Dreaming about
the sun

Every living thing on earth runs on the sun, and so does our mood. Long gray winters leave many people flat and tired, and a sunny morning can lift a week. Dreaming about the sun usually draws on that lift, pointing to energy, warmth and clarity, a hopeful state of mind or a burst of confidence. It can also stand for someone in your life who feels as central and as powerful as the sun, very often a parent.

What the sun was doing tells you which. A sunrise and a sunset carry opposite moods, a sun that burned you is a different dream from one that warmed you, and a sun that never came up is a dream about losing something you thought you could always count on.

What dreaming about the sun means

Everyday talk keeps the sun for good things, like a sunny nature, a place in the sun or making hay while it shines. In a dream it tends to keep that warmth, with a few darker turns.

Energy and a clear head

The most common reading is vitality. Dreams full of bright sunshine often come when you feel well, rested and hopeful, or when you badly want to. If you've been ill, burned out or stuck indoors, a sunny dream can be the mind reaching for what it's missing, and if it's been sunny all week where you live, the dream may just be keeping up with your days.^[1]

A parent or a power over you

The sun is the center everything moves around, and in a dream it can stand for the person your life revolves around, often a father or mother, sometimes a boss or a partner. If your sun dream felt intense, ask whose warmth, or whose glare, it reminded you of.

Being seen

Sunlight shows everything. A dream of standing in full sun, with nowhere to hide, can be about being exposed, praised or judged, depending on how it felt.

Dreaming about a sunrise or sunset

A sunrise is the classic image of a new beginning, and dreams of one tend to come at a fresh start, like a new job, a recovery or a relationship after a long time alone. A sunset is the other end, something finishing, often gently. A peaceful one can be about accepting that a chapter is over, while one that filled you with dread may be about an ending you're not ready for.

Dreaming about the sun burning you

A scorching sun, sunburn, or heat with nowhere to go is about too much of a good thing, attention, ambition or pressure that has gone past warmth into harm, like a manager who never lets up or a goal that's taking over your health. The myth of Icarus, who flew so close to the sun that the wax on his wings melted, is the same dream told as a story. Look at where you found shade, if you did.

Dreaming about the sun not rising

Waiting for a sunrise that never comes is a frightening dream about losing your source of energy or hope. It often comes during depression, grief or burnout, when the thing that usually gets you through the day has gone missing. Dreams of an eclipse are its near neighbors, along with dreams of endless darkness. If the low feeling has followed you into your days for weeks, it's worth telling a doctor.

Dreaming about two suns

Two suns in the sky, or a sun far too big and close, is a dream about something out of balance. Two suns can stand for two people competing for the center of your life (two parents after a divorce, a partner and a parent) or for two goals pulling you in different directions, and a giant sun close to the earth is a pressure that has grown too large.

Dreaming about the sun according to Jung and Freud

Both men's ideas fit a sun easily, since it is bright, round and the center of everything it lights.

Jung: the sun as the Self

Jung used the word Self for the center of the whole person, wider than the "I" that does your thinking, and found it in dreams as circles, mandalas and other images of wholeness.^[2] Read through that idea, a round, bright sun at a steady distance pictures being in line with yourself, while one that burns, shrinks or never rises asks what has pulled you off your own center, and two suns are two claims on the middle of you.

Freud: the ruler of the sky

Freud read the king and queen in a dream, or the emperor and empress, as the dreamer's own parents.^[3] Carry that into the sky and the sun is the obvious ruler, the one thing everything below depends on and nobody can look at straight. A sun that scorches becomes a parent's attention at its most intense, one that won't come up the fear of losing it, and, in keeping with his view that a dream dresses up what we want, a warm sun with you standing quietly in it could be the wish to feel that approval again.

Other readings

Artemidorus, the 2nd-century diviner who wrote the earliest Greek dream book we still have, held that a bright sunrise and a clean sunset were good for everyone, but that the sun harmed anyone with something to hide, because it shows everything.^[4]

The biblical and spiritual meaning of the sun in dreams

Two old texts put the sun inside a dream, Genesis and the Ramayana.

The sun in Joseph's dream

In Genesis, young Joseph tells his family he saw the sun, the moon and eleven stars bowing to him, and his father Jacob hears himself in the sun straight away.^[5]

The sun in Hindu texts

In the Ramayana, the Sanskrit epic about Rama, a demoness named Trijata dreams that Sita touches the moon and the sun with her hand, one of the good signs in it.^[6] The Agni Purana, a Sanskrit compendium of dream omens, lists the fall of the sun and moon as bad but eclipses of the sun, moon and stars as good,^[7] turning the obvious reading upside down.

Questions to ask about your sun dream

The sun warms and the sun burns, so start by asking which it did in your dream.

• Was the sun rising, setting, scorching, missing or doubled?
• Did it feel warm and kind, or harsh and too bright?
• Who in your life feels like the center everything turns around?
• How has your energy been lately?

Answer those for yourself first, and then tell Oniri the dream, since it asks much the same before it reads it.