Dreaming of Hats

I took a crumpled straw hat I owned into the milliner to get fixed. When it was finished I put it on my head and I looked like a Gibson girl, complete with ringlets around my face. I thought I looked very jaunty and nice. image by antiquephotoparlour.com

I think this is the first dream I have ever had of dreaming of a hat but it seems like it would be an important dream symbol.

Dreaming of clothes in general usually have to do with your self image and how you perceive you appear to others. Jung saw hats as a symbol of thought and new ideas while Freud, as usual, saw the hat as a sexual symbol.

Styles of hats can suggest a profession that the dreamer could benefit from learning from (i.e. a nurse's cap could suggest healing while a policeman's hat represents authority). Hats from a different era could suggest to the dreamer that she has, or could develop, qualities that the era is associated with.

In my dream I first thought the hat was in the 1920's style (a period that I have always admired) but when I really looked at it I saw the Gibson Girl. The Gibson Girl was the epitomy of the American feminine ideal of beauty in the late 1800's to early twentieth century. She was upper class and ladylike but also athletic, independent yet tradional. In fact, she would have been the type of woman that the 1920's flapper would have rebelled against with her long, piled up hair and corsetted wasp-waist.

Dreaming of clothing makes sense to me right now as I am feeling judged by my peers. By putting on the Gibson Girl hat symbolizes the qualities that I wish people would see in me (ladylike, traditional) although by nature I identify much more with the twenties girls.

I would be interested to hear other dreams people have had about hats. Please share in the comments below.

Dreaming of Birds

(image by let-it-die)

I am back at my old elementary school, standing on the asphalt and playing a kind of tennis game. In this game someone hits live birds to me and I catch them with my hand. I can feel the soft, warm, fluffiness in my hand and when I move my fingers to look, I see that the bird is a black-headed, white-bodied chickadee. I release each one after I catch them. I feel good.

I am on my backyard deck. One by one three different birds come to land on the railing in a row. There is a pelican, an eagle and a crane. They are all large birds. I wake up feeling like this is a significant symbol.

Since ancient times, birds have been a symbol of transformation and wholeness. The Greeks saw birds as messengers of the Gods and Jung also saw birds as messengers of the unconscious. Freud believed that birds represented the penis (but didn't he see almost everything as representing that part of the anatomy???). To the superstitious, birds can be good omens or bad ones depending on the bird.

Since different types of birds represent different things, in this post I'm going to focus on the birds represented in my own dreams.

In my first dream it is interesting that the colours black and white are representative of ones shadow and expressive side (yin and yang). Chickadees and other small birds can represent children or small miracles. I'm also reminded of the saying, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." I feel like this dream was speaking to me about the blessings that may be coming my way and I only have to reach out and grab them (and then be willing to gently let them go).

The large birds in my second dream are a powerful unconscious symbol. Eagles can symbolize power and intellect. Cranes represent maternal love and kindness while pelicans symbolize devotion and sacrifice. The fact that these birds came to me in a trinity of three (see my post about "Dreaming of Numbers") is also a powerful symbol of unity and wholeness. Unfortunately, since this is a dream I had many years ago, I can't remember what was going on in my life at the time but I think it might have been a message more about the universe and universal truths than it was about me.

Please share your own dreams about birds in the comments below.