Dreaming of a dodecahedron : what can this symbol evoke?

The fifth form

There exist only five perfectly regular solids, and the Greeks assigned four of them to the elements : fire, earth, air, water. The dodecahedron remained, and Plato assigns it the whole — the shape of the universe itself, for want of a fifth element to give it.

That detail makes the dodecahedron a figure of totality, like the circle and the mandala, but with a nuance that counts : it is constructed. It can be decomposed into twelve faces, and yet it tends towards the sphere without ever reaching it.

Dreams often use this form when someone tries to understand a whole by assembling it piece by piece. The question it poses is this : what you are trying to reconstitute in pieces — can it be perceived at all except at once?

A perfection without use

A dodecahedron does not really roll, does not stack, does not sit better on one side than another. Its regularity serves no purpose : it produces no practical advantage, it is merely exact.

That makes it a useful figure for speaking of a certain demand. Dreams present it to those pursuing a finished form — flawless work, a coherent life, an explanation that holds entirely — and who discover that completion does not make the thing more manageable.

What to look for is your feeling before the object. Admiration says a totality let itself be seen ; coldness says something else — a perfection attained that does not warm, which many dreamers feel without daring to put it into words.

What the form shows changes the reading

• A perfectly regular solid held in the hand — a totality that let itself be grasped, rare and worth noting.
• Counting it face by face — the attempt to reconstitute in pieces what can only be perceived at once.
• A missing face — an almost complete whole, and the empty place becomes the whole subject.
• A beautiful, cold form — a perfection attained that does not bring what was expected.
• A dodecahedron turning without stopping — what tends towards the sphere without ever reaching it.
• Making one oneself — the effort of assembling a coherence, with what it has of the demanding and the vain.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Jung held regular figures to be images of the Self, and took particular interest in those organising a centre : mandalas, circles, regular solids. He noted that they often appear in periods when consciousness seeks an order, and that they are not produced deliberately. Other readings retain the Platonic tradition, where the dodecahedron figures the whole for want of being able to figure an element.