Snakes in a Dream Meaning

Snakes in Dreams

The following instruction about  the meaning of snakes in dreams is carefully composed from over 18 years of personal experience as a nightly dreamer and as an interpreter of night visions for friends and strangers.

Snakes in dreams represent one or both of these two things: fear and/or evil forces.

Examples to support this dream symbol interpretation follow:

One repeating dream from the mid 90’s involved a massive snake. He manifested in dirty water. In each of these dreams, I would be swimming in a dirty creek. Waterborne sand colored the water, and reduced visibility to less than 20 feet. The giant snake would appear, and I would attempt to fight it. Something would go wrong, and I would wake up almost instantly. In each of these, I experienced a lot of fear.

Note the order of events: first, swimming in dirty water, second, fear, third, snake appears. The snake always appeared after I felt fear. So, symbolically, the snake represents one’s own fear. In life, fear “attacks” us. It stops us from applying for good jobs, prevents us from seeking better contracts in our business, and generally slows us down and forces bad decisions. Fear is an enemy. In Christianity, fear is a sin; fearing is a lack of faith and doubting God. Sin opens the door to the enemy, demonic elements. So:

Fear opens a door to sin, and through that door, a demonic force comes.

Here is another example. In this dream I am with my then business partner, Peter. Peter later betrayed me and framed me for embezzlement. He knew I was innocent. But, the third partner, who really stole the money, was powerfully connected. So, Peter chose the easy road. Here is the dream:

I am with Peter in a desert place. Peter is showing me an underground room. He says he goes there “all the time”, and it is safe. I am doubtful. But, after some convincing, I enter first. Once inside, I see massive numbers of snakes manifest and head toward me. After some yelling, I am lifted out. “That has never happened before,” Peter says.

Peter was unflappable. He was a trained professional psychologist and rarely flinched. Whether the dream foreshadowed the future deception and betrayal, or the snakes manifested for me because of fear, and not for him because of confidence, I do not know.

Here is how the business ended: Peter convinced me to meet with our third partner’s father, a Philadelphia lawyer. In the meeting, papers were quickly passed around. The lawyer pushed us to hurry. He had a meeting soon, he told us. After the papers were signed and removed from the meeting room, he informed us that we had just signed ownership over to the third partner. Now, he informed me that he golfs weekly with the sitting district attorney. This golf buddy will do anything he asks, he said. And, if I even set foot into one of the businesses, he will have me jailed and convicted of embezzlement. I believe that was the manifestation. Peter had been secretly talking with them, I later deduced. However, I don’t know if he knew what was going to happen. The crooked lawyer (the snakes) played us like the rookies we were.

So, snakes in dreams warn of evil forces. They enter in because of fear. If I had not been afraid, and if I did not have other sin in my life, I believe I would have come out on top in that contest.

More on the snake in the dirty creek dreams:

Dirty Creek: This represents the spiritual course of my life. At the time, I read heavily anything I could get. This included a lot of new age books, mythology, native American teachings, dream dictionaries, and other “contaminated” sources of information. My course was not clean.

Two-headed snake meaning: In one of the last dreams of fighting a snake in the dirty creek, I pinned one of the heads to the creek bed. As I held it there, I celebrated. A great sense of victory came into my heart. I silently cheered. Just then, the other end of the snake turned toward me. As it approached, I saw it had a second head. Since both hands were occupied holding the first head down, I panicked, and woke. So, I believe that one end of this (evil) snake is fear and the other extreme is arrogance. In the middle is fearlessness and humility- based on faith in God.

The two headed serpent occurs in the mythology of many cultures from Greece in Europe to Latin American Aztecs. I am going to interpret this as a problem difficult to assess, difficult to “get your hands on”. It is a complicated life issue, or a complicated personality flaw. Of course, the flaw may very well manifest in one or several ways.

Orca: In at least two of the dreams, the snake morphed into an orca, a killer whale. At the time, I pondered the meaning of a black & white mammal. I interpreted it to mean a mixture of good and bad. Like the dirty creek, it represented the mix of right (white) knowledge (my Bible reading) and false (black) teaching from the New Age section of the book store. The basis of my problems was the open door of false teachings I had naively chosen to bring into my life.

Snake: fear, an enemy