If there is a strong smell in your sleeping environment, you may perceive it and incorporate it into your dream. Otherwise, the smell in your dreams is triggered by a memory. You may be associating your dream experience with a pleasant or unpleasant odor. For example, if you are dreaming about your mother, you may smell the aroma of a food she once cooked. The smell may trigger emotions and reflect the general quality of the experience.
If the smell is repulsive in your dream, ask yourself what is rotten or corrupted in your life; alternatively, is your unconscious telling you that it has sniffed out danger or ’smelt a rat’?
Smells can remind you of a particular person or situation; they can also suggest good or bad feelings. For example, a pleasant smell could depict happy times or memories, whereas a bad smell could hold memories of trauma or difficulty. Smells can also act as a warning in a dream, as intuitive information is often recognized by a particular smell. You may have a good or bad reaction to the smell depending on your associations with it. Dreams involving the sense of smell may also be explainable by the large number of idioms regarding smell: on the right scent, throw someone off the scent, smell a rat, smells fishy, stinks to high heaven, what you did stinks and so on.
The appearance of your nose or the nose of someone you know in your dream may be significant.
If the nose suddenly grows long, could you be telling lie after lie in the real world? If it transforms into a broken one, are you about to fall out with someone in the real world? If your nose was blocked, is there something about your waking circumstances that is getting up your nose? See also Nose entry in BODY. When you dream of smelling perfume you are often being reminded of particular memories. Smells in dreams can be evocative and you may need to recapture or reexamine a certain emotion associated with that perfume. [1]
1- To be conscious of a smell in a dream usually means that we are trying to identify an object or where the smell is coming from. Most other senses are sharpened in dreams, but the sense of smell is made available only if a specific interpretation is needed and particular note should be taken of what it is we smell.
2- Childhood is a time when smell is very significant. Many smells which are associated with that time, e.g. baking bread, burning oil, flowers, school dinners, can still be very evocative for us as adults.
A pleasant smell could represent happy times or memories, whereas a bad smell can hold memories of particularly traumatic times.
3- As one’s spiritual senses develop, the ability to sense and recognise smells from the past on a clairvovant level can be somewhat frightening. Provided this ability is recognised merely as a means of identifying a time, place or person there need be no problem and we need have no fear. [2]
Something else you associate with the smell (such as a setting, person, or event).
An idea typically associated with the smell (such as the scent of a rose representing beauty or garbage representing rot).
An attempt to change a perception, situation, or environment.
An unpleasant odor can represent something you consider undesirable (dishonesty, neglect, etc.) or toxic (ill will, festering emotions, etc.).
Someone else’s body odor might represent your judgment of that person, or a perception of ill will or lack of self-care.
You having body odor could represent a concern about your image or (verbal or nonverbal) communication, or a feeling or fear of being judged by others.
See also: Fragrance, Deodorant, Garbage, Rotten, Flower, Offensive or Ugly, Nose, Sensory Cue(the category) [3]
If this isn’t the case, dreaming of pleasant odors such as flowers, the salt air, or good food cooking symbolizes good times ahead, usually associated with whatever is giving off the odor.
See also: Flowers, Beach, Coffee, etc.
Dreaming of unpleasant odors is a sign that something is being kept from you - as in the old saying, “I smell a rat.” [4]
The smell could be environmental.
If there is a strong smell in your sleeping environment, you may perceive it and incorporate it into your dream. Otherwise, the smell in your dreams is triggered by a memory. You may be associating your dream experience with a pleasant or unpleasant order.
For example, if you are dreaming about your mother, you may smell the aroma of a food she once cooked.
The smell may trigger emotions and reflect the general quality of the experience in your dream. [5]
If the smell is pleasing, then consider that this dream is giving you a green light to proceed with the relationship, career opportunity, or creative project you are considering.
If the smell is offensive, then consider this to me a message to stop and take a step back to sniff out what is really going on. Also, dreams of a particular fragrance or scent can reconnect you with a scentsational memory, or a nostalgic, but powerful aspect of yourself.
For a bad smell, see “Smelly”, below. [7]
A bad odor symbolizes aversion (“I cant stand the smell of “). Pleasant smells symbolize affection. Furthermore, the expression “having a nose for news” may play a role in this image, pointing to the fact that you can either trust your intuition (do you “smell a rat”.7) or that you should trust more. [8]
The sweet fragrance of kindness or the odor of contempt; see “nose” [13]
pleasant: wil attract lover with the wrong bait.
scent, a bad: loss of friendship with neighbors.
breath: someone wil trick you with advice you had best ignore.
in the air: wil be deceived by your best friend.
sweat, of: your avoidance wil push you into the arms of a new lover.
unpleasant: an intimate secret wil reveal your exertion was unnecessary. [16]