Dreams of a Giant: The Size of What Stays Silent in Us

“A giant appears to those who carry a strength that has not yet been given its own name.”

The giant has lived in human dreams as long as dreams themselves. The Titans of the Greeks, the Nephilim of the Bible, the Jötnar of the Norse, the giants of Russian fairy tales, the ancestral spirits of enormous stature in the myths of small peoples. Everywhere the giant has the same task: he is larger than you. His body reminds you that there exists a force greater than your own, and that you must somehow meet it.

The first memory of a giant is different for everyone, but in the body it is the same for all: in early childhood, adults were giants. Their legs began above your height, their voices came from above, their palms could cover your whole body. This bodily memory lives in us long after we have grown up ourselves, and it wakes every time we have to meet something larger than our current form.

And perhaps, right now, as you read these lines, you are already recalling a dream in which someone too big was beside you. Not necessarily frightening. Simply larger than you.

A Giant Stands High Above You and Looks Down

You lift your head — and see a figure rising high above. His shoulders at roof level, his head among the clouds. He looks down at you. He doesn’t threaten, doesn’t shout. He simply stands and looks. Your heart beats faster, your breath grows shallow, and your body remembers this exact gesture — to look up from below.

Your Inner Child speaks here — and from the age when everyone around you was a giant and you fit on someone’s lap. This voice lives in you longer than any other. It returns every time someone appears in the outer world who reminds your body: you are small, and it is big. He is not bad and not good. He is simply very ancient.

If the giant is calm and not threatening, just looking — your Child is remembering the earliest meetings with a large, warm force (a parent, a grandmother, a teacher); good experience lives in you, and you can lean on it. If he is scowling, appraising — the old figure of the judging adult is still at work in you; from below, its size always seems larger than it really is. If in the dream you suddenly grow and find yourself at his level — your Inner Child may now, perhaps for the first time, be ready to stand at full height beside the one he was always small before. Turned to its opposite scale, the same searching gaze meets you when a dwarf stands beside you and looks with reproach, the body remembering bending down rather than tilting up.

Ask yourself: “Which of the big people of my childhood has come back to me today in this giant — and am I still looking up at him from below, when I have long since grown up myself?”

Recall one moment from childhood when you looked up at an adult from below. Now, closing your eyes for a second, inwardly “stand” beside that figure at your present height. Don’t prove anything. Don’t change anything. Just feel that you are now of a different size. This is often enough for something inside to move quietly into its true place.

Astrological note: The dream of a tall giant often arrives during transits of Saturn through the 4th or 10th house, during tense aspects of the Moon and Saturn, and during active periods of Pluto in the 1st house. Capricorns and Cancers experience this dream especially bodily. If Saturn is currently touching your natal Moon — your Inner Child is close to the surface, and the conversation with the big figures of childhood is happening right now.

A Giant Destroys, Tramples, Breaks

A giant figure moves through your house, your yard, your city. Walls break like paper. Trees fall. A huge hand sweeps away a roof as if it were a cobweb. He may chase you or be indifferent to you. But either way, the air is full of force that has nowhere to go.

Your Shadow speaks here — in her largest form. This part of you has been storing itself up for so long that her strength no longer fits into an ordinary height. She is not evil by nature. She has simply waited too long. And when she is finally allowed to come out in a dream, she comes out in exactly the size that corresponds to her patience. Her destructions in the dream are not about your life on the outside. They are about the pressure from within.

If the giant breaks what you yourself have long wanted to destroy — your Shadow is doing the work you forbid yourself; listen closely to whether your life has grown too tight for the one you are becoming. If he breaks what is dear to you — anger has gathered there that has nothing to do with the object being destroyed: it simply caught a stray hand, and it is useful to separate the two. If you run from him and he doesn’t catch you — the Shadow does not want to destroy you, she wants to be noticed; running is not required, sometimes it is more useful to turn around. Stripped of size and crash, the same gathered force returns more quietly when a shadow moves separately from you, the long-stored disagreement walking its own line instead of breaking the walls.

Ask yourself: “What force in me has gathered to such a size, and does it have any place at all in my life to come out a little at a time?”

Give your strength a small, safe outlet today. A pillow to shout into. A one-minute sprint at full speed. Loud singing in the car with the windows up. A dance of sharp movements in an empty room. Not for the sake of destruction, but so that the Shadow knows: she is being let out, she is not locked in the basement forever.

Astrological note: The dream of a destroying giant arrives especially often during transits of Pluto through the 1st or 4th house, during tense aspects of Mars and Pluto, and during periods of a strong Black Moon Lilith. Scorpios and Aries recognize this dream at once. If Pluto is currently touching your Sun — your Shadow is active, and it serves her better to come out in small doses than to accumulate to dream-scale.

The Giant Holds You in Its Palms

A huge warm palm lifts you from the ground. You fit inside it whole, like a bird in a hand. Or the giant shelters you with his body from the rain, from the wind, from some great danger — like a living roof. There is no fear. There is only warmth and the sense that, for the first time in a long while, someone has truly taken care of you.

Your Inner Protector speaks here — the part that knows how to hold a large space of safety around you. In daily life he is usually modest and rarely shows himself, but in a dream he comes in precisely the form you need him in: enormous, warm, able to cover all your anxiety at once.

If the giant has a familiar face (a parent’s, a grandmother’s, someone close from your childhood) — the Protector is saying: the experience of safety you received back then still lives in you, and you can return to it as an inner resource. If the giant is entirely unknown — then your own capacity for protection has already grown to this size; there is a great hand of your own in your inner world, and it is yours. If the giant sets you back on the ground and lets you go — the Protector is saying: you have already recovered, you can go on by yourself; his task was not to carry you always, but to help you remember that you can walk.

Ask yourself: “When did I last let myself be small beside someone big — and can I give myself that now?”

Wrap yourself today in a large plaid, a coat, or a blanket — so that it covers you completely, from the top of your head to the soles of your feet. Sit like that for several minutes with no goal. The body easily remembers what it is to “be in a big palm,” and the Protector inside recognizes this experience, even if on the outside you are simply sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea.

Astrological note: The dream of a giant-as-protector arrives especially often during transits of Jupiter through the 4th or 6th house, during harmonious aspects of Venus and Jupiter, and during active periods of Saturn in earth signs. Taureans and Pisces receive this dream especially deeply. If Jupiter is currently in your 4th house — the inner Protector is generous right now, and you can freely allow yourself to feel small beside your own great strength.

You Yourself Become a Giant or Grow

Your body changes as the dream goes on. You notice you have grown taller. Then taller still. Your head touches the clouds. The city below looks like cardboard. Your hands are enormous, and you understand that with one movement you could knock down a wall or hold a whole village in your palms. There is no fear, but there is a strange sense of adult seriousness.

Your Warrior speaks here — the part that knows your true strength once you stop being embarrassed of it. He rarely gets a word in daily life, because there your strength is most often counted as “too much”: too loud, too visible, too much your own. But in the dream he shows you what your strength looks like in its real size, without apology and without shrinking.

If you feel at ease in the new body — the Warrior is saying: your real form is larger than you are used to being in your daily life, and it is time to slowly return to it. If you are afraid of accidentally crushing someone — the fear of your own strength comes from childhood, where that strength was once condemned; the Warrior needs your adult rehabilitation: “yes, I am big, and I am not dangerous by default.” If in the course of the dream you shrink back — that’s all right; the Warrior often comes in several attempts, and with each one your own size becomes a little more familiar.

Ask yourself: “What part of my strength is larger than my usual way of carrying it — and where in my life could I present it a little more fully?”

At one moment of today’s day, let yourself literally straighten up a little — stretch your spine, square your shoulders, take a full breath, as if you were just a bit bigger than usual. Only for a minute, without announcing it. The Warrior remembers this posture, and over time it stops being “foreign” and simply becomes one of yours. The body quickly tells the difference between a game and a real return to size.

Astrological note: The dream in which you yourself become a giant arrives especially often during transits of Mars through the 1st house, during harmonious aspects of Jupiter and Mars, and during periods of a strong Sun in fire signs. Aries and Leos experience this dream especially vividly. If Jupiter is currently touching your Ascendant — the Warrior is active right now, and your real form is coming to the surface.

A giant in your dreams is not a threat and not an omen. It is an image of what is larger in you than your everyday “I”: big feelings, big strength, big figures of childhood, big inner protection. All of this lives in you, and in the dream it briefly shows itself in the size it actually has.

Let the giant of your dreams simply be beside you, without shrinking him and without running away. Sometimes it is enough to meet his eyes from below, and one day you will find yourself the same size as he is.