I’m not really big into dream dictionaries. Symbolism is so subjective, it’s hard to really get usable information from a guide compiled for nobody in particular. That said, if you have recurring images you can’t really get a bead on, you could probably do worse than looking them up.
All of this is to say that I’ve been dutifully making note of my dreams, and have come to the realization that, holy crap, fully 99% of them are water-based.
The funny thing is, I used to live on an island. Going to the beach was a regular thing. When things got too intense at home, I’d sometimes hop on my bike and ride for hours — often ending up at one beach or another. I never dreamed of water then.
I don’t mean that I dream of drowning (because then I’d be signing up for a sleep study to make sure I don’t have apnea). I mean that I’m almost always either navigating around, traveling on, adjacent to, or in the ocean. The character of the water varies — sometimes it’s eerily, glassily smooth. Others, it’s pouring in and threatening to tear down everything in its path. In either case, I never actually feel threatened by it. I might have to work around the threat of an imminent flood, but, no matter how dangerous the waves may seem, they never cross into nightmare territory.
(If I have nightmares, they’re usually about crossing suspension bridges or trying to keep out zombie hordes using doors that are inexplicably too small and keep falling off the hinges, but that’s another story.)
Dream Moods mentions the usual stuff about ocean symbolism, it’s tied to the state of your emotions, rough seas mean turmoil, yada yada yada. (They do have one oddly specific bit about kissing the ocean floor, though.) Looking up “sea” yields pretty much the same.
I know water is emotion, but I haven’t really identified anything in particular that it might be referring to. The roughness of the sea doesn’t correspond to anything, it’s seemingly random. One resource offered up a bunch of prophetic meanings to sea imagery, but, if that’s the case, oh boy do I have a whole lot of very contradictory stuff coming my way. These also don’t “feel” like prophetic dreams that I’ve had. Another resource pretty much describes ocean dreams as a land of contrasts.
I have been considering choosing a patron/matron deity, but I don’t know who and haven’t fully committed to the idea.
Maybe the choice is being made for me.
Marble Crow 