Dream Galaxy

Research case · Animals

A basket of cold squirming snakes

England · before 1911

I dreamed last night I had a basket of cold squirming snakes beside me; they just touched me all over, but did not hurt; I felt mad with loathing and hate of them, and the beasts would not kill me. That, I thought, was my eternal punishment for my sins.

Original text — The World of Dreams, Havelock Ellis

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Source
The World of Dreams — Havelock Ellis, 1911. Case report
Rights
Public domain (US)
Record type
Research case
Place
England · British
Date
before 1911
Uncertainty
Moderate — Reported in Havelock Ellis’s study of dreams.
Imagery
Animals · Darkness
Feelings
Horror · Unease

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Animals in dreams often speak, change form or carry strong feeling. Ellis suggested such dreams may lie behind fables of talking animals; later writers read them as instinct given a face.

Ellis (1911), note 262

Mythological

Messenger animals are everywhere in myth: the eagle in Penelope’s dream, Pharaoh’s seven cows, guardian dogs at the gates of the dead.

Odyssey XIX; Genesis 41

Chinese traditions

In the Liezi’s “deer under banana leaves”, a hunted deer becomes a puzzle about where dreaming ends; Zhuangzi’s butterfly turns the question inside out.

Liezi; Zhuangzi

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images