Dill in a dream: what does it mean?
A feathery herb whose name comes from a word meaning to lull, and which was given to children to settle them.
How do the four traditions 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. The four often disagree, and that is the point: a symbol rarely means one fixed thing, and the distance between Freud, Jung, modern research and myth tells you more than any single verdict could.
How did Freud read this symbol?
Freud would attend to the calming being the naming. A plant named for its effect rather than its appearance was classified by what it did to people, and he would ask what the dreamer named by outcome.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note that dill water was a remedy given to babies by people with no other option. The comfort was real whether or not the pharmacology was.
Our summary of a Jungian reading, in our own words, not Jung's. See Jung, ed., Man and His Symbols (1964).What does modern dream research say?
Food and domestic routine appear in dream reports, and continuity research finds household activity reproduced in proportion to the time actually spent on it.
Our summary of the continuity hypothesis, named by Calvin Hall and Vernon Nordby, The Individual and His Dreams (1972). Its correct scope is disputed; see Domhoff (2017) and the replies to him.What do myth and folklore say?
Gripe water was made with dill and was in nearly every household with an infant, and the plant's old names across northern Europe carry the sense of soothing.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Frazer; Brewer).How can writers use this symbol?
The same symbol, read as craft material rather than as a dream. What it does on the page, how genres use it differently, and what happens when you turn it inside out. Written for novelists, screenwriters and poets who need the symbol to actually work, and it ends with something to try.
Where does this appear in literature?
A plant named for what it does to a crying baby. The name is a prescription rather than a description.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
Classified by its effect rather than its appearance.
What are the genre conventions?
A green feathery mass, a spoon, and a quiet half hour.
How to subvert it
Write it not working.
Try this
Two hundred words about something named after what people needed it to do.
Only the first of these names a source. What a symbol does in a story, how genres treat it, how to invert it and what to try are our editorial judgement as writers and editors, not findings from a body of research. They are offered as craft opinion and should be argued with.
The books behind these readings
These are the books this entry actually draws on, not a general reading list. Where a text is in the public domain we link the free copy first, because you should not have to pay for something you can read for nothing. Every edition listed has been checked to exist and to be the right one.
-
The Interpretation of Dreams
The source behind every Freud reading in the dictionary. This is the 1913 Brill translation we adapt from, and it is free to read online.
-
Man and His Symbols
The accessible Jung, and the honest place to start for the archetype material our Jung readings summarise.
-
The Golden Bough
Cross-cultural context for the myth readings. Public domain and free to read online.
Rosmerta Publishing is a member of the Bookshop.org and Amazon Associates affiliate programs. If you buy a book through these links we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. The public-domain texts are always free to read online.