Dreaming of a box : what can this symbol evoke?

What one does not see and which exists

A closed box is not empty : it is undetermined. As long as it is not opened, its contents remain everything they could be — and it is that indeterminacy the dream stages, more than the object.

The best-known myth says it bluntly : Pandora's box contains every ill, and opening it is irreversible. But it adds a detail often forgotten : hope stays at the bottom. What is shut in is never of a single nature.

This is why the dream frequently accompanies situations where something awaits being known : a diagnosis, an unopened letter, a question not put to someone. The question it poses is precise : do you prefer the indeterminacy to the answer?

Boxing away in order not to see

The box's other use is the reverse : one puts in it what one no longer wants before one's eyes. A dead person's things, old letters, objects one does not throw away and no longer looks at. Tidying here means withdrawing from sight without destroying.

Dreams often use this form, and it is gentle : what is in the box has not been denied, only set aside. One knows where it is. Many dreamers discover in such dreams that they had boxed something away without ever deciding to part with it.

What to remember is your gesture. Opening the box, moving it without opening, or finding it empty tell three distinct stories — and the last is often the hardest, for it says what one was keeping was no longer there.

What you do with the box changes the reading

• A closed box one does not open — indeterminacy preferred to the answer, often from fear of what it holds.
• Opening it and finding something other than expected — an expectation built up that did not match reality.
• An empty box — what one was keeping is no longer there, and nobody had noticed.
• A box one cannot open — a question you do not yet have access to.
• Putting something in a box — setting aside without destroying, which is still a decision.
• A box entrusted to you — a part of another's life for which you become responsible.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology takes an interest in closed containers because they figure what is kept outside consciousness without being suppressed : what is boxed away goes on existing and weighs in a way one cannot explain. It notes that opening, in dreams, often shortly precedes a real realisation. Other readings retain the Pandora myth and recall that what is shut in is never of a single nature.