Marjoram in a dream: what does it mean?
A herb constantly mistaken for oregano, to which it is closely related and from which it differs by being milder and more easily lost in cooking.
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 being defined by the louder relative. A thing described chiefly as the gentler version of something else has no account of its own, and he would ask whom the dreamer was always compared against.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note that it is added at the end. Long cooking destroys it, so the herb has to go in when the work is nearly done, which is the opposite of how the stronger one is used.
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 cooking appear in dream reports and continuity research finds culinary routine reproduced by the people who perform 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?
It was grown for garlands and for strewing as well as for the pot, and the two herbs are close enough that shops have sold one as the other for a very long time.
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?
It has to go in at the end or it disappears entirely. The stronger one goes in at the start, which is why people keep getting it wrong.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
Defined entirely by comparison with something louder.
What are the genre conventions?
A soft grey-green leaf, and a pan already nearly finished.
How to subvert it
Write it cooked for an hour.
Try this
Two hundred words about somebody always described as the gentler version of somebody else.
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.
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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.
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Man and His Symbols
The accessible Jung, and the honest place to start for the archetype material our Jung readings summarise.
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The Golden Bough
Cross-cultural context for the myth readings. Public domain and free to read online.
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