Dreams about road: 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.

Also covers: Train

Start with yourself

Were you heading towards somewhere or leaving somewhere? Did you choose this road?

Jung · Individuation as a way

Jung often spoke of individuation as a path one has to walk oneself; no one else’s map fits exactly.

If the road kept going after you woke, what do you think is around the next bend?

C. G. Jung, “Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation”, Collected Works 9i

Traditions, side by side

Upanishads Classical text

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says that in dream “there are no chariots, no harnesses, no roads — but he creates chariots, harnesses and roads”: the dreamer builds the way as they go.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.3.10

Tang tale Literature

In “The World Inside a Pillow”, a young man on the road to Handan lives a whole career in a dream while millet cooks — the source of the idiom “yellow millet dream”.

Shen Jiji, “The World Inside a Pillow” (c. 780)

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 road look like one you have actually seen? Could it simply be a copy of a memory?
Index — by connection
Could the road point to an actual cause — a bodily sensation, a sound in the room, something that happened that day?
Symbol — by convention
Does the road 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 road

The soul roves over wide areas India · c. 4th c. BCE–4th c. CE (epic)
The third day hence to fertile Phthia Athens, Greece · 399 BCE
The skull that spoke in a dream On the road to Chu, China · c. 3rd century BCE
The wise men went home another way Bethlehem · c. 1st century (narrative)
Arise, and flee into Egypt Bethlehem → Egypt · c. 1st century (narrative)
Come over into Macedonia, and help us Troas, Asia Minor · c. 49 (narrative)
Pulled from her bed on her wedding night Greece (story setting) · c. 170 CE (novel)
Driving an ox cart that carried the sun Chang’an, China · spring 846
The shoe I lost in the dream Chang’an, China · c. 870
A man clothed with rags Bedford, England · written c. 1676, pub. 1678
All the ponies driven westward Dakota country · c. 1860s
Back in the little town of his birth Russia · 1866 (novel)
Seeing Rome from the train, never entering Vienna, Austria · c. 1897
The poultice became a saddle Vienna, Austria · c. 1900
My own vast shadow England (countryside) · before 1911
Walking ahead with immense effort England · before 1911
Endless platforms on the way to Berlin England · before 1911
The child on my back grew heavy as stone Tokyo, Japan · 1908