Dreaming about
snakes

Snakes are one of the oldest and most widely shared dream images there is, and a snake dream rarely feels neutral. Most people wake from one either frightened or strangely fascinated. That reaction is the best clue you have, because dreaming about snakes usually comes down to one of three things. It's a fear you haven't looked at, a person you don't quite trust, or a change in you that's already under way.

Which of the three it is depends on the detail of your dream. A snake that bites you isn't the same dream as one you calmly watch from a distance, and a snake in your own bed says something different from one in the wild. And what was going on in your life the week before matters just as much, so the same snake can mean opposite things for two people.

What dreaming about snakes means

Snakes carry more meanings than most animals because people have always been of two minds about them. They kill, but they also stand for healing (a snake still winds around the staff of Asclepius on ambulances and pharmacy signs). They hide and strike without warning, and they grow by shedding their whole skin and leaving it behind. Why would one animal mean so much? Because each of those facts gives you a reading.

A fear you haven't faced

The most common reading of a snake dream is also the simplest one. Plenty of people are afraid of snakes without ever having met one, and a dream reaches for the clearest picture of fear it has. Was the snake hidden, coiled somewhere you couldn't see, or did it appear just as you put your foot down? Then look for a worry with the same shape, something you know is there but keep stepping around. One theory of dreaming argues this is exactly what such dreams are for, with the brain rehearsing threats at night so you're readier for them by day.^[1]

Someone you don't fully trust

English has "a snake in the grass" for a reason. When the snake felt sly more than dangerous, or turned up somewhere that should feel safe (your home, your office, a friend's kitchen), the dream is often about a person. It doesn't have to be someone who has betrayed you. More often it's someone you've had a small, quiet doubt about, the colleague who's a little too friendly or the friend whose story didn't quite add up, and the dream says out loud what you only half noticed during the day.

A change you're in the middle of

A snake has to split its old skin to keep growing, and that's the reading people tend to forget. If you weren't afraid in the dream, if you watched the snake, followed it or even held it, the snake can be the change itself (a new job, the end of a relationship, a habit you're finally dropping). Seen that way the dream is less a warning than a picture of you outgrowing something, which can feel uncomfortable and still be good news.

Desire and raw energy

Snakes have been tied to sex and to life energy for as long as people have written about dreams, from Freud's reading (more on that below) to the coiled serpent of yoga traditions. A snake dream that left you excited, or unsettled in a way that wasn't quite fear, may be about attraction, or about energy you've been holding back.

Dreaming about a snake biting you

A bite is the most searched snake dream, and usually the one that wakes you up. It means the thing the snake stands for has reached you. The worry is no longer at a distance, the person you doubted has done something, or the change has arrived whether you're ready or not. Where it bit you is worth a thought. A bite on the hand is often read as being about something you're doing or about to do (reaching for a job, signing something, holding on to someone). A bite on the foot or leg points to the path you're on, and whether you feel safe walking it.

If the bite didn't hurt much, or you shook it off and kept going, the dream may be telling you the fear is bigger than the thing itself. If you kept dreaming about the bite after waking, that's worth sitting with, because it usually means the situation is still live.

Dreaming about black snakes

Black snakes are the color people search for most, and they tend to carry the heavier readings, like grief, low mood, or something hidden, either from you or by you. Read through Jung's idea of the shadow (the part of yourself you'd rather not see), a black snake can be a trait or a feeling you've pushed out of sight and that now wants attention. But that isn't a bad sign, and it's often the dream that comes just before you admit something to yourself.

Dreaming about green, white or yellow snakes

Color readings come from folklore more than from any theory, but they're consistent enough to be useful. A green snake tends to mean growth or healing, though the green of envy is in there too. A white snake is rare in nature, so dreams tend to treat it as special (a sign of healing, a clear warning, or something spiritual, depending on who you ask). Yellow is nature's warning color, and it's also the color of cowardice in English, so a yellow snake can be about caution or about a fear of standing up for yourself. Red snakes go with anger, passion and danger. Before you take any of these on board, ask what the color means to you, because your own association beats the folklore every time.

Dreaming about killing a snake

Killing a snake is usually one of the better snake dreams. You faced the thing you were afraid of, dealt with the person you didn't trust, or put an end to a situation that was draining you. The exception is when killing it felt wrong. If you woke up guilty or sad, ask whether you're cutting off something you actually need, like a change you're scared of or a desire you've decided you shouldn't have.

Dreaming about a huge snake

Size in a dream is usually about how big the problem feels, not how big it is. A huge snake that blocks your way is a worry that has grown to fill the room. Pythons and boas don't bite their prey to death, they squeeze. So if the giant snake was wrapped around you, think about what's squeezing you right now, whether it's debt, a controlling relationship or a schedule with no air left in it.

Dreaming about snakes in your house

A house in a dream is very often a picture of you, your private life and the people closest to you. Jung built a whole theory of the mind on a dream about a house.^[5] So a snake indoors brings the problem close to home. It may be about family, a partner or a roommate, or about something in yourself you've let in without looking at it. A snake in your bed narrows it further, to intimacy, sex and the person you share your life with.

Dreaming about a dead snake

A dead snake usually means the threat has passed, or that you've already outgrown whatever it stood for and haven't noticed yet. If the dead snake came back to life, it's a familiar pattern of a problem you thought was settled, an ex who reappears, or an old habit returning just when you'd stopped watching for it.

Dreaming about lots of snakes

Where one snake is a specific worry, a floor, a pit or a lake full of snakes is overwhelm. It's lots of small things that each feel dangerous, more than you can deal with one at a time, a bit like dreams of spiders or insects swarming. English calls a group of people you can't trust "a nest of vipers", and if the snakes were everywhere at work or in a group of friends, that's worth considering too.

Dreaming about a snake chasing you

A snake chasing you works like any chase dream, and being chased is the most common dream theme there is, with about four in five people remembering one.^[2] You're running from something you'd rather not face. Snakes are fast but they rarely chase people in real life, so a snake that hunts you down in a dream is your mind making the threat bigger than it is. People who manage to turn around and face the pursuer, in dreams like this, often report it shrinks or changes into something else.

Dreaming about snakes according to Jung and Freud

Few dream images have been argued over as much as the snake, and the big names in dream interpretation read it in very different ways.

Jung: the snake as instinct

Jung saw the serpent as instinct itself, the cold-blooded and ancient part of the mind, dangerous and healing at the same time.^[4] In his view a snake tends to appear when your conscious life has drifted too far from your body and your instincts, and the dream pulls you back. He had no patience for fixed symbol lookups, including this page, and would have begun by asking what snakes mean to you.

Freud: the snake as a male symbol

Of everyone who wrote about snake dreams, Freud went furthest. In The Interpretation of Dreams he named the snake as the most important of all male sexual symbols, alongside other animals like fish, cats and mice.^[3] For him a snake dream was very often about sexual desire or the fear of it, disguised just enough to let you sleep. He also insisted that your own associations come first and symbols second, which is easy to forget when people quote him.

Other readings

Artemidorus, a 2nd-century Greek diviner and the author of the oldest Greek dream book to survive, the Oneirocritica, split the animal in two.^[6] The great serpent, the drakon, stood for a king, for wealth (it guards treasure) and for time, since it sheds its old age with its skin, and one that came to you kindly was a very good sign. An ordinary snake was a sign of illness or of an enemy, and whatever it did to you in the dream, he held, they would do. The link between snakes and sickness hasn't gone away. In a study of pandemic dreams co-written by Deirdre Barrett, a Harvard psychologist with thousands of dreams on file, snake bites were one of the strange body images that dreams turned illness into, next to maggots and a body crumbling into sand.^[7]

The biblical and spiritual meaning of snakes in dreams

The serpent in the Bible

If you're looking for a biblical meaning, the Bible holds both readings. The serpent in Genesis tempts Eve with a half-truth, which is where snakes as lies and temptation come from.^[8] But in Numbers, Moses raises a bronze serpent on a pole and anyone bitten who looks at it lives,^[9] and Jesus tells his followers to be "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves".^[10]

Snakes in the Talmud

The Talmud, the foundational text of rabbinic Judaism, is far more cheerful than Genesis. In its long section on dreams, a snake is a sign that your livelihood is within reach, as close as dust is to a snake, a bite means it doubles, and killing the snake means you lose it.^[11] A rabbi called Rav Sheshet insisted that killing one doubled it too, and the text adds, quite dryly, that he had just dreamed of killing a snake.

Questions to ask about your snake dream

All the readings above are a starting point, and the detail only you know is what actually decides the meaning of your dream. So before settling on one, run through a few questions.

• Were you afraid of the snake, or curious about it?
• Where was it: outside, in your home, in your bed, in water?
• Did it remind you of anyone, in its look or the way it moved?
• What did you do: run, fight, freeze, watch, pick it up?
• What started, ended or changed in your life in the weeks before?

Oniri asks you questions like these before it reads your dream, so two snake dreams rarely get the same reading. And if snake nightmares keep coming back and wrecking your sleep, there are simple ways to have fewer nightmares, and it's worth mentioning to a doctor.