Dreaming of a caterpillar : what can this symbol evoke?

The state before

Caterpillar and chrysalis are often confused, though they are opposite moments : the chrysalis is closed and still, the caterpillar open and voracious. One transforms, the other accumulates — and the accumulating must be finished before the transformation begins.

Dreams use that distinction exactly. The caterpillar designates periods when one is not advancing towards a form but amassing : learning without knowing what for, working without seeing what follows, holding a post that visibly leads nowhere.

The question it poses is this : are you sure that what you are doing at the moment prepares nothing? Those who dream of caterpillars often judge sterile a phase that is simply prior.

A creature one does not like

Nobody finds a caterpillar beautiful. It devours plants, it is soft, it moves slowly : the butterfly fascinates, the caterpillar repels — and yet it is the same being.

Dreams often play on that contempt. They designate a part of you judged inelegant or useless : a need, a slowness, a way of doing things one would rather not show. It is not a flaw to correct, it is a stage one dislikes going through.

What to remember is your reaction to the creature. Disgust, indifference, or curiosity tell three different relations to what in you does not yet have the form you hope for.

What the animal does changes the reading

• A caterpillar eating without stopping — a phase of accumulation it would be premature to judge sterile.
• Finding it repellent — a part of you judged inelegant, and no less necessary for that.
• A crushed caterpillar — a stage interrupted before producing what it was preparing.
• Seeing it begin to spin — the passage from accumulating to transforming, a precise and rare moment.
• A very long caterpillar, with no visible end — a preparatory phase lasting longer than expected.
• A butterfly beside a caterpillar — both states at once, in you or between two people.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology distinguishes phases of preparation from phases of transformation, noting that the former cannot be shortened : everything that transforms has first accumulated. It observes that dreamers judge such periods harshly because they produce nothing visible. Other readings retain the revulsion the caterpillar arouses and see a figure of the parts of oneself one tolerates poorly.