DreamloreDream dictionary › Common dreams › Snakes
What does it mean to dream about snakes?
Snakes turn up in dreams in every culture, and the old dream books had plenty to say about them. These are Miller's own words on snakes and serpents, quoted exactly, with a link to each full entry.
What Miller wrote (1901)
To dream of snakes, is a foreboding of evil in its various forms and stages. … To kill them, you will feel that you have used every opportunity of advancing your own interests, or respecting that of others. You will enjoy victory over enemies. … To see or step on snakes while wading or bathing, denotes that there will be trouble where unalloyed pleasure was anticipated.
Read the full entry for “Snakes” →
To dream of serpents, is indicative of cultivated morbidity and depressed surroundings. There is usually a disappointment after this dream.
Read the full entry for “Serpents” →
Your dream is not a dictionary entry
A dream about snakes comes with a place, other people and a feeling, and the old books read the same image very differently depending on those details. Dreamlore takes your whole dream, spoken or typed, finds the passages that fit it in Miller and Freud, quotes them word for word, and leaves you one question to reflect on. The journal stays on your phone.
Read your own dream in DreamloreFull dictionary entries
Questions
What does it mean to dream about snakes?
In Miller's 1901 dictionary, snakes are mostly an omen of trouble and enemies, though killing a snake is read as victory over them. His separate entry on serpents speaks of low spirits and disappointment. Dreamlore offers these as a starting point for thinking about your own dream, not as a statement of what it means.
Where do these quotes come from?
They are quoted verbatim from public-domain books: Gustavus Hindman Miller's Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted (1901). Each quote on this page is checked word for word against the source text before the page is served, the same check the Dreamlore app runs on every quote it shows.
Other common dreams
Dream about teeth falling outDream about being chasedDream about fallingDream about flyingDream about water or drowningDream about deathDream about being pregnantDream about spidersDream about a houseDream about a carDream about fireDream about a babyDream about your partner cheatingDream about a weddingDream about school or examsDream about a tornado or stormDream about a dogDream about being naked
Dreamlore and these pages are for reflection and curiosity. The books quoted here are old — Miller wrote in 1901 and his entries read as omens, and many of Freud's ideas are disputed today. Take them as a starting point for thinking about your own dream, not as prediction or advice.