Illness in a dream is a signal: something in your life or in your body needs attention, rest or healing. It may also be an emotional wound.
When the dream feels light
Healing from an illness speaks of recovery and the end of a hard time.
When the dream feels dark
A serious illness points to exhaustion, worry or a problem neglected.
Ask yourself
What needs care and rest?
Correspondences
- Archetype
- Death and Rebirth — The great transformation: something ends so that something else can live.
- Element
- Water — feeling, dream and the unconscious
- Planet
- Saturn
- Tarot card
- Four of Swords
- Alchemical stage
- Nigredo, the Blackening
The body speaking for the soul. Rest, and listen.
Words that call this sign
fever, ill, illness
Related signs
The Serpent · The Butterfly · The Frog · Fire · The River · Rain · Blood · Bones
The card of this dream
Four of Swords. Rest and retreat, the stillness that restores. A knight lies in effigy on a tomb in a church, hands joined in prayer, three swords above him and one beneath. It is rest, recovery and retreat: a pause needed after the struggle.