Dreaming Lens: Were you in a dungeon? Were you under threat of being taken to a dungeon? Was the dungeon yours? Did you know to whom the dungeon belonged? Were you working in the dungeon? Was anyone being tortured?
Personal Focus: Dungeons are a place of torture and imprisonment. Originally, they were part of a castle or fortress that belonged to the nobility of the land, so at the heart of this symbol lays the fact that a dungeon was initially part of a home. As such, they represent an element of the Self (see Houses). Because dungeons are located at the lowest level of the building that houses them, they correlate with deeply hidden and unconscious thoughts and fears. They were a place where people were kept locked up and tortured; therefore, a dungeon is the part of the Shadow where our most frightening ideas and thoughts create ongoing and imaginable levels of suffering and pain.
Within the societal structure, the essential and historical use of a dungeon was to keep the safety of the community in tact by capturing and sequestering enemies who might do harm. Torture itself was implemented to extract information that would lead to the capture of more enemies and increase the safety and well being of the world above. The mere thought of such a place was so terrifying that the threat of ever being taken there essentially kept order and harmony among the common people.
There is a sexual element to this image that connects to the fetishism dominating or submitting in sexual role-play. A dungeon, in this case, need not be a fear-inspiring dark and dreary place; it can be private and possess the appropriate equipment to facilitate the activities associated with such sex play. If you are in this scene in your waking life, then your dream may be a reflection of the people and emotional experiences associated with that corner of your environment. If the dungeon in your dream is sexual in nature and this lifestyle is foreign to you, consider ways in which your sexuality and thoughts about physical intimacy may be holding you hostage or, conversely, may need an avenue of healthy, playful expression.
The Dreaming Lens will offer important information for your interpretation. The setting accounts for the part of our unconscious we are dealing with; the Shadow and fear being fully expressed. The type of action a dungeon is known for also figures prominently into the symbolic meaning associated with it. The threat of being taken to one is the more powerful element to consider. If you were being tortured, the Character Aspect of your captor will illuminate what parts of you are holding you back through fear. If you were the torturer, than your prisoner(s) will shed light on what aspects you feel the need to punish. Also be willing to look at your sense of justification for your actions or lack there of. We often imprison parts of who we are, torturing them (and ourselves) for elements of our humanity that we don’t understand or that frighten us.
