Dreaming of a candelabrum : what can this symbol evoke?

Several lights, one foot

A single candle lights a little ; a candelabrum lights a room. But its branches all start from the same axis, and moving the foot moves every flame at once.

Dreams often use this structure for what, in a life, hangs on a single point. Several activities, several relationships, several belongings — and one source feeding them all : a state of health, a trade, a person, a conviction. The diversity is real, so is the dependence.

The question it poses is concrete and uncomfortable : on what do things that seem separate in your life depend? Those who dream of this object often have more activities than supports.

The extinguished branch

A candelabrum with every candle burning does not draw attention : the one missing a flame is what is noticed. The eye goes to the extinguished branch, and dreams work exactly so.

This motif designates what is missing from an otherwise orderly whole. A part of you that no longer works while the rest holds, a relationship gone out within a living circle, an area where you produce nothing any more without anyone being alarmed.

What to remember is what you do with that branch. Relighting it, removing it, or simply looking at it tell three different relations to an extinction you are probably alone in noticing.

What the object shows changes the reading

• Every candle lit — a functioning whole, whose dependence on a single foot goes unnoticed.
• One branch out among the others — what is missing from an otherwise orderly whole.
• Relighting a candle from another — a part of you revived by what still burns.
• An overturned candelabrum — the fall of a single point carrying away all it bore.
• Candles of unequal height — commitments begun at different moments, which will not end together.
• A seven-branched candelabrum — the ritual form, where the number counts as much as the light.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology takes an interest in objects gathering several elements on a single structure, because they well describe a person's organisation : varied activities, a common source, and a concentrated vulnerability. It notes that images of light often designate what remains conscious and active, as against what went out silently. Other readings retain the ritual use of the candlestick, where each flame counts separately.