Dreaming of a small boat : what can this symbol evoke?

The crossing from one bank to the other

Every tradition has placed a boat at the border of worlds. Charon's, carrying the dead across the river ; the Egyptian sun's, crossing the night to be reborn at morning. The common point is not death, it is passage — a state one leaves, another one joins, and an in-between where one is nowhere.

That intermediate moment is what the dream stages. One has left a bank, one has not reached the other, and meanwhile one can do nothing but go forward. Many dreamers describe that feeling without naming it : a period of their life when something has ended without what follows having begun.

The question it poses is therefore precise : what did you leave, and how long have you been waiting to arrive?

Who holds the oars

The boat imposes a question other vehicles avoid : someone rows. There is neither engine nor wind, only a human force applied in the opposite direction to the gaze — one advances with one's back to the destination.

That material detail is rich. Rowing oneself means progressing without seeing where one is going, relying on the bank one is leaving to take bearings. Being taken by another means entrusting one's passage to someone one does not always know to be a guide or merely a ferryman paid for it.

What to remember is therefore the place you occupied. At the oars, at the prow, or seated doing nothing while another steers — these three dreams do not share a subject.

What happens in the boat changes the reading

• Rowing oneself — advancing without seeing the destination, taking bearings from what one leaves.
• Being taken by a ferryman — entrusting one's passage to someone, with the question of what he wants.
• A boat motionless in midwater — the in-between that lasts : no bank behind, no bank yet ahead.
• A boat taking on water — a crossing undertaken with insufficient means.
• An empty boat on the shore — a possible passage not taken, sometimes for a long time.
• Reaching the far bank and not stepping off — arrival refused, which is more frequent than one thinks.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology takes an interest in figures of passage because they describe periods social life does not name : one speaks of departure and arrival, rarely of the crossing. The boat, tiny and unprotected, expresses its vulnerability. Other readings stress the ferryman figure, and what it means to hand one's movement to another.