What does it mean to dream about darkness?
Darkness often stands for the unknown, fear, or what is hidden from view, but also rest and the quiet before something comes to light.
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 darkness as the cover under which hidden wishes move, the place where what is repressed can stir unseen. Fear of the dark is often fear of what it conceals. What you imagine in it is revealing.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung would see the unconscious itself, the shadow and all that the daylight self has not faced. Darkness is not only loss but the ground from which new awareness grows. Entering it can be the start of finding light.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Continuity ties darkness to waking uncertainty, fear, or simply the need for rest. It often mirrors a time when the way ahead is unclear. The dread tends to ease once something becomes visible.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Primordial darkness comes before creation in myth after myth, the formless night out of which the world is made. Gods of night and of the underworld ruled it. Darkness was both the beginning of things and the place of the dead.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Bulfinch; Frazer).