Dreams about animals: a Jungian reading

An animal in a dream tends to be the part of you that does not reason — instinct, hunger, fear, loyalty. So it is worth noticing whether you are taming it, running from it, or whether it walks calmly beside you.

It depends on how it looked

• it walks beside youan instinct you have come to trust
• it is shut in a cageyou are keeping something alive under lock and key
• it attackswhat was pushed down is announcing itself by force
• it is woundedsomething natural in you has taken a hit

A question for you

Which part of yourself do you keep on a chain?

And yours is read symbol by symbol

This is what a dream dictionary cannot do: it reads the dream you actually had. You write it in your own words — a house you had never lived in, a small door under the stairs, a key that did not fit — and each of those images is taken separately, with what it may be carrying for you.

Then comes the archetype the dream is standing in — the Threshold, say — a reflection that ties it to your own chart, and at the end a question to sit with. Not an answer. A question.

A dream reading needs an account, because the dream is stored — that is the point: the meaning shows up when the same image comes back a third time. The account is free and the first readings are free too.