Dreaming about snakes: what that dream usually reflects

What this dream usually points to (and what it doesn't)

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme.

Dreaming about a snake does not signal betrayal, illness or luck. Dangerous animals are among the most frequent contents of human dreams, and the leading explanation is how the brain handles threat, not a message about your life.

Read also: Dreams about flying: what happens in the brain and Dreaming about death: why it happens and what it does not mean.

Why dangerous animals appear so much

The threat simulation hypothesis suggests dreams work as a safe rehearsal of risky situations. Predators, chases and escapes appear in dream reports from very different cultures, which supports that reading.

Source: Revonsuo, The reinterpretation of dreams, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2000.

Add the continuity hypothesis: a tense day, a documentary about animals or a real scare all make this content more likely.

Source: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003.

Common variations of dreaming about snakes

• A snake attacking or biting: usually intense fear, often waking the person up.
• A still snake, watching: more about held tension than about fright.
• Running from a snake: combines with being chased, one of the most common dream themes.
• Killing or driving the snake away: a relief ending, frequent when something is being resolved in waking life.
• Many snakes: often shows up in overloaded periods.

See also: Dreaming about bees and Dreaming about dogs.

Psychoanalysis, symbols and faith: another look at dreaming about snakes

In Freud's psychoanalysis. Faced with readings this far apart, Freud would not look for the answer in a book: he would split the dream into parts and ask what comes to mind about each one, such as the snake's color, where it was, or the skin left on the ground. This is the basis of free association, a method whose construction is traced in Juliana David Jorge's 2007 thesis at PUC Minas, in Brazil.

In Jung's psychology. Joseph Henderson, a coauthor of Man and His Symbols, calls the serpent perhaps the most common dream symbol of transcendence: the one on the staff of Aesculapius, god of medicine, still an emblem of the medical profession. Originally a nonvenomous snake that lived in trees, coiled on the staff it seems to mediate between earth and sky.

In symbols and faith. In ancient Greece, Chevalier and Gheerbrant write in A Dictionary of Symbols, newborns were given an amulet with a tiny serpent, a sign of intuitive wisdom and protective vigilance. Among the Yoruba, the serpent Dan is Oxumarê, the rainbow that links the upper and lower worlds; in Afro-Brazilian religions such as Umbanda and Candomblé, Oxumarê is tied to cycles and movement. In Numbers 21:8-9, anyone who had been bitten looked at the bronze serpent Moses raised and lived.

Bringing both views together. Jung tells how the chemist Kekulé, while studying benzene, dreamed of a serpent biting its own tail, an ancient image; the dream led him to the idea of a closed ring of carbon. The symbol belonged to everyone, but the meaning came from the problem he was working on while awake. The same goes for the snake that sheds its skin: the symbol offers the question, and your life supplies the answer. If it struck, see what changes when the snake attacks.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jorge, PUC Minas, 2007; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols; Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols; L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014; Prandi, Mitologia dos orixás.

What dream dictionaries record

Livro do Sonho, a popular Brazilian dream dictionary, links the snake to betrayal by friends, money problems and something new in your life that you are not paying attention to. In other traditions, the snake that sheds its skin is a symbol of renewal and healing. These are two very different readings, and the emotion of the dream helps you choose which one makes sense for you. More bluntly, the Brazilian dream book O Livro dos Sonhos, by L. P. Baçan, sums up the snake as problems in life and dissatisfaction in love.

Freud described dream books as a kind of dictionary that translates each image into another with a fixed meaning. Artemidorus of Daldis, author of the oldest complete Greek dream book that has survived, advised looking at the dreamer's life before interpreting. If you see the dream as a message, both paths suggest the same thing: ask what this image brings to mind in your life right now. See dream meanings according to science and culture.

Source: Livro do Sonho, Brazilian dream dictionary; Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014.

Popular beliefs about this dream

In Brazilian folk reading, snakes are linked to envy or betrayal. In Eastern traditions and in parts of Jungian reading, the same animal stands for transformation and renewal, because of shedding skin. In several ancient cultures it symbolises healing, as in the rod of Asclepius still used in medicine.

Notice that these readings contradict each other. That is a good reminder that such meanings are cultural, not universal.

What cannot be claimed

There is no basis for saying the dream announces betrayal, illness, a lucky number or a future event. If the dream left you uneasy, the useful question is different: what has been threatening you or keeping you on alert lately?

See also dream meanings.

Read also: dreaming about alligators and crocodiles; dreaming about geckos and lizards.