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Earthquake in dreams: what it can mean

  • Fear and danger
  • Nature
  • Change

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The short answer

An earthquake takes away the one thing we assume is solid. Many dreamers link it with a sudden change, or with a sense that the ground under their plans is not as steady as it looked.

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

Natural disasters appear among the themes that people report in surveys of typical dreams. The continuity view suggests they borrow the language of disaster to express waking upheaval: a move, a breakup, news that changes everything. Threat simulation theory, one contested account, reads such dreams as the mind rehearsing danger. If you have lived through a real earthquake, dreams about it can be part of how the mind processes that fear.

Classic texts

History

Artemidorus treated an earthquake as a sign of wide change touching many people at once, not only the dreamer. His point, that the scale of the image matters, is still a useful question to ask: is this change yours alone, or does it shake the people around you too?

Folk tradition

Tradition, not science

Tradition: American popular dream books, around 1900

Miller's 1901 dream dictionary read an earthquake as a sign of business trouble and distress from upheaval in public affairs. It is one old reading, reported as history rather than prediction.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. What in your life changed, or might change, faster than you expected?
  2. What did you reach for or protect when the ground moved?
  3. Who was with you, and did you feel alone in it?

Related symbols

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. Tore A. Nielsen, Antonio L. Zadra, Valérie Simard, Sébastien Saucier, Philippe Stenstrom, Carlyle Smith, Don Kuiken (2003). The typical dreams of Canadian university students. Dreaming 13(4): 211-235.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: typical dreams questionnaire, results (reference not yet checked)

    Survey of how many people report having had common dream themes (being chased, falling, teeth, flying, exams, nakedness and others) at least once.

  2. G. William Domhoff (2001). A New Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams. Dreaming 11(1): 13-33.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 13-33 (dreams as simulations of personal concerns) (reference not yet checked)

    Dreams as embodied simulations of personal concerns (the continuity view). The backbone of our psychology lens.

  3. Antti Revonsuo (2000). The reinterpretation of dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23(6): 877-901.

    cited, not reproducedcontested theory

    • Cited at: pp. 877-901 (threat simulation theory) (reference not yet checked)

    Threat simulation theory: dreams as rehearsal for danger. Influential but contested; presented as one theory among several.

  4. Ross Levin, Tore A. Nielsen (2007). Disturbed dreaming, posttraumatic stress disorder, and affect distress: A review and neurocognitive model. Psychological Bulletin 133(3): 482-528.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 482-528 (distressing dreams and emotional distress) (reference not yet checked)

    Nightmares and distressing dreams in relation to fear processing and emotional distress.

  5. Artemidorus of Daldis (1644). The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica), in five books, translated by Robert Wood. London.

    first published 2nd century CE

    public domain

    • Cited at: Book II, on earthquakes (reference not yet checked)

    Greek dream manual from the Roman era. We paraphrase the public-domain Wood translation (1644). Modern translations (White 1975, Harris-McCoy 2012, Hammond 2020) are copyrighted and only cited.

  6. Gustavus Hindman Miller (1901). What's in a Dream (later reissued as Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted).

    public domain

    • Cited at: entry: Earthquake (reference not yet checked)

    An American popular dream dictionary. Its entries are written as omens ("foretells"); we only report how people once read a symbol, never as a forecast.