There's Always a Snake

Dreamed about a snake last night. Correction: snakes. Plural.
Needless to say, it was one of those 'toss and turn' kind of nights. I was in one of those small-town "zoos" where one room houses chickens, rabbits, frogs, turtles, maybe a fox or another random small animal. And a snake. There's always a snake.

So here I am in the snake room, and one gets loose. Now I don't know if any of you had the "snake show" at school when you were little -- if you're from my area, you definitely did -- but the man always used a hook to scoop the slithering things up, stick them in a mesh-like bag, and put them back in a box.  Which is what he did in my dream.  But then, out of the blue, a cat in the corner turns around, hikes its rear-end, and poops out another snake. I know, right? Crazy. And this one is between me and the door, so I'm trapped.

I wake up, sweating. My covers are strewn all over the place.

I rarely have nightmares, and I wouldn't even categorize this as a true nightmare. Why not? Because I know where it came from.  Isn't it better when we can trace the path our subconscious takes? Right now I'm reading up on the symbolism of serpents for my Bible as Literature class. Each week we're required to explore a literary element in a blog (a separate blog) and I'm pondering the meaning behind the serpent being chosen as the animal of sin. In fact, I picked up two books yesterday at the library and actually read the following passage:

"When a snake appears in a dream it represents powers from the depths of the psyches of others, powers as old, we might say, as this primordial reptile itself." - Dictionary of Symbolism by Hans Biedermann, 1989

So there you have it. I am powerful beyond my imagination. Or not precisely. Dream snakes can also mean rejuvenation, like the act of a snake shedding its skin. Which in my case, probably hits a little closer to home.

So snakes, blogs, dreams, psyches, rejuvenation... What did you dream about last night?

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