Dreams about tree: 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: Forest
Start with yourself
What kind of tree was it, and was it alive, bare, or in bloom? Does it remind you of a particular place?
Jung · The philosophical tree
Jung collected trees drawn by his patients and found in alchemy, and read them as images of slow growth — rooted below, reaching up.
What in you is growing slowly at the moment, without much notice?
C. G. Jung, “The Philosophical Tree”, Collected Works 13
Traditions, side by side
Norse myth Myth & scripture
Yggdrasil, the world-ash, holds the nine worlds in its roots and branches.
Poetic Edda, “Völuspá”
Tang tale Literature
Chunyu Fen falls asleep under an old pagoda tree and dreams of a kingdom; on waking he finds it was an ants’ nest among its roots.
Li Gongzuo, “The Governor of Nanke” (c. 802)
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 tree look like one you have actually seen? Could it simply be a copy of a memory? - Index — by connection
Could the tree point to an actual cause — a bodily sensation, a sound in the room, something that happened that day? - Symbol — by convention
Does the tree 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 tree
- Three branches and Pharaoh’s cup Egypt (narrative setting) · undated narrative
- An olive wreath that covered the earth Susa, Persia · 481 BCE (as told)
- Was it a dream that I saw? Forest (epic setting) · c. 4th c. BCE–4th c. CE (epic)
- An old woman in a brass coffin Ithome, Messenia · 369 BCE
- Build a city under the plane-tree Mount Pagus, Smyrna (İzmir) · 334 BCE (as told)
- A tree reaching unto heaven Babylon · narrative set c. 6th c. BCE
- A knife opened his heart, and he could learn Eastern Han China · c. 150 (as told)
- The deer hidden under banana leaves State of Zheng, China · compiled c. 4th century
- A thorn in her eye Chenliu (Kaifeng), China · 4th century
- My old friend entered my dream Qinzhou (Gansu), China · 759
- The kingdom under the locust tree Guangling (Yangzhou), China · c. 802
- A willow tree fell to the ground Chang’an, China · 815
- A child climbed out of a hollow tree Tang China · c. 840
- The window with cypress and mallows Mount Tiantai, Zhejiang, China · c. 900
- A boy mounted on a lion India (story setting) · c. 1070 (compiled)
- Bottom’s dream, which hath no bottom Athens (setting) · c. 1595 (play)
- Waking in the Peony Pavilion Nan’an, Jiangxi (setting) · 1598 (drama)
- Into the Land of Illusion Beijing, China · c. 1760 (novel)
- A warning of the war-party Dakota country · early 19th c. (told)
- Step in my tracks, up through the clouds Shores of Lake Huron · traditional (recorded c. 1820s–1850s)
- An ice-cold little hand at the window Yorkshire moors, England · 1847 (novel)
- The child on my back grew heavy as stone Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- Carving the guardian out of the wood Tokyo, Japan · 1908