What does it mean to dream about lake?
A lake often pictures a still pool of feeling, the calm or hidden depth of your inner life, and what lies beneath a quiet surface.
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 read large bodies of water as tied to birth and the unconscious, and a still lake can hold both calm and what is submerged. Notice whether the surface is clear or murky, since each suggests a different relation to what is below.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung saw water as a common image of the unconscious, and a lake as a contained, reflective stretch of it. The state of the water, mirror-still or troubled, may say something about how you meet your own depths.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
The continuity view ties a lake to waking moods and settings, perhaps a place you know or a wish for calm and stillness. What you felt at the shore is usually the most useful clue.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
Lakes are old thresholds in myth, homes of the Lady who held a king's sword and of spirits dwelling beneath the water. Their stillness made them places where the otherworld seemed close.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Bulfinch; Brewer).