When analyzing dreams it must be remembered that symbols don’t necessarily mean the same things to everyone. Dreams are personal to the dreamer and therefore although this article can give you an idea on how to get started thinking about what your ancestors and other people who appear in your dreams might mean, you should also think more deeply about their actual significance for you.

Seeing Ancestors or Family in Dreams

An ancestor might come to you in a dream to remind you of a childhood event that relates to the current moment in time.
Think about where they appear, what they say to you and what they are wearing. Consider how you felt in your dream or on waking? If you were happy to see them and the dream left you feeling relaxed, it could well be your ancestors appeared to help you subconsciously resolve some problems currently in your mind.

Warning of Possible Illness

Sometimes when an ancestor appears to you in a dream, this could be warning of possible illness although, if this person is a grandparent, the recovery will be swift.
Usually dreams which include dead relatives are warnings of possible failure, unless you follow their advice.

Fascinated by an Ancestor

If you see an ancestor who fascinates you, perhaps when you’ve been delving into your family history, this could well be your mind trying to contact this ancestor to find out more about them; even more fascinating is if you feel you have inherited many of their qualities as their visits in your dreams will make you feel even closer to them.

Seeing your Brother in Dreams

Sometimes it is not ancestors but family who appear in your dreams. If for instance you dream of seeing your brother and he is in good health, good fortune will be bestowed on your family. If, however, your brother doesn’t look too good, a loss which is likely to affect your closest relations is a possibility.

A Woman Dreaming of Her Brother

A woman dreaming of her brother is a sign of domestic happiness. On the other hand, a man dreaming of his brother warns of quarrels. Dreaming of a brother getting married is indication of possible family disputes. One other suggestion indicated when dreaming of brothers and sisters, is a long-life.

Two Sisters in Argument

Moving on to sisters and dreams of sisterly arguments suggests disappointments in the family. If however, one of the women is your sister-in-law,
a small windfall is a possibility. Good fortune is also indicated if a sister is in contention with a brother-in-law.

Dreaming of your Mother

It is a fortunate sign to dream of seeing your mother. If she appears to you in a domestic setting, you might expect good things or simply good life.

Dreaming about Ancestors meaning

To see ancestors in a dream, I mean relatives, who lived before the parents, it worries about past conflicts, or do they speak something good, pleasant or pleasing, the worries turn into blessings that they don’t reverse.

Deceased Ancestors

Deceased ancestors in a dream indicate unhappiness and concerns that are grounded in past actions, if they appear angry, sad, worried, sick or complaining. The characters encounter a friendly, but if they are rude, the concerns are even greater.

Ancestors Amadlozi in dreams

In dreams we get different messages which can be confusing at times. At a young age we don’t worry about our dreams as much as we do when we get older.
This is because at an early age we don’t have a lot of life experience so even if we dream about significant things, it doesn’t really carry any weight. As we grow older and start to understand that our dreams may be telling us a story of our lives and connect us with our ancestors, we then begin the analyses on them and in some instances it gets to a point where one goes overboard in pursuit of these messages.

Spiritual Ancestral World

The spiritual/ ancestral world has a lot to do with our minds as it only exists in the spirit form.
So whatever you are going through is not seen or experienced by people around you, not unless they have some powers themselves to see through the visions by the ancestors. During this time you get messages from dreams and visions and these messages can be very useful when it comes to giving you directions.

Dreams During Initiation

The dreams that we get during the time of initiation are a very sensitive matter, in that they should be treated and analyzed with a certain amount of caution as they can be confusing at times.
We should not take our dreams literally unless they come across as visions or they carry a logical meaning to our lives at that stage.
I say this because you get people who live their lives depending on dreams to give them directions and I find this disturbing because dreams come from a very deep place that needs some spiritual abilities to be understood, hence we need the connection when in need of their true meaning.

Spiritual Powers and Connections

Depending on your spiritual powers and connection with the spirits, sometimes you can dream about something that have happened or that which is still to come.
This means that your spirits has an ability to connect with happenings and other peoples’ spirits, thoughts and feelings. If someone is thinking of you a lot it affects you in that you also start to think about him/her, this simply means the connection your spirits have.

Dreams can carry you into a situation and get you so hooked up in the events that you automatically become obsessed with that part of your life.
The dreams that we get during the initial stages of our initiation must be treated in the most sensible manner because they come at a stage when one questions everything around them.
During this time your mind is finding it hard to believe that the spirit world really exists.

Dreams – As a Response to a Stressfull Situation

Your mind is also revisiting a lot of other facts of life and trying to make sense of what is happening to you.
Remember that at this stage you are asking yourself a lot of questions when you wake up, you are already in the state of irresolution.
It is at this time that your mind starts to play games with you. It gives you different options and state of affairs in your sleep and makes you choose your own destination.
During your sleep, a film of your life takes place before your own eyes. You are given different possible directions and options including end results and consequences.
When we are dreaming, we dream about things that are impossible in the real world.
Some of us fly in our dreams and this means that your ancestors are in a stage of waking/rising up and will be giving more of their powers to you.
This means that your powers are taking off, so it’s up to you to accept and follow the journey.
They are just letting you know the potential you have in accepting the powers.
It doesn’t really mean that you will be able to fly like a bird in real life, but it can mean that your powers can take you places if you follow their instructions and stay on the positive side of your spiritual doctrines.

Dreaming About your Enemies

We then dream about our “enemies”. These dreams warn us about potential dangers in our lives.
If someone doesn’t like you very much and they are casting negative energy/spells towards you, it does affect your sensation.
As they continue to have bad thoughts about you, you also pick up on them and start to feel uneasy about them. This is when you begin to think more about them and in some cases you become suspicious and obsessed with bad feelings towards someone.
This gets into your system from your mind to an extent that you become physically sick. During this time you dream about this person and the bad things they are doing to you.
At times you dream about the real things they have done to you like using muthi and some negative energy to cast bad spells to you or simply attacking you by means of psychic attacks.

Dreaming of Impossible Physical Confrotations

Sometimes can be given information in a form of a dream which will give a general sketch to the amount of negative energy they have towards you.
In this case you dream of things that are impossible in the real world, you can dream of your enemy stabbing you with a spear or attacking you with swords all sharpened, but they can’t kill you, they can’t go through your skin, you don’t die. This dream is showing you that your enemy has deadly “desires” towards you but you on the other hand have very powerful spirit guides who protect you.

From such a dream we need to consult with our spirit guides and ask them to do more, give us more protection, put the enemy to rest, and fight wining spiritual wars with our enemies, we do this by offerings to our spirits.
In our African traditional religion and ancestor worship we make offering through meat, African beer called uMqombothior Sigodo-khaya we also beat and dance to the drums being thankful for the protection we receive from our ancestor spirits.

Conflicting Dreams and what to do

When we dream about things we need to do in our lives… As we start on this spiritual journey we get different messages about the things we need to do and the rituals that will help us through.

Dreams operate in the spiritual form

so at times they can be exaggerated to emphasize their impact in our lives.
I always say one must have a very strong support system in the form of a family at home, an honest reliable friend, a dream interpreter and a spirit medium who will help you do the right things during this time when there is a tug of war of spirits in you,
when dreams come one after the other with too many spirits wanting you to do too many different thing at a time.
Ancestors can tell you things to do in your dreams, they will guide and direct you and at the same time they will give you tests to prove yourself. At times they can even trick you just to weigh your progress in the training.
The things that we need to do physically in our lives can be rituals that were ignored by our parents or certain traditions that we left undone in the past.
All of these things are necessary to take you through to another level in your spiritual progress.
The examples of these debts could be anything like, to accept ancestors (ukuvuma idlozi), to cleanse them, to initiate or enroll in a sangoma training program, to do thanksgiving ceremonies in appreciation of the life and families we are given or just to create a prayer place for the ancestors in your home.
The question is, when do we take these dreams literally (or not?) Like I said before and I will always emphasize this until kingdom come, ancestors live in the spiritual world, earthly things don’t mean much to them so when we honor them we need to concentrate on the mind, feelings and the emotional side of things. All this does not need a belief in yourself, strength or some sophisticated machines, it only needs you to follow the lead by the ancestors.

Importance of Listening and Responding to your Dreams

Following their dream massages from their ancestors some people consult with spirit mediums for assistance in pleading for clemency with their ancestors.
When the spirits are angry about something you are not doing right, they will contact you through your dreams. Ignoring those dreams they may end up holding them back and now it will be hard for you to know what needs to be done.
That is when you will find yourself taking all the stories even from the unscrupulous spirit mediums, psychics, prophets,angel-readers, clairvoyance, shamanists, sangomas, inyangas etc.
It’s okay, it is one’s choice it but becomes very difficult than it would have been done from your own dream-line of ancestor spiritual messages because they will cover all the debts that were left out by many generations in the past life of the family of which you are born into.

Ancestors could be asking for your help in Dreams

Ancestors can come through dreams or by the means of spirit mediums and tell you what is it that they want you to do for them.
It is not only the offering they may be looking for, in some cases it is just some customs they deed when they were still alive of which you are no longer doing.
It may be rituals of course or even offering in terms of slaughtering an animal brewing some beers and dancing to drums to steer the presence of the spirits.

Dealing with Spiritual Needs

There is a time when the spirits need your help in terms of separating them from the bad ones or helping the earth bound ones to be accepted by the main and the leaders in the spirit world.
They will have been separated by the fact that those earth bound ones are still having unresolved issues in the world of the living It means they are running low in their energy so you must find out what went wrong and what needs to be fixed.
If you slaughter at this stage and invite a lot of people in the yard, ancestors do not accept it because they have no stamina to accept anything at that stage.
When we do these things we need to be very logical in uniting these two worlds
(the ancestral and the world of the living). We need to find a common ground on which we can practice our rituals in a manner that is effective and relevant to both these worlds.
Firstly if your ancestors say they are hungry, it means there is a reason why they are hungry so you need to give them something that can take them out of that state of hunger.
If you offer them food without enticing them first, they will not be able to accept it.
Ancestors have come through in the past and explained that as we do these functions and share food amongst ourselves, they are left to linger because they don’t even have an appetite to start with.
And then you hear people saying that they have been doing rituals/slaughtering for ages so how can the ancestors come now and say they are hungry.
When you slaughter you don’t actually feed the ancestors, you are just treating your guests to a feast.
When you feed your ancestors you must know what they want and how can they receive it. People who have nothing are at an advantage these days when it come to honouring the ancestors because they do with what they have and it works very well.
Before you can offer anything to hungry ancestors you must first cleanse them. This is done so as to take them out of their state and to get them ready to accept what ever it is we want to offer them.
Most people complain that after doing a ritual/slaughtering things just take a turn for the worse and this does happen if you don’t cleanse your ancestors first.
There is no way we can solve problems by spilling blood. We can only spill blood afterwards when things have come right and we are celebrating. After cleansing them you need to offer what they asked for. Say for instance they said they are hungry, now the question is how do we feed the spirit? Feeding your guests will not help your guides.

Now, you need to do an offering/ilati for your ancestors at your prayer place. This offering is a form of a healing process so you don’t need to invite people over.
I always tell people that when you take pain killers for your headache you don’t invite guests to take or share with you, so why invite people when you heal/ sort out your ancestral problems? When doing this offering you must remember the things that ancestors need in order to get gain strength that will take them to a greater place on the other side.

Firstly, they need a loving heart from you, an accepting mind and a smell of greatness in the air. Ancestors gain a lot of strength from the smell of the incense and the smell of braai meat.
This means you don’t have to slaughter at this stage as long as there is a smell of meat and incense at the prayer place. The other thing that will help you is to have traditional beer and a white piece of cloth to symbolise purity andprosperity.
When you do your prayer you ask the ancestors to find a place in your heart, your prayer place and your home.
You invite them to rejoice in your life and be a good spirit so they can move on, in their own journey.
These debts we left behind by others and now they create a stumbling block for the ancestors but if you set them free they accept and move on, which means they start to sort out problems they had created for you in trying to get your attention.
After doing such a ritual your ancestors will start to come in dreams and offer you advice where needed.
In some cases they show themselves by making things a less difficult in your daily life. Changes may not be drastic but when you look back after a while you realise that your life becomes less stressful after accepting your guides.
We do all of this based on a dream that said your ancestors were hungry, they needed a place and were feeling cold.

Some people will go all out and buy blankets, do functions or even build a house for the ancestors.
This is all good if you can afford it but you must think carefully how much of this goes a long way and make a difference in the world of ancestors?
Small gestures and a willing heart go a long way in helping our ancestors. When we go all out to please each other on earth, it remains just that and it doesn’t even begin to heal us.

The next time you dream, try and learn from it and please do not get carries away about dreams.
Analyse them with a clear mind and learn something that will make you a better person in the future.
What is important about dreams is the way you feel when you wake up. After having a significant dream, open your eyes and stay in bed for a while.
Think about how you feel at that moment and capture those feelings. Be honest about it even if the feeling is not a good one. If you feel uneasy or angry remember that it is the purpose of that dream to bring out those feeling in you. If you feel happy, embrace and rejoice in the feeling. “Now, you can wake up and take on the real world”

Always remember to share your dreams with people you can trust, people who will support you in life no matter what. Some dreams can be very sensitive in their nature while others can be destructive if taken literally.
Some dreams come to us as a warning for a period of difficulty ahead and this can not be avoided, one just need to prepare themselves.

People with a calling will have a lot of dreams about the sea, snakes or chanting

When the sea is dark and vicious it means your guides are angry they need your acceptance immediately.
When the sea is calm and blue, it means your guides are at peace and so is your life.
A dark coloured snake means your ancestors have become your own enemy so you need to accept them before they give you hardships in life,
and a green snake means ancestral powers that are ready to be utilised in helping others.
When one dreams of people chanting, it means that you must take up healing and become a healer(one way or the other).

When your dreams are nice and uplifting in the morning, it implies the state of your own life in general and when they are exhausting and giving you headaches it means just that.

How you feel in the morning determines your day ahead. Dreams come to us for a purpose but we need to be clear about boundaries when it comes to analysing them.