Verbena in a dream: what does it mean?
A plant that was carried on Roman altars and used to sweep them, and whose old name simply meant sacred branch.
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 it being the instrument rather than the offering. A plant used to prepare an altar rather than to be laid on one is doing the work and not receiving anything, and he would ask what the dreamer had been used to make ready.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note that it turns up in every tradition of the region. Roman, Druidic and later Christian accounts all give it a role, which is unusual for a plant with no striking properties at all.
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 appear in dream reports according to real exposure, and continuity research finds garden and herbal species 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?
Verbenae were the sacred boughs carried by priests and used to sweep the altar, and the plant kept a reputation across several successive religions in the same territory.
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 kept a sacred reputation through three successive religions in the same territory, which almost nothing manages.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
Present at everything and part of none of it.
What are the genre conventions?
A small plain plant, sweeping a stone table before anything happens on it.
How to subvert it
Write it as the offering.
Try this
Two hundred words about the thing used to prepare the ceremony, which is never part of it.
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.