Dreaming about a broom: sweeping, an old broom and its meaning

Dreaming about a broom: what it usually points to

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Dreaming about a broom does not announce a fight, a move or a spell. The broom is one of the most common tools in a home, and the dream tends to use it to speak of cleaning and organizing: clearing away what bothers you, closing a matter, putting life in order. When the dirt never ends or the broom breaks, the scene tends to go with fatigue and the feeling of a never-ending task.

What the broom does not indicate is good or bad luck: the belief that it drives visitors away or sweeps luck out of the house is tradition. Before looking for a message, it is worth remembering whether there was a big cleanup or a move in the last few days.

Read also: Dreaming about garbage and Dreaming about a house.

Why a broom shows up in the dream

The continuity hypothesis, examined by Michael Schredl and Friedrich Hofmann in 2003, holds that dreams follow the activities and worries of waking life, and housework takes up a good part of many people's days. The Saturday cleanup, the dirt tracked in by the rain, the new home to clean before moving in, the witch's broom seen in a movie: all of it is ready material for the night.

The broom also arrives through repetition. A motion repeated for hours during a cleanup sometimes keeps going in your head when you lie down. Among the themes of the typical dreams questionnaire that Tore Nielsen and colleagues gave to Canadian university students in 2003 is trying again and again to do something. The broom that never finishes the job is a household version of that scene.

Sources: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003; Nielsen and colleagues, Dreaming, 2003.

Frequent versions of the broom dream

If the scene was about piled-up dirt, it is worth reading dreaming about garbage too; if there was a witch in the dream, dreaming about a witch.

See also: Dreaming about meat and Dreaming about glasses.

When to seek professional help

Dreaming about a broom is almost always just a dream about home. It deserves attention when it comes with a need to clean or to check things while awake that takes up hours of the day and causes distress. In that case, talk to a psychologist or a psychiatrist.

If the scene turns into a recurring nightmare, with a witch chasing you, and you often wake up frightened, see a health professional: frequent nightmares have treatment. See how to have fewer nightmares.

Source: Morgenthaler and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

What dream dictionaries say about the broom

In O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book, L. P. Baçan gives the broom a domestic reading: in life, changes; in love, passing disagreements.

Freud criticized this method, which he called "decoding": swapping each image for another according to a fixed key, without asking the dreamer anything. The broom of someone who spent the weekend cleaning and the broom of someone who has been afraid of witches since childhood call for different readings.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014.

Freud, Jung and faith on the broom

In Freud's psychoanalysis. Freud showed that dreams lean on impressions from the previous day, often trivial ones. In one of his own dreams analyzed in The Interpretation of Dreams, a botanical monograph glimpsed in a bookshop window becomes the center of the scene and pulls up far more important memories. The broom is the trivial object par excellence: it appears because it was at hand, but it may be carrying another matter.

In Jung's psychology. Jung called the traits we prefer not to see in ourselves the shadow. In Man and His Symbols, Marie-Louise von Franz describes how the shadow appears in dreams and asks to be recognized. The expression "sweeping it under the rug" sums up the movement: dirt that keeps coming back in the dream may point to something that was pushed into a corner.

In symbols and faith. A Dictionary of Symbols, by Chevalier and Gheerbrant, recalls the legend of the witches' sabbath, in which witches rode off on brooms to gather at night. The Bible uses the gesture of sweeping in another direction: in Luke 15:8-10, in the parable of the lost coin, a woman lights a lamp, sweeps the house and searches carefully until she finds the coin. In Afro-Brazilian religions, Omolu, or Obaluaê, is the orixá linked to illness and healing, according to the mythology collected by Reginaldo Prandi; his emblem, the xaxará, is a bundle of straw adorned with cowrie shells, associated with sweeping away ills.

Bringing both readings together. Science shows that the broom in the dream is usually the one from this week. Faith and psychology ask what you are trying to clean and what you are searching for in the dust, like the woman in the parable.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols; Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols; Prandi, Mitologia dos orixás.

Folk readings about dreaming of a broom

In Brazilian folk tradition, the broom has a reputation of its own. A broom upside down behind the door is said to be a folk charm to make visitors leave; sweeping the house at night would carry luck away with the dust; sweeping over the feet of a single person would delay their wedding. In dreams, sweeping appears as a sign of a new phase; a new broom, as a fresh start; an old broom, as fatigue. These are readings from tradition, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.