Dream Symbols & Their Meanings
Dreams speak in symbols, images that carry meaning beyond their literal appearance. Explore the most common dream symbols and what they might reveal about your inner world.
How to Use a Dream Symbol Dictionary
A word of caution: dream symbols don't have fixed, universal meanings. Water in your dream may mean something entirely different than water in someone else's. Cultural background, personal associations, and the dream's context all matter.
Use this guide as a starting point for reflection, not a definitive answer key. When you read about a symbol, ask yourself: Does this interpretation resonate? What personal associations do I have with this symbol? How did it make me feel in the dream?
We provide interpretations from multiple traditions, Jungian, spiritual, and cultural, because different lenses illuminate different aspects of meaning.
Explore Dream Symbols
Water
Emotions, the unconscious, purification, life force. Water's form in your dream matters, calm seas vs. raging storms tell different stories.
Read full guideTeeth
Anxiety, self-image, communication, power. One of the most common dream symbols, and one of the most debated.
Read full guideSnakes
Transformation, hidden fears, wisdom, healing. Snakes carry powerful meaning across nearly every culture.
Read full guideDeath
Endings, transformation, major life changes. Rarely literal, usually signals the death of something old to make way for new.
Read full guideFalling
Loss of control, anxiety, letting go, failure fears. How you fall, and whether you land, changes the meaning.
Read full guideGet Personalized Symbol Analysis
DreamTap doesn't just match symbols to dictionary definitions, it analyzes your specific dream context to provide personalized interpretations. Your first analysis is free.
After years of personal Jungian dreamwork and shadow exploration, I built DreamTap to solve my own problem: capturing dreams without fully waking up, and having thoughtful analysis ready the next morning. I'm not a dream expert—but I've studied the sources and learned from experience.
DreamTap is developed by LiftHill Studio
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