Dreaming about
candles

A candle is the smallest fire most of us ever keep in the house, and it's lit on purpose, for a birthday, a dinner, a power cut or a prayer. So dreaming about candles is rarely a neutral dream. It usually points to hope in a dark time, to someone you're remembering, or to the sense that time or energy is burning down, and which of those it is depends on the flame.

A candle that burns steadily in a dark room and one that keeps blowing out are close to opposite dreams. Who lit it and why matter as much, since a candle on a cake, a candle at a vigil and a candle on a dinner table come from three different parts of your life. So the reading comes from your dream's own details, and from whatever has kept you up at night lately.

What dreaming about candles means

A candle gives a little light, needs shelter from the wind, and gets shorter every minute it burns. Most candle dreams use one of those three facts, sometimes all of them at once.

Hope in the dark

The most common reading is a small hope in a hard time. A single flame doesn't light a whole room, but it's enough to see by. Have you been through illness, grief or money trouble lately, and kept hold of something to believe in anyway? That's when this dream tends to come. If you were protecting the flame with your hand, the dream may be about how carefully you're guarding that hope right now, and from whom.

Remembering someone

People light candles for the dead, for the sick and for anyone they're holding in mind, in churches, at memorials and on anniversaries. A candle dream after a loss is often about remembrance, keeping someone present. And it doesn't have to be a death, since a candle for someone far away, or someone you've fallen out with, is a way of keeping a light on for them.

Time and energy running down

Before clocks were common, people marked hours on candles (a candle clock, which burned down past marked lines), and the image of time melting away has stuck with us. A candle burning fast, or one that's almost gone, often comes when you feel a deadline closing in or your own reserves running low. English describes the last one perfectly, as burning the candle at both ends, and the dream may be asking how much longer you can run like this.

Dreaming about lighting a candle

Lighting a candle is a small act of intention, the moment you decide to bring light into something. The dream often comes when you're starting something hopeful, reaching out to someone or making a private promise. If it lit easily, you may feel ready. A match that kept failing or a wick that wouldn't catch points to effort that isn't taking, perhaps a plan that won't get going or a person who won't warm to you.

Dreaming about a candle going out

A candle going out is the sad version of the dream, a hope or a feeling suddenly gone. It tends to come after a disappointment, or when you're afraid one is coming. It isn't a sign that anyone will die, whatever older superstitions say. But what blew it out matters more, because a draught from nowhere points to bad luck you couldn't control, while someone blowing it out on purpose is about a person you feel is putting out your plans or your enthusiasm.

Dreaming about a candle burning down

Watching a candle shrink to a stub is a dream about something running its course, a job, a relationship or a season of your life. If you were calm, it may be about accepting that it's ending. If you were anxious, scrambling for another candle before the last one died, ask what you're trying to keep going past its time. Wax melting everywhere can also be about a situation getting messy as it ends.

Dreaming about lighting a candle for someone

Lighting a candle in a church or at a shrine for someone you love is a prayer even if you don't pray. The dream usually comes when that person is on your mind, because they're ill, far away or gone. It's often a gentle dream, a way of caring for someone you can't help in any other way. If you were lighting it for yourself, you may be asking for help you haven't asked anyone for out loud.

Dreaming about birthday candles

Birthday candles are about age and wishes. Too many candles, or candles you couldn't blow out, often come around a birthday you're dreading, and getting them all out in one breath is the hope that your wish gets granted. The birthday page has more on dreams about getting older.

Dreaming about candles in a power cut

Candles in a blackout are what you fall back on when the normal light fails, and the dream is often about getting by in a crisis. Something you relied on (a job, a partner, your own health) has gone out, and you're managing with less. If the house felt cosy by candlelight, you may be finding that the simpler way of living suits you. If it felt frightening, the darkness is the bigger part of the dream.

Dreaming about candles according to Jung and Freud

A candle is small enough to carry and easy to put out, which is where both men's ideas get their grip.

Jung: a small flame to shelter

Candles aren't on any of his lists, but his child archetype is the nearest tool. It's his figure for what hasn't happened yet, potential and beginnings.^[4] A flame you cup against a draught is that kind of thing, small and not yet strong enough to light a room. A candle that keeps blowing out then asks what is putting out the new thing in you, and whether the draught comes from other people or from your own doubt.

Freud: the long object and the wish

In Freud's list of dream symbols, long objects such as sticks are male symbols.^[1] He didn't single out candles, but a candle is that shape, and applied his way a candle that won't light or keeps going out could carry a fear about desire or potency. Your own memories of candles came first for him (a cake, a church, a power cut). And a birthday candle hands you the wish itself, which is his idea of a dream as wish fulfilment with the disguise left off.

Other readings

Artemidorus, a Greek diviner who wrote five books on dreams in the 2nd century AD, wrote about the lamp, not the candle. He took it to be the head of the household, the dreamer's life breath and love, because it flares up.^[5]

The biblical and spiritual meaning of candles in dreams

Candles in the Bible

The King James Bible uses the candle as a picture of the inner life. "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord", says Proverbs, searching the inward parts.^[2] And Jesus tells his listeners that nobody lights a candle to put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick so it gives light to the whole house.^[3] If your candle dream felt spiritual, those two lines are where the tradition starts, the candle as your own spirit and as something meant to be seen.

Questions to ask about your candle dream

A candle dream depends on why the candle was lit and what happened to the flame, which is what these questions get at.

• Who lit the candle, and what for?
• Was the flame steady, flickering, burning fast or going out?
• Where were you, at home, in a church, at a table, in the dark?
• Who has been on your mind lately?
• Is there something you're keeping going with very little left?

Oniri asks about the place and the person behind the flame before it reads the dream, because a vigil candle and a dinner candle aren't the same light.