Larkspur in a dream: what does it mean?
The annual relative of the delphinium, named for a spur at the back of the flower shaped like a lark's claw.
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 naming from behind. A flower named for a projection at its back rather than for the face it presents was described by somebody looking at the wrong side, and he would ask which side of the dreamer got named.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note that the spur holds the nectar. Only an insect with a long enough tongue can reach it, so the shape that gave the flower its name is also a filter on who may visit.
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?
Plants and gardens appear in dream reports according to real exposure, and continuity research finds cultivated flowers occurring most for people who grow them.
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?
It was sown among corn as a field annual before herbicides, and it went from the fields at the same time and for the same reason as the cornflower.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.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?
The spur is a filter. Only something with a long enough tongue can reach the nectar, and the name is that same spur seen from outside.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
Named from the back rather than the face.
What are the genre conventions?
A blue flower with a hooked spur behind it, and one bee that can manage it.
How to subvert it
Write a short-tongued visitor.
Try this
Two hundred words about a shape that is both the name and the rule about who may come.
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.
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.