Hi all! I always had really messed up and nonsense dreams and though I found many websites with different meanings for the elements of dreams, I haven’t really found good guidelines to interpret them.
For example my last dream took place in some kind of a french castle at a banquet where I met the current american president who claimed to be the russian tzar and gave me a fox fur scarf because it was cold… like what even?..
The only thing I found out about fox fur that it signifies good luck, but I’m kinda stuck on interpreting this dream… do you guys have any book recommendations to get better at reading into the symbolism of the dream-world?
It is me, the local village idiot, coming to offer my advice.
I haven’t really subscribed to the “universal symbolism” behind dreams. I believe that–like most symbolic icons–there is SO much room for interpretation. For example, that you can’t just say “red means love” because, even across cultures, symbols like colors, animals, etc. can represent a lot of different things.
I take a more personal approach when interpreting symbolic dreams, because each symbol means something to you.
For example, is there someone in your life right now who reminds you of the person you saw in your dream? Is there someone who represents these qualities/makes you feel the same way you feel about that person (I’m being vague because that’s a low-key political question and you can’t talk about politics here).
I would take a personal approach first, see how you feel about the symbols, then use things like dream dictionaries to supplement where you can’t come up with a personal opinion on the interpretation.
Some websites I used to use:
Note, I haven’t used ANY of these in a long time. So I can’t speak to their recent practicality.
An old friend of mine, who was a long-practicing witch, told me once that your subconscious mind knows how to relay a message so that you can interpret it. I subscribe to that belief.
Thank you! I kinda subscribed to the universal symbolism stuff, but I agree that everyone’s different and symbols can be really personal… I haven’t thought about this approach, but I’m gonna try it, thank you!
I’ve been having random celebrities pop into my dreams whose existence I know of, but I don’t follow them or know what they really do usually, so it’s a weird pattern… but that approach where I first figure out how I feel about them just made something click.
Edit: On the symbolism being different and personal with everybody note, I was thinking about a video Kurtis Joseph posted about the chakras, like how it should be pondered on why each chakra is associated with a certain color - that made me think how a well-working root chakra for example, could be completely different color for 2 different people… but I don’t know, I might be wrong about this.
There are smarter people here who could weigh in on this. I am just not educated enough on it to offer a valid opinion.
This happens a lot for some friends of mine. Depending on the context of the dream, it could represent people in your waking life that you idolize or something–for these friends, we managed to identify that some of these people represent relatives (in terms of their behavior in the dream) and used that symbolism to gain insights on situations and “relationship dynamics” between them in the waking world.
I say that I subscribe to a personal approach, but truthfully I have two theories and bounce back and forth on which is true depending on what day it is:
The theory I’ve mentioned before
I read a study once that claimed our brains take in a bunch of information throughout the day and then “process” that information at night.
– So, for example, you dreaming of an American president could be done that way because you’ve heard someone talk about that person and didn’t consciously acknowledge it (or maybe you did).
– This is like a subconscious “queue,” which then your subconscious mind “rationalizes” into the scenario that you dream about.
I like to think of dreams like puzzles we try to solve, unlocking aspects of ourselves. Then again, I also have an entire thread dedicated to dreams that I believe signifies a past life, so that is a little paradoxical I suppose.
