Dreaming of scissors : what can this symbol evoke?

Two blades opposing in order to cut

A single blade scores ; two crossing blades separate cleanly. The tool takes its force not from sharpness but from opposition — and that is what makes the cut so clean.

Dreams use this figure for decisions that separate definitively. Unlike tearing, which leaves ragged edges, the cut is clean : one cannot pretend it did not happen, nor can one glue it back.

The question it poses is precise : the separation you are contemplating — do you want it clean? Some situations call for a cut, others sit badly with what it has of the irreversible.

What is cut so that it grows

Scissors do not only destroy : one prunes a plant so it starts again, cuts hair that grows back, cuts the cord that has done its work. In all these cases cutting frees.

Dreams often use this dimension, and it is what the common reading lacks. What is cut is not always lost : a burden set down, a relationship that weighed, a project abandoned so the rest may advance. Amputation and pruning look alike at the moment of the gesture.

The decisive detail is what remains after the cut. A stump or a regrowth : it is the only thing that truly distinguishes the two, and dreams often show it.

What is cut changes the reading

• A clean cut — a separation one cannot pretend not to have made.
• Scissors that will not cut — a decision taken without producing an effect.
• Cutting one's own hair — a change inflicted on oneself that will grow back.
• A cut thread — the end of a tie, an old motif where three spinners decide the length of lives.
• Pruning a plant — cutting so it starts again, which looks much like a loss at the time.
• Someone else holding the scissors — a separation decided by a third party, which you undergo.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology takes an interest in gestures of separation because they are at once necessary and dreaded : growing requires cutting, and every cut resembles a loss at the moment it is made. It notes that dreams of cutting tools often accompany decisions already ripe that consciousness has not yet pronounced. Other readings retain the motif of the cut thread and its place in representations of fate.