Reptile

Any reptile in your dreams may depict your surface feeling reactions to that creature, such as like or dislike, attraction or repulsion. But in many cases reptiles such as a snake or lizards are used to portray your very basic instinctive responses to life, such as the fear reaction, flight or fight response, the sexual drive toward reproduction, territorial display, and ritualistic social behaviour – shaking hands, bowing, etc.

The reptile also frequently shows how you are dealing with such enormous flows of emotional or nervous energy. For instance fear is a great protector, but in human life, because we can keep stimulating the response by imagination, by words, it can become overactive to the point of illness. A gazelle may be chased by a lion. If it escapes it doesn’t spend days shaking or drinking alcohol to cover its fear. In a few minutes it is quietly grazing. A human in such an encounter can replay it over and over.

The point is that you cannot become a fully mature human being until you learn to meet these ancient drives and integrate them into your everyday life. So it is important to develop a working relationship with the snakes, lizards and frogs in your dreams. Also the reptile in our dreams is often an expression of our physical makeup. See: Reptile Brain; Snake, Alligator, Frog.