Snake

Universal Landscape: Change or transition; death and rebirth.

Dreaming Lens: What kind of snake is appearing in your dream? Is it poisonous, dangerous or innocuous? What was your fear level or lack thereof? Did the snake have human qualities or abilities? Does it have a message?

Personal Focus: Snakes can inspire great and varied personal emotions, and therefore can ultimately connect to very different shades of meaning based on your Personal Focus. Because of this continuum of response from fear and loathing to fascination and sensual stirrings, they need to be considered carefully when they appear in a dream.

First and foremost, snakes represent change and transformation. This connects to the fact that they shed their skins in their growth process and that many of them are capable of causing fatality to their predators, implying the symbolic rebirth that follows any death experience. There is a healing element of this, as many snake venoms can also be used as curatives. This may connect to the two snakes that appear on the physician’s caduceus, representing the challenge to life and the response of the healer to match it.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the snake bears the responsibility for tempting Eve. As such, a snake can represent a confrontation with a change in your value system. It is important to remember that Eve’s yielding introduced the human race to the knowledge of mortality and the birth of consciousness. A serpent in your dream may actually represent a major shift in your awareness that may bring about the death of an old paradigm, but that will bring you into a whole new world.

In eastern cultures, the awakening of spiritual power is often referred to as a snake. Known as the Kundalini, it is experienced as an incredible energy which undulates up the spine. Stimulating this can induce a tremendous healing force which contains the ability to purify the nervous and glandular systems. The practice of Yoga is designed to awaken the snake that lives dormant at the base of the spine. As a dream symbol, a snake could represent the potential for power and energy if properly channeled.

If a snake appears on a particular part of your body (such as choking you) you might want to make an association between that body part/energy and what in your life needs to be transformed. How you feel about the presence of actions of the snake reveal your deeper emotional responses to the change that is occurring.