The lexicon
Dream dictionary
What a dream tends to mean — the psychological reading first, the folklore second, always labeled honestly. Look up the symbol you woke up with.
How do you use this dictionary?
Start with the strongest image — not the whole plot. Dreams are rarely stories; they're one or two charged pictures wrapped in narrative leftovers from the day. Look that image up, read the psychological reading first, and treat the folklore as context, not verdict. Then ask the only question that makes a dictionary useful: what does this symbol mean to you? A snake is a warning in one tradition, healing in another, and to a herpetologist it's Tuesday.
How is each entry structured?
Every entry follows the same shape. A direct answer in the first two sentences. The psychological reading — what the pattern tends to track in waking life. The cultural and spiritual readings, labeled as such. Then the common variations as their own questions, because "dreaming of a snake bite" and "dreaming of a shed snakeskin" point in different directions. Entries end with what to do the morning after — usually: write it down, name the feeling, notice what it touches.
Which matters more — the symbol or the feeling?
The feeling. Two people dream of the same falling; one wakes exhilarated and one wakes sick. Same symbol, opposite dreams. Use the symbol to find the entry and the feeling to choose between its readings. If the interpretation you read doesn't match what the dream felt like, keep the feeling and discard the interpretation. Dreams show what your attention keeps returning to — which is also why they pair naturally with a daily practice like the AYA Method: one shows you where attention goes at night, the other chooses where it goes in the morning.