Dreams about light: Jung, traditions and semiotics
This is not a dream dictionary. Each perspective below names where it comes from; traditions are shown side by side, not merged into one meaning.
Start with yourself
Where did the light come from? What did it let you see — and was anything too bright to look at?
Jung · Lumen naturae
Writing on Paracelsus, Jung took up the old idea of a lumen naturae, a “light of nature” within us that illuminates from the inside rather than from outside authority.
Did the light in your dream show you something you cannot quite see when awake?
C. G. Jung, “Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon”, Collected Works 13
Traditions, side by side
Early dream research Dream research
Ellis noted the common claim that light on closed eyes sets off dreams, but said he had no decisive evidence and that eyelids guard sleep well. His own dream of a bright light and a huge shadow came after an evening walk into the setting sun.
Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. IV
Hebrew Bible Myth & scripture
The first thing spoken in Genesis is “Let there be light”: light marks the start of an ordered world.
Genesis 1:3
Semiotics: how an image comes to mean
Following C. S. Peirce, an image can work as a sign in three ways:
- Icon — by resemblance
Does the light look like one you have actually seen? Could it simply be a copy of a memory? - Index — by connection
Could the light point to an actual cause — a bodily sensation, a sound in the room, something that happened that day? - Symbol — by convention
Does the light mean what it means by convention — an idiom, a saying, a family phrase? Would it still mean that in another language or culture?
C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers 2.247–249 (icon, index, symbol)
C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (1921), “Definitions: Symbol” — a sign stands for something known, a symbol for something not yet fully known
Ellis (1911), ch. II, on verbal links between dream images
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Recorded dreams with light
- As in a mirror, as in a dream Ancient India · c. 5th c. BCE (text)
- A thunderbolt fell on my father’s house Mesopotamia · 401 BCE
- An ivory chariot flying through the clouds Lanka (setting) · c. 5th–4th c. BCE (epic)
- The third day hence to fertile Phthia Athens, Greece · 399 BCE
- A great image with feet of clay Babylon · narrative set c. 6th c. BCE
- A goddess put lightning in my hand Near Rome, Italy · 88 BCE
- His son with thunder and a sceptre Thrace · c. 60 BCE
- A golden hump on his neck Rome, Italy · c. 90s CE
- The moon, then the sun, entered my bosom Wu (Zhejiang), China · c. 175–182
- Where she was, there was I also Thagaste, North Africa · c. 373
- Holding the sun on a mountain top Tang China · c. 760
- Driving an ox cart that carried the sun Chang’an, China · spring 846
- Swallowing the sun Guangling (Yangzhou), China · c. 920 (Wu kingdom)
- Gold under the pillow every morning Chinchinī, on the sea coast (story) · c. 1070 (compiled)
- Iron cavalry, silent as water Shu (Sichuan), China · c. 1173
- Who is dead in the White House? Washington, D.C., USA · early April 1865 (as reported)
- Stair after stair in endless series Edinburgh, Scotland · c. 1867–1871
- Father, don’t you see that I am burning? Central Europe · before 1900
- A sky like cracked ice England · before 1911
- My own vast shadow England (countryside) · before 1911
- Heaven, surrounded by dazzling light United States · before 1911
- Living pictures in magnesium light Germany · before 1911
- A samurai racing the temple clock to enlightenment Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- A cedar chest of dream-stuff from her grandfather Washington, D.C. · c. 1910s