous and pretentious on the outside, and totally lacking in substance and beauty inside?

The house contains many symbols, and in the next post about this I’ll begin discussing the rooms of the house. First: the kitchen.

Previous posts in this series:

Dream Symbols 1: Pregnancy and Birth
Dream Symbols 2: Death
Dream Symbols 3: The Snake
Dream Symbols 4: The Butterfly
Dream Symbols 5: Flying

Photo Credits:

Top Photo: Icelandic Turf House with kind permission of Danny Yee