I’m part of a huge war that my side narrowly wins. I stand in a field full of skeletons- both animal and human, all completely bare bones. There’s piles, hills of them- as far as anyone can see. Half of the bones are a darker tan and look weathered, while the other half look like they’re bleached white. The bleached white ones start to rattle, until they lift up into the air and start to collect together- forming the mammoths and other animals that died in battle. Their bodies start to regenerate around the formed bones, from the feet up. All of the human skeletons stay dead.
I leave the area where the animals are regenerating toward a dirt cliff. On the other side of the cliff is a tall bone structure that I know once belonged to an animal I cared dearly about. It’s as tall as a building. I need to climb up and over this dirt if I’m going to be able to see the animal.
I scale the cliff one pocket at a time- but it’s no easy task. The dirt is compacted but is still not quite stone- similar to sandstone. It’s fragile. There’s places I can grab that feel stable but they crack and crumble when I try to put my weight on them. I spot a penny on my way up, but ignore it.
I get quite a ways up, but can’t seem to find a safe way up and over. I look down and see I’m so far up that if I fall, I’ll be in a world of hurt. I climb back down, snagging that penny on my way. At the bottom I end up in a shed with a few other little treasures that I collect. [End]
Relative to Real Life~
Day of September 7th, 2015
Real-life characters: None.
Dream-created characters: People that fought and died, animals.
Real-life places: None.
Dream-created places: Field of bones, cliff, area beyond cliff that I can’t reach.
Different than real life: I’ve never been in battle, mammoths are extinct.
Reoccurring: No.
Precogntive: No experiences yet.
To see bones in your dream, represent the discovery of your personal, family, or cultural secrets. It is also symbolic of your underlying strengths that you have not yet recognized. Consider the symbolism of getting to the "bare bones" or the significance of "having a bone to pick with someone."
To dream of broken bones, represents the discovery or realization that that there is a weakness in your plans or in your thinking. Your dream may call for your immediate attention to a particular situation or relationship.
To see a dog eating or chewing a bone, represents your basic desires and instincts.
A dream about bones can represent a loss, whether it is the loss of material things, such as money or poseessions, or the loss of a person - either someone going away temporarily, or a more permanent loss.
If you dream that you find a bone, you could be worried about a conflict between you and the rest of your family.
Picking up a bone in a dream can be a sign that you are feeling dissatisfied with some aspect of your life.
A bone in a dream may also be a phallic symbol.
To dream that you are standing at the edge of a cliff, indicates that you have reached an increased level of understanding, new awareness, and a fresh point of view. You have reached a critical point in your life and cannot risk losing control. Alternatively, it suggests that you are pondering a life-altering decision.
To dream that you or someone falls off a cliff, suggests that you are going through a difficult time and are afraid of what is ahead for you. You fear that you may not be up for the challenge or that you cannot meet the expectations of others.
To dream that you are climbing to the top of a cliff, symbolizes your ambition and drive. The dream may parallel your desires to achieve success and to be the at the top of your profession. It is analogous to climbing the corporate ladder.
Dreaming that you are standing at the edge of a cliff means that you have arrived to an increased level of understanding, new awareness, and a fresh point of view. You may have reached a critical point in your life and may fear losing control.
Standing on the edge of a cliff could be a frightening, but at the same time an exhilarating experience. Dreaming about cliffs generally indicates that the dreamer has come to a point of heightened understanding and awareness. An increase in the level of consciousness may have occurred. Through hard work and perseverance, the dreamer may have reached a vantage or plateau of understanding.
Dreaming of animals is a indication that you should be listening more carefully to your instincts. Try to think of the characteristics and particularities of each animal: what do you think it refers to? You may need to identify your instincts, as primitive as they can be, and try to find how they can help you in your life. Each animal has also his own significance: an owl could indicate bad news, death or sickness, a friendly dog can represent a good friend, a snake can be a mean enemy, a bird will herald some good news, a horse means victory, an agressive threatening black dog can present itself as the guardian of the dead...Generally speaking, talking animals represent superior forms of intelligence and are spiritually more important.
The interpretation of the animal in your dream depends on your relationship with it in daily life. Animals represent the qualities in our character or specific aspects of our personalities. They could symbolise our more intuitive and instinctive parts, or they could serve as messengers for the unconscious.
There are various interpretations, for the animals you see in your dreams. Some dream researchers feel that animals appear to take on activities (in your dream) of which you are subconsciously ashamed. For example a woman who had cheated while dieting saw a farm animal eating too much of cattle feed repeatedly, in her dreams!
These apart, here are the animals, and their significance according to dream interpretation:
* Alligator - Dangerous emotions
* Ants- Dissatisfaction
* Bees- hard work and organization
* Butterfly - spiritual or emotional metamorphosis
* Camel - endurance/financial gain
* Dinosaurs - refers to the past
* Donkey- humility/honor
* Dragonfly- good news
* Eagle- prosperity
* Elephant- knowledge/ power/ strength
* Horse- Power and sexual energy
* Mice- disappointment
* Tiger- power and beauty
Of the utmost importance in symbolism, both in connexion with
their distinguishing features, their movement, shapes and colours, and because of
their relationship with man. The origins of animal symbolism are closely linked
with totemism and animal worship. The symbolism of any given animal varies
according to its position in the symbolic pattern, and to the attitude and context
in which it is depicted. Thus the frequent symbol of the ‘tamed animal’ can
signify the reversal of those symbolic meanings associated with the same animal
when wild. In the struggle between a knight and a wild or fabulous animal—one of
the most frequent themes in symbolism—the knight’s victory can consist either
in the death or in the taming of the animal. In Chrétien de Troyes’ mediaeval
romance, Yvain, the hero is assisted by a lion. In the legend of St. George, the
conquered dragon serves its conqueror. In the West, some of the earliest references to animal symbolism are found in Aristotle and in Pliny, but the most
important source is the treatise Physiologus, written in Alexandria in the 2nd
century A.D. Another important contribution was made one or two centuries
later by Horapollo, with his two treatises on Hieroglyphica, based on Egyptian
symbolism. From these sources flows a stream of mediaeval animal symbolism
which produced such notable bestiaries as that of Philip of Thaun (A.D. 1121),
Peter of Picardy and William of Normandy (13th century); or the De Animalibus,
attributed to Albertus Magnus; Libre de les besties of Raymond Lull; and
Fournival’s Bestiaire d’Amour (14th century). The primitives’ view of animals,
as analysed by Schneider (50), is mirrored in all these works, namely that while
man is an equivocal, ‘masked’ or complex being, the animal is univocal, for its
positive or negative qualities remain ever constant, thus making it possible to
classify each animal, once and for all, as belonging to a specific mode of cosmic
phenomena. More generally, the different stages of animal evolution, as manifested by the varying degrees of biological complexity, ranging from the insect and
the reptile to the mammal, reflect the hierarchy of the instincts. In Assyrian and
Persian bas-reliefs, the victory of a higher over a lower animal always stands for
the victory of the higher life over the lower instincts. A similar case is in the
characteristic struggle of the eagle with the snake as found in pre-Columbian
America. The victory of the lion over the bull usually signifies the victory of Day
over Night and, by analogy, Light triumphing over Darkness and Good over Evil.
The symbolic classification of animals is often related to that of the four Elements. Animals such as the duck, the frog and the fish, however much they may
differ one from the other, are all connected with the idea of water and hence with
the concept of the ‘primal waters’; consequently, they can stand as symbols of
the origin of things and of the powers of rebirth (37, 9). On the other hand, some animals, such as dragons and snakes, are sometimes assigned to water, sometimes
to earth and sometimes even to fire (17). However, the most generally accepted
classification—which is also the most fundamentally correct—associates aquatic
and amphibious animals with water; reptiles with earth; birds with air; and mammals (because they are warm-blooded) with fire. For the purposes of symbolic
art, animals are subdivided into two categories: natural (often in antithetical
pairs: toad/frog, owl/eagle, etc.) and fabulous. Within the cosmic order, the latter
occupy an intermediate position between the world of fully differentiated beings
and the world of formless matter (50). They may have been suggested by the
discovery of skeletons of antediluvian animals, and also by certain beings which,
though natural, are ambiguous in appearance (carnivorous plants, sea urchins,
flying fish, bats), and thus stand for flux and transformism, and also for purposeful evolution towards new forms. In any event, fabulous animals are powerful
instruments of psychological projection. The most important fabulous animals
are: chimaera, sphinx, lamia, minotaur, siren, triton, hydra, unicorn, griffin, harpy,
winged horse, hippogryph, dragon, etc. In some of these the transmutation is a
simple one, and clearly positive in character—such as Pegasus’ wings (the spiritualization of a lower force)—but more often the symbol is a consequence of a
more complex and ambiguous process of the imagination. The result is a range of
highly ambivalent symbols, whose significance is heightened by the ingrained
belief in the great powers exercised by such beings as well as in the magic importance of abnormality and deformity. In addition, there are animals which, while
hardly or not at all fabulous in appearance, are credited with non-existential or
supernatural qualities as the result of a symbolic projection (for example, the
pelican, phoenix, salamander). There is a fragment by Callimachus on the Age of
Saturn, in which animals have the power of speech (this being a symbol of the
Golden Age which preceded the emergence of the intellect—Man—when the
blind forces of Nature, not yet subject to the logos, were endowed with all sorts
of extraordinary and exalted qualities). Hebrew and Islamic traditions also include
references to ‘speaking animals’ (35). Another interesting classification is that of
‘lunar animals’, embracing all those animals whose life-span includes some kind
of cyclic alternation, with periodic appearances and disappearances (18). The
symbolism of such animals includes, in addition to the animal’s specific symbolic
significance, a whole range of lunar meanings. Schneider also mentions a very
curious primitive belief: namely, that the voice of those animals which can be said
to serve as symbols of heaven is high-pitched if the animal is large (the elephant,
for example), but low-pitched if the animal is small (as the bee); while the converse is true of earth-symbol animals. Some animals, in particular the eagle and the lion, seem to embody certain qualities, such as beauty and the fighting spirit,
to such an extent that they have come to be universally accepted as the allegorical
representations of these qualities. The emblematic animals of Roman signa were:
eagle, wolf, bull, horse and wild boar. In symbolism, whenever animals (or any
other symbolic elements) are brought together in a system, the order of arrangement is always highly significant, implying either hierarchical precedence or relative position in space. In alchemy, the descending order of precedence is symbolized by different animals, thus: the phoenix (the culmination of the alchemical
opus), the unicorn, the lion (the necessary qualities), the dragon (prime matter)
(32). Symbolic groups of animals are usually based on analogical and numerical
patterns: the tetramorphs of Western tradition, as found in the Bible, are a fundamental example; another example would be the Chinese series of the four benevolent animals: the unicorn, phoenix, turtle and dragon. The following animals occur
particularly in Romanesque art: the peacock, ox, eagle, hare, lion, cock, crane,
locust and partridge (50). Their symbolic meaning is mainly derived from the
Scriptures or from patristic tradition, though some meanings, arising from analogy, such as that between cruelty and the leopard, are immediately obvious (20).
The importance in Christianity of the symbols of the dove, the lamb and the fish
is well known. The significance of the attitudes in which symbolic animals are
depicted is usually self-evident: the counterbalancing of two identical—or two
different— animals, so common in heraldry, stands for balance (i.e. justice and
order, as symbolized for instance by the two snakes of the caduceus); the animals
are usually shown supporting a shield or surmounting the crest of a helmet. Jung
supports this interpretation with his observation that the counterbalancing of the
lion and the unicorn in Britain’s coat of arms stands for the inner stress of
balanced opposites finding their equilibrium in the centre (32). In alchemy, the
counterbalancing of the male and the female of the same species (lion/lioness, dog/
bitch) signifies the essential contrast between sulphur and mercury, the fixed and
the volatile elements. This is also the case when a winged animal is opposed to a
wingless one. The ancient interest in animals as vehicles of cosmic meanings, over
and above the mere fact of their physical existence, persisted from the earliest
beginnings of the Neolithic Age up to as late as 1767, with the publication of such
works as Jubile van den Heyligen Macarius. This treatise describes processions
in which each symbolic chariot has a characteristic animal (the peacock, phoenix,
pelican, unicorn, lion, eagle, stag, ostrich, dragon, crocodile, wild boar, goat, swan,
winged horse, rhinoceros, tiger and elephant). These same animals, together with
many others (such as the duck, donkey, ox, owl, horse, camel, ram, pig, deer stork, cat, griffin, ibis, leopard, wolf, fly, bear, bird, dove, panther, fish,-snake
and fox) are those mainly used also as watermarks in papermaking. The use of
watermarks, undoubtedly mystical and symbolic in origin, spread throughout the
Western world from the end of the 13th century onwards. All the above particular
symbolic uses rest on a general symbolism of animals, in which they are related to
three main ideas: the animal as a mount (i.e. as a means of transport); as an object
of sacrifice; and as an inferior form of life (4). The appearance of animals in
dreams or visions, as in Fuseli’s famous painting, expresses an energy still undifferentiated and not yet rationalized, nor yet mastered by the will (in the sense of
that which controls the instincts) (31). According to Jung, the animal stands for
the non-human psyche, for the world of subhuman instincts, and for the unconscious areas of the psyche. The more primitive the animal, the deeper the stratum
of which it is an expression. As in all symbolism, the greater the number of objects
depicted, the baser and the more primitive is the meaning (56). Identifying oneself
with animals represents integration of the unconscious and sometimes—like immersion in the primal waters—rejuvenation through bathing in the sources of life
itself (32). It is obvious that, for pre-Christian man (as well as in amoral cults),
the animal signifies exaltation rather than opposition. This is clearly seen in the
Roman signa, showing eagles and wolves symbolically placed on cubes (the
earth) and spheres (heaven, the universe) in order to express the triumphant
power of the force of an instinct. With regard to mythic animals, a more extensive
treatment of this subject is to be found in the Manual de zoología fantástica of
Borges y Guerrero (Mexico and Buenos Aires, 1957), in which such creatures are
characterized as basically symbolic and, in most cases, expressive of ‘cosmic
terror’.
To see animals in your dream, represent your own physical characteristic, primitive desires, and sexual nature, depending on the qualities of the particular animal. Animals symbolize the untamed and uncivilized aspects of yourself. Thus, to dream that you are fighting with an animal signifies a hidden part of yourself that you are trying to reject and push back into your subconscious. Refer to the specific animal in your dream.
To dream that animals can talk, represent superior knowledge. Its message is often some form of wisdom. Alternatively, a talking animal denotes your potential to be all that you can be.
To dream that you are saving the life of an animal, suggests that you are successfully acknowledging certain emotions and characteristics represented by the animal. The dream may also stem from feelings of inadequacy or being overwhelmed. If you are setting an animal free, then it indicates an expression and release of your own primal desires.
To see lab animals in your dream, suggest that an aspect of yourself is being repressed. You feel that you are not able to fully express your desires and emotions. Alternatively, it suggests that you need to experiment with your fears, choices, and beliefs. Try not to limit yourself.
To see freshly stirred dirt in your dream, symbolizes thriftiness and frugalness. Dirt is also representative of situations where you have been less than honorable and may have acted in a devious manner. You are trying to conceal or bury your questionable behavior.
To dream that someone throws dirt at you, suggests that someone is questioning your character and harming your reputation.
To dream of seeing freshly stirred dirt around flowers or trees, denotes thrift and healthful conditions abound for the dreamer.
To see your clothes soiled with unclean dirt, you will be forced to save yourself from contagious diseases by leaving your home or submitting to the strictures of the law.
To dream that some one throws dirt upon you, denotes that enemies will try to injure your character.
Seeing freshly stirred dirt in your dream, symbolizes thriftiness and frugalness. Dirt is also representative of situations where you have been less than honorable and may have acted in a devious manner. Dreaming that someone throws dirt at you indicates that enemies will try to attack your character and harm your reputation. Dreaming that your clothes are soiled with dirt means of a contagious disease that you have been stricken with.
Dreaming about dirt, as in something dirty, could represent your state of mind or a situation from your daily life. It could symbolise a relationship, a business venture, or any other part of your life where you, or someone else has been less than honest and honourable. Dirt in your dreams could also represent your unwholesome attitudes and a devious state of mind. This dream, depending on its details, may be encouraging you to clean up "your act" inside and out.
To dream of a certain place in your dream, is telling of your inner state of mind. Consider the feel, the appearance, and the coloring of the place. Also consider your own personal feelings and memories with that particular place.
To dream of seeing only the side of any object, denotes that some person is going to treat your honest proposals with indifference.
To dream that your side pains you, there will be vexations in your affairs that will gall your endurance.
To dream that you have a fleshy, healthy side, you will be successful in courtship and business.
To see green fields in your dream, symbolize great abundance, freedom, and happiness. You may also be going through a period of personal growth. Alternatively, this dream may simply be an expression for your love of nature.
To see freshly plowed fields in your dream, signify growth, early rise to wealth and fortunate advancements to places of honor.
To see dead or barren fields, signifies lack, pessimism and your jaded prospects for the future.
To dream of dead corn or stubble fields, indicates to the dreamer dreary prospects for the future.
To see green fields, or ripe with corn or grain, denotes great abundance and happiness to all classes.
To see newly plowed fields, denotes early rise in wealth and fortunate advancement to places of honor.
To see fields freshly harrowed and ready for planting, denotes that you are soon to benefit by your endeavor and long struggles for success.
Seeing green fields in your dream, symbolizes great abundance, freedom, and happiness. You may also be going through a period of personal growth. Alternatively, this dream may simply be an expression for your love of nature.` Seeing freshly plowed fields in your dream means growth, early rise to wealth and fortunate advancements to places of honor. Seeing dead or barren fields means lack, pessimism and your jaded prospects for the future.
Dreaming that you’re in a field can have differing meanings, you have to look at all the details carefully and make an interpretation based on how it made you feel; still, green and pleasant fields are usually a symbol of happiness and great prosperity in your personal and working life. If the field has withering crops and is dried up it signifies completely the opposite. If you are in a newly ploughed field it can signify that you will achieve everything you want so long as you put in the hard work, you reap what you sow as it were.
All things that flow and grow were regarded in early religions as a symbol
of life: fire represented the vital craving for nourishment, water was chosen for its
fertilizing powers, plants because of their verdure in spring-time. Now, all—or
very nearly all—symbols of life are also symbolic of death. Media vita in morte
sumus, observed the mediaeval monk, to which modern science has replied La vie
c’est la mort (Claude Bernard). Thus, fire is the destroyer, while water in its
various forms signifies dissolution, as suggested in the Psalms. In legend and
folklore, the Origin of life—or the source of the renewal of the life forces—takes
the form of caves and caverns where wondrous torrents and springs well up (38).