TAMNAI: Dream Symbols Directory

The moon is often an archetypal woman image. In many cultures and religious orders, the moon is identified as a mother figure. This is true in Native American, African, Christian, and Eastern literature and lore. The moon dream may come with or generate an intuitive feeling that someone in the inner circle of your life is pregnant.

Another moon scenario is a product of the twentieth century. Specifically, the desire for space travel. These dreams can be based on either the scientific desire to experience the event or the spiritual desire for absolute separation from the churning, tumultuous human experience on earth.

The moon can also evoke feelings of magic and mystery.

Strangers in dreams can be very puzzling. Most often they are simply displaced persons and images that are drawn from the list of persons we know by face and name (sometimes they represent our own anima or animus). Strangers can reveal a tremendous amount of information about how we are experiencing the world. Different theorists have offered numerous explanations of who these characters are and how they worked into our psyches. Organizing the cast list is a useful endeavor for interpreting any dream.

Anima/Animus as Stranger

Carl Jung theorized that in the Self there were female counterparts to the male personality and male counterparts to the female personality. These counterparts are psychic projections that appear to us in dreams. When a female stranger shows up in a man’s dream, her behavior can be a projection of the feminine side of his personality. This is conversely true for women who dream of male strangers. These strangers don’t often have sex appeal for the dreamer, though some may. What is more common is a soul-mate friendship.

Understanding these characters is helpful because we learn how we want others (particularly the opposite sex) to perceive us. The corollary is how we are afraid they perceive us.

A second dimension to the anima/animus character is the desire to express what perhaps we are unable to express in waking life. Women may have animus characters in their dreams who show tremendous anger to compensate for a feeling that they cannot show in waking life. Likewise, men may have anima characters who cry due to the pain of life — an emotion they may not feel the ability to indulge. These strangers are often benevolent to us. They may be helpful, protective, or supply information to solve a problem. When they are troubling, it is often because they are acting out in a way we wish we could.

Displaced Strangers

This is when your dream moves a person from one type of relationship to another. An example would be having a well-known celebrity become your brother or sister. A more common example includes boss or teacher as a parent. In addition to personality roles, emotions might get displaced. This is especially true in the case of anger or sexual attraction that cannot be expressed in waking.

Incubus/Succubus Strangers

These are stranger-lovers who appear in dreams to have sex with the dreamer (an incubus visits a female; a succubus visits a male). They often represent the extremes of the sexuality experience. Either they are idealized lovers in the emotional and physical sense, or they are demonic and repulsive lovers, employed to steer you away from a waking practice that you may know is bad for you.

Shadow Strangers

These are strangers of the same gender as the dreamer who possess the negative attributes of the dreamer. Most often, these negatives are presented in extremes. It is a very useful situation for understanding ourselves. Each of us has negative traits which we try to cover-up in our public life. Sometimes, we may even develop denial defenses in our egos to refute that we have downsides to our personality. These shadow strangers appear in our dreams to show us our weaknesses.

Many times in dreams, dates and numbers are used as a signal to identify something from the dream that will translate to waking life. In dreams, dates may be clues to guide you toward a time or event that is serving as the trigger for the dream.

Weeping in dreams is not at all unusual. This is often because of the emotional power carried by the images and persons you are encountering. Weeping in the dream is generally separate from actual physical tears forming. It is more often that weepy feeling you get in your heart when a particularly moving scene is played out before you. The best advice is always to go with the dream. Emotional releases and revelations can have a very cleaning effect on the psyche and should be embraced whenever possible. However, you should try to determine the trigger event that caused the emotion.

Did someone else make you cry directly?

Were you crying for a particular reason, or was it for a general emotional release?

Did the tears make you feel ultimately better or worse?

Kissing is often associated with youthful love. It is teenagers, and not parents, who kiss until they are weak in the knees on the escalator in the mall. You can be kissing another, watching others kiss, or experience that “I’m about to be kissed” moment.

Kissing another is often wish-fulfillment or sexual acting out. The wish-fulfillment may not be to kiss per se, but to experience the youthful energy of love. Kissing in this sense is the desire for the awakening of passion, not necessarily the passion acted out.

Watching others kiss may be a sign of knowing too much about them personally or participating in their lives at too personal a level. The exception here would be if you are watching your partner kiss another, which is an obvious herald of infidelity or a desire for voyeurism in the relationship.

The “about to be kissed” moment is an interesting one. Often, it occurs as we wake up. This is the dream that may most accurately reflect a desire for actual passion with another. The reason we wake up is the taboo feeling that perhaps, while we want this, it would not be beneficial to actually participate in it.

Is the kissing comforting or threatening to you?

Is it something you sought after, or was it forced upon you?

Is your general experience repugnant, romantic, or passionate?

Royalty is becoming more of a mixed dream symbol in contemporary dreams. Three hundred years ago, it would have been a universal symbol of wealth and power. However, as we become more aware of the struggles royalty face, it is more common to dream of them in relation to our own daily struggles.

Many times our dreams are a search for persons who can identify with our inner struggles. As royalty divorce, grieve, and grow-up in the public eye, we look to them as symbols to reinforce our own daily crises. Or we dream of them in an effort to attach the splendor of their lives to our normal lives.

Becoming a member of royalty is often a wish-fulfillment dream for wealth. However, if your dream includes an element of returning to the era of monarchy, the dream may also include a desire to assert oneself more powerfully in a particular area of life, whether it be in a financial or emotional realm.

Looking at who serve in your court and in what capacity would be a worthwhile examination.

Entering into the presence of royalty can be another version of the mirroring dream. However, it may also be a judgment dream, if you are holding secrets in your life that undermine your ability to function openly. Nobility often served as the final court of appeals in many nations.

Does a hierarchical society please or repulse your personal sense of social order?

In your waking life, do your conversations include discourse on who is better than or less than others?

Public speaking is the number one fear of the majority of adults-it even ranks higher than death! The result is that dreams of this sort are common. Rarely are they nightmares, but rather dreams of scrutiny and overcoming. Often the occasion of the speaking or the audience members will suggest something to you about an area of your life where people are looking too closely for your comfort.

Another version of this is the public speaking dream where the topic or attire is totally inappropriate for the dreamer’s context. This dream is similar to the nudity dream in that exposure and inadequacy are themes in the dream. The dream may be an attempt to expose a weakness that you are covering up.

Was the nature of your public appearance absurd, or did it somehow fit logically with your waking life?

Did you feel a sense of high anxiety during the situation, or were you calm and forthright?

A lot of things can happen to your home in a dream. It can be built or purchased, destroyed by the weather or war, or conquered or overrun by invaders. Most dreams about homes occur when there is transition, instability, or significant growth occurring in waking life.

.A home overrun is often reflective of instability in the dreamer’s relationship to the world. Feeling overwhelmed is not unusual. However, if overwhelmed is the chronic condition of your life, then being overrun by a particular sort of person or animal may reflect the source of waking anxiety.

.The home destroyed may come with geographic relocation, financial pressures, death, or divorce. In these dreams, the home is being “pulled apart” or somehow losing its ability to provide safe haven. If this dream is occurring in your life, it is worth looking at what influences are stressing your life and the effect they are having on your waking life.

.A home built is an expansive view of what is happening in your life. Perhaps you are feeling an upswing in your job or financial base that will allow you to acquire additional opportunities. Perhaps a relationship is or will be changing from dating to nesting. In any case, the home-building dream should be considered a positive one.

.Because homes are often a symbol of feminine influence or the womb, interpretive questions arise logically from transitions. Are you or your partner pregnant and needing a “nest” for the expected progeny? Do you feel a need to involve yourself in a significant relationship with another? Do you feel rootless or too set in your ways?

The snake is a difficult dream symbol because it is so widely interpreted among various cultures. Interpretations run the gamut from blood-curdling fear to wisdom and peace. These options are determined by literary history and folklore from different cultures, as well as personal experience.

.In waking life, it is not uncommon to be afraid of snakes. For some people, this fear is disruptive and pathological, even to the point that a photo of a snake represents an oppressive threat. For these people, snake dreams are almost universally bad. If the dream includes someone who handles snakes, whoever tames the object of the fear is likely a source of wisdom and control in the dreamer’s world, and may be a representation of some aspect of themselves or someone else they know.

.Among Asian and Native American cultures, the snake is a wisdom symbol. The idea of wisdom comes from the snake’s ability to shed its skin and renew itself. If one dreams of snakes from this perspective, it is a dream of renewal, problem-solving, and good tidings in general.

In Judeo-Christian cultures, the snake is a symbol of temptation or spiritual opposition against reaching one’s goals. This concept is derived from Bible when Satan tempts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in the form of a snake. Sometimes, a snake dreamt in this context will remind you of a particular person in your waking life with whom you have a competitive relationship.

Finally, Freud and classical psychotherapy have also thrown interpretations into this “pit.” The contention is that the snake is a type of phallus. The snake often embodies fear about intercourse and an aversion to it.

Coming up with an insightful interpretation for your dream snake could be tricky. What emotions are prevalent regarding the snake: fear, respect, or opposition?

What is your attitude about snakes in waking life: neutral, fearful, or friendly?

Did the snake appear when you were alone or were others with you when the snake entered the dream scene? What are your feelings about those others?

Answering these questions should lead towards a productive interpretation of the snake dream.

Running is a traditional symbol of health and vitality in addition to being a means of fleeing potential danger. Thus running could be considered a dream of virility, as well as fear.

Usually, in a dream of running in which fear is the dominant emotion, you will find that you can either run all night and successfully escape the danger (albeit with a serious emotional drain), or you find that you continue to falter and stumble, making the object of your fear even more terrifying. In the latter case, try to relate the dream situation to a situation in your life where you are feeling incredible pressure. Sometimes a simple change of perception can solve the problem.