Dreaming about a volcano: what an eruption in a dream means

Dreaming about a volcano: 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 volcano does not predict a catastrophe, nor does it mean you are about to blow up at someone. The image tends to appear when something has been building up beneath the surface for a long time: irritation swallowed at work, a family matter never talked about, exhaustion that nobody sees. The volcano is the perfect picture of pressure that grows in silence until it finds a way out.

Lava in detail, flowing or reaching you, has its own article in dreaming about lava, and the shaking ground is covered in dreaming about an earthquake. Here the focus is the whole mountain: the warning, the eruption, the ash and the aftermath.

Read also: Dreaming about a mountain and Dreaming about a tsunami.

A volcano in the dreams of people who live in Brazil

Brazil has no active volcanoes. The country lies in the interior of the South American plate, far from the edges where active volcanoes are found. What exists there are traces of very old volcanism, extinct for millions of years: the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, off Brazil's northeastern coast, is of volcanic origin, for example. The nearest active volcanoes are in the Andes, in countries such as Chile, Ecuador and Peru.

That is why the volcano in a Brazilian's dream almost always comes from a screen or a classroom, and the same goes for anyone who lives far from one. The continuity hypothesis, tested by Michael Schredl and Friedrich Hofmann in 2003, helps trace the path: the documentary from that week, news of an eruption in another country, a disaster movie, the baking soda and vinegar volcano your child took to the science fair.

Antti Revonsuo proposed that threat dreams work as a rehearsal of danger, and a natural disaster can serve as a setting for this training. The volcano has one extra detail: it gives warning. Smoke, tremors and smell come before the eruption, and many people dream precisely about the waiting.

Sources: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003; Revonsuo, The reinterpretation of dreams, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2000.

Eruption, lava, ash: the most common scenes

If the sky went completely dark and the scene looked like the end of everything, see dreaming about the end of the world. If what stayed with you was the gray cloud, compare it with dreaming about smoke.

See also: Dreaming about dirty water and Dreaming about swimming.

When a volcano dream calls for attention

Dreaming about a volcano now and then is common and calls for no action. Pay attention when the scene becomes a recurring nightmare, several times a week, with fear of falling asleep or tiredness the next day. People who have lived through a real natural disaster may also have dreams that come back almost unchanged. In both cases, talk to a health professional: frequent nightmares can be treated. See how to have fewer nightmares.

If the dream goes along with anger you feel is at its limit, with outbursts that frighten you or those who live with you, talking to a psychologist helps you find a way out before the eruption. Asking for help is a way of caring for the people around you.

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

The volcano for Freud, Jung and faith

In Freud's psychoanalysis. In the first chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud reproduces the case of Gregory, who slept with his feet on a hot water bottle and dreamed he had climbed to the summit of Etna, where the ground was unbearably hot. A heavy blanket on a muggy night, feet resting against something warm or a fever can turn into glowing earth. Freud, however, believed that such stimuli explain only part of the dream: the choice of the scene still calls for asking what it reminds the dreamer of.

In Jung's psychology. In Man and His Symbols, Jung insists that the strongest images in dreams are at once image and emotion, and only make sense with the emotion attached. A volcano dreamed with terror and a volcano dreamed with fascination are not the same symbol. In Jung's key, the first question is what you felt in front of the mountain.

In symbols and faith. In Exodus 19:18, Mount Sinai smokes like a furnace and the whole mountain quakes greatly when God descends upon it, a scene that recalls an eruption. In 1 Kings 19:11-12, the prophet Elijah sees a strong wind, an earthquake and a fire pass by, but God is in none of them: He is in the "still small voice" that comes after. For the biblical tradition, the sacred also speaks softly, after the noise.

Bringing both readings together. Research shows where the image comes from and why it frightens; psychology and faith ask what is boiling inside and what comes after the explosion. Write down whether the volcano was already erupting or whether you were waiting for it.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols.

The volcano in dream books

In O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book, L. P. Baçan records the volcano with a surprising reading: in life, good friends; in love, dissatisfaction. The mountain, in turn, appears as progress in life and anguish in love. For this tradition, the eruption does not announce disaster, and the feeling it brings up is more emotional than material.

Freud called this way of reading the decoding method: each image turns into another through a fixed code, without asking the dreamer anything. The volcano of someone who just came back from a trip to Chile and that of someone who keeps swallowing insults do not tell the same story.

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

What folk belief associates with the volcano

In Brazilian folk reading, an erupting volcano is usually associated with big changes and with emotions that overflow. A dormant volcano would be a secret kept; ash, a new beginning after a phase of destruction, an idea that echoes a real fact: the soil in volcanic regions tends to be very fertile. Running from the lava and escaping would be overcoming a hard period. These are beliefs from tradition, and not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.