Dreaming of a well — what does it mean?

What does it mean to dream of a well?

You lean over the edge and look down. It is dark the whole way, and somewhere down there is water — you hear it, or you see a patch of reflected light. The distance is impossible to judge.

The well is an old dream motif, and that is probably down to its shape. It is narrow where you stand and wide where it ends, and that is one of the most precise geometries a symbol can have.

The narrow opening down to something large

Access, but only a little at a time

A well gives water, but one bucket at a time. That makes it a good image for something you have access to without being able to take it all at once — a source, a memory, an ability you only reach part of.

The depth you cannot measure

Where the lake shows you its surface, the well shows you almost nothing. Dreams of wells often concern exactly that uncertainty: you know something is there, but not how much or how far down.

The well that always belongs somewhere

Wells do not stand alone in a landscape. They belong to a farm, a house, a place where someone lived. The dream therefore borrows the whole place, and who lived there can matter as much as the well.

What you did at the well

If you drew water up: The most positive variant. Bringing something up from the depths tends to be read as something inaccessible having become accessible.

If you dropped something down it: A strong image for something gone without being destroyed. It still exists — it is simply out of reach.

If the well was dry: A source that has stopped giving. Often described in periods when something one used to be able to draw on no longer yields anything.

If you saw your own reflection: The well as mirror is a motif in its own right. Sits close to dreams of mirrors, with depth added.

If you fell in: The most distressing variant. Ending up somewhere narrow and deep you cannot climb out of shares its core with dreams of being trapped.

The well in folklore

Wells have been gathering points, water sources and, in many cultures, places where people made offerings or wishes. That double role — vital and slightly dangerous — is probably why the motif has persisted so long in dreams.

The dream sits close to the basement: both are downward spaces attached to a house. The difference is that the well has water at the bottom, and that the water is something you are meant to use.

Sources and further reading

• Carl Gustav Jung, Man and His Symbols (1964) — on downward spaces as images of the unconscious, relevant to the well’s shape and what it does to the reading.
• Calvin Hall and Robert Van de Castle, The Content Analysis of Dreams (1966) — normative data, relevant because it shows how dominant familiar buildings and grounds are in dream settings.
• G. William Domhoff, The Scientific Study of Dreams (2003) — the continuity hypothesis, relevant to the well tending to belong to a place the dreamer has actually been.