About Symbols of Sleep

Symbols of Sleep is an independent dream dictionary. We explain what common dream symbols — teeth falling out, being chased, snakes, water, and 264+ others — tend to mean, in plain English, for anyone who wakes up wondering.

How we write it

Each entry is written by hand, not spun from a template. We draw on three streams and try to be honest about which is which:

• Psychology — the way dream researchers and thinkers like Jung and Freud read recurring symbols, presented as perspective rather than fact.
• Common experience — the patterns that show up again and again in how people actually dream and what tends to be going on in their waking lives.
• Folklore & tradition — cultural and spiritual readings, always framed as beliefs (“in many traditions…”), never as certainty.

Dreams are personal. We aim to give you useful angles to think with, not a single “correct” answer. Nothing here is medical or psychological advice.

Get started

Try the dream interpreter to decode a dream in your own words, browse the full A–Z index, or get in touch.