A woman enters a clear mountain stream to bathe and finds it is teeming with snakes. She regards snakes as allies rather than adversaries, but there are so many in the water that she becomes fearful. When a huge snake approaches her, she manages to grab it behind the head and uses it to hold the other serpents at a manageable distance. She wakes with a sense of accomplishment.
In a dream of my own, I am walking in a woodland setting with a woman who decides to use an outhouse on the far side of the clearing. As she starts crossing a swampy patch with many fallen branches, I see that the water is full of snakes and I become concerned for her safety. It’s too late to stop her. She crosses without mishap, and I study the snakes. They are of many colors. An inner voice tells me the black and yellow ones are the most dangerous. There is also a vivid crimson snake, and a pair of duller reddish and blueish hues, near the edge where I am standing. I push them down with my stick – which proved to be a very large staff I use to help the woman return safely.
Both dreamers were alarmed by a mass of snakes in the water, but our response strategies were different. The woman dreamer waded right in, while I kept a cautious distance. We both sensed that the snakes in these dreams might mirror somatic conditions – in the case of my dream, that of another person I might be called on to help.
The snake in someone else’s dream is not the snake in your dream. That’s something I often say when people ask me about dream symbolism.
The theme came up for me again as I did some research to honor a dream in which I was scouting an imminent visit to New York City. In my dream, an excited group of younger New Yorkers were quizzing me about the importance of dreaming and dream interpretation in early Jewish tradition. In my dream, I spoke to them with apparent authority about Joseph and Pharaoh, and about rabbinical discussions in the Talmud, about Philo of Alexandria, and about Gabriel, the archangel of dreams for all three Peoples of the Book (Jews, Christians and Muslims).
The theme came up for me again as I did some research to honor a dream in which I was scouting an imminent visit to New York City. In my dream, an excited group of younger New Yorkers were quizzing me about the importance of dreaming and dream interpretation in early Jewish tradition. In my dream, I spoke to them with apparent authority about Joseph and Pharaoh, and about rabbinical discussions in the Talmud, about Philo of Alexandria, and about Gabriel, the archangel of dreams for all three Peoples of the Book (Jews, Christians and Muslims).
To honor this dream, I dived into an old folder I had compiled on Jewish dream traditions, and found some notes I had made on observations by Rabbi Gershon Winkler (always good value) on dreams in the Talmud. He quoted the following Talmudic interpretation of snake dreams: “One who sees a snake in their dream, it is a sign that their livelihood is at hand. And if the snake bites, it means their income will increase two-fold. And if the dreamer kills the snake, it means they will lose their livelihood.” [Talmud, B’rachot 57a] The rationale for this reading (as expounded by the famous 11th century rabbi known as Rashi) was as follows: the snake slithers across the ground, where all sorts of food is easily available, hence it brings the promise of sustenance.
However, another rabbi, Rav Shei’shet, rejected this approach. He contended that, on the contrary, if you kill a snake in your dream it means your income will double. It seems Rav She’shet had a vested interest in this outcome; he himself had dreamed of killing a snake.
In reading our own dreams, we get out of the snake pit of casuistry and conflicting interpretations by cleaving, first and last, to our feelings. If you are bitten by a snake and on waking you feel neutral or even blessed, that dream is clearly very different from a dream with the same apparent content that leaves you feeling frightened or drained. Poison may be medicine, medicine may be poison.
“The dream follows the interpretation” says a famous midrash (Midrash B’reisheet Rabbah 39:8). Let’s make sure that we base our interpretation, not on external authorities, but on our feelings and instincts, supported by careful exploration and the right kind of feedback from others (which should always be offered in non-authoritarian mode, “if it were my dream”).
I know the snake can be medicine, as it was for pilgrims who traveled from all over the Mediterranean world to the temples of dream healing consecrated to Asklepios and his divine family. On a night when I felt quite ill, I set an intention on going to bed: “I wish to be healed.” I added a second statement: “I ask for the health of body and mind required to serve my spiritual purpose.”
As soon as I stretched out on the bed, I saw an enormous serpent. perhaps twenty feet long. I wrote in my journal:
I see the dark slits of its pupils, quite close to me, in a head larger than my own. I do not feel fear, but there is a strong sense of the uncanny, the presence of a transpersonal other. I feel this is the Asklepian serpent, a power mastered for healing. The form of the god appears less distinctly, like a living statue. Also the form of a large dog with tall pointy ears.
I resolve to let the snake enter my energy field and do anything required for healing. I begin to experience movements of the serpent energy through my chakras, starting at the root center and moving upwards. There are moments of gentle physical pressure or constriction as it passes through some of my energy centers – of slight pressure in the heart, of a little constriction at the throat. The movement ceases to flow smoothly at the vision center, where I had been experiencing pressure and blurring. An experimental probe, not pushing too hard. The movement loops down and back, returning to try again. I invoke Light as well, and feel the presence and blessing of a being of Light I know well.
I feel a process of healing has been initiated, and will be played out over time, if I allow it to be.
One thing more about the snake, as a figure in dreams. It has the power to shed its skin. So if we find ourselves connecting with the snake in our inner lives, we may be able to claim the power to shed the skin of past histories, and whatever heavy energies of the past we may have been carrying.
Snake photo by Don Dimock
Read Previous Post
