Dream dictionary › Chains

What does it mean to dream about chains?

To dream of being bound in chains, denotes that unjust burdens are about to be thrown upon your shoulders; but if you succeed in breaking them you will free yourself from some unpleasant business or social engagement. To see chains, brings calumny and treacherous designs of the envious.

The full entry for “Chains”

To dream of being bound in chains, denotes that unjust burdens are about to be thrown upon your shoulders; but if you succeed in breaking them you will free yourself from some unpleasant business or social engagement. To see chains, brings calumny and treacherous designs of the envious. Seeing others in chains, denotes bad fortunes for them.

— Gustavus Hindman Miller, Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; or, What's in a Dream (1901). Public domain.

How Dreamlore reads a dream about chains

A dictionary entry is one symbol on its own. In a real dream, chains arrives with a place, other people, and a feeling, and the meaning shifts with them. Dreamlore takes the whole dream — spoken or typed — finds the passages that actually fit it in Miller and in Freud, quotes them word-for-word, explains the symbols in context, and leaves you one reflective question. On Plus it also paints the dream from your own words. The journal stays on your phone.

Read your own dream in Dreamlore

Related dream symbols

ChaffChair

Questions

What does it mean to dream about chains?

To dream of being bound in chains, denotes that unjust burdens are about to be thrown upon your shoulders; but if you succeed in breaking them you will free yourself from some unpleasant business or social engagement. To see chains, brings calumny and treacherous designs of the envious.

Where does this dream meaning come from?

From Gustavus Hindman Miller's Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; or, What's in a Dream (1901), a public-domain dream dictionary. The passage above is quoted verbatim; Dreamlore shows the same text, checked word-for-word against the source, when it reads a dream about chains.

Dreamlore and this dictionary are for reflection and curiosity. Miller wrote in 1901 and his entries read as omens; take them as a starting point for thinking about your own dream, not as prediction or advice.