Shadow in Dreams
shadow · shadows · shade · silhouette · cast shadow · one's shadow · shadowy figure · shaddow
A shadow is read on two levels at once. Literally it is the dark shape a body casts, proof that something solid stands between a light and a surface; figuratively it names the part of a person that goes everywhere with them without being looked at directly. Dreams of shadows are commonly taken to concern what accompanies the dreamer unacknowledged — traits, impulses or history kept out of the light.
The image is often read as the disowned portion of a self: not what a person is hiding from others so much as what they have declined to recognise in themselves. It is generally described as following rather than opposing — attached, unavoidable, growing longer as the light lowers. Interpretation tends to treat turning to face it as the significant movement, and fleeing it as the arrangement that keeps it in place.
By detail
Size
the shadow is unusually long, or looms larger than the body casting it
An outsized shadow is read as something small in itself that has taken on disproportionate presence. The image is often taken to describe a fear, a fault or an old event given more weight than its actual size. One line of interpretation reads the exaggeration as distortion to be corrected; a different line notes that shadows lengthen as the light drops, and reads the image as a matter of the hour rather than of the object.
Place
standing in shadow, or a place suddenly dimming
Being in shadow rather than casting one shifts the reading to conditions. The image is commonly taken to concern a stretch in which the dreamer is out of the light — overlooked, obscured, or sheltered from exposure. Attention often falls on what stands between the dreamer and the light source, since the shape of the shadow is read as describing whatever is doing the blocking.
Action
one's own shadow behaves strangely — moves alone, detaches, will not follow
A shadow acting on its own is read as a part of the self that has stopped being governed. The image is generally taken to describe something the dreamer once managed to keep quiet asserting a will of its own. Some readings treat this as unwelcome, an intrusion into a settled self-image; a different line regards it as overdue, and reads the shadow's independence as a bid for recognition rather than as a threat.
the dreamer casts no shadow at all
The absence of a shadow is read as a self presented without its darker half — a claim to be all light. The image is generally taken to concern a picture of oneself that has been edited, and the strangeness of the scene is understood as registering the edit. Interpretation usually treats the missing shadow as still present somewhere, simply not attached where it belongs.
Feeling
being followed or pursued by a shadow
Pursuit by a shadow is read as the pattern of avoidance made visible. Since a shadow cannot be outrun by moving away from it, the chase is generally understood as the problem rather than the solution. Interpretation often notes that turning is what ends such a pursuit, and that the fear in the image usually attaches to the act of looking rather than to whatever would actually be seen.