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Water

Dreams of the liquid world. Exploring under lakes and seas, living in water, breathing water... or drowning.

It's my experience that such dreams are often precursors to flying dreams--and sometimes to lucidity. Maybe it's just that for a lot of dreamers, water and especially the sea is a symbol for dreaming itself--so breathing underwater can show you're comfortable exploring the dreamworld and that your unconscious welcomes you.

But Jungians can go too far. If you skin dive a lot...

RELATED TOPICS: walking or skating on water - swimming - beach dreams - flying dreams - lucid dreams - mer-folk - underground dreams - falling water: rain, waterfalls, geysers - If you're feeling smutty, there's always wet dreams - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

What this site is - Add your dreams! - How to read blurbs - Ratings - Copyright - Downloading - The World Dream Bank has 3300+ dreams plus 1000 more pages on dreamwork, shamanism, surrealism, fantasy, worldbuilding, creativity and genius. Site © Chris Wayan 2001-2013.



ABYSSIA: by Wayan; started 2006/6/6, a webtour of an inverted world
A nondream vision of an alternate Earth where continents are abysses, abysses continents...
ADORABLE CYBORGS: by Wayan; dreamed 2016/10/5, a dream-poem on inner teamwork
A child dreamer and two different kinds of cyborg must cooperate
to free the hostages imprisoned under San Francisco Bay...
AFTER THE FLOOD & THE PIG-EARED BABY ALLIGATOR: by Skiznot; c.1995, an oracular dream
My hometown floods. I swim after some strange fish and find
a scientific community where a scaled baby tells me who I am...
AIDA'S TOILET BOAT: by Wayan; 1993/4/7, a psychic dreamtale.
A sexy comedian and her troubles down the drain. A dream that turned out to be true...
ALIEN GIRL, SACRED PEAKS: by Wayan; dreamed 2005/11/25, two dreams on long-term goals
I'm one of a trio of swimmers in a pool, making out--under the surface only. Must we hide?
I'm near Shiprock with a flying-saucer girl who sees the nearby crags and far snowy peaks
as all the same size and distance... how to teach perspective?
CAUTION: SKINNYDIPPING, GROPING
ANCIENT RUINS, AND A GIFT FROM DEEP OCEAN:
by Jenny Badger Sultan; two dreams (2016/11/19, 2017/1/18) on dreamwork, memory & amnesia
1: Ruins in India. Fascinating but age-blurred; wish I could see the carvings better...
2: Giving presents at a party, I hand a girl a vertebra from the abyss, encrusted with jewel-like barnacles...
ANOCHE / LAST NIGHT: by Antonio Machado; c. 1900; a joyful dream poem
Last night, as I slept, I dreamt--illusion blessed!--that I had a beehive, here inside my heart...
BALLOON DIVE: by Wayan; 2007/6/17, a nightmare saying I made the least bad choice
A boy leaps from a runaway balloon, falls 100' into a pond, and floats face-down.
I'm sure he's dead, but when a woman fishes him out...
BEET: Five Dreams One Night: by Wayan; 2013/10/30, Halloween dreams as minipoems
Parasites, Rambo, huge fetus-beets, an exhibitionist and a living statue advise me on my love life...
CAUTION: NUDITY
BEYOND THE BUOYS: by Wayan; 1981/2/12, a short punning dream.
I'm a fairy queen at the beach, chasing a girl who's a strong swimmer. Yep, she swims beyond the buoys...
CAUTION: BAD LESBIAN PUNS
BLUE MER-ANGEL: by Wayan; 2000, ceramic sculpture, 11.5" long.
Seems strange to have no hands. How do dolphins get things done? By not needing to get things done?
CAUTION: MILD NUDITY
BYE-BYE, OLD FILM!: by Wayan; 1981/1/24, a psychic dream, with a 2015/5/22 follow-up.
My friends destroy all my old films and give me a 'new' one--but it's from 1900! Then I wake to find...
CATFISH RESCUE: by Nick Munford, art by Jesse Reklaw; pre-2000; a dream of shamanic kindness
I run away. A car nearly hits me and I fall into the lake. But
a kindly catfish drags me to an underwater phone booth...
THE CONCHES: by Wayan; 1996/5/23, a dream on how dreams view the waking mind.
A visit to the Conches, a strange race of molluscs who are people only seasonally...
CRIMECON 90: by Wayan; 1990/3/27, a dream about capitalism.
I did what I love. The money didn't follow. So now I have to guard a crimeboss at a theft convention...
CAUTION: INEVITABLE CHEKHOVIAN SHOOTOUT
DANCE OF THE SUN: by Wayan, 1972/10/23, an epic mystical dream
I cross a hostile continent to a magic commune, fall in love with a flying girl who slaps a
soul-spark into my head, and follow an alien goddess leading the Dance of the Sun...
DEATH CHANTY: by E.M. Martin's friend; 1914/9/21, a psychic dream
An endless parade of drowned sailors sing a dirge. The dreamer woke in tears. Then the news arrived.
THE DESTRUCTION OF HAWAI'I; 2004/9/2 by Anonymous #37; a short apocalyptic nightmare
I was a small boy living on Oahu. Out my front door I saw a 20-mile-tall wall of flames stretching across the horizon...
DRACULA'S SANDWICH: by Brenda Ferrimani; 1997/8/22, a death/rebirth nightmare-painting
Dinner with Dracula goes well, considering, except for the mayonnaise. But suddenly I'm drowning!
No one sees or hears me. Am I a ghost, am I dead or alive? And how would anyone notice?
DREAM OF ABYSSES: by Marie-Claude Girondé, spring 2007, a dream-drawing.
Girondé dreams she's floating through the oceanic abyss...
THE ERTHEDNI: by Wayan, 1977/1/8, three transformation dreams, the last with advice
1: I'm starving in a lush valley; a cult claims all the food, the water, even the air.
2: I'm drowning in a cage but find a corner with water I can breathe--just barely.
3: I'm a merman with a wise friend who hints I need to leave those who starve & drown me...
CAUTION: DOMESTIC BATTERING (OFFSTAGE)
EVERLASTING AND PERPETUAL NIGHTMARE: by Shawn King; c. 2009/2/10; two bits of a lifelong nightmare
Lucifer throws firebolts from a Montreal tower; monsters stalk us; next comes the flood...
FANTASTIC RIDE: by Marie-Claude Girondé, spring 2007?, a dream painting.
The dreamer overflows from her egg, spills out to become a waterfall, a stampede of horses...
FLUID REALITY: by Wayan; 1983/8/8; a magical dream-sea voyage that turned out to be predictive
On my quest I find magic portals, snarky flower-fairies, undersea redcoats,
reassembling bodyparts, living chess, and Nosferatu the Cheating Vampyre...
FOOD CAME BETWEEN US: by Wayan, 1993/4/25, a tasty dream epic.
The terror of Navy breakfast, the joy of filterfeeding, how to marry pudding, and a sniper lunch with kisses...
FORGET THE FLEURS DU MAL: by Wayan; 1983/1/1?, a poem on nightmares.
In the richest regions of the sea, dead stuff wells up to meet the light. Do we have similar zones?
FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH: by Roswila, August 2002; a dream-poem illustrating dream reentry
My horse and I dove into a lagoon and sought buried treasure on the sea-floor. What are we really after?
GREEN ANGELS: by Wayan; 1985/9/2, a dream-idyll seething with politics.
I stalk a platoon of levitating surf-bunnies who may be out to bomb a Greenpeace submarine...
GREEN, GREEN, SPIRIT OF THE SPRING: by Jenny Badger Sultan; dreamed 1991/2/3, 1995/8/13 and 1995/11/10
I meet a girl with a plant growing out of her head...
Someone prays to the spirit of a spring to heal me...
I watch people practice exercises with the ritual feel of voudun or candomble...
HAENA TWILIT COVE: by Wayan; 1984/10/31, a predictive dream.
Landing in Hawaii, I dream of a magical twilit cove I must swim across. The eve of leaving, there it is...
HELL HALL: by Anonymous #3; c.1920?, a dream of initiatory cannibalism
A revival meeting goes bad--suicides, 'long pig', a hell-pit. If you sup with the devil, carry a long fork!
ICEBERG WRANGLERS: by Wayan; 2015/8/4, an otherworldly dream-poem
Captain Ahab's part-whale students are better ice wranglers than I'll ever be--
wrestling icebergs of possibility round to their best outcomes, in this pea-soup sea...
IGUANA: by Jim Shaw; between 1987 & Jan. 1995, two surreal dreamlets on water damage
In a flooded room, an indignant iguana scolds me, while
my wife Marnie checks her computer implant for water damage...
IN IO: by Wayan, 1981/8/7, a wild otherworldly dream with 3 illustrations.
I live on Io. It's nicer than its photos. At least inside, where the oceans are--where I grow a second head...
JUMP OVERBOARD: by Graham Greene; 1925/12/11, a possibly psychic nightmare.
Wednesday night I dreamed I had to jump overboard... that night there was a wreck
off the Yorkshire coast in a storm and the captain ordered his men to jump into the sea...
KICK AUTHORITY: by Wayan; 1989/10/25. Early digital painting of a dream figure.
Question authority? Nah. They always have such excuses! Kick authority entirely! Just say no.
THE LADY BATHES IN GRIEF: by Wayan; 1983/5/31, a long-haul psychic dream.
Why'd a spirit-woman come to our reservation to mourn a drowned guy? Her mirrors & candles tell us...
A LAKE DEMON: by Wayan; 1979/11/3, an anti-lucid dream.
I walk through worlds, fight a deadly lake demon, and work magic--but I mustn't go lucid...
LIBERTÉ: by Marie-Claude Girondé, c. 2005?, a dream painting.
"Freedom is a gift you give yourself." But it doesn't always involve seahorses or babycarriages covered in quills...
LONG ROAD TO HEAVEN: by Edwin Muir; 1920, an epic hypnogogic shamanic initiation
Creatures in the primal sea touch my third eye, dragons cry their eyes out, I fight the Sphinx, and arrive at last in...
MARS REBORN: by Wayan; 15 pages, 27 photos, 2003/9/22, a tour of a sculpted/virtual world
Mars as it will be 1000 years from now, terraformed. A guided tour with photos...
A NEW MERMAID DISH: by Wayan; 1994/11/13, a parabolic dream
A mermaid friend invites me to see an underwater experiment in the Golden Gate...
CAUTION: MERMAID BREASTS
IN THE MERMAID'S DRESSING ROOM: by Wayan; 100K, 1993/12/18; an evolutionary dream.
At Sea-Dragon State Park, I climbed down to the sea serpent's dressing room after the show, and found...
CAUTION: MERMAID BREASTS
MERMAID, MARE, AND SEA-STAR: by Wayan; 1983/3/23; daydream of sea-love
I was a mermaid summoning a great storm to carry my love to me--and my love was a red sea-mare...
THE MERMAID TOW: by Wayan; 1994/2/17, a rescue-fantasy dream.
I rescue some drowning kids by turning into a mermaid, but towing one girl has an unexpected effect...
THE MERMAN'S LOVER: by Wayan; 1991-93; a sex daydream treated four ways.
Four versions of an underwater meeting between lovers, one terrestrial, one marine...
CAUTION: ORAL SEX
MOM POPS: by Wayan; dreamed 1983/8/5, a dream of bursting your inner critic
The flood sickens my fuchsia bush. My mom says my fuchsia is hopeless,
but I make up a treatment. When it works, well... read the title.
CAUTION: PUNS, EXPLODING MOM
MUPPET WITNESS: by Bill Tjaden, art by Jesse Reklaw; pre-2000; an absurd dream
I work in a witness protection program. We hide the Muppet on the bottom
of an empty swimming pool, hand him a long straw, and fill it with...
OFF DOVER: by Wayan; 2010/9/30, a dream-based mini-sestina (poetic experiment)
I'm biking over the English Channel. So mild & easy after the Greenland-to-New-York run...
OISIN: by Wayan; 2005-2013, 32 maps and images; a nondream virtual world
A model of a moon, half-Europa, half-Mars, with (intelligent?) life in seas under a skin of ice...
ORPHEA: by Wayan; 1995/12/27. Digital painting of a hole in our myths.
Krishna, Orpheus, Kokopelli...why are the mythic musicians all guys? Where's Orphea's head?
OTTER MEDICINE: by The-Fringe, a Crow healer, early 1850s; a shamanic dream with physical effects
I slept on an island in a scalding hot spring, praying for a dream. I got one--and woke up on the shore...
A PILGRIM DREAMING: by Denise Levertov; 1977? a dream poem
A man I loved goes into the Jungian depths, but when his anima appears in the mirror-pool, his nerve fails...
PEAK ANGEL: by Wayan; 1995, dreamlike but nondream digital collage.
A naked angel came and perched on a rock, pointing at a vista that seemed both alpine and undersea...
PIPES AND TIME: by Wayan; 2017/12/21, a dream of the far future that came true next day
A timetraveler shows me a hotspring shrunk to a quarter of its old flow.
Valves? Pipes? Or drought, from climate change? This IS the future.
A day later, a local main breaks, and our water flow shrinks to a quarter of normal...
POOL ASSASSINS: by Wayan; 2017/3/1, a nightmare after hearing of a real assassination
Four women with guns attack me at a public pool. Trapped in the water, can I survive? Only by being ruthless...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
POOL OF TRUTH: by Katherine Metcalf Nelson; 1983/10/1; a dream of shamanic descent
Night. A massive crash on the highway. Bodies strewn. Sickened, I descend a spiral stair to the Pool
of Truth. It gives no answers. Women spout platitudes. I go on, in pain, down past the polar bears...
CAUTION: THE DEAD
PRESIDENTIAL TACO: by Robert Adams, art by Jesse Reklaw; pre-2000; a dream farce
I botched President Clinton's taco. And on the way home, I fell in the river.
Luckily, Jesse Jackson happened by and pulled me out, restoring my faith in...
PUFF TIDE: by Wayan; 1993/5/1, a nightmare on indulging rage and tears; 8 illus.
I'm swept off sea-rocks, as my scaly guardian watches calmly--letting me drown in the tears I shed...
CAUTION: DROWNING
PULL THE PLUG ON THIS WAR: by Rick Veitch; pre-1995; a surreal dream
I'm a Confederate officer. The only way to save my men is to end the war by
pulling the plug at the bottom of the lake! I dive in, fighting a Yankee, who...
THE ROWAN: by Graham Greene; 1921, a possibly psychic nightmare.
The ship I was on going down in the Irish Sea. It was not till yesterday,
looking at an old paper, I saw about the sinking of the Rowan in the Irish sea...
SEA MASSAGE: by Wayan; 100K, 1995/10/3, a puzzling dreamtale.
I can fly and breathe water. So I fly into art-rich mansions, though
not to steal--I earn plenty from undersea massage...
SEA OF TIME: by Wayan; 100K, 1989/7/26. Digital sketch of astral dream.
I dreamed I was drowning in the Sea of Time, where dragons asked me questions.
Painful questions...
SHAMANIC CHEW-TOY: by Wayan; 2011/3/16; nested dreams of strange women
Compulsively honest spirit-women with waterjugs invade my friend's house.
I wake to find my girlfriend's obsessing on hair loss. To calm her, I babble about limb loss...
and wake again to find she was a dream too.
A SHELLFISH EPIPHANY: by Wayan; 1996/6/14, a spiritual dream.
Our family of Japanese pearldivers is cast away on an atoll. One day, lonely, scared, I cast away fear...
SIPHONIA: by Wayan; 30 p, 2006-14, a nondream virtual world, in progress; maps, tours
First, suck up 90% of Earth's seas. Now wait 90,000 years for life to adapt. The continents are now
Tibetan plateaus above steamy new Deeps, ruled by giant parrots, ravens and otters...
SIX DREAMS: by Jim Shaw; c.1994, a very busy night!
1: A flooded bathroom becomes 2: a glass water-piano; 3: my friend strips in a restaurant, so
4: they serve me gutted dog. 5: Dolls teach prostitution, as 6: a rhino rubs up to an elephant-bear...
THE SOLE FISHER OF THE EIGHTH NODE: by Wayan; 1986/9/25, a prescriptive dream.
The pier jutting into the sea of dreams has an 8th chakra at the end, where a lonely woman fishes for, um, sole...
A SQUID STRATEGY: by Wayan; 1997/10/7, a dream warning.
Giant squid start surfacing at popular beaches and eating people. Not the form of first contact we'd hoped...
CAUTION: YOU ARE LUNCH
THE STONE THE BUILDER REJECTED: by Wayan; 1998/10/3; plaster sculpture ca. 9" across.
I love curves, not the chunky forms of this machine-ruled world...
STORM OF HUGE RAINDROPS: by Albrecht Dürer; 1525/5/30, watercolor of a size-nightmare
The first drop struck about four miles away, with terrific force and thunder, breaking and drowning the land...
SULFUR GROTTO: by Wayan; dreamed 1988/8/30, a psychic genderbent rescue-dream
I'm a teenage girl diving for treasure. In an eerie coral grotto reeking of sulfur,
I spot a diver in trouble... and wake to find the grotto is real..
SURF THE SAN ANDREAS: by Wayan; 2008/8/21, 3 short dreampoems, Dreamverse #11
Through twin gates of dream--not ivory and horn any more, but fear and trust...
Three castles on the sea: a Mock Kremlin, a Ship of Toiletpaper, and a Ship of Brick and Beer...
A mad old surfer of the San Andreas Fault, impossibly riding earth-change...
SUTRO RUINS: by Wayan; 1997, pencil/digital; waking landscape though it doesn't look it.
The ruins of the Sutro Baths in San Francisco were the setting for an otherworldly dream...
SWIMMER: by Wayan; 1992, a digital sketch of daydream.
Swimming down among the tentacles didn't bother me. I wanted that ball. But I didn't see the BIG eye...
SWIMMER IN BLUE: by Wayan; 1984/4/26 drawing of recurring dream image.
I have recurring dreams of figures broken up by hair the color of the background...
CAUTION: MILD NUDITY
SWIMMING CATS: by Starvibes, 2012/1/20, a mysterious dream image
Tracking two cats at night, I watch amazed as they dive in and swim gracefully across a swimming pool...
THIEF OF DREAMS: by Wayan; 1996/11/29, a sexy soul-swap dream; a 22-page comic (or text w/pics)
I was a mermaid trying to find Count Coyote's stolen dreams, so I could marry my human girlfriend...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, LESBIAN MARRIAGE, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
TITANIC IMAGE: by Graham Greene; 1912/4/14?, a child's nightmare as the Titanic sank
One image has remained with me for more than sixty years:
a man in oilskins bent double under the blow of a great wave...
VAMPIRE LOVE: by Sarah Binkley; 2013/9/6, a near-drowning sex dream
I volunteered to meet him underground. He held me underwater and slammed into me. I nearly drowned, yet...
CAUTION: ROUGH SEX
WALL TO WALL WATER: by Larry Vigon; 2003/3/18; a surreal, beautiful dreamlet
The home we were to stay in was on fire. The next had a living room
that was shallow water, wall to wall, where turquoise fish swam...
WAR IN THE RING: by Bruno Oliveira; May 2011, a happy nightmare
War, monsters, plague and bombs are just thrills spicing up
this city rising from a tropical sea on an alien world...
WATER BOOKS: by Marilyn Stablein; 1968, a dream while visiting Nepal... for six years
In a Tibetan monastery on an ancient lakebed, I swim through a vast sunken library.
Books open like sea anemones, letters float to the surface like kelp...
THE WEED: by Elizabeth Bishop; before 1946, a dream-poem on death/rebirth
I was dead. A weed grew from my heart; then two streams poured out--not
water or blood but experiences. I asked the weed what it was doing, and it said...
THE WELL: by Denise Levertov; 1960?; a dream-poem
I meet my own muse--the muse of all of us, perhaps--scooping water from a sacred well...
THE WHITE SUBMARINE: by Wayan; 1974/7/6, a dream of love and flood.
My girlfriend and I ride out the Great Flood in the White Submarine,
but there are romantic complications. Some things never change...


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