What Does Dreaming About an Ostrich Mean?

Psychologically, the ostrich is best known for one image: burying its head in the sand. So it most often touches avoidance and denial — refusing to face a problem, truth, or reality you'd rather not see, 'burying your head in the sand' and pretending a difficulty isn't there. The ostrich is the emblem of avoidance, of hiding from what you don't want to confront.

It carries other notes. As flightless but fast, the ostrich is a bird that cannot fly, yet runs with astonishing speed — so it can touch being grounded yet swift, or great speed in running away from (or toward) things. As running from things, the ostrich's powerful flight on foot touches fleeing, escaping, or running fast from what you'd rather avoid. As conspicuous and large, the big, striking ostrich touches being conspicuous, hard to ignore, or standing out. Yet at its core, the ostrich asks: what are you avoiding, denying, or burying your head about? Whether the ostrich buries its head, runs swiftly away, stands tall and conspicuous, or you face it usually mirrors avoidance and denial (head in the sand), fleeing what you'd rather not face, being grounded yet swift, and the question of what you're refusing to see.

A Freudian reading would attend to the ostrich as the creature of avoidance — burying its head to not see, fleeing swiftly from what it would rather not face, evoking denial, the refusal to see, and the flight from the uncomfortable. The ostrich can embody the defense of denial, the burying of the head against what one won't face, and the swift flight from the uncomfortable truth.

Its head-burying and its running carry the charge of denial and of flight. What the ostrich evokes — the avoidance of the buried head, the flight of its running, the conspicuousness it can't truly hide — tends to point at the dreamer's relationship to avoidance and denial: the burying of the head against what one won't face, the flight from the uncomfortable, and the truth that remains (conspicuous) however one tries to avoid seeing it.

Scripture's ostrich is a creature of striking, even careless, nature — God's words to Job describe the ostrich that 'leaveth her eggs in the earth... is hardened against her young,' yet 'when she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider' (her great speed), a creature 'deprived of wisdom' yet wondrously swift. The ostrich touches this theme of a strange, swift creature, and of the caution against carelessness and folly.

An ostrich dream, read this way, can touch avoidance, carelessness, swiftness, or folly. A biblical sensibility might weigh the ostrich between its remarkable swiftness (scorning 'the horse and his rider') and the caution about its careless folly ('deprived of wisdom') — reading the dream as a prompt to face rather than bury one's head, to wisdom and care over carelessness and avoidance, and (in the ostrich's wonder) an appreciation of even the strange creatures of God's making.

In Islamic sensibility the ostrich, a remarkable creature of God's varied creation, touches the wonder of creation (the strange and swift among the made world), and the recognizable theme of facing reality with wisdom rather than avoidance — meeting truth and difficulty with courage and trust rather than burying one's head. The ostrich evokes the wonder of creation and the call to face reality with wisdom.

An ostrich dream, in this frame, might point to avoidance and denial, fleeing what one won't face, or a striking, conspicuous matter. Held with humility, the ostrich can invite the facing of reality and difficulty with wisdom, courage, and trust in God — rather than the avoidance of 'burying one's head' — and an appreciation of the wonder and variety of creation; an invitation to meet what one would rather avoid with honesty and faith rather than denial.

In a Hindu frame the ostrich's head-burying avoidance touches the theme of facing versus fleeing reality — the avoidance and denial that refuse to see (a kind of willful ignorance, avidya, the not-seeing of what is), against the courage and discernment that face what is real; its swiftness also touches grounded speed. The ostrich evokes avoidance and the refusal to see, against the facing of reality.

An ostrich dream, in this frame, can point to avoidance and denial, fleeing what one won't face, or being grounded yet swift. The tradition's note attends to facing versus avoiding: the head-buried ostrich as an image of the avoidance and not-seeing (avidya, willful unawareness) that refuses to face reality, against the courage and discernment (viveka) that face what is real — an invitation to face rather than bury one's head, meeting reality and difficulty with awareness, courage, and discernment rather than denial.