Dream meaning Dreaming of a cage

A cage in a dream is either confinement or guarded keeping, and what is inside it and whether its door opens tell which. Being shut in a cage is a restriction on the dreamer: a debt, a hard position, a fear or a place they cannot leave for now. The door opening is release and relief; breaking out by force is escaping a constraint at some cost.

A bird in a cage in one's house is someone kept close and protected under the dreamer's care, or a talent held back; setting the bird free is releasing someone from a restriction, or a matter that passes out of the dreamer's hands. A bird that sings in its cage is contentment within a limit. An empty cage with its door open is someone who has left, or a freedom that is there to be taken.

A golden cage is a comfortable confinement, wealth or a position that holds the dreamer back as much as it keeps them. A lion or a dangerous beast in a cage is an enemy restrained, and seeing the lock hold is safety; a beast escaping its cage is a danger that asks for caution. Building a cage is restricting someone, or guarding something precious.

The Sufis spoke of the soul as a bird from the high garden caught in the cage of the body, and in the Masnavi Rumi tells of a merchant's parrot that won free of its cage by dying to itself. For one on the path, a bird rising free of a cage at dawn is the soul's longing answered.