LION

Dream Meaning

The lion has reigned in the human imagination as the sovereign of beasts for as long as humans have dreamed — its golden presence in the unconscious is almost never accidental, always weighty with questions about power, courage, dignity, and the proper use of authority. When a lion appears in your dream, something important is being said about your relationship to these qualities, both as they exist within you and as you encounter them in others.

A lion that approaches calmly and regards you with equanimity is among the most powerful affirmations the dreaming mind can offer: it means you are not afraid of your own strength, that you and the sovereign animal within you have reached an understanding. A lion that attacks is the dream staging the terror of being overwhelmed — by someone else's dominance, by your own unmanaged aggression, or by the sheer force of instincts that have been suppressed beyond their capacity for containment.

The question the lion always asks is: what do you do with power?