Something with too many legs moves along the skirting board, faster than seemed possible. Centipede dreams carry a particular kind of alarm: not the slow dread of a snake but a quick, scuttling shock, and the knowledge that this creature bites. A few old dream books noticed it, and they reached opposite conclusions.
| Variant | What the old books read | Source |
|---|---|---|
| A centipede | Unlucky, a lost salary; lucky for merchants | Yume handan jikkensho 1908 |
| A centipede | Wicked people | Artemidorus, 2nd century |
| Being bitten by a centipede | Long life | Zhougong 1880 |
| A lot of centipedes | Being surrounded by wicked people | Yume handan 1906 |
| A big centipede | No entry in any book cited here | none |
| Killing a centipede | No entry in any book cited here | none |
What does it mean to dream about a centipede?
The 1908 Japanese dream book, the Yume handan jikkensho, gave the centipede one line among its insect entries: seeing a centipede was unlucky and meant losing one's salary, except for merchants, for whom it was lucky. The 1906 Yume handan, a Japanese translation of the Chinese Menglin xuanjie, had a single entry for a swarm, which it read as being surrounded by wicked people.
The Chinese Zhougong dream book (1880 print) went the other way. In its insect section, the line 「蜈蚣咬人壽命吉」 reads a centipede biting a person as long life. Artemidorus, in the second century, took the darker view: he closed his chapter on snakes and other creeping creatures by reading poisonous spiders, scorpions and centipedes together as wicked, unscrupulous people.
Miller's 1901 dream dictionary (Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted) has no centipede entry at all. So the old record is thin, and divided. What follows reports the readings that exist, says plainly where there are none, and then turns to the psychology.
What the centipede did
These are readings from the old dream books, reported as history; no dream is a forecast.
What does it mean to dream of being bitten by a centipede?
A sharp burn on the hand or foot, the long body already gone. The Zhougong dream book (1880 print) read a centipede biting a person as long life, one of the more surprising lines in its insect section. Artemidorus's reading of centipedes as wicked people points the other way. Psychologists often hear a small betrayal: a hurt that came from somewhere you had not been watching.
What does it mean to dream of killing a centipede?
The slipper comes down, or the kettle of hot water. No book cited here has an entry for killing a centipede. Psychologists usually hear relief, a threat finally dealt with, and sometimes unease at how much force it took. The dream often follows a week in which a lingering problem was confronted.
How big, and how many
What does it mean to dream of a big centipede?
It is as long as an arm and moves like water. No book cited here distinguishes a large centipede from a small one. Psychologists read size as importance: a worry that has grown, in the dream, to match how much space it now takes up in waking thought.
What does it mean to dream of a lot of centipedes?
They come from under the floor, from the walls, from everywhere at once. The 1906 Yume handan read a hundred or more centipedes gathering around the dreamer as being surrounded by wicked people, adding that one who kept an upright heart and careful conduct would come to no harm. Psychologists read numbers as pressure: many small threats, none of them decisive, all of them close.
What does a centipede dream mean psychologically?
Psychologists usually read insects and other crawling creatures as intrusion: things that creep in uninvited and multiply where attention lapses. The revulsion is usually the point. The centipede adds a sting, and with it something closer to the scorpion: anxiety about being hurt by something small and precise, often by a person, and sometimes the dreamer's own readiness to strike back.
Speed matters too. A centipede is hard to follow with the eye, so the dream often carries the feeling of a threat you cannot keep track of. The waking question is usually what has been getting in through the cracks, and whom you are watching most closely. For the relatives, see dreams about insects and dreams about scorpions.
A question to sit with
Is there someone or something in your life you are keeping half an eye on, just in case?
A dream book can tell you that the Zhougong list thought a centipede bite meant long life. It can't tell you why yours always comes out of the same corner of your childhood room. That shows only when your dreams are recorded and kept together. Dreamlock, on the App Store for iPhone, is a private dream journal made for keeping them together: it listens to your dream, paints it, and notices when the same creatures come back.