I wake at 4:17 in the morning and for a few more seconds I am still in that house. I know the corridor, I know where it turns, I even know which lamp burns oddly, and at the end I see the same door again. I walk towards it, I almost reach it, my hand is already on the handle — and that is exactly when I wake up. For the fourth time. If this goes on, I will soon be asking for the title deed, because I clearly spend enough time in that house.
And recurring dreams have that particular ability to stay with us after waking. One dream dissolves while we are still looking for our slippers, another survives until coffee, and a third comes back a week, a month or a year later with the same person, place, fear, door, train or feeling. That is when I start asking myself why the night repeats a story that evidently is not finished.
While I sleep, the brain goes on working with what I have lived through, with memory, emotion and the information gathered during the day. That is why a recurring dream can appear around a period that moves me more than I realise, around a decision I keep postponing, an old story touched by a new event, a fear, a strong wish or a change I already sense. During the day I may have convinced myself beautifully that everything is finished, cleared up and filed in the right drawer, and then at night my brain evidently opens that same drawer and says: “Fine, and what do we do about this?”
Picture someone who periodically dreams of missing a train. He runs along the platform, the train pulls away, the doors close, and the dream ends with that familiar feeling of being late for something important. The first such period was before he changed jobs. A few years later the dream returns while he is considering going to live elsewhere. Then it shows up again around a relationship in which he has long hesitated whether to stay. The train is the same, the life situations are different, and the thread running through them may be the fear of missing the right moment.
That is exactly why a symbol takes on meaning when I connect it to my own life. The sea may be the loveliest memory of my childhood, while for someone else it is a place they are afraid of. An old house may carry love, safety and the smell of my grandmother’s banitsa, while another old house may hold memories a person would happily leave locked up along with the cellar. Even a train speaks a different language depending on whether I am waiting for it, missing it, travelling in it or watching it pull away.
So with a recurring dream I would first ask: “What does this image mean to me personally, and where have I met the same feeling in my life?” The answer is often more interesting than any ready-made meaning.
Falling is one of those dreams in which the body decides to take part with enthusiasm. I drop from a ladder, a roof or some unknown height, I jolt awake, and for a second I am completely convinced that the bed was involved in the incident too. Then I check where I am, and it turns out the only real danger is waking the person next to me.
When this dream returns, I would pay attention to the moment before the fall. Am I slipping, jumping, losing my footing, is someone pushing me, am I trying to grab hold of something? Even more important is the feeling. If I am terrified, the dream tells one story; if I am flying downwards and feel released, the story is already a different one.
Then I would look for that same feeling in my life. I may have started a new job and for the first time in years have no certainty about how I will manage. I may be waiting for someone else’s decision about money, a property or a relationship. I may be in love and feel how little control I have over how things will develop. Or my old way of keeping everything under control may already be turning out to be impossible. Then falling begins to look like a very precise image of the feeling I live with during the day.
I go to the mirror in the dream, one tooth falls out, then a second, then a third, and the situation quickly reaches a scale at which I am already considering a loan for the dentist. I wake up, check with my tongue whether they are all present, and the day can begin.
Teeth are connected with the way I look, speak, smile and present myself to the world, so such a dream is worth looking at around the themes of confidence, voice, age, change and the way I see myself. If in this very period I have to speak in front of people, I am starting a new job, I am meeting someone after years, I am going through a change in my appearance, or I am in a situation where other people’s opinion matters to me particularly much, the dream already has a context.
Another very interesting question is whether there are words in my life that I keep to myself. Imagine that for two weeks I have wanted to tell my boss what I think about a certain situation, and I keep putting the conversation off. Or I have an important subject with my partner and I keep waiting for the “right moment”, which has evidently gone off somewhere together with the train from the previous dream. If that is exactly when I start dreaming of my mouth, my teeth or being unable to speak, I already have a thread worth following.
I have a diploma, a job, I have paid enough bills, I have had difficult conversations and I have lived through situations for which nobody handed me a textbook. And even so, at night I am back at school. The exam starts in five minutes, I do not know which room it is in, I have not studied, and for some mysterious reason everyone else looks beautifully prepared. The subconscious evidently keeps its archives longer than any administration.
This dream is especially interesting in periods when I feel I have to prove myself. I may have started a new job and still be asking whether I am good enough. I may be waiting for an important interview, a presentation, a conversation or a result. The person beside me may constantly make me feel that I have to earn their approval. Or the strictest examiner may be me, with every success immediately followed by a new question: “Fine, but can you do more?”
With a recurring dream like this, I would write down what happened a day or two before it appeared. Did I get criticism? Did I compare myself with someone? Did I take on a new task? Did I feel unprepared? If the exam turns up at exactly such moments, the night is probably using an old and very familiar image to tell the present feeling that someone is holding the red pen.
This is the dream that can turn a perfectly decent morning into an investigation. I wake up after a romantic dream about someone I have not seen for eight years, and before the coffee I am already wondering why he showed up, whether he dreamed of me too, and whether the Universe is trying to arrange a meeting without first checking our calendars.
It is more interesting to remember first what I myself was like in that period with that person. I may have been very young, free, bold, insecure, jealous, in love, dependent, adventurous, or convinced that my whole life was still ahead of me. Then the person in the dream may be carrying a whole period and a particular state of mine.
Imagine a woman who dreams of an old love every time her present relationship starts to feel too predictable. Perhaps the dream brings back the sense of excitement she associates with those years. Someone else dreams of an ex-partner when facing a break-up, because the present situation activates the memory of the previous one. A third person dreams of someone from the past exactly when they themselves are beginning a new chapter, and the old image seems to mark the distance between the person they were and the person they are now.
And there are cases where, after such a dream, the phone really does light up with a name from the past. Then we already have excellent material for the next chapter.
I walk into a house that in the dream I know is mine. I know the kitchen, the stairs and the windows, and then I notice a door I have never seen before. I open it and find a room. Behind it there is another one, then a corridor or a whole new floor. In real life such a discovery would probably raise the value of the property rather pleasantly, but in the dream the question is different: what am I discovering in myself?
A house easily becomes an image of one’s inner world, and the unknown space may coincide with a period in which I am discovering a new wish, talent, interest or possibility. Someone at fifty may suddenly decide they want to study something they have dreamed of since they were twenty. Someone else may realise that the life they long considered final actually has a few more doors. A third person starts a new relationship and discovers reactions and feelings in themselves that they have not met for years.
If this house keeps coming back, I would start drawing it. No artistic ability is needed; a square, a door, a window and the approximate layout are enough. After a few months it may turn out that the house is changing. A new floor appears, a locked door opens, the dark room becomes light, or suddenly I discover a garden. That is already a story of my own, one no universal dream dictionary can write for me.
If a dream stays on my mind, I would give it a little more attention than the morning “Oh, what nonsense I dreamed” followed five minutes later by complete amnesia. There can be a notebook by the bed, and in it I can write the date, the phase of the Moon, the main image, the people, the place, the feeling on waking, the strangest detail and what happened over the next 48 hours.
The strangest detail is especially valuable. A red umbrella. The time 3:12. A single word on a sign. A yellow dress. A dog in front of a door. A song I have not heard for years. It is precisely the small details that slip out of memory easily, and if they repeat they can turn out to be very interesting.
After a month I would read all the entries at once. If I dream of a railway station every time before an important change, I already have a symbol of my own. If water appears after a certain kind of conversation, I have another connection. If the same house comes in periods when I am beginning a new chapter, I am gradually learning its language. If a particular person appears in my dreams whenever I feel alone, perhaps I already understand what his image stands for in my case.
I can also write my dreams in the journal of Moon & Tarot, so as to follow the lunar cycle as well. After a few months I can compare whether around certain phases I dream more vividly, remember more, see particular themes return, or find no visible pattern at all. And that last result is a result too. A personal journal is interesting precisely because I am following what happens with me.
There are dreams that take on meaning only later. I walk into a place for the first time and suddenly I am convinced I have already been there in a dream. Someone says a sentence and the feeling is so familiar that for a second time seems to fold. I dream of someone I have not seen for years, and two days later I get a message from them. Or the dream contains a specific scene that, some time later, resembles a real event astonishingly closely.
These are exactly the cases I would write down most carefully, because memory is a magnificent storyteller and likes to edit the old scripts a little. If the dream was written down on 3 March and the event happens on 18 March, I can open the notebook and see what I actually dreamed. The coincidence may be astonishingly specific. There may be only one shared image. Or the present event may simply have unlocked an old memory and now feels much closer to the dream than it really was.
And then there are experiences that people themselves describe as intuitive or prophetic. They have been part of human experience for thousands of years, and that is exactly why I find it interesting to observe them rather than label them straight away. A dream written down gives me the chance, some time later, to compare the facts and see what really did repeat.
Imagine, for example, that I dream of an old friend I have not seen for ten years. In the dream she is wearing a red coat and tells me: “See you on Friday.” On Friday I get a message from her. That is already a specific coincidence, and I would note it down. If I merely meet another woman in a red coat, the story is rather different. The journal keeps that difference, while human memory loves a good plot and now and then adds a little direction of its own.
If such a coincidence turns up several times, it is worth looking at it through Signs as well, where exactly this kind of repetition is gathered: numbers, meetings, words and signs that come back over several days in a row.
Choose the dream that keeps coming back or the one you still cannot forget, and before going to sleep write down one question: “What in my life right now carries the same feeling as this dream?” Leave the notebook by the bed and in the morning, before the phone manages to tell you the weather, the news, three special offers and who did what during the night, write down the first thing you remember. It may be a whole storyline, or only a face, a room, a word, a colour or a feeling. Do this for seven mornings and at the end read the entries all together. Look for the images, people, places and feelings that repeat, and compare them with what is happening in your life during that same week.
You may discover that a particular image comes when you are facing a decision. A person appears when a certain feeling is missing from your life. The water changes according to your emotional state. The house opens a new room exactly when you are beginning a new chapter. Or you may discover a completely different connection that no dream dictionary could have predicted, because it is part of your own story.
And that, for me, is the most interesting thing about dreams. They have shared images, yet every person gradually creates their own night language. When a dream comes back, it is worth following when it arrives, what feeling it carries and what is happening in my life around it. After a few entries I may already see a thread that with a single dream I would easily have missed.
The Game of the Soul is a spiral of 64 fields, and each day it gives you one field with a question. Dreams cross paths with it more often than you would expect, because both work with the same thing: whatever has not yet been said out loud. Sometimes the field of the day asks exactly the question the dream posed the night before, and then the dream you wrote down suddenly gets a second part.
If you have a specific dream that keeps coming back to your thoughts, take it to Dream Interpretation on FatedWays. There it makes sense to look at its whole history — who was in it, where you were, which feeling stayed with you after waking, which images repeat and how they connect with your life now. Because the question “What does it mean to dream of a house?” can give a general direction, while “Why did my house open that same locked room again exactly last night?” is already quite another story.
After that the dream has somewhere to stay. What you read is gathered in The Book, and The Traces of Fate keeps the course of the story with its dates, so that months later you can see which dream came before which turn in your life. If the same dream returns around the same kind of situation, Karma looks at the repetition from the other side: what the task inside it is and where it breaks.
And if you would rather start from the image, try the test “Which messenger comes in your dreams?” — twelve night pictures, each with its own mandala and its own sound, and a short practice for the night. And if you would like to look at one single dream with the cards, the tarot spread “The Night Messenger” goes in four directions according to what you remember most clearly on waking.
And if the night messenger decides to come back again, at least this time it will find the notebook by the bed.
A recurring dream is usually connected with a theme that is still open: a postponed decision, an old story touched by a new event, a fear or a strong wish. So it is worth following when it appears and what is happening in your life around it.
Falling is often linked with the feeling of losing your footing and your control. More useful than the general meaning is to look at the moment before the fall and at the feeling in it, and then to look for that same feeling in your life during this period.
Teeth are connected with how you look, how you speak and how you present yourself, so such a dream is considered around confidence, voice, change and other people’s opinion. A useful question is whether there are words you are currently keeping to yourself.
This dream appears in periods when you feel you have to prove yourself — a new job, an interview, a presentation, or a person whose approval you feel you must earn. Sometimes the strictest examiner is you.
Someone from the past often carries a whole period and the state you were in back then. So the first question is what you yourself were like in those years, and what of that state you miss or are returning to now.
A house easily becomes an image of the inner world, and the new room coincides with a period in which you are discovering a new wish, gift, interest or possibility. If the dream repeats, it is worth drawing the house and seeing how it changes over the months.
A notebook sits by the bed, and in it you write the date, the phase of the Moon, the main image, the people, the place, the feeling on waking, the strangest detail and what happened over the next 48 hours. After a month the entries are read all together.
Different traditions link the phases with how vividly dreams are experienced and remembered, and the most interesting way to find out how it is for you is to write your dreams down over several cycles. The journal in Moon & Tarot keeps the dream and the lunar day in one place.
There are experiences people describe as intuitive or prophetic, and they have been part of human experience for thousands of years. A dream written down with its date lets you compare later what really did repeat, instead of letting memory rewrite the script.
In the Dream Interpretation room on FatedWays. There the dream is looked at with its images, its people, its place and the feeling after waking, and what you read stays in The Book so that you can come back to it later.
The first seven days in the game are free, with no card. Dream Interpretation and the journal in Moon & Tarot are part of the trial and of every subscription.
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