Dream meaning Dreaming of a ladder

A ladder in a dream joins earth to sky: it is ascent and effort, the steps between where you are and where you hope to be. Watch how you move on it: climbing or descending, steady or shaking, alone or with someone holding it. The most famous ladder in scripture appears in a dream.

Jacob, sleeping on a stone at Bethel, saw a ladder set on the earth with its top in heaven and angels going up and down on it, and woke to say that the place was the gate of heaven. The Prophet's ascension through the heavens is called the Mi'raj, a word that means a ladder, and the Qur'an names God the Lord of the ways of ascent.

John Climacus, a monk of Sinai, described the spiritual life as a ladder of thirty rungs. Rumi warned of another ladder, built of me and mine: whoever climbs highest on it falls hardest. To the interpreters a ladder is the means by which a person rises to what they seek, and each part of the dream is read on that means.

Climbing steadily is rising step by step in your affairs, whether in work, in standing or in religion; a ladder vanishing into the clouds is a height still ahead whose end you cannot yet see. Missing rungs are a gap in the means that has to be filled before you climb further, and someone holding the ladder is a person who helps you rise.

Descending is a return, or a height you are right to leave; falling from it is a loss of standing to guard against. Angels on the ladder, as in Jacob's dream, are a good sign of blessing on the way you are taking.