The water is moving and you are on the wrong side of it. River dreams stay with people because they are rarely still: there is a current, a far bank, a question of how to get across. The old dream books noticed the same things, and they did not always agree about what they meant.
| Variant | What the old books read | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Crossing a river by boat | Achieving one's aims; gaining office | Yume handan jikkensho 1908; Zhougong 1880 |
| Crossing on a bridge | Misfortune scattering; difficulties surmounted | Yume handan jikkensho 1908; Miller 1901 |
| Falling into a river | Falling into water and not coming out as unlucky | Zhougong 1880 |
| A clear river | Pleasure and prosperity; good fortune | Miller 1901; Yume handan jikkensho 1908 |
| A muddy or raging river | Quarrels and jealousy; a lawsuit | Miller 1901; Yume handan jikkensho 1908 |
| An overflowing river | Trouble in business, or great prosperity | Miller 1901; Zhougong 1880 |
| Swimming in a river | Help from someone of standing | Yume handan jikkensho 1908 |
| A dried-up river | Good for every matter, or sickness | Yume handan 1906; Miller 1901 |
What does it mean to dream about a river?
Miller's 1901 dream dictionary (Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted) read a river by its water. A clear, smooth, flowing river promised pleasures and prosperity; muddy or tumultuous water, in his words, meant "disagreeable and jealous contentions". He ended the entry with a single bleak line: "To see empty rivers, denotes sickness and unusual ill-luck."
The Japanese books looked at the same water from a different angle. The 1908 Yume handan jikkensho by Karasawa Shōkaku has a page of water entries, and most of what it says about rivers is about getting across them: by boat, by bridge, on horseback. Its lines often follow the Chinese Zhougong dream book (1880 print) closely, and the Chinese book shares the interest in crossing.
On one point the traditions flatly disagree. Where Miller read an empty river as illness, the 1908 Japanese book read a river that has run dry as good for every matter. The 1906 Yume handan, a Japanese translation of the Chinese Menglin xuanjie, explained why with a pun on the written character: take the water radical away from 河, the character for river, and what is left is 可, "possible" or "good". The book added that the dream was especially good for the sick, and told of a king of Song whose grave illness healed after it.
So there is no single old meaning of a river dream, only a set of scenes with their own readings, several of them contradictory. What follows reports them as history, then the psychology.
Crossing the river
These are readings from the old dream books, reported as history; no dream is a forecast.
What does it mean to dream of crossing a river?
A ferry, a rowing boat, a ford you wade with your shoes in your hand. The 1908 Japanese dream book read crossing a river by boat as achieving one's aims, and the Zhougong dream book (1880 print) read the same crossing as gaining office: 「乘船渡江河得官」. The 1906 Yume handan added a condition. Wading a river in clogs meant taking a risk to get something done, and the book read it as lucky only if the dreamer reached the other bank safely. Psychologists hear a change under way, its outcome still in the water.
What does it mean to dream of crossing a bridge over a river?
The bridge is narrow and swaying. The 1908 Japanese dream book read crossing a bridge as misfortune scattering, and, more surprisingly, read a bridge collapsing after the dreamer had crossed it as good in every matter, with illness healing. Miller's 1901 dictionary agreed that safe passage was the point: "To cross a bridge safely, a final surmounting of difficulties, though the means seem hardly safe to use." Fear in the middle is the common modern form: too far to turn back, not yet across.
What does it mean to dream of falling into a river?
The bank gives way, or the boat tips, and the cold closes over you. The Zhougong dream book (1880 print) read falling into water and not coming out as unlucky, 「自落水中不出凶」, which implies that climbing out again changed the reading. The 1908 Japanese book read drowning in water as trouble over one's dwelling, a mild reading for such a frightening scene. Psychologists usually hear overwhelm: something in waking life that has risen past what feels manageable. See also dreams about drowning.
What the water was like
What does it mean to dream of a clear river?
You can see the stones on the bottom and the light moving over them. Miller's 1901 dictionary read a clear, smooth, flowing river as pleasure and prosperity close at hand. The 1908 Japanese book read seeing clear flowing water as good fortune, and the Zhougong dream book (1880 print) read a great body of still, clear water as greatly auspicious. All three books agree here. Psychologists read clarity as feelings that are, for now, understood.
What does it mean to dream of a muddy or flooding river?
Brown water, fast and loud, carrying branches past. Miller read muddy or tumultuous water as quarrels and jealousy, and being cut off by an overflowing river as temporary embarrassment in business. The 1908 Japanese book read river water that flows with a choking, sobbing sound as a sign of a lawsuit. The Zhougong dream book took the opposite view of high water: rivers and seas swelling and overflowing were greatly prosperous. Psychologists read a river in flood as emotion arriving faster than it can be processed; for the larger version, see dreams about floods.
What does it mean to dream of swimming in a river?
Sometimes the current carries you easily; sometimes every stroke goes nowhere. Neither Miller nor the Japanese books has a swimming entry as such. The 1908 book read finding oneself in the water as receiving help from someone of high standing, and the Zhougong dream book read being in the water at one's ease as greatly lucky. Psychologists read swimming as coping: ease in the water as feelings managed, strokes against the current as effort that isn't gaining ground.
What does it mean to dream of a dried-up river?
Cracked mud where the water should be. Miller read empty rivers as sickness and ill luck. The two Japanese books read the dry riverbed as good for every matter, the 1906 book with its pun on 河 and 可. Psychologists often hear depletion here, a source of feeling or energy that has run low, though some dreamers describe relief, as if a barrier between two places had simply gone.
What does a river dream mean psychologically?
Psychologists usually read water as emotional life, and its state as a fair report of how manageable feelings currently are: clear when they are understood, murky when they are not, rising when they arrive faster than they can be absorbed. A river adds direction. It is feeling that is going somewhere, and it carries the dreamer, or the dreamer's boat, whether or not they want to go.
The other half of the image is the crossing. Rivers in dreams often mark a boundary between two states: two jobs, two homes, two versions of oneself. The far bank is where the change ends; the water is what it costs to get there. Psychologists note that the dreamer's position usually matters most. Standing on the bank, deciding, is a different dream from being midstream, and both are different from being swept along. For the wider family, see dreams about water and dreams about the sea.
A question to sit with
What are you on the near bank of right now, and what would it take to cross?
A dream book can tell you that a Meiji-era writer thought crossing a river by boat meant achieving your aims. It can't tell you why your river is always the one behind your grandparents' house, or why it floods only in the weeks before a move. That shows only when your dreams are recorded and kept together. If you're wondering whether reading dream meanings helps at all, we wrote an honest answer: should you stop reading dream meanings? 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 places come back.