What Does Dreaming About a Kite Mean?

Psychologically, the kite is a beautiful image of freedom and aspiration held in balance with being grounded — it soars high and free, yet stays tethered by a string to the hand below. So a kite most often touches rising hopes, dreams, and aspirations lifting up and soaring, while still being anchored and connected to the ground. The kite is the image of soaring high while staying tethered.

This carries several charges. As aspiration and rising hopes, the kite soaring touches your dreams, hopes, and aspirations lifting and rising high — 'flying high.' As the balance of freedom and grounding, the string touches the balance between soaring freedom and staying grounded and anchored — the tether that both holds you back and steadies you, keeping your high-flying hopes connected to the ground. As control and letting out the line, flying a kite touches managing the balance — letting out line to let it soar, holding on to keep it steady. As childhood and joyful play, the kite touches childhood, lightness, and joyful play. As cut loose, a kite cut free touches freedom (or losing your anchor and direction). As tangled or crashing, a kite that tangles, nosedives, or crashes touches dreams faltering, hopes brought down, or losing control of your soaring aspirations. Whether the kite soars high, is held tethered, breaks free, tangles, or crashes usually mirrors freedom and aspiration, the balance of soaring and staying grounded, joyful play, and hopes rising or faltering.

A Freudian reading would attend to the kite as the soaring-yet-tethered form — rising high and free, yet held by the string to the hand below, evoking aspiration and freedom held in tension with the grounding tether. The kite can embody the soaring of aspiration and the tether that holds it, the rising free yet anchored, and the balance of letting soar and holding on.

Its soaring and its tether carry the charge of free aspiration and of grounding restraint. What the kite evokes — the exhilaration of its soaring, the steadying of its string, the loss of it cut free or crashed — tends to point at the dreamer's relationship to aspiration and grounding: the rising hopes that soar, the tether that both holds back and steadies, and the balance of letting one's aspirations soar while staying anchored to the ground.

While the kite (the toy) is not Scripture's image, it touches the tradition's themes of mounting up and soaring ('they shall mount up with wings as eagles'), aspiration toward the heights, and the balance of soaring hope with being grounded and anchored ('hope... an anchor of the soul'). The kite's soaring-yet-tethered nature touches these themes of rising up and of aspiration held with grounding.

A kite dream, read in this light, can touch aspiration, rising hope, freedom, or the balance of soaring and grounding. A biblical sensibility might weigh the kite as an image of mounting up and soaring hope — held, like an anchor, to a grounding tether — reading it as a prompt toward aspiration and rising hope ('mount up with wings'), balanced with a grounding anchor that keeps one steady, letting one's hopes and dreams soar high while staying connected to firm and grounding ground.

In Islamic sensibility the kite touches aspiration and rising hopes balanced with grounding — the lifting of one's hopes and aspirations high, held in balance with remaining grounded and connected (the balance, mizan, the tradition prizes), and joyful, wholesome play. The kite evokes aspiration and rising hope, the balance of soaring and grounding, and wholesome play.

A kite dream, in this frame, might point to freedom and aspiration, rising hopes, the balance of soaring and staying grounded, or joyful play. Held with humility, the kite can invite the lifting of one's hopes and aspirations (aiming high) while remaining grounded and connected (the prized balance), a wholesome, joyful lightness, and trust — letting one's dreams soar while staying anchored in faith and the ground of one's life, balancing high aspiration with grounded steadiness.

In a Hindu frame the kite touches aspiration and the rising of the spirit balanced with grounding (the kite soaring high yet tethered, an image of high aspiration held with grounded connection), and joyful play (kite-flying a cherished festive joy, as at Makar Sankranti); it also touches the balance of freedom and the steadying tether. The kite evokes rising aspiration balanced with grounding, and joyful play.

A kite dream, in this frame, can point to freedom and aspiration, rising hopes, the balance of soaring and staying grounded, or joyful play. The tradition's note attends to aspiration and balance: the kite soaring high yet tethered as an image of high aspiration (the spirit rising) held in balance with grounded connection — an invitation to let one's aspirations and spirit soar high while staying grounded and connected by a steadying tether, and to the joyful, festive play and lightness the kite represents.