An airport is a modern symbol of transportation, a public place of comings and goings, of departures and arrivals, of farewells and reunions. An airport is a liminal space, neither here nor there, a way-station on a journey, a place of transitions. Was the airport in your dream big or small? Crowded or empty? Today, airports face heightened security threats, and they take extra precautions to monitor and protect passengers. Do you feel safe in your dream?

Airports, stations and other points of departure can indicate a plethora of possibilities, the meeting of ideas, or apprehensions or excitement about the future.

A fear of bees is a deep instinct within us; were you scared in the dream? Was there just one bee, or a few, or a swarm? They are small but powerful creatures. Flying, buzzing, pollinating...bees are incredible builders and highly skilled navigators. Their communal way of life in a hive can symbolize our own social roles and identities. They can sting, and in some cases kill, but they can also make delicious honey. They reflect many qualities we admire. In what ways are you most bee-like?

To the ancient Greeks and Romans, bees were endowed with special wisdom, and their appearance in dreams was regarded as an auspicious symbol, predicting peace and prosperity. The Israelites believed that the Promised Land flowed with milk and honey; the Greeks and Romans regarded honey as the food of the gods.

Bears are the apex predators of the forests, mountains, and tundras. How big was the bear in your dream? What color? Was it cuddly and cute or ferocious and scary? Many shamanic traditions view bears as especially wise and spiritually powerful beings. Is the one in your dream there to teach you something? Bears can also be symbols of parental dedication, the mama bear and papa bear protecting their young. You might be amused by "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day" (1968), a short animated film about a stuffed bear who has a very strange dream...

A boat is an ancient form of transportation across the water, and thus a classic symbol of change and transformation. What kind of vessel was in your dream—a rowboat, a yacht, a cruise ship? How far out into the water did you go? A boat leaving the land implies a journey, and can be a symbol of dreaming itself (as in Sendak's children's book "Where the Wild Things Are" (1963)). Where is the boat in your dream going? Where do you wish it were going?

Bones can represent the essence of things. Being stripped or cut to the bone may signify a sudden insight, but also sometimes a deep attack on the dreamer's personality. Broken bones may suggest fundamental weaknesses.

In most cultures, birds symbolize the higher self, although small birds who stay close to the earth represent more accessible instinctive wisdom. The dove frequently stands for peace and reconciliation. Birds frequently symbolize aspects of relationships, and each bird usually embodies the emotion with which its behaviour is linked. Territorial birds such as blackbirds can represent jealousy, while thieving birds such as magpies may suggest a threat to a relationship from an outside party, or aspects of the self stolen by a friend or partner.

Birds are graceful creatures of flight, and powerful symbols of freedom, release, spirit, and higher perspectives. In ancient Greek and Roman traditions, birds and their flights were omens of future good or ill. What specifically do you notice about the bird in your dream? Was it flying, or perched somewhere? Some people are scared of birds, and with good reason. In evolutionary terms, they are little dinosaurs. The classic movie of avian terror is Hitchcock's "The Birds" (1962), which has spawned many nightmares over the years.

Books variously represent wisdom, the intellect, or a record of the dreamer's life. Inability to read the words in a book indicates the dreamer’s need to develop greater powers of concentration and awareness in waking life.

Clocks and watches stand for the human heart, and thus the emotional side of the dreamer’s life. A stopped clock indicates a chilling or stilling of the emotions, while a clock racing out of control suggests that the emotions may be overwhelming to the conscious mind.

A candle or torch suggests the intellect, or alternatively other, more spiritual forms of understanding.

The clown is an aspect of the archetypal Trickster, making a fool of himself or herself to mock the pretentiousness and absurd posturing of others.

A camera often represents a wish to preserve and perhaps cling to the past.

The cup is a classic female sexual symbol. However, because it may contain wine, and through its associations with the Holy Grail, a cup may also stand for love and truth.

A church can represent the spiritual side of the dreamer, peace, or higher wisdom. To feel that one is a stranger inside a church may remind the dreamer to pay more attention to the spiritual side of life. At other times, the dream may be warning of the need for more self-discipline or for allowing more time for inner exploration. On the other hand, the church's thrusting spire was seen by Freud as a phallic symbol.

Cats often stand for intuitive feminine wisdom and the imaginative power of the unconscious. Black cats are cultural symbols of good fortune, alongside such symbols as four-leafed clovers, doves and olive branches.

Travel and motion can stand for many other aspects of life, in particular for progress toward personal and professional goals.

Clothing, particularly in auspicious colours, may represent positive aspects of the dreamer’s psychological or spiritual growth, but when over-elaborate may suggest pretension, or a weakness for worldly display. Because clothes can make the wearer seem taller or thinner, richer or poorer than he or she really is, they can stand for self accusations or hypocrisy, a particularly flashy waistcoat or tie may represent our knowledge that we are deceiving others in some way, establishing a persona at odds with reality. In Jungian interpretation, cross-dressing in dreams can indicate a need for, or warn of an exaggerated emphasis upon, the Anima or Animus (that is, the female side of a man, or the male side of a woman). Early dream dictionaries gave some curious interpretations, from which psychology is noticeably absent. A text of 1750 maintained that for a girl to dream of putting on new clothes presaged marriage, while in the The Golden Dreamer (1840) it is said that to dream of seeing a naked woman “is lucky; it foretells that some unexpected honours await you”. Although a cover for nakedness, clothes may in their cut, line or function draw attention to what they pupport to hide. Dreams about brassieres or trousers may therefore represent thoughts about breasts or genitals, or about maleness, femaleness or sexuality.

A common theme in fairytales is that of the young hero who must journey to a foreign land to discover his true self, before returning to slay a dragon, or rescue a suffering maiden. When such themes appear in dreams they usually symbolize a journey into the unconscious, where the dreamer seeks to find and assimilate fragmented parts of the psyche in order to achieve a psychological confidence and wholeness that can differentiate him or her from collective society. Siegfried for example learned the language of animals after eating the heart of the dragon Fafnir. Jung saw the Dragon as a primary symbol related to the collective or overbearing social aspect of the Great Mother, who must be slain if the hero is to be free.

Dolls may represent the Anima or Animus, the qualities of the opposite sex within ourselves. Jung also found that dolls sometimes indicate a lack of communication between the conscious and unconscious levels of the mind.

A large plant-eating mammal, comfortable living at urban/wilderness interfaces. Fast, nimble, and graceful leapers, deer are a favorite prey of apex predators like cougars and wolves, along with human hunters from ancient times. They tend to be herd animals, rarely seen alone. Their large, dark eyes suggest a gentle intelligence. The males grow tremendous antlers, which serve both for show and for combat. Many classic stories feature deer in mythic settings. The Hindu demon Ravana uses a golden deer to lure king Rama away from his palace, leaving his wife, queen Sita, vulnerable to kidnapping. When the ancient Greek hunter Actaeon accidentally sees the goddess Diana, who loves deer, bathing in a forest spring, she turns him into a stag who is pursued and killed by his own hounds. Modern horror films reached a kind of crystallized perfection in the animated short "Bambi Meets Godzilla" (1969). A "deer in the headlights" signifies paralyzed helplessness, frozen in the act of being vividly seen. In many places deer are the largest wild creatures who regularly interact with human communities, which can be charming but problematic and dangerous, too. In your dream, where are you when the deer appear? Is it a natural place for them to be? If not, what brings them there?

To dream of a journey through a desert may indicate loneliness, aridity, or a lack of creativity. A hot burning sun can indicate the intellect’s power to make a desert out of the dreamer’s emotional life.

A dog can represent devotion, as symbolized by Argos, the first creature to recognize the Greek hero Odysseus when he returned from his wanderings, but it can also stand for the destructive force of misused or neglected instincts , just as the hounds of the Greek hunting goddess Artemis tore Actaeon to pieces when he invaded her privacy.

A door opening outward may indicate a need to be more accessible to others, while a door opening inward can be an invitation to self-exploration. If a locked door proves frustrating for the dreamer, this may suggest that he or she should search for a new skill or idea to serve as a key. Dreams of failure often contain situations such as ringing a doorbell or knocking on a door without reply. Freud interpreted both doors and windows as feminine sexual symbols, Jung associated them with the dreamer's abilities to understand the outside world.

Sometimes there may be a reference to animal associations embedded in the similes and cliches of idiomatic language - linking elephants with long memories, for example, as foxes with cunning, pigs with gluttony, and so on.

Eyes are symbolic windows into the soul , and clues to the dreamer’s state of spiritual health. Bright eyes suggest a healthy inner life.

Burial may represent the repression of desires and traumas, and may also denote an end, or the need for an end, to a particular phase of the dreamer's life. Where the funeral is not associated with someone known to us, it can be a reminder of the passing of time, of the irrecoverable nature of the past, or of the importance of not establishing too many emotional attachments.

As well as sensuality, fruit can represent fertility in the creative arts or science (the bearing of fruit), or the receiving of rewards. Bitter fruits suggest that these rewards may not turn out exactly as expected.

This is a powerful and ambivalent dream symbol. Fire destroys, but it also cleanses and purifies. In dreams it can signal a new beginning, or represent disruptive emotions — perhaps the flames of passion or envy. Fire can suggests the need for sacrifice, but at the same time promises to open up new opportunities. Fire is a masculine energy, and represents that which is overt, positive and conscious. Out of control, however, it suggests the need for the dreamer to take better charge of unbridled passion or ambition.

Fire brings energy, heat, light – and danger? – death, destruction, ashes – it also enables life; warmth, hearth, cooking – An alchemical force of transformation – Myths of fire (the Phoenix, Prometheus, Coyote, Agni) emphasize its precious value, mysterious origins, and ambivalent power to nourish or kill – Some dreams reflect our primal fear of wildfires, perhaps increasingly so...

Fish have commonly been used to symbolize divinity, and often stand for the spiritual abundance that feeds all men and women. In dreams they can also represent insights into the unconscious. Fish caught in a net and brought to the surface represent the emergence of these insights into the full light of consciousness.

A young child has serious problems in consciously reconciling the loving, providing aspects of a mother or father with their function as agents of discipline and fear. Rather as the witch can symbolize the destructive aspect of the Mother, the giant or ogre can symbolize that of the Father. Freud often interpreted images of older men in his patients’ dreams as a condensation of their fathers. Freud believed that the dream woman and dream man most represent the dreamer’s mother and father, and maintained that they symbolize aspects of the Oedipus and Electra complex from which men anti women respectively suffer.

Giving is a symbolic form of social interaction and, as a dream image, provides clues about the nature of our relationships with others. Of course, whether the gifts are welcome or unwelcome is crucial to their meaning. Receiving many gifts on festive occasions such as a birthday emphasizes the esteem in which the dreamer is held by others, but if the gifts arrive at less appropriate times they can indicate the bombardment of unwelcome advice to which the dreamer may be prone. Buying a present can suggest our wish to make a special effort for the person concerned, or more nebulously can represent our feelings of generosity toward them. If the present is particularly expensive, this may be a symbol of the dreamer’s wish to make special sacrifices, or to help or serve the other person in an especially important way. On the other hand, showering presents on others, particularly if they are rejected, may indicate that the dreamer is being too trusting in the gift of advice, lavishing attention where it is not wanted, or making inappropriate attempts to become acceptable to others. A gift that is never fully unwrapped typically relates to hidden mysteries, which the dreamer has started to unravel but for the moment remain at least partially unknown: the message is that with further perseverance such mysteries may be revealed.

A symbol can carry a variety of meanings which, although they are all facets of the same truth, each benefit from separate inspection. Thus, under analysis the image of a gun may emerge even for the same dreamer as representing thunder and lightning, male procreation, destruction, and the toy the dreamer once used to terrify a childhood friend into parting with his candy. Each of these four meanings reflect the central theme of power, but show respectively that power can be used to destroy, to do good, to do evil, or to reinforce a childish urge to intimidate and exploit others. When the dreamer is the victim of violence, and the emotional charge is high, the dream may represent an assault upon status or relationships, or a threat to finances, health, or general welfare. Any weapon that refuses to fire in defence of the dreamer suggests powerlessness: the dream is indicating to us that we must find better ways of arming ourselves against the challenges of the world. For Freud guns, like steeples, knives, doors, caves and the like all represented sexual objects, whenever they appeared in dreams. For Freud, a gun or knife that refuses to function suggests sexual impotence, or the fear of sexual impotence.

The image of a ghost as a shadowy, insubstantial being may suggest knowledge within the dreamer that now requires fleshing out and empowering by the conscious mind. Such images may also suggest fear of death or of an after-life bereft of sensation and human emotion. Dreams of ghostly figures hovering over the dreamer’s sleeping body are sometimes interpreted as OBEs (Out of the Body Experiences), in which the dreamer’s "soul" or dreaming body appears to shed its physical form.

The horse generally symbolizes mankind’s harnessing of the wild forces of nature, while a winged flying horse can represent the unleashing of energy for psychological or spiritual growth. In Freudian dream interpretation, a wild horse represents the dreaded, terrifying aspect of the father.

In dreams, hair often symbolizes vanity; conversely, the ritual act of shaving the head indicates a renunciation of worldly ways. Early dream interpretators suggested that to dream of going bald predicts an imminent loss of the heart. A strong beard can stand for vitality, while a white one can signify age or wisdom.

Being hospitalized may show a desire to relinquish control over one’s own body or, in a different context, a fear of losing this control. Working in a hospital generally reflects a desire for a socially acceptable way of gaining control over the bodies of others (exemplified by the favourite childhood game "doctors and nurses").

Hats and gloves are often used by the dreaming mind to represent female genitalia. The obvious connection is that they enclose parts of the body. Crowns and tall hats are traditional symbols of authority, raising the wearer above his or her peers and colleagues.

Houses in dreams usually represent the dreamer, and can symbolize his or her body or the various levels of the mind. Like bodies , houses have fronts and backs, windows that look out onto the world outside, doors through which food is brought, and other openings through which waste is later expelled.

The knife or dagger is by far the most common male sexual symbol. It can represent the penis in its ability to penetrate, and can stand for masculinity in its associations with violence and aggression. It may also represent the "sword of truth" that cuts through falsity and ignorance, or the will to cut away false desires.

The lion almost invariably appears in dreams as a regal symbol of power and pride, and often represents the archetypal, powerful and admired aspect of the father.

An apex predator, renowned for its strength and ferocity, the lion is often called "the king of the jungle." Lions are very big cats (and cats are very little lions) who have historically symbolized royal power, nobility, courage, and military potency. With their sharp teeth and claws, long tail, tawny coat, and awesome roar (heard in the opening credits of every Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie), lions arouse both instinctive fear and admiration. All over the world, statues of lions serve as guards for temples, libraries, and sacred spaces. Many myths and sacred stories involve heroes testing their strength against lions. The first of Hercules’s twelve tasks is to defeat the fearsome Nemean Lion. In the Bible, Daniel’s faith protects him when he’s thrown into a den of ravenous lions. Don Quixote opens a lion’s cage to challenge it to a fight, and when the beast declines he proudly renames himself the "Knight of the Lions." In the Narnia books of C.S. Lewis, the lion Aslan is a majestic Christ-figure. Some cultures use a lion’s pelt as a ritual robe to invoke the noble spirit of the beast. Associated with the zodiacal sign Leo and the Christian gospel writer St. Mark, lions symbolically resonate with the sun, gold, fire, and virility. To "lionize" someone is to praise them effusively, to view them as equally awesome as an actual lion. No ordinary dream animal, the lion carries an energy of wild independence that can be both threatening and inspiring. How close was the lion in your dream? How did it behave toward you? Where in your waking life do you feel leonine presence and power?

Receiving goods or messages through the mail often heralds something unexpected in the dreamer’s life, such as a new opportunity or challenge. The dreamer’s response to the contents of the package may give clues to the meaning. For example, failure to take a letter out of the envelope may suggest that full use will not be made of the chance on offer, while a sense of anticipation before opening it can indicate a more positive attitude.

A maze in a dream usually relates to the dreamer's descent into the unconscious. It may represent the complex defences put up by the conscious ego to prevent unconscious wishes and desires from emerging into the light.

Monkeys often represent the playful, mischievous side of the dreamer, and may symbolize an immature yet instinctively wise aspect of the dreamer’s consciousness that may require expression. In the East, the monkey can also symbolize the untamed, chattering mind that needs to be stilled by meditation.

By illuminating the night, the moon symbolizes dreaming itself – Its rhythms govern the tides and give us a natural marker of time – Often associated with change, nature, and the divine feminine – In many traditions, full moons are special times of spiritual energy and ritual practice – Did you notice the moon’s phase in your dream? Do you notice the moon’s phase in your waking life? You might try...

The moon often represents the feminine aspect, the queen of the night, and the mystery of hidden, secret things. It is also associated with water (because the tides are governed by the moon), and with the imagination. A full moon may indicate serenity and stillness, signifying the dreamer's potential for contemplation. A new moon is an obvious symbol of fresh beginnings.

A young child has serious problems in consciously reconciling the loving, providing aspects of a mother or father with their function as agents of discipline and fear. For Jung, the always ambivalent Great Mother is an archetype of feminine mystery and power who appears in many forms: at her most exalted as the queen of heaven, at her most consuming as the Sumerian goddess Lilith, the gorgon Medusa, or the witches and harpies prevalent in myth and folktale. For Freud, however, the symbolic dream mother was far more a representation of the dreamer’s relationship with his or her own mother than an abstract archetype. Freud observed in fact that most dreams involve three people the dreamer, a woman and a man — and that the theme that most commonly links the three characters is jealousy.

Milk usually represents kindness, sustenance and nourishment, whether physical or emotional. Freudian dream interpretation sometimes takes it to represent male semen.

Provided that we can read it, a chart or map is the symbol par excellence of a sure and predictable direction; if it proves incomprehensible, however, our loss of bearings may be followed by disproportionate frustration and panic. In dreams the map can represent self-knowledge, and a failure to read its signs warns us that we are in danger of becoming unknown territory to ourselves.

The monster or giant who towers over a small and vulnerable child is an archetypal theme in children’s dreams and stories. Such figures often represent adults in the child’s life who dominate him or her with what must seem an arbitrary and near infinite power. By confronting these monsters in their dreams (and therefore in the unconscious), children can come to terms with them in their emotional lives. Rather as the witch can symbolize the destructive aspect of the Mother, the giant or ogre can symbolize that of the Father.

These represent the way that we present ourselves to the outside world and even to ourselves. If the dreamer is unable to remove a mask, or is forced by others to wear one, this suggests that the real self is becoming increasingly obscured.

Money generally represents power in everyday dreams, and to find one has insufficient to pay for what one wants can symbolize a lack of the abilities or qualifications needed to achieve some desired goal.

For Freud, dreams about mouths may represent fixation in an early stage of psycho-sexual development, marked by immature characteristics such as gullibility or verbal aggression.

Mountains are the male aspect, or on a loftier plane the higher self, they also suggest the self determination needed if one is to reach the summit, as well as the dangers and the rarefied nature of the environment.

Seeing a strange face in the mirror often indicates an identity crisis. If the face is startling or frightening, it may stand for the Shadow, the archetype that represents the dreamer’s darker side. Somebody walking out of a mirror may hint that new aspects are emerging from the unconscious, while an empty mirror can represent the clean slate of the dreamer’s mind before the ego overlays it with wishes and self-images.

Failure to make oneself understood on the telephone can suggest weaknesses in the dreamer’s ideas or in the ability to convey them convincingly to others. Failure to make a telephone connection may suggest loss of intimacy in a relationship.

Police can provide reassurance, but equally they may represent inhibition, and the censorship of natural impulses by the conscious mind. Being chased by the police can indicate the dreamer’s need to face the accusations of a guilty conscience, or to learn from past mistakes.

The embodiment of authority, security, and the rule of law, police in dreams can symbolize both positive and negative qualities. With their official uniforms, badges, handcuffs, and weapons, they guard with physical force the border between socially acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Police can be friends or foes depending on where you stand in relation to that border. The ambivalent symbolism of the police arises from our mixed feelings about public order and the use of violence to preserve it. We naturally seek safety and protection from harm, but we just as naturally fear unjust control and coercion. In some dreams, the police act to "protect and serve," making community life possible. But other dreams envision life in a "police state," where people become captives of authority and victims of state-sanctioned violence. In psychological terms, police can symbolize the superego, the voice of inner restraint and control, as well as social pressures toward conformity and obedience. "To police" something means to monitor it constantly for compliance with the law. If you have a dream about police, how do you relate to them? Are they protecting you from a threat? Or do they see you as the threat that needs to be stopped?

Sometimes there may be a reference to animal associations embedded in the similes and cliches of idiomatic language - linking pigs with gluttony for example, as foxes with cunning, elephants with long memories, and so on.

Rivers and streams are particularly potent metaphors for the passing of time, and dreams of standing on the river bank may suggest that it is time for the dreamer to pause and reflect upon the direction and intensity of life. Rivers may also serve to remind the dreamer that it is possible to flow past obstacles that lie in the way, rather than confront them directly, and that like a river, life alternates between hectic rapids and deep slow-moving pools, shallows and depths. Water is a potent symbol of the unconscious, and attempts to dam a river, or stem the leak from a pipe, may indicate that the dreamer is trying to repress material that is flowing from the unconscious mind.

Ruins tend to suggest neglect and decay rather than deliberate destruction. A ruined city may be drawing the dreamer's attention to a neglect of social relationships, or of aims or ideals in life that were formerly more steadfastly kept in mind. A ruined or dilapidated school may have other associations. Any dream that returns us to childhood only to witness emptiness or decay suggests that we are carrying disappointed childhood expectations, or disquieting memories. Sometimes there is an added sense of the passing of time, the impermanence of life, and the need to look forward rather than dwell in the past.

As well as being the traditional symbol of love, the red rose in Freud's view often indicates the female genitalia, or the blood of menstruation.

Like the mind, a house consists of different levels and compartments, all performing different functions and connected to each other by stairs and doors. In dreams, each room and floor can stand for different aspects of the personality or mind, which should be connected and integrated, but often are not. Generally, the living rooms of the house represent the conscious and preconscious, the cellars, the unconscious, and the upper rooms the dreamer’s spirituality and higher aspirations.

Rain in dreams is often connected with cleansing and purification. On the other hand, rain can represent the illusory nature of opposites, such as water and air, the imaginative and rational parts of the mind. It often underlines the importance of harmonization between apparently disparate elements of the dreamer's inner and outer life.

Some dreamers who report seeing shoes in their dreams associate them with sexuality: as with cups, hats and gloves, they can be entered by other objects, or by parts of the body. Women’s shoes can sometimes stand for dominant female sexuality, which may come from the infant's experience of his or her mother's feet.

A statue or bust often represents the desire to place someone or something on a pedestal, and may also signify their remoteness and unattainability.

Sometimes school dreams relate to specific happenings that fill the dreamer with remembered pride or (more often) embarrassment, but sometimes they use school as a convenient metaphor to convey their messages. For example, dreams of finding oneself back at school, but demoted to a lower class, or stripped of some coveted responsibility, can symbolize childhood insecurities that have still not been resolved.

The sun has strong connotations of the masculine, the world of overt things, the conscious mind, the intellect, and the father. In dreams, a hot burning sun can indicate the intellect’s power to make a desert out of the dreamer’s emotional life. Conversely, the sun hidden by clouds can suggest the emotions overruling rationality.

As well as representing fate and the celestial powers, the stars can stand for the dreamer's higher states of consciousness. A single star shining more brightly than the rest can signify success in competition with others, but may also serve to remind the dreamer of his or her responsibilities to those of lesser ability. The brightest star could also be the one that is closest to destruction.

Steps downward usually represent a way into the unconscious. It was from a dream of a house that Jung formulated his theory of the collective unconscious. The house was unfamiliar but undoubtedly his own, and after wandering its various floors he discovered a heavy door that led down to a beautiful and ancient vaulted cellar. Another staircase led to a cave, scattered with bones, pottery and skulls. He interpreted the cellar as the first layer of the unconscious, and the cave as the “world of primitive man” within himself that he termed the collective unconscious. Freudians often associate any rhythmical activity with sexual intercourse. The same meaning is attributed to climbing stairs or a mountain, the crashing of waves on the seashore, travelling, and the insertion of one object into another, such as a key into a keyhole.

In dreams the devouring mother, who consumes her children through possessiveness or her power to arouse guilt, is often symbolized by the spider, who traps and lives off her innocent victims. The web woven the spider ensnare its prey is also a common dream image.

So many symbolic possibilities! Snake can represent wisdom, healing, renewal, alien intelligence, and evil. In psychoanalysis, snakes are classic symbols of the male genitals. What did your dream snake look like? How did it make you feel? All primates have an innate fear of snakes, making them a symbol of the deepest levels of the unconscious mind. Vivid dreams of snakes appear in the *Oresteia* of Aeschylus, in Shakespeare's *A Midsummer Nights Dream*, and J.K. Rowling's *Harry Potter* novels. Snakes are the favorite animal of the ancient Greek god Asclepius, who comes to people in their dreams to heal them of their illnesses. Are you suffering in a way that your dream snake might be able to heal you?

Aesculapius, the god of healing, is said to have summoned sacred snakes to the shrines to lick the wounds of the afflicted in their sleep, and so heal them. The caduceus — a device consisting of two snakes entwined around a rod — is still used to represent healing in Western symbolism.

Jung believed that turning to face the sea indicates that the dreamer is prepared to confront the unconscious, while creatures emerging from the deep represent powerful archetypal forces. For Freud, the sea and the incoming tide were primal symbols of sexual union.

Melting snow suggests fears and obstacles dissolving in the dreamer’s path, but snow can also symbolize transformation and purification, a halt to progress, or an obstacle in the way of the creative flow of the dreamer’s mind. It may also represent a lack of emotional warmth, a suggestion that the dreamer has paid insufficient attention to his or her feelings.

As demonstrated by Jung’s theory of the Collective Unconscious, the most apparently mundane scenery can carry a remarkable depth of symbolic information. A tree, for example, that initially represents the cherry tree under which the dreamer played as a child, and which therefore stands for shelter and sweetness, can later in the dream serve as a symbol of the mother, later still as the Tree of Life, and finally as the sacrificial tree upon which Christ was crucified.

Excretion usually represents the dreamer’s public anxiety or shame, or his or her urgent wish to express or unburden the self, whether for creative or for cathartic reasons. Menstruation can carry similar connotations, and is often associated with a sudden release of creative energy. To dream of unsuccessfully searching for a toilet may indicate a conflict between the need to express oneself public and a fear of doing so; while to dream of finding a toilet engaged indicates jealousy of another's position or creativity; while causing a toilet to overflow indicates fear about losing emotional control, or failure to discipline creative potential. If the dreamer is anxious that a toilet lacks privacy, it may indicate fear of public exposure, or a need for greater self-expression.

Trains follow a fixed route, suggesting that the dreamer is receiving help on his or her journey. Being on the wrong train or passing one’s destination can denote missed opportunities. Jung noted that travelling in a public vehicle often means that the dreamer is behaving like everyone else instead of finding his or her own way forward.

Teeth (falling out, broken, and so on) are the focus of many anxiety dreams. Anxiety dreams are not there to torment the dreamer , but to draw attention to the urgency of identifying and dealing with the sources of anxiety, which may wreak havoc in the unconscious if left to themselves. Artemidorus interpreted the mouth as the home, with the teeth on the right side its male inhabitants and those on the left side its female.

Weddings or other anniversaries can serve as reminders of transience, or more positively as indications of the significance of human and family ties, of the vows and undertakings associated with them, or — if the emotional charge is negative — of the restricting commitments involved. A wedding often suggests the union of opposite yet complementary parts of the self, and the promise of future fertility. In the case of 'big' dreams, it may be of archetypal significance, symbolizing the union within the dreamer oj the fundamental creative forces of life— male and female, rationality and imagination, conscious and unconscious, matter and spirit.

Water is the symbol par excellence of the unconscious, the depths of the imagination, the source of creativity. To dream of swimming suggests that the dreamer should venture into this realm, but if he or she struggles to float, this may be a warning that more caution and more careful preparation are required.

Freud interpreted both doors and windows as feminine sexual symbols; Jung associated them with the dreamer’s ability to understand the outside world. Looking into others’ windows (voyeurism for Freud) can suggest the dreamer is too curious about their lives, and perhaps uses this curiosity as a substitute for self-examination.