Darkness

(1) Darkness is a common symbol of the unconscious.

If the darkness is frightening, this represents your fear of the unknown forces in your psyche.

If the darkness is warm and velvety, you are being invited to regard your unconscious as your friend.

(2) Darkness pierced by a light may be a sign that ‘light shines in darkness5: that the truth you are seeking (about yourself, or about life) is to be found in the unconscious. Darkness represents the unconscious in its unknown aspect; when it has been integrated into one’s conscious life, all is light. (On the shadow)

(3) It may be that, in the dream, you cannot find your way to the light, for example, at the end of a dark tunnel. This may reflect desperate feelings; frustration; depression.

See also Tunnel.

(4) The dark place may be womb-like and represent your own mother or, more likely, your emotional relationship to your mother. The unconscious may be recommending that you liberate yourself from a dominating mother (or mother image) and become your own person.

It may represent, not your own mother, but mother in a vaguer and profounder sense: ‘Mother Nature5, physiological, natural, instinctive functions; the unconscious.

See also (I) above and (5) below.

(5) Darkness may represent death. (The womb, too, may be a symbol of death: the desire to return to the womb is a desire to escape from life’s pains and problems.) See also Dead / Death.

If the darkness frightens you, perhaps you are afraid to investigate the unknown parts of yourself.

If you get lost in it, the dream is representing your feelings of insecurity, despair, or depression.

If it is, instead, “the darkness before dawn,” your unconscious is optimistic that your prospects are more promising than you think. A light at the end of a tunnel or the stars and the moon shining in the sky is an indication that your aspirations and desires are positive and urgently seek a light to guide you in life and tell you where to go. During the darkness, that’s when the unconscious lives more intensely. For this reason, the night is the symbolic moment in which characters from horror novels such as witches, ghosts, etc. meet These frightening figures are only representing our hidden aspects, or the lower forces mentioned earlier.

The Chinese oracle I Ching, used by Carl Jung to help with dream interpretations, says that when the darkness is so great that you can see absolutely nothing, it is to get darker. So, things can only get better.

If you are in a totally dark night, you are afraid of dying—and living—and you need advice from an objective person. Seeing a small light: you are distressed, but help is on the way. Being in a cave: you are unconsciously afraid of being attacked. Being in a dark closet: you recognize somebody’s hidden intentions just in time to prevent the person from carrying them out.

See Night.

Depth Psychology: Dreaming about darkness always refers to an emotionally dangerous situation or one that is unresolved. This may have to do with a specific experience widi other people or yourself. Try to shed some light on the situation. Being in a dark passage: you are feeling unprotected from the intensity of others and yourself.

It is a test: you need to prove yourself in order to come back into the light. Sometimes such a dream also suggests that you seek expert advice.