Sunday, April 14, 2002		Dream Theme

Dreaming of butchers
Vinaya Katoch Manhas

It is waste — and worse than waste — of efforts to ignore the element of brutality because of the repugnance it excites.

— Karl Von Clausewitz

DREAMING of a butcher could be termed a gory dream that generally invokes a feeling of distaste and nausea in the dreamer. Although not very common, dreams of butchers and the blood associated with them do tend to occur in quite a few cases. As per Indian thought to dream of a butcher is a bad omen. It means that you shall be surrounded by troubles on all sides. If you also see many carcasses of animals and their bodies lying about then be prepared for some bad times ahead. This dream foretells that you are about to fall seriously ill or shall meet with unfortunate times. Should you also see lots of blood then beware of enemies who will use any means possible to ensure your downfall.

As per western philosophy if you dream of butchers slaughtering cattle and lots of blood lying on the floor, then be prepared for a long and fatal sickness in your family. Should you see a butcher cutting meat, it means that your reputation may suffer in the eyes of the people around you. You are warned to be careful while writing letters or documents as even slight carelessness on your part could harm you.

Psychologically speaking, a butcher is a person who mutilates, but at the same time provides meat, an important part of our diet. Thus, he is also a person who separates the goods from the bad. At the same time he can also be a destroyer. Dreams of butchers generally serve to warn us to beware of a destructive streak within ourselves.

Take the dream of a 33-year-old woman who often dreamt of herself running and trying to escape someone who is chasing her. She takes shelter in a building where she sees carcasses of animals hanging on the walls. It is a cold storage for meat. As she runs to hide she keeps banging into these carcasses and she can feel the wetness and coldness of the cold meat. It sickens her. In a corner she sees a man cutting huge pieces of meat into small chunks. She hides behind him and does not seem to mind the blood around.

In this dream two factors seem to be very apparent. One is her running to escape from her predator and second, the scene at the cold storage. The lady, in all probability, seems to be trying to avoid some person in her real life either because she is in awe of him or because of guilt feelings. Her escape to a cold storage and the sight of the carcasses and the butcher cutting the meat and the blood all around seem to symbolise her feelings of aggression, fear and repulsion towards the person in question. If she had been able to identify the butcher then her dream could have been interpreted more accurately.