Dreaming about
owls

Owls carry two reputations that have never quite agreed with each other. In ancient Athens the owl was the bird of Athena, goddess of wisdom, and it was stamped on the city's coins. In Rome and in plenty of later folklore, an owl hooting near the house was a sign that someone was about to die. Dreaming about owls usually sits somewhere between the two, closer to insight than to doom, but with a feeling that something serious is being shown to you.

Whether your owl dream was about wisdom or about an ending depends on what the owl did and how you reacted. An owl watching you calmly from a branch is a different dream from one flying straight at your face. The color of the owl, where it was and what's been happening in your life all shift the meaning. In the end, the significance of an owl in a dream comes down to details only you know.

What dreaming about owls means

Owls see in near darkness, fly almost without a sound, and can turn their heads round to look behind them. They hunt at night, when everything else is asleep. Those facts sit behind most of what people read into owl dreams.

Insight, or seeing in the dark

The most common reading is that an owl is about seeing what you couldn't see before. Owls' eyes are so large that they can't move them in their sockets, so they turn their whole head instead. And in a dream that fixed stare is often your own attention finally landing on something. A calm owl can mean you're close to understanding a situation, a person, or a decision you've been circling. It tends to show up just before something clicks.

Wisdom and advice

The wise old owl is a children's book cliché for a reason. In a dream an owl can stand for a person whose advice you trust (a teacher, a grandparent, a mentor) or for the wiser part of you that already knows what to do. If the owl spoke to you or seemed to want something, think about advice you've been given lately and haven't followed.

A hard truth or an ending

The darker side of owls comes from their link with night and death. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, an owl sitting in the marketplace at noon is one of the omens before Caesar is murdered. But an owl dream that leaves you uneasy is usually about an ending of another kind, like a job winding down, a relationship you suspect is over, or a part of life you're leaving behind. And if someone close to you is ill or has died, the owl may simply be your grief, given a shape.

The night owl

Some owl dreams are about the plain idiom. A "night owl" is someone who comes alive after dark. If you've been staying up late, working nights or lying awake at 3am, an owl in your dream may be a picture of that. Is your body asking you to sleep more? The quiet hours are when owls hunt, and when worries tend to hunt us too.

Dreaming about a white owl

A white owl is the owl people search for most by color, and it's often the most striking owl dream. Snowy owls are white, and barn owls have pale, heart-shaped faces that glow in headlights, which is why people have mistaken them for ghosts at night. A white owl can carry the gentlest readings, like clarity, protection, or a message you've been waiting for (Harry Potter's Hedwig, a snowy owl, delivered letters). But it can also feel ghostly, about someone who has died or a presence you miss. Which one it was for you depends on whether the owl comforted you or unsettled you.

Dreaming about a black owl

Owls are almost never black in nature, so a dream that gives you a black one is making a point. Black tends to bring in the heavier readings, like fear, grief or a secret, and an owl that color can be a truth you'd rather not see. Jung called the disowned side of a person the shadow,^[1] and a black owl can be insight into that side of you, the kind that's uncomfortable to accept. That isn't a bad sign, because seeing it is usually the first step to dealing with it.

Dreaming about an owl staring at you

An owl that stares at you without moving is one of the most memorable owl dreams, and it can feel both calm and unnerving. It's usually about being seen, either by someone in your life who notices more than you'd like, or by your own conscience. Ask who in your waking life has been watching you closely, or whose opinion you've been worried about. If you stared back without fear, the dream may be about facing something you've been avoiding.

Dreaming about an owl hooting

Hearing an owl hoot is often what people remember most, even when they never see the bird. In folklore the call was the warning part, the sound of bad news on the way. In a dream it's more often a call for your attention, something you've been ignoring that keeps making itself heard. The classic "twit-twoo" is actually two tawny owls, a female and a male calling to each other, so an owl call can also be about a conversation you've been waiting to have.

Dreaming about an owl attacking you

Owls hunt in silence, and their prey usually doesn't hear them until the last second. So an owl flying at you or attacking you is often about something that caught you off guard, a criticism, a revelation or a truth about yourself you didn't see coming. Owls do sometimes swoop at people who get too close to a nest, which gives the dream a second reading. Have you been intruding on something someone else wants to protect, or has someone been protecting themselves from you?

Dreaming about an owl in your house

An owl inside the house brings all of this into your private life. Houses in dreams tend to stand for your inner world or your family, so an owl there can mean insight about home, or a truth that's moved in and won't leave. In the old folklore an owl near the house was a death omen, and that's where the dread in this dream usually comes from. And it doesn't mean anyone is going to die. A dream can't foretell that, as the post on whether dreams predict the future explains, but it can show you that you're worried about someone.

Dreaming about a dead owl

A dead owl tends to be about lost wisdom or lost guidance. It can follow the death or departure of a mentor or a grandparent, or a stretch where you feel you've stopped trusting your own judgment. If you found the owl dead and felt sad, give that sadness its due. But if you felt relief, the dream may be about dropping advice or expectations that never really suited you. Many people read a dead owl as the end of a dark period, which fits when the dream left you lighter. There's more on endings in dreams on the page about death.

Dreaming about owls according to Jung and Freud

The big dream theorists didn't write much about owls, but their ideas fit the bird well enough to try, and what follows says so each time.

Jung: the owl as wise old man and as shadow

Two of Jung's ideas fit this bird. The wise old man, in his writing, is the figure of guidance and meaning, and he appears as a teacher, a doctor, a grandfather or any authority figure,^[2] which is close to the owl that gave you advice or stood for a mentor in the readings above. The shadow, the self you've pushed out of view, is the other,^[1] and an animal that hunts at night, flies without a sound and turns its head to look behind it is a fair picture of what you keep out of the light. Which one your owl was depends on whether it comforted you or made you want to look away.

Freud: the owl you heard yesterday

Freud's method needs no fixed meaning for owls, and he would have started from the day before: an owl you heard outside the window, saw in a nature program or read about to a child often explains why the bird turned up that night.^[3] Then he'd ask what an owl makes you think of. A bird that watches you in the dark without a sound is a good stand-in for being watched, and in his list the dreamer's parents are the ones who watch over a child, shown as a king and queen. So an owl that stares could be a parent, a teacher or your own conscience, and your associations would decide which.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of owls in dreams

The Bible and the Talmud both treat the owl with suspicion, and neither is a decoding of your dream.

Owls in the Bible

The Bible mostly uses owls as birds of empty places. They're among the birds the law of Moses lists as unclean,^[4] and a psalm compares a lonely, sleepless person to "an owl of the desert".^[5] Isaiah pictures owls nesting in the ruins of a land laid waste,^[6] along with ravens, which is part of why both birds feel ominous (the page on crows covers the ravens' cousins).

Owls in the Talmud

Several pages of Berakhot, a tractate of the Talmud, are given to dreams. There it holds that every bird is a good sign except the eagle-owl, the owl and one other night bird, which the text describes as frightening to look at.^[7] The exact species are uncertain in translation. Either way, that's what the tradition says, not a decoding of your dream.

Questions to ask about your owl dream

Only your own answers can settle what your owl meant. These questions usually point the way.

• Did the owl feel wise, ghostly, or threatening?
• Was it watching, calling, attacking, or dead?
• Where was it: outside, in your house, near someone you know?
• Is there a truth you've been avoiding, or advice you haven't taken?
• Has anything ended, or started to end, in your life recently?

Oniri asks you questions of this kind, about your life and your feelings, before it reads your dream.