Dreaming about heaven and hell: what the dream usually reveals

What it means to dream about heaven and hell

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 heaven and hell is not a message about your fate after death, nor a sentence of condemnation. The dream usually appears in phases of guilt, of hard decisions between right and wrong, of grief or of reconnecting with the faith of your childhood. Heaven tends to come with relief, peace or reunion; hell, with guilt, bottled-up anger or fear of punishment.

This text deals with heaven and hell in the religious sense, as places or states of the soul. If your dream was about the blue sky, the clouds or the sunset, the reading is different, and you will find it in dreaming about the sky or clouds.

Read also: Dreaming about an angel and Dreaming about a demon.

Where the heaven and hell of the dream come from

The continuity hypothesis, tested by Michael Schredl and Friedrich Hofmann in 2003, holds that dreams work with what filled waking life. Heaven and hell arrive through Sunday school or catechism, a strong sermon, Dante's Divine Comedy read at school, a movie or a conversation about someone who has died.

The hell of the dream, in turn, follows nightmare scripts. Studying adults' recent nightmares, Michael Schredl and Anja Göritz found in 2018, among the most frequently mentioned themes, falling, being chased and the death or injury of people close to you. Fire, falling and being chased are precisely the images that culture associates with hell.

Sources: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003; Schredl and Göritz, Nightmare Themes, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

The most common heaven and hell scenes

If the scene had fire, read also dreaming about fire. If the heart of it was a reunion with a loved one, see dreaming about someone who has died.

See also: Dreaming about possession and Dreaming about ghosts or spirits.

When this dream calls for support

It is worth seeking support when the nightmare of condemnation repeats, when the fear of going to hell stays with you during the day or when guilt keeps you from sleeping. A psychologist can help, and so can a religious leader you trust. Frequent nightmares can be treated; see how to have fewer nightmares.

If the dream came in the middle of a hard grief, or if you feel you cannot take it anymore, do not stay alone. Reach out to a health professional and, if you need to talk right now: in the US, you can call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), free and available 24 hours a day.

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

Psychoanalysis, symbols and faith before heaven and hell

In Freud's psychoanalysis. Freud opened The Interpretation of Dreams with a line from Virgil: "If I cannot bend the powers above, I will move Acheron", the river of the world of the dead. In the same book, he compares Paradise to a collective fantasy of childhood, a time without shame that dreams visit again.

In Jung's psychology. Myths are full of descents into the underworld: Orpheus seeking Eurydice, Dante guided by Virgil. For Jung, going down is an image of entering the unconscious and coming back with something new. Crossing hell in a dream can be read as a passage, not a punishment.

In symbols and faith. In A Dictionary of Symbols, Chevalier and Gheerbrant treat the sky as an almost universal symbol of the sacred and of what is above, and the underworld as the place below, dark and closed. In the Bible, Jesus says that "in my Father's house are many rooms" (John 14:2). In Spiritism, Allan Kardec wrote Heaven and Hell (1865), in which both appear as states of the spirit; in The Spirits' Book, sleep is described as a moment when the soul is partly free.

Bringing both readings together. Science shows how guilt, grief and childhood images build this dream. Faith asks what needs forgiveness and where your hope lies.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols; Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols; Kardec, The Spirits' Book.

Heaven and hell in dream books

In O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book, L. P. Baçan gives the two themes opposite readings. Heaven, in life, brings happiness and, in love, pleasant surprises. Hell, in life, false hopes and, in love, distress.

Freud saw in these books a decoding method: the image becomes a fixed meaning, without asking what it reminds the dreamer of. The hell of someone who has just heard a strong sermon and the hell of someone living through a fight at home are not the same place.

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

The popular reading of heaven and hell in dreams

In Brazilian popular belief, going up to heaven is a sign of a good phase and of peace at home; a golden or very bright heaven, of achievement. Hell is often read as a "dream of opposites": being there would announce the end of a suffering, and getting out, a victory over a problem. These are readings of the tradition, which comfort many people, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.