Dreaming of fish
Wealth you take hold of — and one of the steadiest 태몽 signs. In Korean tradition, catching the fish matters more than seeing it.
Fish are read in Korean 해몽 as 재물, and this entry is unusually consistent about how: the reading turns on possession. Watching fish is read as fortune nearby; catching one, holding one, or bringing it home is read as fortune that becomes yours. Size scales the reading, and a carp — 잉어 — carries the strongest form, tied in East Asian imagery to the fish that climbs the falls and becomes a dragon, and so to a leap in standing. Fish are also a common 태몽, especially a large clear fish that comes to you or leaps into your arms.
- You catch a fish, or one leaps into your arms
- The strongest reading. Fortune taken hold of, not fortune observed. As 태몽, one of the plainest signs there is.
- A large carp (잉어)
- The most auspicious of the fish. In East Asian imagery the carp climbs the falls and becomes a dragon, so it is read as a leap in standing.
- A great many fish, or a full net
- Read by count: abundance rather than a single stroke. The old books tie it to a household's income rather than one windfall.
- The fish slips away, or the net comes up empty
- Read as fortune that came close and did not settle. Timing, not loss — nothing was taken from you.
Fish move where you cannot quite see them, which is exactly why dreams use them for things you sense but have not caught hold of yet — an idea, an opportunity, a feeling about someone. If the dream was about reaching and missing, that is often the more useful half of it.
Is a fish dream a 태몽?
It is one of the common ones, especially a large, clear fish that comes toward you. As with all 태몽, tradition recognises them in hindsight rather than declaring them in advance.
Why is the carp the strongest fish?
Because of the old image of the carp climbing the falls and turning into a dragon. That story is why a carp is read as a leap in standing rather than only as money.
The fish got away. Is that bad luck?
The tradition reads it as a near miss, not a loss. Nothing in the reading takes anything away from you — it simply did not settle this time.
On the dream page you write your dream in your own words, and Bokki does not guess at it — she compares your sentence against a fixed list of words, one list per symbol. (If a language model is reachable it writes the reply instead; the word list is the reader that is always there.) This symbol is called by 9 words:
| Script | Words that call this symbol |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 물고기 · 잉어 · 붕어 |
| Japanese | 魚 · さかな |
| Latin script (English, Spanish, Portuguese) | fish · pez · pescado · peixe |
None of this symbol's Hangul words is a one-syllable noun plus a case particle, so none of them needs that extra left-boundary rule.
Latin-script words count at word boundaries only, so a longer word that merely happens to contain those letters does not count. The plural tails -s and -es are allowed, so a plural still counts as the same word.
Japanese and Han-character words have no space marking where a word ends, so they are still matched as plain substrings. We would rather say that than pretend the reader is cleverer than it is.
In the dictionary this symbol sits at position 8 of 32. When one dream touches several symbols, only the first 4 in that order are shown, so a dream that touches many symbols may not reach this one.
Tell Bokki the whole dream in your own words →
- Dreaming of a snake
- Dreaming of a pig
- Dreaming of feces
- Dreaming of a dragon
- Dreaming of losing teeth
- Dreaming of death
- Dreaming of water
- Dreaming of fire
- Dreaming of a baby
- Dreaming of a tiger
- Dreaming of money
- Dreaming of blood
- Dreaming of a dog
- Dreaming of a cat
- Dreaming of a house
- Dreaming of an ancestor
- Dreaming of an exam
- Dreaming of a wedding
- Dreaming of falling
- Dreaming of being chased
- Dreaming of flying
- Dreaming of snow
- Dreaming of shoes
- Dreaming of birds
- Dreaming of a mountain
- Dreaming of a mirror
- Dreaming of rain
- Dreaming of a fight
- Dreaming of bugs
- Dreaming of a celebrity
- Dreaming of a car
These are readings from Korean 해몽 tradition, not predictions. Nothing here calculates your future, and we will not pretend it does.