What does it mean to dream about cremation?
Cremation in a dream often pictures a complete ending or a release, the clearing away of what is finished, rather than a literal forecast.
Four ways to read it
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream.
Freud
Freud would read cremation as the wish to be wholly rid of something, a feeling, a memory, or a part of the self burned away rather than buried. The fire can give force to a desire for a clean break. He would ask what the dreamer most wants gone.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung would often see fire as a force of transformation, where the old form is consumed so that something can change. Cremation can mark a thorough ending in the work of the self, with nothing left to cling to. The question is what is being released for good.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Under the continuity view, cremation dreams often follow real funerals, grief, or a strong wish to close a chapter completely. The mind replays an ending it is working to accept. Your own feeling in the dream is the best guide to its weight.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Many traditions burned their dead, holding that the fire freed the spirit from the body and sped it on its way. The pyre was both an ending and a release across cultures. Out of the ashes some told of new life, as in the bird reborn from its own burning.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Frazer; Bulfinch).