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Snakes
Always depending on the unique dream's experiences with snakes, the symbol has ancient roots. Snakes in many human cultures, have represented power, especially feminine power, or the power of the Mother Divine. Snakes are a transformational symbol being able to remove their skin, an outer identity and go on in life. Or, in their capacity to live in both the inner earth and on the surface, they seem to represent the wholeness of our souls which participate in an inner and outer world.
Watch what the snake is doing, where it is and how frightened the character you play is when encountering it. Our relationship to personal power, to wholeness is being demonstrated.
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Death
Death in most dreams shows great change. We humans associate this image with unalterable change. Such change is often frightening to our waking selves and we feel it in the dream when we see death. We look for what person or character has died, notice what qualities that person carries for us and intuit what in us has changed.
For example, when graduates close in on commencement, they sometimes have dream of murdering their families. A dreamer might hold the bloody knife in shock and grief. This dream reveals the great feelings that are often unacknowledged in a time of transition. While waking life is full of eagerness and celebration, the emotions left in the dark are the loss and change that will come over the graduate as she distances from her family, separates and changes with her own hand, the life of her family. She has the "tool of change" in her own hand and the horror of changing her family by her own actions.
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Child
The child or baby in a dream signifies a new part of self, or a vulnerable part. I the child is, say four years old in the dream, ask what began four years ago, or what happened when you were four that is coming up for review.
Some say the child is a divine representation to be honored as an affirmation of innocence and purity
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Water
Water of all varieties indicate messages about our subconscious or our emotions and on a literal level, the fluid of our bodies. Because it is so changeable it represents the moving quality and changeability of emotions. Water is the most variable of all elements able to take many forms: in solid (ice or snow), in air as steam, vapor or mist, and in liquid as rain, ponds, oceans, tsunamis, swimming pools, hurricanes, faucet water, well water and on and on.
When water shows up as ice, it may refer to grief, the frozen and locked up emotion. In different forms of ice, it can reveal where we are in the process of holding grief even playfully as skating ponds, or gentle cloaking as in snow.
Most often, the water we fear is the image when we are overwhelmed, drowning, out of our depths. The form of water we are dipping into or sinking in shows us where we are emotionally.
When we are most confident, we see sure strokes in a swimming dream or wading or simply the vision of the massive ocean in all of its majesty and calm.
As a representation of the collective unconscious or our personal subconscious, the great waters of life reveal our openness or fear or exploration into the power of the unknown depths. All of our humanity, past and present and future is part of the vast unconscious. Here we dip into our connection to all that is and occasionally glimpse our mysterious link to all through the image of water.
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Dogs
Dogs in dreams represent our unconditional loyalty and love for ourselves. When the dog shows up, we are reviewing or learning about correcting our own self-regard. Carl Jung wrote that if the dog in his dream jumped down a well, he would follow. The symbol is so true to our well-being and our highest good that we can trust its guidance.
If your dream dog is dying or dead or frozen or in chains, take that as a message that we need to address some self-care and concern for our own respect. Biting dogs could represent a self-regard that has been actively irritated and is angry with our waking behavior. We need to assert our self protection quickly. If you ever see a lively dog or many vibrant dogs, the dream is affirming a healthy and appropriate self-respect. Whatever your recent choices have been in your waking life, they have benefitted and nurtured your soul
