Dreaming about
an eclipse

An eclipse turns day into night for a few minutes, and anyone who has stood under a total one remembers how wrong it felt. The air cools, birds go quiet and the light turns a strange silvery gray. Dreaming about an eclipse usually points to that same feeling in your life, something blocking your light for a while, whether it's a person who overshadows you, a worry that dims a happy time, or a part of you pushed out of view.

Eclipses end, and the dream usually knows it. A sun that came back is a very different dream from one that stayed black, and a red moon watched with friends is not the same as one watched alone and afraid. Which of these you had, and what has been casting a shadow over your weeks, decides the reading.

What dreaming about an eclipse means

An eclipse is one body passing in front of another, so the dream is nearly always about something coming between you and what usually lights you up.

Being overshadowed

English says a person is eclipsed when someone else takes all the attention. A sibling's wedding the month you had news of your own, a colleague who presents your idea better than you could, a partner whose career fills every conversation, any of these can show up as a sun slowly covered.

A dark patch in a good time

A solar eclipse can fall at midday in full summer, under a perfectly clear sky. Dreams of one often come in a period that should feel bright, a new relationship or a promotion, when a worry has slid across the middle of it.

A rare turning point

Eclipses are rare enough that people travel across the world to stand in one. If the dream felt awed more than afraid, it can mark a moment you sense is a turning point, a decision or an ending you'll date things from.

Dreaming about a solar eclipse

A solar eclipse is the sun going out, and the sun in dreams is usually energy, warmth and confidence. Seeing it blacked out can mirror a time when your drive has gone, after burnout or an illness, or when someone else's mood has blotted out your own. If you saw the edge of the sun reappear, the dream may already be telling you that you're coming out of it.

Dreaming about a lunar eclipse

During a total lunar eclipse the moon doesn't vanish, it turns a coppery red, which is why people call it a blood moon. Because the moon so often stands for feelings and the hidden side of life, a red moon tends to be about emotions coming to the surface, anger or desire or grief you've kept quiet. In many places the blood moon was once feared as a sign of war or disaster, and a dream of one can carry that dread without predicting anything.

Dreaming about looking directly at an eclipse

Everyone who has watched an eclipse has been told not to look straight at the sun, and dreams of staring at one anyway (or of eyes hurting afterwards) are about looking too closely at something that can hurt you. That might be scrolling through an ex's new life or rereading a cruel message, and protective glasses suggest you've found a safer way to look.

Dreaming about an eclipse that doesn't end

The dream turns frightening when the light doesn't come back. A sun that stays dark is a passing shadow you've started to believe is permanent, which is a common feeling in long stretches of low mood. If the dream felt hopeless and those weeks have too, it's worth talking to someone. Close to these are dreams of darkness with no end at all.

Dreaming about an eclipse according to Jung and Freud

Jung on the shadow crossing the sun

A total eclipse is a dark disc sliding over a bright one, and Jung's word for the dark side of a person, the part you disown, is the shadow.^[1] He wrote nothing about eclipses, so this is his idea applied, with the sun taken as the part of you in plain view. On that reading a dream eclipse is the disowned side coming between you and your own light, the anger you swallowed or the envy you haven't admitted. The comfort is built into the picture, since a shadow blocks the sun only while the two are lined up.

Freud on the day everyone looked up

Eclipses are announced weeks ahead and fill the news, so Freud's method would first check whether one had been in your day, a headline or a friend's trip to see one.^[2] Then comes the wish. For a few minutes the whole world stops and looks up together, and a dream that grants that, a pause everybody shares, may be granting a wish for things to stand still while you catch up. He wrote nothing about eclipses, so this is his method applied.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of an eclipse in dreams

Many cultures once explained an eclipse as something swallowing the sun, or took it as a warning.

The sun turned to darkness in Joel

The prophet Joel speaks of a day when "the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood".^[3] The words belong to a prophecy about the day of the Lord, the Bible's picture of the usual order breaking.

Eclipses in the Agni Purana

Among the Sanskrit Puranas, the Agni Purana sorts dreams into good and bad omens, and it puts the fall of the sun and moon among the bad ones. Eclipses of the sun, moon and stars it counts among the good, and the Matsya Purana's list agrees.^[4][5] So a darkened sky is a sign of upheaval in Joel and a good omen here, one more case of these lists refusing the obvious reading.

Questions to ask about your eclipse dream

Eclipses are dramatic, but the reading usually comes down to what was in the way.

• Was it the sun or the moon that went dark?
• Did the light come back before you woke?
• Who was watching it with you, and how did they react?
• What has been overshadowing you, or what have you been overshadowing?

Oniri works through questions like these with you before it gives a reading, because a red moon at a party and a black sun over an empty town are not the same dream.