Dreaming about
God

Dreams about God are often the ones people remember for the rest of their lives, and they come to believers and non-believers alike. They tend to arrive at turning points (grief, illness, a big decision, or years away from a faith you grew up in). Dreaming about God usually reflects what you hold highest and how you stand with it, whether that's your search for answers, your conscience, or your faith in whatever shape it takes.

This page doesn't try to settle whether such a dream is a message from God, which religious traditions judge in their own ways (they're described below). What it can do is help you look at the dream itself, at what God was like in it, what was said, and the feeling you were left with on waking, because those details separate a dream of comfort from a dream of judgment.

What dreaming about God means

God in a dream rarely looks like anything you could draw. People describe a light, a voice, a presence behind them, or an old man on a throne straight out of a children's Bible, and each comes with its own reading.

A search for answers

The most common God dream comes when ordinary sources of help have run out. You're facing a question nobody around you can answer, about a sick parent, a marriage, or what your life is for, and the dream reaches for the highest authority there is. If you asked God something in the dream, the question itself is worth writing down. It's often clearer than anything you've managed to put into words while awake.

Your conscience

For many people God is the one who sees everything, and a God dream can be your conscience in its most serious form. Did you feel watched, judged, or forgiven? That tells you where you stand with something you've done or are about to do. And a God who was kind to you when you expected anger can be the first sign you're ready to forgive yourself.

An authority from childhood

The first all-powerful people most of us meet are our parents, so a stern or distant God can carry the face of one, especially a parent whose approval you still want. If the God in your dream sounded like your father or mother, the dream may be as much about them as about faith.

Dreaming about seeing God

Most people who see God in a dream describe light, too bright to look at, or a figure they can't quite make out. When God has a face, it's often an old man with a beard, as if from a painting on a church ceiling, which says more about the pictures we grew up with than about God. People tend to remember how the light felt, warm or searching, more than what it looked like.

Dreaming about God speaking to you

A voice with no body, saying your name or one short sentence, is how many of these dreams go. In the Bible the boy Samuel hears his name called in the night three times and thinks it's the old priest Eli, until Eli tells him to answer, "Speak; for thy servant heareth".^[1] If God spoke in your dream, write down the exact words as soon as you wake. Do they sound like something you've needed to hear for a long time? Or like something you've been avoiding?

Dreaming about praying to God

Praying in a dream is asking for something with your whole heart. What you prayed for is the clearest thing the dream gives you, because it's what you want most right now, sometimes more honestly than you'd admit in daylight. If the prayer felt answered, the dream often brings calm. If no answer came, it may be about a long wait you're in the middle of.

Dreaming about God being angry with you

An angry God is usually guilt, often learned early. People raised in strict homes or strict churches have this dream more, especially after breaking with a rule they grew up with, about sex, drink, work or leaving the faith. It doesn't mean you're condemned, and it says nothing about heaven or hell. It means part of you is still keeping score, and it can be worth asking whose voice is doing the counting.

Dreaming about God when you're not religious

Plenty of atheists and agnostics dream about God, and it often unsettles them, but we all carry the idea of God from childhood whether we believe or not. In this case God usually stands for something absolute, like meaning, mortality, a moral question, or awe at something bigger than yourself. It doesn't say you'll start believing. It says you've been thinking about the big questions, often after a birth, a death or a close call.

Morpheus, the god of dreams

If you searched for the god of dreams, you're thinking of Morpheus. In the Roman poet Ovid's version, he's one of the sons of Sleep, the one who appears to sleepers in human form, copying a person's face, voice and walk. His brothers took the shapes of animals and of objects. The name comes from the Greek for "shape", and morphine was named after him because it brings sleep.

Dreaming about God according to Jung and Freud

The symbol lists skip God, but each man has an idea that fits the shapes God takes in dreams.

Jung: the wise old man

In Jung's account the wise old man is an archetype that can wear the clothes of a priest, a teacher, a grandfather or any other authority.^[2] The bearded figure on a throne fits that list, though the list doesn't name God, so this is an application. Read his way, the figure is a picture your mind builds out of every person who ever knew better than you.

Freud: the parents behind the throne

Freud read an emperor and empress in a dream as the dreamer's father and mother.^[3] Applied to God, a ruler with absolute power over you is the shape a parent has in a child's eyes, and a God who judges or forgives sounds like the parent who once did the same.

Other readings

Artemidorus, a Greek of the 2nd century AD who set down the dream lore of his day, counted gods among the trustworthy figures in a dream, along with priests, kings, parents and teachers: what they say is true. A god seen without his proper attributes or bearing was lying.^[4] He meant the gods of his own world, but his test is a fair question for yours, which is whether the figure looked and spoke the way you'd expect.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of God in dreams

Three traditions take dreams seriously enough to write about them, and each also warns against believing every one.

Dreams from God in the Bible

The Bible takes dreams seriously and treats some of them as messages. "I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream," God says in Numbers.^[5] Joseph rises from prison by reading Pharaoh's dreams (one of the oldest dream interpretations on record), and he insists the meaning comes from God and not from him.^[6] The Magi are "warned of God in a dream" not to go back to Herod.^[7] But the same Bible says most dreams come "through the multitude of business",^[8] and Jeremiah condemns prophets who say "I have dreamed, I have dreamed" to pass off their own ideas as God's.^[9] Elihu, the young friend who lectures Job, says God opens people's ears in a night vision, "when deep sleep falleth upon men".^[10]

Dreams from God in the Talmud and the hadith

The Talmud, the book rabbinic Judaism is built around, says no dream comes without some nonsense in it, even one that comes true.^[11] A hadith preserved in Sahih Muslim, the report of a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, divides dreams into good tidings from God, distress sent by Satan and the mind's own talk.^[12] Both texts give some dreams a place and tell you to sort the rest with care.

Questions to ask about your God dream

A God dream deserves a slow read, and these questions help you take it on your own terms.

• What did God look like, or did you only hear or sense a presence?
• What was said, and in whose voice?
• Did you feel loved, judged, afraid, or at peace?
• What big question or decision is on your mind right now?
• What did faith mean in the home you grew up in?

Oniri won't tell you whether your dream came from God, but if you share it along with these answers, it can help you see what the dream was saying about your life. For a believer, talking it over with someone you trust in your faith is a good next step too.