# Sleep and Dreams > General Dream Discussion > Nightmares and Recurring Dreams >  >  Recurring nine-tailed fox spirit dream

## HeartWeaver

Over the last few years, I have recurring dreams of a similar theme, sometimes spread out over months, sometimes within the same few days.

In my dream, the recurring theme is that my ex-fiance is represented as a nine-tailed fox spirit. I suspect this has partly to do with the fact that he adores foxes and many people around me describes him as shrewd, sneaky, a recluse and seductive, many of which are associated with the lore of nine-tailed foxes. I was completely obsessed with him since I knew him, though briefly forgetting him when I date other people, but whenever I am single, my limerence towards him was overpowering, but I never initiated as I thought he is out of my league. I found out that he felt the same way towards me, albeit he hid it well until that point. In the meantime, my husband is represented as a male nymph. Maybe I have been reading too much creepy stories at night to contribute to this, but usually the dreams are not gory or scary.

Description of dreams (very long):

[SPOILER]
1. The one that stands out the most is one I had two years ago, when I have agreed to marry him but shortly before he backed out. In the dream, he was his normal self, and he invited me to his mansion, where there are all sorts of fancy food and we danced. Suddenly, there was the sound of thunder, and everything vanished. We are in a dark and broken-down hut, and he transformed into his fox form briefly. Then he asked quietly, "What if all that you saw before was just an illusion? If I lose everything and return to my true form, will you still love me?". I said yes, and he smiled sweetly, albeit with a tear dripping from his eye. A few weeks later, his biological father passed away. His father, who is quite well-off, excluded him from his estate, claiming that he is not his son. He fell from riches to rags. Not being able to deal with all these, he broke up with me.

2. Then when I just met my husband, but before we confessed our feelings to each other, I dreamed that he is a nymph and we somehow were tied to each other by the ankles with a magical rope, which neither of us can untie or cut. Right after, we got together.

I have lost contact with my ex for quite a while. Recently, I have gotten worried of my ex getting hurt with the Paris attacks, as he used to live there. 

3. The second one from last week, however, is more gory. He is surrounded by dead bodies, and he stood there alone, crying, with bloodstained hands. I walked towards him, but he told me to go away unless I want to die too. I followed him from a distance, seeing as he assassinated the masterminds by digging out their hearts. Then he sacrificed his soul to revive to the victims. As he lay there at the brink of death, he whispered "Justice is served. At least I am no longer the monster that I was". The next day, the mastermind was caught and killed.

4. The next one has gotten even more gory and scary, it seems the combination of all my greatest fears. I was in a Communist country, and I was snowed in at the Paris airport. It was completely deserted aside from a young man wearing a pilot's uniform (It was not apparent who he actually is at that time). He said there is a chemical war going on outside and not to go out, but he is a fox spirit and due to not having a body, he offered to go out to hunt. So the arrangement went on for months, and for some reason or another we started getting intimate. But as time goes on, the food quality dropped. At first it was stolen fresh food from the army, then it turned into rotten meat, hearts torn from animals and humans, and bread filled with leeches. He could not find me winter clothes, so he tore off his fox skin to keep me warm, lying that he found it at a fancy Italian store selling fox skin by chance, but I discovered that his skin was bleeding and open when he was asleep.

Then I panicked as I realised I am pregnant. He said it's impossible as he is a spirit without a body. It went on a few times, despite avoiding intimacy. He went to his Grandmother, and she said when their type of spirit meet their soul mate, this happens. So we denounced each other, but somewhat still need each other. Yet pregnancy still happens. It was a nightmare with so many infants, so he begged his Granny for a solution, she said that the only way is to go vegetarian for a period of time and turn into a human. But it was impossible with the winter and the war going on. After spring arrives, he tries to teleport me and the children to another country. I woke up briefly and was shocked to see all the lights in my room on at 5am, but went back to sleep quickly.

We were in a concentration camp, my family was there. My father, who is now an old man, has gone mad and started beating the fox who is now a man. I told him what happened, he wouldn't listen. In the country, you get Christmas presents from the government. He typed into the computer that he is ordering a makeup set for his little daughter. I thought I am his only daughter, he could not recognise me. Turns out he had dementia as well. The torturing there was really sick and they showed them weird videos to brainwash the prisoners. The man asked if he recognised him as the one that killed the terrorists and revived the victims when he was still alive in human form, a dream I had about 3 nights ago. Then he said "We were not fated to be soulmates in our previous life, but we are in this life", followed by a quote that we are both fond of. I was about to call his name then reality struck and I woke up.

5. Last night, there was one whereby I indirectly dreamed of him. I was looking at cheap cottages/mansions in Brittany for him (but he was not present). The estate agent looks like the old man in Monopoly, stroking his mustache, looking quite pleased. I saw a gothic one that I thought he would like. Just as I was about to say that I want to look at it, my father-in-law came over, looking somber, telling me that there is something important and to follow him. I remembered that I forgot about a meeting with him, and I woke up.
[/SPOILER]

I read up on dream interpretations, and foxes represent third parties. However, it does not seem to be the case, as I am no longer in contact with him (he cut me off), and I am happily married with my husband with no intention to leave him. I am not superstitious and do not believe in spirits and reincarnations, so I believe all these are either symbolic or nonsensical.

TL;DR: I keep having symbolic dreams of my ex as a mythical being that promptly come true. What do you think the most recent one represents, if anything at all? What do you think it means to have my subconscious mind consistently represent him as a fox spirit?

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## Athanor

Although in order to provide a more accurate interpretation it would usually be best to have some additional general background information about you, it’s safe to say that most of the dreams you’ve described come from deeper and less “personal” layers of your unconscious mind.

Because of this, some ideas about their meaning can be tried out without knowing much about you because the symbols in them are more “collective”.

For example, looking at the ancient myths and stories about the nine-tailed fox can help to clarify this image in your own modern dream.

Dreams use analogies and metaphors as their language, and most of the time, the people seen in dreams mostly represent parts of our own psychology.

Since you’re a female, it might seem strange to say that a male figure can symbolize a part of your own personality, but it general terms, your ex-fiancé and your husband represent such parts of yourself as thinking, reflection, opinions, “mind”, spirit, assertiveness and mental focus etc.

In your case, it’s probably even more confusing because their images in the dreams likely symbolize both the outer men and your own inner male figures in some way.

The first dream takes the form of a fairy story, showing in this way that it was about a very basic situation which hundreds of thousands of people have experienced over the ages.

Somehow, traces of these experiences are coded into mankind’s DNA, not as actual whole memories but as kind of remnants or the essence of the events that occurred.

Apparently the first dream appeared before the death of your ex’s father and because the deepest layers of our psyche are in some way very intuitive and able to perceive things to which the ego is blind, it outlined a kind of mythic story that would be repeated in your own life.

The basic core of this story seems to relate to the idea of “delusion”, just like the myths of the nine-tailed fox are usually about being deceived by someone who turns out not to be who they seem to be, i.e. by a fox instead of a person.

At the time, you were completely obsessed by your ex, and as we know, “love is blind”. For instance, everyone else knew that he was shrewd, sneaky, a recluse and seductive, but you apparently didn’t see any of this.

It’s not very romantic, but the truth is that we tend to be obsessed about someone because he or she represents a part of ourselves about which we are mostly very unaware.

So for instance, you might not be very good at consciously and fairly using the traits of a fox and of your ex when needed in everyday life in order to get through various situations.

That is to say, most people can generally benefit from the appropriate use of slyness, cleverness and a sort of imaginative vs. humdrum and commonly accepted way of handling various issues and challenges.

If a person isn’t consciously able to use such characteristics, then they’re kind of “negative” and “inferior”, just like it turned out your ex was in some ways and this might have been partly why you were so attracted to him.

The dream about your future husband was more positive but because he’s not shown as an actual man, the idea is probably that certain characteristics that he has will have to be worked at in yourself so that you can gradually become more complete and whole as a person.

It looks like the tragic events in Paris might have stirred up something unpleasant in yourself as shown by the gory and scary dreams with your ex in them.

Unfortunately, the dead bodies who were killed by the mastermind and his accomplices could possibly represent parts of yourself that were somehow “killed” in the past.

This could be hard and unpleasant to look at (your ex warns you to go away from the gory scene), but symbolically, it could be that your ex in the dream, who is also a “fox”, could have gone along with the “killing” of these parts of yourself in the sense that a fox can sometimes symbolize an understandable impulse to “cleverly escape” looking at painful issues.

So in your dream, the idea could be that any such normal desire to “run away” can be stopped (your ex dies) and because of the “sacrifice” of this attitude of avoidance, aspects of your personality which have been missing for some reason can apparently be “revived” and your inner ex will no longer be a “monster” that caused you to avoid looking at the problem. 

The next dream of the airport/concentration camp is gorier, probably to show that some kind of distressing and underlying issue really should be looked at if at all possible.

The key seems to be that you probably have to learn the skills of a fox yourself in order to deal with various issues, but it looks like this might not be easy (things get worse over time, too many children are born etc.) and something seems to block the fox-spirit from becoming human (that is, the fox-traits could be kept from being fully conscious and able to be used by you in an effective way).

Maybe you have to let in your emotional side more often (i.e. to get rid of the “winter”) and to also trust your basic bodily instincts more fully (i.e. as maybe symbolized by becoming a vegetarian). 

Doing so would mean relying less on certain fixed opinions and thoughts etc. as represented by the young man (who’s also apparently a pilot and therefore connected symbolically with air and the intellect).

The unusual coincidence of all the lights being on in your room when you woke at 5:00 A.M. might also have been hinting at this idea (based on the analogy between “light” and “thought”).

Some of these opinions etc. might be negative thoughts and judgements about yourself that are like the torturers in the concentration camp, maybe saying things in your mind like “You’re so dumb you’ll never really get a good job” etc. etc.

The final dream might be showing that you could be tempted to keep a permanent relationship with the negative fox within (finding a house for him) but that this wouldn’t be good for you (father-in-law wants to speak about a serious matter); that is, you might want to escape having to look at a serious issue of some kind instead of looking at it more carefully (forget the meeting).

Anyway as mentioned, without knowing anything much about you, this way of looking at your recent  very upsetting dreams might not fit your personal circumstances very well, but I hope these ideas can be helpful in some way. 

Please feel free to ask any questions or to make any comments about this particular way of looking at your recurring dreams.

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## coolcoolcool

Naruto nine tail fox

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