Dreaming of motley : what can this symbol evoke?

What refuses the uniform

A plain colour speaks of belonging : the uniform, the robe of office, the black of serious people. Motley says the opposite — it marks out the one who belongs to no category, and whose mixed colours designate them as such from afar.

Older societies reserved this garment for precise places : the jester, the king's fool, the player. Not out of contempt, but because those figures held a position apart — that of one who may say what others keep quiet, precisely because he is filed nowhere.

Dreams often use motley in that sense. It designates a marginal position that grants a freedom, and pays for it : one listens to the person who belongs to nothing, and does not take them seriously. The question becomes : did you choose that place apart?

An assemblage rather than a unity

The other reading rests on the material itself : motley cloth is made of pieces added on, often of diverse origins. It is not a fabric, it is an assemblage — and it holds.

Many dreamers see themselves wearing such a garment and worry, as at a failure of coherence. Often the opposite should be heard. A life made of pieces from elsewhere — several trades, several countries, several families — is not a failed life : it is a life whose unity is not read in its colour.

What to remember is your feeling before the cloth. Discomfort says a coherence is being asked of you, or that you ask it of yourself ; ease says the assemblage has been accepted, and now makes a garment.

What is motley changes the reading

• Wearing motley oneself — a place apart, a source of freedom and of non-recognition.
• Feeling embarrassed by those colours — a coherence being asked of you, or demanded of yourself.
• Seeing someone else so dressed — the one in your circle who says what others keep quiet.
• A cloth made of added pieces — a life composed of pieces from elsewhere, and holding nonetheless.
• Colours violently clashing — an assemblage still ill-adjusted, whose seams show.
• Removing the motley garment — the wish to enter a category, with the freedom that removes.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology takes an interest in figures that escape categories, because they often speak of a part of the dreamer that finds nowhere to be filed. It notes that such figures recur in those whose path did not follow a single line. Other readings retain the jester's garment and see the position of one who gains the right to speak in exchange for the right to be taken seriously.