Weapons in dreams and the Justice Tarot Card
What is the general meaning of weapons in dreams?
Weapons in dreams may involve rifles, pistols, or sharp elements such as knives, arrows and swords. In the dream we can handle these weapons or be the targets. This may be the case of dreams where we are threatened in or chased by an armed character.
Another variation is dreams where we get stung by a pointed object. Marie-Louise von Franz, the great Swiss psychoanalyst and disciple of Jung, gives the example of a protagonist of a fairy tale that is stung by a spindle. It is found in the wonderful text “The Feminine in Fairy Tales“.
Sharp and pointed weapons are “directed” instruments, they are masculine active symbols and psychologically are connected to the thinking function. Like thinking, weapons imply focusing on a particular objective and the formulation of a judgment or the expression of a will.
Weapons in dreams as symbols of Thinking
If the dream accent is on the presence of directed weapons, it may mean that we have some kind of conflict with the thinking funcion. The conflict can manifest itself for example in being particularly sensitive to “sharp” jokes or to the judgment of others. Carl Gustav Jung teaches that this is actually a projection of our own unconscious attitudes towards others.
We can also have dreams that allude to our inability to consciously direct our psychic energy towards a specific goal or idea. In the case of female dreams, in Jungian terms we speak of “negative Animus”.
OniroTarology and the Justice Tarot Card
In the symbolism of Tarot, thinking may be related to swords. In Arcanum VIII (Justice) we find a correspondence with dreams of the kind described.
The Justice Tarot Card portrays the motif of a weapon which seems to threaten us, just like “judging” attitudes. Judging is the ability to “discern” between what is right and wrong for us.
OniroTarologia 