Dreaming about
cows

For most of human history a cow was a family's wealth, its milk, its butter, its calves and its plow. People still call a reliable earner a cash cow and an untouchable idea a sacred cow, and in several mythologies a cow sits at the very beginning of the world. Dreaming about cows usually draws on that old role. It tends to point to nourishment and care, often a mother or someone who looks after you, or to your own patient, steady side.

The state of the cow matters most. A healthy cow grazing in a green field is a different dream from a thin one standing in mud, and milking a cow is a different act from running from one. What cows mean to you shapes it as well. Someone who grew up on a farm will see a working animal, while for someone in a city a cow may stand for the countryside, slowness or a simpler life.

What dreaming about cows means

Cows are gentle, slow and productive (and, strictly speaking, always female, since the males are bulls or steers), and their dream meanings follow from that. Three readings cover most cow dreams.

Nourishment and the mother

Jung listed the cow among the images of the mother archetype, alongside the earth, the garden, the well and helpful animals in general.^[1] So a cow in a dream often points to whoever nourishes you (your actual mother, a partner, a friend), or to the part of you that takes care of others. How the cow was treated in the dream can say a lot about how that care feels at the moment, generous, taken for granted or worn out.

Patience and calm

Cows spend most of their day eating, resting and chewing the cud, and they rarely hurry (which anyone stuck behind a herd on a country lane can confirm). A calm cow in a dream can be a picture of patience and contentment, or of a slower pace you'd like to have. If your life has been all rush, the dream may be holding up a different speed for you to try.

Abundance or scarcity

Because cows were wealth, their condition in a dream often tracks your sense of security. Fat, healthy cows can point to a time when you feel provided for, and thin, sick or missing ones to worry about money, energy or support running low. The most famous cow dream ever recorded, Pharaoh's, is built on exactly that contrast.

Dreaming about milking a cow

Milking is about getting something from a source of nourishment. If the milk flowed easily, the dream may be about receiving support or making good use of what you have. If nothing came out, or the cow kicked the bucket over, ask whether you're asking too much from a person or a resource that's running dry. And sometimes the cow is you, which makes the dream about feeling milked by everyone around you.

Dreaming about a herd of cows

A herd is about belonging and going along with the group. Cows move together and rarely stray, so a herd can point to a family, a workplace or a community where everyone follows the same path. Standing outside it can mean you feel different from the people around you, and walking with it can mean comfort in fitting in, or a wish to stop following the crowd.

Dreaming about a cow chasing you

A cow chasing you is less frightening than a bull, but it's still unsettling, since cows are supposed to be gentle. It often points to a caring person whose care has started to feel like pressure, a mother who won't stop worrying, a partner who keeps checking in. But if the animal was actually a bull, the dream leans more toward anger, force or masculine energy.

Dreaming about a cow giving birth

A cow calving is about new life and new beginnings, a project born after a long wait, a baby, a business, a plan finally coming to life. Calves are usually on their feet within an hour of being born, so a newborn calf that gets up and walks can be about something new that's stronger than you expected. If the birth was hard, look at what in your life is taking more effort to bring into the world than you'd hoped.

Dreaming about a dead cow

A dead cow tends to be about loss of support or security, a job that's ended, a source of income drying up, or a caring relationship that's changed. It can also be about grief for a mother or a mother figure. It doesn't predict anyone's death, and more often it's the dream noticing that something which used to feed you, practically or emotionally, isn't there in the same way.

Dreaming about fat and thin cows

This is the dream with the longest history. In Genesis, Pharaoh dreams of seven fat cows coming out of the Nile, followed by seven thin, ugly cows that eat them up and look no better afterwards.^[2] Joseph tells him the fat cows are good harvests and the thin ones the hungry years that will swallow them, and he advises storing grain while times are good.^[3] If you dream of thin cows eating fat ones, it's worth asking whether you're spending your good times as if they'll last. But the dream isn't predicting a lean year, whatever Pharaoh's did.

Dreaming about cows according to Jung and Freud

Jung put the cow on a list of mother symbols. For Freud there is no cow entry to cite, so his section applies his ideas and says so.

Jung: the cow and the mother archetype

The list of mother symbols the cow sits on is long (a church, the sea, the earth, a cave, a well), which shows how wide Jung's idea was: the mother archetype wasn't about one woman but about shelter, feeding and the ground under you.^[1] A cow in a field is that image in animal form, which is why a cow dream can feel warm even when your own mother isn't in it. His idea of compensation adds a question. If you're the one who does all the feeding at home or at work, a cow that is thin or gives no milk may be the side of you that needs feeding.

Freud: the day before and the wish

Freud would start from yesterday, from a carton of milk, a field seen from a train or a call with your mother, which he called day residue.^[8] Then he would ask what wish the cow is dressed in. A cow is the animal that feeds without being asked, so the wish could be to be looked after in that way, or to hand over the work of looking after others.

Other readings

Calvin Hall, an American psychologist who treated a dream image as a picture of how you see the people in your life, used the cow as one of his examples of how a dream symbol works.^[4] A dreamer who sees his mother as nurturing may picture her as a cow, and for Hall the image states that view of her openly.

The spiritual meaning of cows in dreams

The cow has a place in more creation stories than almost any other animal. In ancient Egypt the goddess Hathor, linked with motherhood and joy, was often shown as a cow or with cow's horns. And in Norse myth the first cow, Audhumla, fed the first giant with her milk and licked the first god out of a block of salty ice.

The cow in Hindu texts

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna's teaching in the Mahabharata, Krishna says that among cows he is Kamadhuk, the cow that grants every wish.^[5] The Agni Purana, a Sanskrit compendium with a chapter of good and bad omens seen in sleep, reads seeing a cow in a dream as a sign that the dreamer's family will flourish, and counts drinking milk from a cow as a good dream too.^[6]

The cow in Buddhist texts

The best-known Buddhist cow dream is in the Jataka, the tales of the Buddha's earlier births, where a frightened king of Kosala dreams of cows suckling at calves born that same day, and his brahmins prepare an animal sacrifice to ward off the omen. The Buddha reads it as a picture of a far-off age when the old will depend on their children's goodwill, and the sacrifice is called off.^[7]

Questions to ask about your cow dream

A cow dream is easy to read too fast as "mother". These questions help you see if that's right.

• Was the cow healthy, thin, sick or dead?
• What was it doing, grazing, being milked, chasing you, calving?
• Did it remind you of anyone, in its manner or its care?
• Do you feel looked after at the moment, or like the one doing all the looking after?
• Is anything in your life running low, money, energy, patience?

Oniri reads your cow in the light of answers like these, so a cow in a field turns into a picture of your own week and not a dictionary entry.