Water
Rivers, lakes, rain, a glass of it. Water is one of the plainest images people log, and one Jung took very seriously.
What Jung wrote
Jung called water the commonest symbol for the unconscious. In his essay on the archetypes of the collective unconscious he describes a lake in a valley as a picture of the psyche lying below the conscious mind, and the path down to it as the way anyone has to go who wants to meet what lives there.
In Symbols of Transformation he follows water through myth and ritual as a source of life and of rebirth: the spring, the flood, the river that has to be crossed, the water of baptism. Going into water and coming out of it again was, for Jung, one of the oldest pictures we have of being made new.
- C. G. Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious”, Collected Works, Vol. 9i
- C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, Collected Works, Vol. 5
What the world is logging
Logged with the mood
- Calm50%
- Anxious25%
- Tired17%
- Happy8%
Where it is logged most
- United States6
- Azerbaijan2
- Russia2
- Türkiye1
- South Africa1
Most common moon phase
Waning Gibbous (4 entries)
Often logged together with
Flood (2) · Anxiety (2) · Ice Storm (2) · Tundra (2)
Counted from anonymous Archetype Matrix entries. Updated October 8, 2026.
What we don’t do
We won’t tell you what your water means. Jung himself distrusted fixed dream dictionaries and held that a symbol can only be read in the life of the person who dreams it. Archetype Matrix only counts: who logged the same image, where, and in what mood.
Other symbols
ForestSnakeOceanBoatAlienOld WomanShadowLionDogWolfEagleMirrorFishHorseGoldOld Man
