The Dream Book of Self-Knowledge
- intensifies everything earthly (usually instincts and sometimes emotions) with its commotion.
- arriving to a city: the dreamer leaves behind the peace and tranquility in his soul to descend into the whirl of earthly life.
- historical: related to the dreamer's past; historical buildings in it can symbolize people with whom we share a karmic bond that arises from the relentless Law of Karma*34.
- burning and looting of a city: ridding oneself of a past worldview (see Apocalypse archetype) or the image of future events in the world (see archetype of Past and Future Visions).
- city monuments, dominant features: represent the center of a being (see the Treasure archetype).
- with many passage canals (like Venice) or with a river running through it: in the whirl of earthly life there are many feelings, whose traits correspond to the purity of the water.
- municipal authorities or government offices in a capital city: authorities control from the position of a higher consciousness the lower component of nature – the ego; the population is behind the lower component of nature, but usually it is the workers who rail against authorities and the government (it is good for the dreamer if he is on the side of the controlling will, which limits the lower human nature).
- a city can represent the family in some emotional dreams.
- tension, problems, disorder or even attacks and fights in the city: problems in everyday earthly life will lead the dreamer to search new, better alternatives of life.
- ugly, dug up: the dreamer is beginning to see everyday earthly life as ugly and longs for a fuller emotional life.
- wandering in the city: see Wandering, wander, labyrinth.
- unknown, foreign: the unknown part of the mind.
- city center: the goal of an earthly person and the central position of earthly events.
- city walls: see Ramparts.
- conquering, militarily controlling, but also defending against an enemy: a positive dream since inner discipline is successfully fettering the dreamer's earthly behavior.
- in the enemy's hands: earthly life is becoming the enemy for the dreamer, who prefers completely different values.
- blackout in city: the dreamer is abandoning his earthly life (city) the emotional level (blackout); the question is whether he is abandoning it upwards (e.g. flight of the active imagination*41) to a spiritual level, or downwards to the darkness of the instinctual level.
- attractive, well-maintained city: a content, normal earthly life.
- beautiful, incredibly beautiful, with perfect architecture: a prefiguration of the heavenly city and spiritual life.
- heavenly: symbolizes spiritual life.
- moving, fleeing or departing a city: the path to finding peace and calm.
- of the future: can be a genuine vision of the future (see Past and Future Visions archetype).
- the ruins of cities: symbolize the old world that the dreamer is leaving to find a new world, which in the unconscious means the discovery and taking root of a new view; this image is often part of the complicated process of the Apocalypse archetype.
- dead, void of people: a deadened relationship to earthly life, expected departure from this city and the discovery of a new world according to the scenario of the Apocalypse archetype.
