Dreaming about
stars

The light from most stars you see left them years ago, some of it before you were born, so looking at the night sky is looking at old news from very far away. People have still steered ships by them, made wishes on them, and read their futures in them for thousands of years. Dreaming about stars usually points to your hopes and ambitions, a wish, a goal, or a sense of being guided toward something you can't quite reach.

Whether the stars shone, moved or fell is what shapes the reading. A sky crowded with stars is a dream of wonder, a single shooting star is a wish, and stars dropping out of the sky is something closer to fear. Think about what you've been hoping for lately, and how far away it feels.

What dreaming about stars means

We use stars for anything high and bright. We reach for the stars, thank our lucky stars, call famous people stars and unlucky lovers star-crossed. Dreams use the same language.

Hopes and ambitions

The plainest reading is ambition. A dream of stars often comes when a goal is on your mind, a career, a creative project, a life you'd like to live. If the stars felt close, the goal may feel within reach. If they were very far and faint, it may be about a hope that feels unrealistic, or one you've stopped letting yourself think about.

Direction

Sailors found north by a single star, and stars in a dream can be about guidance, a value or a person that helps you find your way. A star that seemed to lead you somewhere tends to come when you're looking for direction, or have just found it.

Fame and being noticed

A star is also a celebrity. If the dream mixed stars with stages, spotlights or famous people, it may be about wanting recognition or worrying about being seen. There's more on dreams of celebrities and fame on their own pages.

Dreaming about shooting stars

A shooting star is a speck of space dust burning up as it hits the air, over in a second, and the custom of making a wish on one is old and widespread. In a dream it usually stands for a wish, often one you haven't admitted out loud, or for a chance that could be gone if you blink. If you made a wish in the dream, what was it? That's often the clearest message the dream has. A meteor shower tends to come with excitement about many possibilities opening at once.

Dreaming about a sky full of stars

A night sky packed with stars, far more than you'd ever see from a city, is a dream of wonder and perspective. It often comes when you need a break from small worries, or after a moment that made you feel part of something bigger, a birth, a death, falling in love. Feeling tiny and lonely under it points to feeling insignificant, and feeling calm to peace.

Dreaming about stars falling

Stars falling out of the sky is a frightening dream about ideals and hopes coming down. It can come when a goal has failed, or when someone you looked up to has let you down, a mentor, a parent, a public figure. Stars falling into the sea or going dark one by one can mirror a slow loss of hope, while catching one suggests you're holding on to something despite everything.

Dreaming about holding a star

Holding a star in your hands, or touching one, is a dream about reaching something you thought was out of reach. It often comes just after a success or when you're close to one, and if it burned you, the dream may be about a goal that costs you health or relationships.

Dreaming about stars according to Jung and Freud

Jung: the Self as a distant light

Jung gave the name Self to the center and wholeness of the psyche, and he found it pictured in circles and mandalas, shapes built around a middle point.^[4] A star is a middle point with light going out from it, so a dream star you steer by or walk toward can be read as the pull of that wholeness, the part of you that's larger than whatever you're busy with this week. The step from his Self to a star is ours.

Freud: the star you reach for

Freud saw a dream as a wish shown already fulfilled, and a hand closing on a star is about as direct as that gets, the goal in your palm.^[5] We have no reading of stars from him, so the falling ones are yours to set against the wish. What were you hoping to hold on to when they went?

Other readings

In the Oneirocritica, the earliest Greek dream book that has come down to us, the 2nd-century diviner Artemidorus read bright, clear stars as good for journeys and undertakings. Stars vanishing from the sky meant emptiness for a rich dreamer, since he thought of the sky as a house and the stars as its contents, and ruin for a poor one.^[6]

The biblical and spiritual meaning of stars in dreams

Stars in the Bible

Stars stand for promise in the Bible. God takes Abraham outside and tells him to count the stars, "so shall thy seed be".^[1] Later the wise men follow a star to find the newborn Jesus.^[2] And in one of the Bible's famous dreams, the young Joseph sees eleven stars bowing to him, which his father and brothers read at once as his eleven brothers.^[3]

Joseph's stars in the Quran

The Quran tells the same dream. The boy describes to his father eleven stars, the sun and the moon bowing to him,^[7] and years later, when his family bows before him, he calls it "the interpretation of my old dream".^[8]

Questions to ask about your star dream

Stars are about hopes, so ask what you were hoping for.

• Were the stars still, shooting, falling or in your hands?
• Did you make a wish, and what was it?
• Were you alone under them, or with someone?
• What goal or hope has been on your mind lately?

Describe your star dream to Oniri and it will ask you a few things along these lines, so the reading fits your own hopes and not anyone else's.