Dreaming about
clocks

Clocks rarely appear in a dream by accident. They're the one object whose whole job is to tell you how much time you have, so dreaming about clocks usually means time is pressing on you somewhere, whether it's a deadline at work, a decision you keep putting off, your age, or a wait that has gone on too long.

The clock's behavior decides the rest. A clock ticking loudly over your head is pressure, and one that has stopped is something stuck or finished. Hands that race or run backwards are about time you feel you're losing or would like back. And since clocks act strangely in almost every dream, the oddness itself can be a clue that you're dreaming.

What dreaming about clocks means

Every reading of a clock dream comes back to time, but time can press on you in a few different ways.

A deadline or a countdown

The most common reading is the simplest. You have something due (one of your exams, a move, a launch, a payment) and the clock is that date in picture form, like being late without the running. Watch for clocks in places you link with tests or judgment, like a school hall or an office.

Your age and the "biological clock"

English talks about a biological clock ticking, and a clock dream around a big birthday, when your age is on your mind, or while you're deciding whether to have children, often means exactly that. It can also be about parents getting older, or about a feeling that everyone else is on schedule and you've fallen behind.

Waiting

Some clock dreams have no rush in them at all, only waiting. You watch the hands and nothing happens. That fits a stretch of life on hold, with news you're waiting for, a person who hasn't called back, a change that keeps being promised for next month.

Dreaming about a clock stopping

In many homes people used to stop the clocks when someone died, so a stopped clock can feel ominous. It doesn't predict anything. It's usually about a part of your life that has paused, like a relationship that isn't moving or a project frozen halfway. If the clock stopped at a time that means something to you, the hour of a birth, a loss or a phone call, that moment is probably what the dream is about.

Dreaming about a clock running backwards or too fast

A clock spinning forward is time getting away from you, too many days going by with too little to show for them. One running backwards tends to be about wanting to undo something, or about the past pulling at you (an old relationship, the person you were at twenty). English has a phrase for each, from racing against the clock to turning it back, and your dream may be acting one out. If you were trying to stop the hands with your fingers, ask what you're trying to hold still.

Dreaming about a loud ticking clock

A clock you can hear across the room, or one so loud you can't think, is pressure you can't tune out. Fans of Peter Pan will remember the crocodile who swallowed a clock, so Captain Hook could hear it coming. The ticking in your dream works the same way, as a warning that something is coming closer.

Dreaming about a clock you can't read

This one is more about dreaming than about time. Reading is one of the things the dreaming brain does badly, and reading and writing turn up in dreams far less often than in waking life,^[1] so a clock face often blurs, has the wrong number of hands or shows a different time each glance. If you noticed it and thought "this is strange", you were close to a lucid dream. Checking a clock twice is one of the classic tests, and there's more on how it works here.

Dreaming about clocks according to Jung and Freud

Clocks aren't on either man's symbol lists, so each section applies an idea of his and says so.

Jung: living by the clock, dreaming against it

In Jung's idea of compensation, a dream pulls against a lopsided waking attitude.^[2] If you live by the diary, with every hour accounted for, a clock that stops or shows the wrong time may be the dream pulling the other way. If you've let things drift, the loud tick over your head does the same job in reverse. Either way, the question is what your days leave out.

Freud: the exam hall and the clock on the wall

Freud counted examination dreams among the typical ones, with a twist: the exam in the dream is one you already passed, which he took as comfort before a real test.^[3] A clock on the wall of a school hall belongs in that dream, and if yours had one, his reading would hear reassurance and not a threat. Otherwise he'd start from the day before, from the deadline or birthday you've been counting down, and ask what wish the dream is disguising. Wanting more time is the obvious candidate, and that part is ours.

Other readings

Artemidorus, a Greek who wrote five books on dream interpretation in the 2nd century AD, has an entry on the sundial, the clock of his day, and reads it as standing for actions, impulses and undertakings, since people act by the hours.^[4] Where we hear time running out, he heard what you've set in motion.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of clocks in dreams

The Bible has no clocks, but its best-known passage on time asks the question a clock dream raises.

Time in Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes says "To every thing there is a season", and lists "a time to be born, and a time to die".^[5] If your clock dream feels like a question of timing, whether it's too soon or too late to act, that passage asks the same thing.

Questions to ask about your clock dream

Before you decide what the clock meant, go back over what it was doing.

• Was it ticking, stopped, racing or running backwards?
• Could you read the time, and did it mean anything to you?
• Where was the clock: a school, an office, your childhood home?
• What are you waiting for, or running out of time on?
• Does a birthday, a deadline or an anniversary fall soon?

Oniri asks what's going on in your life before it reads your dream, so a clock before an exam and a clock after a loss don't get the same reading.