Dream Symbol - Tornado

Meaning of Dreams about tornados in dreams

Physical: You are experiencing sudden changes or a clearing of old structures, like changing jobs suddenly or needing to move.

Emotional: You feel an emotional upheaval brewing; destructive and powerful emotions, like rage with ensuing chaos and confusion, are beginning to release.

Mental-Spiritual: Being in the eye of the storm symbolizes the still, calm center within yourself where you can find insight and strength amidst chaos. If you are
swept up in the storm, you are experiencing intensely confusing thoughts and are consumed by overwhelming conditions.

Interpretation:

In my capacity as a professional dream worker, I travel all around the English speaking world, (both IRL - "in real life" - and on the Internet), on a daily basis, working with peoples' dreams, and helping them figure out more about what they mean. This gives me the opportunity to carry out an extensive, on-going, informal survey of the collective "trends" in the content and imagery of peoples' dreams. One of the patterns I have noticed, as we approach the millennium, is that more and more people are reporting dreams of great storms, particularly "tornadoes".

At the same time, even a casual eye on the news media in waking life informs us that the world's weather has gotten dramatically "worse" and more intense over the last decades of the 20th century. "Global warming" appears to be the culprit in the waking world, and of course, that, (plus the emotional impact of the news stories of storm damage, and the tragic deaths and dislocations of peoples' lives which inevitably result from these great storms), is sufficient reason alone for the number of "dream tornadoes" to increase - but I believe there are other, even deeper collective/archetypal reasons for the steady increase in this particular type of dream imagery.

The individual and collective problems and dilemmas we face at the end of the 20th century are all, in a very real way, the consequence of incomplete (still evolving) conscious awareness. I am increasingly convinced that it is the huge disparity between our immensely sophisticated knowledge about how to manipulate the physical world, (skills which we inevitably try to use to satisfy the incoherent jumble of our less-than-conscious desires), in contrast with our almost total lack of reliable self-knowledge about the deeper structures of our interior lives, which is the main cause of the terrible situation(s) we find ourselves in at this perilous historical moment.

In the dream world, "wind & water" have been archetypal symbols of spirit ("which bloweth where it listeth") and emotion, (which "runs deep", even when it's still) for thousands (if not millions) of years. In the waking world, peoples from all over the planet share stories where the "voice of the God(s)" "speaks from out of the whirlwind". Non-technological peoples, (including the vast majority our own ancestors, back to the Old Stone Age an beyond), have viewed the "tornado" as "the finger of God", which points with precision and unparalleled power to the psycho-spiritual mysteries of guilt and hidden meaning. Like the imagined "Hand of God", the tornado demonstrates breath taking power, and leaves one life relatively untouched, while the life standing directly next to it is totally torn and shattered forever.

Each time we dream of "tornadoes", these ancient, collective layers of symbolic association reveal themselves anew. Each "dream tornado" is, at some level, a harbinger of change, in the psyche as well as the waking world. Although only the dreamer can say for sure what his or her dream images mean, dream "tornadoes" are compelling metaphors of the individual and collective social change that we "feel", (that we know in our secret heart of hearts), is necessary , and is coming. We intuit, as dreamers, that ultimately the "power of this impending storm" is not just a consequence of incomplete human consciousness and planning failure alone. The forces of change are also "forces of nature" - "divine forces", like nature herself. The dream "tornado", over and over again, turns out to be symbol of the dreamer's own personal relationship to the deepest unasked and unanswered psycho-spiritual questions is his/her life, and these issues always have transpersonal implications as well.

Altrnative interpretations:

1.)A dream that includes a tornado may indicate the onset of sudden and major change in your life
2.) Self-destruction
3.) Something that is unpredictable or uncontrollable

If you dream that you are caught up in a tornado, see other people in one, or you are in danger from a tornado, you will find that your business plans come to naught and failure will dog your footsteps until you do something to aid your chances of success.