While I am not quite qualified to interpret dreams, your post grabbed my attention for my 19 year old son has just recently talked about how smart, sensitive and compassionate elephants are and they memorialize their dead. They go together in groups to places where elephants have died, even those who were not a family member. They also are known to protect each other and even protect people and paint! I have seen paintings done by elephants and it is amazing! Maybe your dreams have been more about compassion and protection. The verse in the bible that comes to my mind is Psalm 139, particularly verse 7–“where can I flee from your presence…”. Perhaps that passage will comfort you.
I found this on the web about elephants:
If you really knew how smart, sensitive, and creative these animals are you’d be amazed. Honestly, elephants do it all. They live in societies with their own cultures, self-medicate with plants, protect people and other animals in trouble, and PAINT. Paint! Really? …Anyone else a little disheartened that their artistic talent will never match up to an elephant’s?
Elephants have such intense social groups that they become extremely upset when one of their own dies. Of all animal grieving and funeral rituals, there is none as well documented or well known as the elephant’s.
Upon seeing the bones or carcass of another elephant, a family will stop and investigate them, even if the elephant was unrelated to the group. The ritual includes touching the bones gently with their trunks while remaining very quiet, covering the body with leaves and grass, and if the elephant belonged to their own, staying with the body for days or weeks at a time.
Elephant researcher Martin Meredith had this story to tell: ”The entire family of a dead matriarch, including her young calf, were all gently touching her body with their trunks, trying to lift her. The elephant herd were all rumbling loudly. The calf was observed to be weeping and made sounds that sounded like a scream, but then the entire herd fell incredibly silent. They then began to throw leaves and dirt over the body and broke off tree branches to cover her. They spent the next two days quietly standing over her body. They sometimes had to leave to get water or food, but they would always return.”
Elephants are such compassionate animals that they’ll even grieve for and bury their number one killers… us. A news report in Kenya told of an elephant that trampled a human mother and her child and then stopped to bury them before disappearing in the bush.
Fact is, it’s pretty obvious to see that elephants mourn for their dead and would be at least somewhat emotionally compromised when we go around slaughtering entire herds… Take out your “save the elephant” banners.
