Dreaming of a kite : what can this symbol evoke?

What holds back is what lifts

It is this object's most counter-intuitive fact : the line does not prevent flight, it produces it. A free kite is not a liberated kite, it is a piece of cloth falling back down.

Dreams use this figure when a constraint is perceived as an obstacle when it in fact supports. A professional frame, a family commitment, a discipline judged burdensome — and without which nothing one does would stay aloft.

The question it poses is delicate : what you would like to cut — are you sure it is holding you back? Those who dream of this object are often considering leaving something.

Holding without deciding

The one holding the line does not steer : he composes with a wind he does not choose, giving or taking back cord. He decides neither direction nor strength — only length.

It is a position many hold without naming it : with a growing child, a project entrusted to others, a loved person one directs in nothing. One does not command, one accompanies ; and letting out too much or too little produces the same failure.

What to remember is your gesture. Holding back, unwinding, or feeling the line slip tell three different relations to what rises without you.

What the line does changes the reading

• A kite rising well — a successful accord between a constraint and a force one does not master.
• The line breaking — a constraint removed, and what was rising falls at once.
• Holding a line without seeing what is at the end — accompanying something whose outcome escapes you.
• A kite stuck in a tree — an impulse stopped by a silly obstacle, which one dares not retrieve.
• Unwinding too much line — giving more freedom than the situation bears.
• Seeing someone else hold your line — the sense that your rising depends on a hand that is not yours.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology takes an interest in images where constraint proves supportive, because they correct a frequent error : believing freedom consists in removing ties. It likens such figures to the frame, that function allowing a process to unfold without dispersing. Other readings retain the position of the one holding the line, and what it says about accompanying.