Animals in Dreams
A Jungian and Archetypal approach to the psyche's symbols
In this edition of The Artemisian, I'll be answering a question submitted by a paid member. If you'd like to submit one of your own, consider joining the membership community. Upgrading allows you to deepen your studies and inner work via in-depth monthly classes, access to the resource library and more1. Your support also allows me to continue offering accessible educational content for all subscribers, thank you!
A paid member writes…
What does it mean when I dream about animals? Especially snakes, as they have been showing up in my dreams for years.
“Generally, animal images are interpreted in depth psychology as representatives of the animal, that is, instinctual, bestial, sexual, part of human nature…I prefer to consider animals in dreams as Gods, as divine, intelligent, autochthonous powers demanding respect.”
— James Hillman, Dream and the Underworld
When working with symbols that arise from the unconscious, we can never be too certain as to what they mean. The yearning for absolute clarity is difficult to resist — we want to feel sure that we have interpreted a dream correctly, that we understand what a figure represents, or know that each time a motif emerges, we are referencing it with precision and accuracy. Alas, the psyche and its images are mercurial, shapeshifting, and kaleidoscopic. They evade capture and dance in shadows, inviting us to suspend heroic urges to seize the symbol and instead be immersed in their essence, seeing what unfolds as we share psychic space with them.
Animals in our dreams are no different. As Hillman notes in the quote above, there is a tendency in the Jungian-depth psychological traditions to interpret them as an image of our instincts, the aspects of our being that still carry the wild, untamed, pre-conscious conditions that we observe in the animal kingdom. In Hillman’s school of Archetypal psychology, the focus is to “stick with the image,” rather than jumping to rigid conclusions or dictionary definitions. In Animal Presences, he shares:
“The moment you’ve caught the snake in an interpretation, you’ve lost the snake. You’ve stopped its living movement. Then the person leaves the therapeutic hour with a concept about “my repressed sexuality” or “my cold black passions” or “my mother” – and is no longer with the snake. The interpretation settles the emotional quivering and mental uncertainty that came with the snake. In fact, the snake is no longer necessary; it has been successfully banished by interpretation. You, the dreamer, don’t need the snake anymore and you then form the habit of not needing dreams anymore either once they have been interpreted. Meaning replaces image; animal disappears into the human mind.”
The Archetypal approach keeps the vibrancy of symbolism alive, the breath ever-flowing through the image so that when we meet them in our dreams, we are oriented to a living-being that engages us, moves us deeply, and draws us further into the underworld of psychological richness. The image tells us what it means by how it is presenting itself, its qualities, what it unleashes within. This perspective I hold with care, for it keeps me on my toes — curious, questioning, reaching out to receive its wisdom.
On the other hand, the Jungian perspective provides a field of interpretive tools that allows us to trace the dream symbol down to its collective unconscious roots. There is no denying that we have diverged from our animal brethren. At one point in time, we also ran boundless and free, we moved with instinctual purpose, unclouded or weighed down by responsibility, duty, work, rationality, technology. We were embodied to the fullest extent, immersed in all nature had to offer. Why can’t an animal in our dreams speak to this long lost experience? Perhaps the snake appears to remind us that we shed layers of our form over and over, that we can act stealthily by putting belly to earth and moving with the shape of the land, that we must strike when the opportunity arises and hold our prey in a constrictive grip, integrating it slowly.
A Jungian lens also encourages us to play with amplification, a method where we look towards larger cultural, mythological, or archetypal patterns to deepen our understanding of a symbol. When we amplify, we uncover the tracks and trails that the archetypes have carved upon the human psyche. We see how they impress meaning, generate mythic narratives and shape our perception. Seen this way, the snake can symbolize Kundalini—the coiled, primal life energy resting at the base of the spine, ready to awaken and guide us into a new spiritual awareness. It may carry secrets of healing and knowledge, as in the story of Asclepius, or tempt us to break from unconscious unity and seek new paths to consciousness, like the snake in the Garden of Eden.
Like any good dialectical approach, we hold the tension of seemingly oppositional points of view, giving them a chance to conjoin and produce something that is intertwined with the principles of both.
When working your dream-snake, consider and combine the Archetypal and Jungian schools:
Pay attention to the way the snake appears, what its fork-tongued whispers have to share, without preconceived notions. What spontaneous insights come from this?
Consider the snake in its various traditions — from ouroboric life/death cycles2 to regenerating Hydras with venomous blood — as well as the instinctual layer of the psyche that has been lost to shadow and time. What may this be compensating, correcting, reminding or instructing you on?
Meeting the Bear
“Animals generally signify the instinctive forces of the unconscious…This integration of the instincts is a prerequisite for individuation.”
— C.G. Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (CW 9.1)
I’ll give an example of this methodology in practice. A few years ago, I began having recurring bear dreams. Here are a few:
(1) I am walking through a forest with a small group of individuals. We come across a dead bear on the path ahead. The group I am with seems worried and frightened but I feel curious. I walk over to the dead bear and begin removing its hide. I feel a type of reverence for what I am doing. I finish removing its skin and it is now a wearable coat of the bear’s fur and head. I put it on.
(2) I am navigating difficult terrain, it’s dark out and the foliage is dense, animals are about. I have a sense that I am safe but I have moved too obviously, given away my position, and suddenly, I am knocked to the ground. I am in the jaws of a bear, its teeth and mouth are around my body, my hands. It’s not killing me but I am fearful. I gain some lucidity, I realize I am dreaming, and repel the bear with an energetic force and run away.
(3) I am in a type of Neverland, a society of young, teenage children with no adults about. A loud bang rings against the glass wall, a bear, a monstrously sized bear, is clawing its way inside. The kids start lining up to fight the bear, they pull out weapons. I watch from afar, not feeling any fear.
How am I to understand this symbol of the bear? Sometimes it is frightening, attacking, vicious and unrelenting. Other times it is present and heavy with significance and power. Up until that point, I didn’t have much conscious draw or association to the bear. So I considered it from a broader, Jungian lens initially.
I skin the bear and wear its pelt, much like Heracles does with the Nemean Lion. Am I wrestling with some part of my instinctual nature that still lies in shadow? Does its wildness, so far from my conscious awareness, bring about this fear? Is my resistance energizing the presence further, stalking me from dream to dream, pinning me to the ground to get my attention? If I can approach it with curiosity and deference, see this as an initiating first labor towards growth, might I be able to integrate some aspects of my psyche that I lack relationship to?
I found this line of contemplation useful, but still, the bear dreams continued. I sensed I was missing something, so I set aside time to journey into an active imagination with the bear. After a bit of meditating and breath work, I brought the dreams to mind, walking the forest wearing the pelt, feeling the jaws against my throat, watching the bear attack the fortress. “What do you represent?”, I queried.
The spirit of the bear seemed to turn towards me, and in its gaze, I felt something like a mothering energy — fiercely protective of her young yet pushing them towards independence and capability. This felt like the archetypal Great Mother in animal form. She challenged me to nurture my tender, vulnerable parts without staying lost in the land of eternal childhood. To own fierce embodiment that is often fleeting, to reconcile with the feminine that I felt estranged from. To learn what it means to be a container of creation, to be an initiate of mysteries that weaves from mother to daughter.
Uncovering these insights kicked off a new stage of my inner work. I took the pieces into analysis, worked with them in my journal, and tracked how these themes were playing out in my life. Further, the bear dreams began to shift and change. The more I consciously worked with the material, the more they seemed to evolve from within the psyche. At times, I had no bear dreams at all, or, I’d have a recurrence of the chasing, antagonistic bear when I let the dynamics go too long unattended. Some four years later, I am still visited by this animal presence. Most recently, less than two weeks ago, I dreamed of a mother bear and cub. My dream perspective was high above, watching them move through a hillside in unison. The story continues to unfold.
It wasn’t any one way of interpreting or communing with the dream symbols that helped me discover their “true” meaning, but rather, a mixing that allowed me to pick up nuance from many angles. Even now, having so much context to work with, I remind myself not to get too complacent, but to tap into the potentials that lie in the living image, in its mythopoetic and instinctual soul.
Join the conversation
How do you work with animals in dreams? Do you relate more to the Jungian or Archetypal psychology approach? Is there a particular animal you’ve dreamed of most?
Archetypal Guidance Q&A
Paid Members - Interested in having your inquiry answered in the next Q&A? Submit a question about archetypal and Jungian psychological ideas as they relate to your inner work below.
For further musings, see: Ouroboros: The Rhythm of Creation
Lots of cat dreams recently, which pushed me to re-read Von Franz's book on the Cat. I tend to go with personal associations and then amplification. However, I was reading about how, given that we seem to be on the cusp of a sixth mass extinction, animals are finding their way into our dreams as a matter of urgency, which was interesting and v moving. It was a chapter in a book on ecopsychology but I can't recall its title at the moment.
I dream with cats a lot 😅