Table

A dining table or similar piece of furniture indicates togetherness and relationships, an idea that is reinforced if the dream figures are also eating together. One could say it alludes to a "composition" of the elements around the table. (Compare Consumption.) If the table is round, it might suggest an intention to achieve wholeness, while a square table could signal that such an ambition is not part of the scenario.

According to von Franz, the motif of the Knights of the Round Table represents an expression of inner unity or integration that frequently appears in dreams (1995b, p. 177).

This is reinforced by mythological contexts. When the knights gathered around the Round Table, it expressed a sense of unity, but the situation also symbolically represented the spiritual center of the world. (Compare with the Pole around which people gather during ceremonies.) Jesus gathers his disciples around the dining table at the Last Supper, which holds a similar symbolic meaning. In the Bible, the twelve tribes gather around the table, unified as the chosen people, and so on.

Even today, we feel faint echoes of this once potent symbolic value, such as finding it impolite if someone leaves the table before everyone has finished eating (a feeling one wouldn’t experience if someone simply left the couch, for instance).

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