Dreaming about cassava: meaning and variations

Dreaming about cassava: the direct answer

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 cassava does not announce plenty or a lack of money, and it is not a guaranteed spiritual sign either. Most of the time, the root enters the dream because it is part of routine: it was bought at the market, peeled at the sink, served fried on the weekend or remembered from a grandmother's house. Along with it usually come feelings of work, of care with food and of harvest, as after an effort that finally pays off.

Read also: Dreaming about food and Dreaming about crops or a vegetable garden.

Why cassava ends up in the dream

Research on the continuity between waking life and dreaming, reviewed by Michael Schredl in 2003, shows that the themes of the day tend to come back at night, and that the emotional weight of an experience counts more than its apparent importance. Someone who spent the afternoon peeling cassava for a family lunch, who works in the fields or who saw a plantation through the bus window has plenty of material to dream about the root.

The plant's own characteristics help explain the scenes. Cassava takes work: pulling up the plant takes strength, the skin is tough and the raw root needs cooking before it reaches the table. That is why the dream usually mixes the root with chores, tiredness and waiting. Pulling out a huge cassava after a long tug, for example, may echo a hard job that is coming to an end. See also dreaming about food.

Source: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003.

Variations of dreaming about cassava and what usually goes with them

When the scene takes place in the fields, with a hoe and turned earth, it is worth reading dreaming about crops or a vegetable garden too.

See also: Dreaming about salt and Dreaming about garbage.

If the dream keeps coming back: when to seek help

Dreaming about cassava is almost never linked to suffering. If the dream, however, turns into a recurring nightmare (food rotting without end, a hunger that never passes) and you wake up in distress several nights in a row, it is worth talking to a health professional: frequent nightmares have treatment. See how to have fewer nightmares.

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

Science and belief: Freud, Jung and traditions

In Freud's psychoanalysis. Freud saw many dreams as the disguised fulfillment of a wish, and gave an example from his own body: after eating anchovies or olives at night, he dreamed he was drinking water in great gulps. Something similar happens with food. Someone who went to bed hungry, or missing the buttered cassava of childhood, may find the root served on the plate of the dream. His method helps too: break the scene into parts (the earth, the skin, the pot, who was at the table) and see what each one brings to mind.

In Jung's psychology. Man and His Symbols observes that ordinary objects can gain enormous psychic force in a dream, to the point that a person wakes up disturbed by something banal. The book also speaks of the "almost invisible roots" of conscious thoughts. In the Jungian key, a root that grows in the dark and needs to be dug up can be read as an image of what lies beneath the surface and asks for attention, always starting from the dreamer's own story.

In traditions of faith. In Brazil, cassava has a history of its own. A legend of Indigenous origin, often told in schools, speaks of Mani, a girl buried inside the family hut, from whose grave a plant with a white root was born: hence the name mani-oca, "house of Mani". In the Christian reading, earth and harvest recall the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3-9) and Galatians 6:7, "whatever a man sows, that he will also reap".

Bringing both readings together. Science explains why the root appears: routine, kitchen, affectionate memory. Tradition offers questions: what is being planted, what can already be harvested? Noting whether the cassava was raw, cooked or rotten, and how you felt, helps keep the two apart.

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

What dream dictionaries record

In O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book, L. P. Baçan records cassava with a short reading: in life, discoveries; in love, passion and sex. One way to understand the choice is to think of the plant itself, whose most valuable part stays hidden and only appears when someone digs.

Freud called this kind of book the "decoding" method: each image is swapped for a fixed meaning, as in a code key, and his example was a book in which "letter" meant "trouble". The problem, for him, is leaving out the dreamer. The cassava of someone who grew up pulling roots on the farm is not the same as the cassava of someone who only knows it fried at a bar.

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

Folk beliefs about this dream

In folk interpretation, cassava is usually read as a sign of sustenance, rewarded work and a full table, since it is a staple food in many Brazilian homes. Boiled cassava appears as comfort and harmony in the family; the root pulled from the earth, as achievement after effort; cassava flour, as a reserve for hard times; and rotten cassava, as a warning not to let opportunities spoil. These are cultural readings, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.