movie-like dream of a snake-man

[crazypitz]

I had a dream about 3 men and a woman that all knew each other. The entire dream takes place in pitch dark night, but the rooms always have some kind of really bright light shining from somewhere.

It started with 2 of the guys, 1 a bleach blond and the other dark-haired, both broke into a very fancy office that also had a huge TV screen mounted to the wall and emitting nothing else but white light and a few track lights that were also lit. Both were nonchalant about the break and were looking for something. I wasn't there physically, but I remember asking what they were doing there. They each answered me in turn, the blond explained that they were breaking in there to "find the truth" and hopefully expose it in time, maybe even be able to clear their names. The other explained that they didn't have much time. But neither hurried to find the "truth". Instead, they calmly went through as many books as they could. I was getting nervous for them, wondering myself that if they had so little time, why aren't they hurrying? The security system finally detects their presence and the alarm goes off. The blond announces, "Ah- looks like it's time to go." and the dark-haired one responds, "We're not gonna get out of here in time. they're going to get our picture." Both then calmly and coolly, made their way out of the office apartment, practically walking out the front door, but their picture was taken, as expected.

in the next scene, the environment was bar-like and was lively with a lot of people in the background. Both guys met up with the 3rd, after realizing that he should be informed that their picture being taken could tip off a sworn enemy of his whereabouts. The 3rd guy was wearing a trenchcoat, sunglasses, smoking a cigarette and had some patches of what looked like scaly skin or reptilian kind of skin and it kind of glowed. There was always this bright light hitting him from behind, giving his this lit up outline. There were times where his face almost seemed snake-like. He was really upset that he could be found and threw down his cigarette in frustration. The girlfriend, who suddenly ended up being myself, was asked to dispose of this stick of sage that was still burning and letting off an enormous amount of smoke and a very distinctive scent that could also tip off the snakeman's presence. So, I ran out with it as quickly as I could to throw it into the body of water nearby. As I did, the sworn enemy was outside and had already spied me. I was shocked at how quickly he had shown up and hoped the snakeman got away. The enemy had asked if he could ask me a few questions over dinner. I agreed so as not to look as suspect as I already appeared. As we sat down to dinner, I was handed something that looked like a book with advertising samples. I asked the man to excuse me while I looked through the book as I did have some business to attend to. As I looked through the samples slowly, I spied a sample that seemed out of place and was from the coffee shop down the street, which meant the snakeman was waiting for me at the coffee shop. I felt terrible b/c here I am being held up by someone intent on questioning me, when someone I cared about really needed me to be with him right now. I didn't know how I could get away without having this enemy find out where he was. The dream was very movie-like and, for some reason, none of the people in my dream were of the same ethnicity as me.

There is another segment that followed, but I can't remember how it came to this scene, but I also dreamt that I was being highly scrutinized by enormous and scary creatures. One of them, as I distinctly recalled, looked like a gigantic, dirty, sweaty, angry version of the Buddha with a highly threatening expression and very big eyes constantly staring at me.

Lemme know what you think. Any and all input is greatly appreciated. thank you!

[Athanor]

Although it would usually be best to have general background information about you as well as recent events just before the dream in order to provide an accurate interpretation, by looking at your other posts, the basic context out of which this dream arose can be determined so that a few ideas can be tried out to see if they might fit your personal situation.

For example, there are a total of four men directly involved as opposed to yourself as the dream-ego, so it’s possible that your so-called “masculine side” is the theme of the dream as a whole.

Also, “multiplicity” (the four men as opposed, say, to one man) usually is a symbolic way of showing that an aspect of the dreamer’s psychology tends to be “undeveloped” as yet so that it is “split up” as opposed to being “unified” which is generally viewed by dreams as being more positive in general terms.

It’s possible that an undeveloped state of affairs is also suggested by the overall “melodramatic movie” feel of the dream which you noticed as well as the fact that everything takes place during a pitch black night.

For instance, the blond and the dark haired man seem to be a kind of surface presentation of the problem of the “opposites” in life, similar to old movie westerns where the good guys always wore white hats while the baddies wore black ones.

The men are criminals which is also usually a sign of kind of general lack of control that the dreamer has over certain aspects of her or his personality for whatever reason.

In addition, the image of a male in the dreams of a woman usually symbolizes a group of inner aspects of herself related to “mind”, thoughts, opinions, meaning, the intellect, and issues related to focus and assertiveness for example.

The idea of opinions and the intellect seems to come up in the image of the fancy office which on the surface looks very impressive but which has a couple of unusual items related to thinking; that is, the TV screen emitting nothing but white light as well as the track lighting which is on (light is usually a symbol of thinking).

But in this apparently upscale environment, the men can’t “find the truth” which would “vindicate” them, suggesting that certain collective opinions (e.g. the imageless TV) could be blocking the finding of real meaning.

At this stage, the dream seems to suggest that you have little or no conscious control (not physically present) over these thwarted attempts to genuinely look into the agony of the “opposites” in life and other deep questions which could “free” the men and lead to genuine meaning over time.

In this way of looking at your dream, the men possibly symbolize certain energies which purposely but indirectly lead to the “exposure” of the underlying cause of this deadlock, i.e. the snake man (the men don’t try hard to evade detection, allowing a photo of them to be taken which can put the snake man in danger).

The snake man is apparently not a very attractive character but nonetheless, you are his girlfriend in the dream, perhaps suggesting that you’re under the sway of a negative aspect of the “inner man” (Animus) which one school of psychology defines as follows:

“Animus (Latin, “spirit”). The unconscious, masculine side of a woman’s personality. He personifies the logos principle [as opposed to the eros principle of relationship]. Identification with the animus can cause a woman to become rigid, opinionated, and argumentative. More positively, he is the inner man who acts as a bridge between the woman’s ego and her own creative resources in the unconscious”

If you’d like to read more about this inner man, Marion Woodman’s “Conscious Femininity” and “The Ravaged Bridegroom” among many of her books would be especially helpful.

It’s possible that the image of how the smoke could give the snake man away could be related to your intuition which could “sniff out” that something’s not quite right with this inner figure.

Perhaps you currently don’t trust your intuition very much but it apparently could play a part in “saving” you by getting rid of the negative snake man.

This idea seems to be strongly brought out by the detail of sage being specifically mentioned. That’s because etymology, believe it or not, is often very helpful in figuring out a symbol.

In this case, the word “sage” is derived from the Latin word “salvia” meaning “healing plant”.

But apparently there is a tendency for you to prefer keeping this way of seeing things mostly unconscious (agree to throw it in the water).

So it’s possible that your intuition is not very reliable and might tend to come and go, but it might be shown in the dream as being very on the mark at times (the other man has found out the basic area where the snake man is, either from the smoke and/or indirectly from the intuitive “picture” taken earlier of the thieves).

It might be that a liking for the material things in life (the advertising sample book) somehow tends to keep you too attached to a basically negative attitude (love the snake man and hope he got away).

The fact that the people in the dream aren’t of your ethnicity points to the fact that the theme of the dream relates to mostly “foreign” and unknown parts of yourself.

The angry Buddha might symbolize certain “rules” and “guidelines” that, rather than being helpful and supportive, are tending to be sometimes misused as “rigid principles” which perhaps causes you to feel a little unworthy at times.

However as mentioned, without knowing anything about you, this approach to your dream may not fit your personal circumstances very well, but I hope these ideas can be helpful in some way.

[crazypitz]

Actually, I think you pretty much nailed it. I certainly wasn't expecting perfection, but I do feel that certain people will be drawn to you to give the message you need to hear (pleasant or not), even on internet posts about dreams. Although I found some of it uncomfortable, I feel that I only found it uncomfortable because I am simply unfamiliar. But I do have areas in my life that I feel I need to explore further, and often times, they are areas that I'm not very good at pinpointing. In this case, you gave me far clearer hints of direction than I could've figured out on my own. And this analysis has definitely helped me put a number of things into perspective.

Thank you kindly for the time you put into this. It is greatly appreciated. =)