“I'm from Tampa Bay area. I read your blog. For a couple of nights now I have been having a recurring dream. I keep seeing a line of cockroaches crawling on the floor and I kill them. What exactly does this means?” (sic)
If you think of the cockroach as a symbol you can begin to make some connections for yourself. Here’s one: I worked with a guy that dreamed of cockroaches all the time. He dreamed they were coming out of his pores. Well, when we began to look at connections he admitted to smoking pot. For the unenlightened reader (and perhaps yourself) the very small end of a joint (marijuana cigarette) is called a roach. As we talked more about it he admitted he smoked a lot of pot. He smoked so much pot he had become a pothead. His dream was a warning get-a-clue dream.
Archetypically, a cockroach is a symbol of dirt and filth. It also represents the insect version of a rat and is tied to abandonment (i.e. rats leaving a sinking ship). It is believed that cockroaches and rats will inherit the earth; they are that indestructible as a species. Sometimes in dreams words need to be separated, so cockroach becomes cock and roach.
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.