Dreaming about
whales

The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived, bigger than any dinosaur, and yet most of what you see of a whale is a spout of breath or a curve of back before it's gone again. That's the shape of most whale dreams. Dreaming about whales usually points to something very large moving under the surface of your life, often a feeling, a change or a problem you've only seen the tip of, and to how small you feel next to it.

Not every whale dream is heavy, though, and plenty of people wake from swimming beside one calmer than they've felt in weeks. What the whale did, how close it came and whether you were in the water or above it decide the reading, along with what's been building up in your life lately.

What dreaming about whales means

Whales spend most of their lives in deep water, out of sight, coming up only to breathe, and those habits give the main readings.

Something huge below the surface

If you saw a whale pass under your boat, or glimpsed a fin and sensed the size of what was below, the dream is often about something you know is there but can't see the whole of, like grief you haven't let yourself feel, a change at work that's bigger than anyone admits, or a decision whose consequences you can only guess at. Our biggest feelings rarely show all at once.

Feeling small

Standing next to a whale, even in a dream, makes you feel tiny, and the dream often comes when life feels too big: a new city, a huge project, a family situation that dwarfs anything you can do about it. A whale that ignored you is often about feeling insignificant, which is worth noticing on its own.

Depth and calm

Whales move slowly, dive deep, and call to each other across huge stretches of ocean (humpback songs change from year to year, passed between whales like a tune catching on). A peaceful whale dream often comes when you need slowness and depth, more time alone or a slower answer to a fast problem. If you heard the whale sing, the dream may be about listening to something deep in yourself.

An obsession

In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab chases the white whale that took his leg across every ocean until it destroys him and his ship. If you were hunting a whale in your dream, ask what you've become fixed on, a person, a goal or a grudge, and what the chase is costing you.

Dreaming about killer whales

Killer whales, or orcas, are actually the largest members of the dolphin family, and they hunt seals and even great white sharks in coordinated groups. There's no record of a wild orca killing a person, but since 2020 groups of orcas off Spain and Portugal have been ramming the rudders of sailing boats. So an orca in a dream is often power that's intelligent, organized and hard to read: a group that works together against you, a clever and forceful person, or your own drive at its sharpest. An orca circling you points to feeling targeted, and one swimming beside you to strength on your side.

Dreaming about swimming with whales

Swimming next to a whale is facing something enormous up close and finding you can stay with it. It often comes when you're letting yourself feel something big for the first time, like love, grief or a long-buried memory. If you felt safe, you're ready. If you felt dragged along in its wake, the feeling may be moving faster than you can handle.

Dreaming about a whale swallowing you

Being swallowed by a whale is one of the oldest dream images there is, thanks to Jonah. It points to being taken over completely by something, like a depression, a job, a relationship or a crisis, where you can't see out. In the old story the whale also spits Jonah out alive, so the dream often comes in the middle of a dark stretch, and the question is what you'll be like when you come out the other side.

Dreaming about a beached or dead whale

A whale on a beach is something huge that has run out of room, out of its element and unable to get back. It often points to a big part of your life that has stalled, like a career or a marriage, or a talent you have no space to use. A dead whale can also be a large ending, like a death in the family or a home you've left. If people in the dream were trying to push the whale back into the sea, ask who's trying to help you get unstuck.

Dreaming about a whale jumping out of the water

A whale breaching, launching its whole body out of the sea and crashing back, is one of the most spectacular things in nature. In a dream it's usually a big feeling breaking the surface, joy, anger or a truth you've held in for a long time. If it splashed you, you may be close to someone whose feelings are about to come out.

Dreaming about a whale under your boat

A whale rising under a small boat, or tipping it over, is something huge that could upset your whole situation. It often appears before a big change, a move, a pregnancy, a job offer, when you sense that the ground under you isn't as solid as you thought. If the whale passed gently, the change may be smaller than you fear.

Dreaming about whales according to Jung and Freud

Whales aren't on either man's lists, so these are their ideas set against the dream.

Jung on the whale and the deep water

Of all the images dreams use for the unconscious, Jung found water the most common,^[1] and the sea is the deepest water there is. A whale is the largest thing that lives down there, which makes it a part of you far bigger than you knew. Being swallowed is being taken over by the unconscious for a while, and coming out is bringing something back from it.

Freud on the whale and the birth in the water

Freud wrote that dreams picture birth by way of water, the dreamer dropping in or clambering out.^[5] A whale dream that ends with you spat onto the beach follows the same route, in through the dark and out into the light, so his method would ask what in your life is being born, or what you were born into that you're only now leaving.

Other readings

Artemidorus, a Greek diviner from Ephesus who wrote five books on dreams in the 2nd century AD, had a rule for sea beasts that suits a stranded whale. A sea beast seen out of the water was a good sign, he held, because it can do no harm there.^[6]

The biblical and spiritual meaning of whales in dreams

Jonah and the great fish in the Bible

Jonah runs from what God has asked of him, is thrown overboard in a storm and is swallowed by "a great fish", inside which he spends three days and nights.^[2] Then the fish spits him out onto dry land, and he goes to do what he was avoiding.^[3] In Matthew, Jesus compares Jonah's time in the whale to his own three days in the earth.^[4] The story is about running from something and being turned back toward it.

Questions to ask about your whale dream

Whale dreams tend to be vivid, so they're easy to write down in detail. Use these questions as you do.

• Were you in the water, on a boat, or on land?
• Was the whale calm, curious, or dangerous?
• How big did it feel compared with you?
• What in your life feels huge and only partly visible right now?
• Are you running from something, the way Jonah did?

A whale gets a very different reading in Oniri depending on whether you swam beside it or watched it swallow you, so those details are worth putting in when you describe the dream. And if the water itself frightened you more than the whale, the pages on the ocean and drowning may help.