Posts Tagged ‘dream dictionary interpretation’
Penis
For a man the penis represents more than simply his sexual appetite. It depicts the whole drive of life through his glandular system that develops the body type he has. It is therefore often depicting a sense of his own power of self expression, his potency in expressing himself and capability in the world.
The healthy function of the sexual organs predispose a mans body toward male sexual characteristics such as square hips, muscular frame, facial hair and deeper voice. This brings a certain creative explosiveness to his personality, creates urges toward fatherhood and loving his woman, with connected desires to supply the needs of family if he is emotionally healthy. The positive aspect of the penis/masculinity is for him to want his woman to meet his maleness, his caring aggression, his sexual desire, with her own fiery female energy, needs and strength.
So the penis in the male dream can link with any of these characteristics, or in some way indicate difficulties, trauma or fears about them.
Example: The prick stands up for love. Maybe in youth it stands up for performance, or because you are expected to have sex, or because you believe you have no value if you cannot perform. But when you are 60, 70, or 80, the truth comes out. Can you love? The prick stands up when you feel that glow of life that we call love. This sort of love isn’t just there because you said you were going to do it at 12 o’clock that day. This love is an expression of life. Like life it has its seasons. It ebbs and flows. To press it to perform day after day is not to respect those seasons. With such little respect the flow diminishes. The prick no longer stands up except perhaps through artificial stimulation. You do not command life, it commands you. If it does not, you or dead. This sort of love responds to the human need. Perhaps it should be called compassion.
Example: Emily takes my penis and loses it? For a time Emily really did control my penis. I was completely at her mercy. P
This is one of the themes in male dreams, showing how the man is at the mercy of his sexual desires for a woman. In this sense he feels she controls him. It might even be that she is shown cutting off his penis, suggesting relationship with her kills his sexual drive.
Example: I broke it. I broke my dickey. It was dead. I was dead. I was dead and wanted to kill others too. I couldn’t ask for love because my dickey was broken. My prick. I didn’t have a prick. I didn’t want people to look at my prick because it was dead, broken. I couldn’t ask people to love me because they would know my prick was dead. I couldn’t love people because they would know. I wanted love but I couldn’t ask. My pride was gone. I lost my pride because I lost my prick I didn’t want to go on living without it and wanted to die.
“That’s why I killed my daddy. I killed him. I killed him because I wanted his prick. Mine was broken and wanted a good one. So I killed him to get his.
Example: Dreamt I cut off my penis and used it to masturbate myself. This I did by pushing the penis inside me, where presumably I had a vagina.
Example: ‘My lover Terry, myself and another woman were all on our bed. The other woman seemed very sure of herself and kissed Terry in a very intimate way, he doing the same to her as I lay very near to both of them. Then Terry stuck his bottom in the air and started to lick my chest and breast. I found myself licking around his penis, felt I was under some kind of pressure from both the other two to do so but didn’t feel too shattered as I did it with love for Terry, but I had a bitter taste in my mouth.’ Sally P.
In talking about this dream Sally said she often struggled with what she wanted, and what her partner wanted in sex. She might go along with his needs, but not find it palatable. Even if she did do it with some love, it might leave a ‘bad taste in her mouth’.
Example: ‘I felt as if I were as one with Terry and I realised he was trying to make a journey, as his penis, into his mother’s vagina. Her vagina looked like a long dark tunnel and was threatening to him. I said, ‘You haven’t given your mother satisfaction and you say you will not. Then he was really smashed up in body. Withdrawing into a garden with a high green hedge. I took a leaf from the hedge and began to pull it apart with my hands. Terry said, ‘Look what you are doing, teasing me.’ I felt withdrawal wasn’t the way and started to follow him, walking alongside the hedge. I said, ‘It feels like you are strangling me, so why don’t you do it and kill me?’ We have been going through a lot of sexual withdrawal, Terry saying his sexuality was his to do with as he wanted.’ Sally P.
This second dream of Sally’s is a shrewd summing up of Terry’s sexual fears. In fact Terry suffered a great deal of anxiety about sex, and later uncovered the sort of fear and desire to avoid giving his mother satisfaction in becoming a full blooded man shown in the dream. Our unconscious is a very capable psychologist, and while Terry in Sally’s dream represents her insights regarding him – and must not be seen as a statement of fact about Terry. Nevertheless, such insight are often enormously useful in dealing with relationship difficulties.
Just as women may experience penis envy, men may experience vagina envy. This because there is nothing that a man can do that is quite as miraculous as having a baby. In some men this involves a huge struggle regarding their sexual orientation or easy expression of heterosexual sex.
Example: Was in an underground train. It came out and floated on a lake or river. Then it drew back into the tunnel. I had a baby that I took into a toilet on the train, and put my penis into its back passage, having sex with it. Afterwards, in wiping my penis, a whole lot of stagnant looking sperm came out. I threw it down the toilet.
Although dreamer had never had any conscious urges to have sex with a baby or children, it is not uncommon to dream such dreams. In fact the dream is about the stagnant sperm. His normal sexual development had been disturbed as a baby, and he was reconnecting with it.
Penis replaced by vagina: Could be feeling inadequate as a man or be developing a contact with the female receptive in oneself. It might also show the loss of male drive in sexuality.
Loss of penis: See: castrate.
Penis turns into a snake: Feeling the intense instinctive drive of sexuality. This is a realisation of the drive as existing beyond one’s personality and is an expression of what the sex drive is doing, depending what is happening to the snake. See:reptiles lizards snakes.
Bleeding from penis: Emotional hurts or fears that are interfering with expression of healthy sexual feeling.
In a woman’s dream: Your relationship with, desire for a mate and therefore your relationship with your own desires and male characteristics, such as ambition, work capability, aggression, intellect.
For a woman, the penis may represent your feelings or fears about meeting a man’s full sexuality, as well as the deep experience of the relationship with your father, and all the issues of dependence, fear, love or anger that still exist in your from your childhood. It connects with your experience of growing from childhood, and how your father met your emerging female sexuality. The penis is also the holy grail of your desire for sexual expression. The reality underlying the symbols of temples and churches, embodying as they do the sacredness of the creative sexual drive and the mystery of life.
The penis might also depict the details of the sexual relationship with your partner. As with the example of Sally’s dream below, the events in the dream define the problem or relationship.
Freud suggested that some women experience penis envy – a sense that their vagina is not as good as a penis. This theme often appears on women’s dreams and may be the nucleus of a powerful conflict if explored.
Example: Dreamt that I have an icicle hanging off my penis
In this dream the man’s sexual drive is show as frozen, probably repressed by anxieties or relationship difficulties.
I was with a very attractive woman and felt to see if my penis was erect. It was, but I seemed to have no power there. When I explored the issue of my sexuality, I realised that when I hold back my sexual feelings toward women, for whatever reason, then I feel slightly depressed, disconnected from the world, and with less personal positiveness in what I do. It is almost like a stream of life flows through me when I am happily sexual, which is diminished by my restraints, whether moral or social. Once the river of life is flowing through me again I feel whole and healed – I feel I can achieve things in the world.
As with the above examples, the penis in a dream is usually a direct reference to sexual feelings, fears, or problems. As these can be quite complex several examples are given below.
Example: ‘So for the third time I held the woman and made love. The woman’s vagina was like a flower. I don’t mean to look at, but in physical sensation. My penis felt like it was penetrating petals of flesh and touching with great pleasure a central receptive area. I was left with the feeling of being able to make love again and again without any negative effects. It was a very positive and healthy feeling.’ John T.
John is feeling confident about his sexual drive. Although a powerful drive, subtle feelings and fears have an intense influence not only on the pleasure of sex, but also the response of the physical organs. The relationship with the penis and sex act in one’s dream shows what fears, hurts or attitudes are influencing the sexual flow. See: castrate.
Example: ‘Was in a house with my wife. Outside the door was Something which wanted to come into her – an invisible being. We were frightened and it said ‘Do not be afraid, I want you to put your penis in your wife and wait for me to activate you. In that way you will form a body for me.’ I woke and realised the dream was moving me to parenthood. Already having three children I realised this would mean another 20 years of responsibility. Nevertheless my wife and I made love. Two weeks later I dreamt my wife was pregnant with a son. In fact nine months later she bore a son.’ Nigel I.
In this interesting dream sequence the penis is Nigel’s drive to be a father. See: bed; knob; pole; reptiles lizards snakes.
Useful Questions and Hints:
In a female dream – what is my dream showing my relationship with male sexuality is?
In a male dream – what is my dream revealing about the way I relate to my sexual drive?
Does this dream reveal anything about the way I am in an intimate relationship – if so what is it?
Are there any signs of me growing beyond old patterns of my sexual/emotional behaviour – if so can I enhance them?
Here some useful links – Easy Dream Interpretation – Sexually Inadequate – Man In Your Dreams – Dream Like a Computer Game –
Pentacle
Often represents the human body, or the subtle spiritual life of the person. See: Five.
People or Person
Person and Individuals
“There must have been some dreams that made you wonder why a known person appeared in them. This is especially puzzling if you haven’t seen that person for years. I experience this all the time. Everyone I ever met in my life keeps showing up in my dreams. I can’t blame day residue for it. If somebody appears in my dream, there has to be a special reason for it.
I’ve been entering characters in my symbol book for a long time. Let me introduce you to a few. There’s Peter, one of my strongest helpers. He showed up riding on a horse in my ‘Cracking The Ice’ dream. Riding the horse he managed to crack the ice on a small lake, something I was unable to do on my own. I had to think for a while before I understood exactly why he appeared in my dream. Peter went to the same elementary school as I. One thing I eventually remembered about him was his inventiveness. This led me to realise that I use the appearance of Peter in a dream as a clue to consider whether I need to think of a more ingenious approach to an issue I am confronting.
There’s Frits, whose role I only recently got to understand. I could never see any pattern in the dreams he appeared in. Frits is a high school acquaintance, somebody who was often around, even though we weren’t really friends. I never fully understood it at the time. But it recently hit me that he was especially around when I was rebelling against the boredom of high school. He was having fun whenever I broke the rules, or did something else exciting. With that insight, looking back at the dreams, there is a pattern. Whenever my behaviour in a dream is more active than usual, he is around. He is the part of me that is having fun, because I’m not aware that I’m having fun myself.”
Apart from defining how you see one of your dream characters, and what relationship you have had to them in the past, as Harry suggests, it helps to simply consider how you feel about them, what of their characteristics are most important or noticeable to you. But occasionally it isn’t what you see in their character, but what you feel about them that is important. For instance a person who has frequently appeared in my dreams is a woman called Ann. I felt a lot of sexual attraction to Ann – although she may have felt nothing for me – and she appears in my dreams whenever loving feelings or closeness are being dealt with.
A man I used to work for, Leo, has appeared in dreams where a problem regarding outer activity was concerned. So Leo represents for me ways of dealing with difficulties I face in the world. He is the confidence and courage I have innately to meet things constructively.
But many characters in dreams are not people you have ever met or known, not even characters from films, plays or books. So you can’t look back on them and ask yourself what you observed or felt about them. In such cases it is most helpful to imagine yourself as that character and describe who you are, exactly as you are and how you act in the dream – as the dream character. As an example of this, one character in a dream, an old man, was dying. He was nobody I knew. When I imagined myself as him and described what I felt, and what was happening to me, it was clear he represented the experience I was facing at the time. I was letting my old life, a phase of my life, my old self, die. This was difficult but it was happening, and the dream helped me clarify what I was facing.
One of the most helpful ways to find the qualities of a dream character is to give them a name. For instance you might basically feel that a man you have seen or know slightly seems a practical outwardly capable person. So you could give him the name of Mr. Practical. Mr Practical therefore is your ability in dealing with everyday life, or outward activities. There could also be Mr Sexy, Miss How Do I Look, and so on. Naming characters gets easier if you stand in their role imaginatively as described above. For more information on this see standing in role under peer dream work.
But remember that a word in a sentence changes meaning, even subtly, as it is placed in a different context. The word light, for instance, can be used by saying, “I switched on the light.” Or we can say, “I felt very light-hearted.” Or even, “There was no light.”
Each of these brings about a different sense of surroundings or events. Similarly, the context of a character in your dream may change what you have defined of his or her qualities. So you must look to the context to get the final understanding as to what you dream character indicates in that particular dream.
A person who appeared in many of my dreams was a woman named Su. My relationship with Su was one in which I had been trying to learn to love her without being possessive or grasping. So in my dreams she always depicted my attempts to love in that way, or my attempts to learn a fuller love.
In one dream Su is shown paddling an inflatable dingy to a local town, where I am going to meet her. But there were difficulties about this. At the time of the dream I was dealing with a lot of people in very direct relationships, and Su in this dream shows that I still haven’t ‘met’ or integrated the ability to love without grasping or wanting to posses. The difficulty in the dream suggests that I find it difficult to express this more open love.
In a later dream, experienced just after I had led a weekend activity, I dreamt Su was visiting or with us. But she didn’t look like Su at all, being dark, indecisive and a weaker personality. I was talking with her, or just with her, when I realised that Mike (a close friend) was upstairs with my wife. He had arrived back from America. I wanted him to meet Su. I wanted to hug him, but I also wanted Su to see me do this. So although I hug him with love, there was also something of the purposely done thing about it.
Here Su is actually with me, in my house, so this is an entirely different context than with the previous dream. This shows a fuller integration with unconditional love. But the part at the end where I hope Su will see me ‘loving’ Mike points out that I am still moved by desires for acclaim and public attention.
So to summarise, consider each character and discover what qualities, faults, weaknesses or strength they depict for you. Give them a name, as this helps you remember their quality. But look to the context of the dream to find the detailed and changing expression of what the character depicts.
Couple: Depending on the context of the couple in the dream, they can represent the dreamers parents and the family situation and environment at the age of the couple portrayed; if the dreamer has been married, can depict the dreamer’s marriage situation at the age of the couple; hopes for a relationship; possible outcomes of a relationship; friendship; partnership; some sort of relationship.
Dead people: The influence those people still have in your life – i.e. you are still influenced by them, or your relationship with them, even though they are dead. Feelings about death.
Group of people: A group of people, as in Ivor’s dream below, can depict how one meets the pressure of social norms; public opinion. See: crowd.
Inner People: When you think about a lover, a friend or a person you know, you are only taking in your thoughts, impressions and feelings about them. So many people do not realise that they have an inner person equally as powerful as the external person you know. You have taken in millions of bits of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by meeting or living with them, and they change you and make you the person you are. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Such an inner person can appear in dreams because you still carry the memories or impressions of them, and so they influenced what you hold within you.
Many people are lost and feel as if they cannot more, are trapped, even by past loves. But in fact the more people we can ‘digest’ or accept as part of our own experience, the more freedom we have. Each person we have within us in this way is a new space, a new area or space to live in.
Example: Then I slowly became aware of a deeper sense of the discomfort. It was a feeling of being stuck in one place and not being able to move. It wasn’t anything to do with moving physically but was as an awareness. It felt awful and I tried to move but couldn’t. The only way of describing it was as if we are all made out of the same stuff – as an example concrete – and as such we filled all space. So the little space I filled could not move because all around was filled by others. I felt really stuck and wondered what I could do, but there seemed no way out of it. Yet I could not believe this was really how things were.
Most of this was spontaneous thoughts and movement through the experience, so that was how I was led to thinking about my cousin Sid again, and his situation of being constantly linked with his mother even after he died. Then I realised that I was linked with Rita, and in feeling that I realised that I could move in at least two positions – me and Rita – because of the loving connection I felt.
Then came a flood of realisation, every person I had loved was another position I could be in; and then I knew all the animals I had loved and even people I had a casual relationship with. But there was even more because in dreams and sessions I had become or encountered amazing things, people, creatures, the alien beings and others. I knew then that I was FREE to go anywhere and be almost anything, because their life pattern was now part of me. Then with a rush of wonder, I realised that the more people and creatures I loved, the bigger I became. See Digest
Large crowds: Enormous involvement of self in issue; ones relationship or feelings about the social environment one lives in; in groups we have a feeling of being looked at or on view – how we relate to that may be depicted by what we are doing in the dream group. See: party; roles.
Old person: It often relates to life experience even wisdom. But an old woman can depict your mother or a mother figure; and an old man your father or a father figure.
People from our past: Considering that the major part of our learning and experience occur in relationship to other people, such learning and experience can be represented by characters from the past. For instance a first boyfriend in a dream would depict all the emotions and struggles we met in that relationship, and what we learned from it or took away from it in terms of fears. Therefore dreaming often of people we knew in the past would suggest the past experiences or lessons are very active at the moment, or we are reviewing those areas of our life. A woman who had emigrated to Britain from a very different cultural background frequently dreamt, even twenty years afterwards, of people she knew in her native country. This shows her still very much in contact with her own cultural values and experiences.
Several people in a dream suggest: Not feeling lonely; involvement of many aspects of oneself in what is being dreamt about; social ability.
As social relationship is one of the most important factors outside of personal survival – and survival depends upon it – such dreams help us to clarify our individual contact with society. Human beings have an unconscious but highly developed sense of the psychological social environment. Ivor’s dream shows something we are all involved in – how we are relating to humans collectively. Are we in conflict with group behaviour and direction; do we conform, but perhaps have conflict with our individual drives; do we find a way between the opposites? Much of our response is laid down in childhood and remains unconscious unless we review it.
Example: ‘Walking alone through a small town. I was heading for a place that a group of people, in a street parallel to mine, were also heading for. A person from the group tried to persuade me that the RIGHT way to get to the place was along the street the group was walking. I knew the street did not matter, only the general direction. The person was quite disturbed by my independence. It made him or her feel uncertain to have their leader apparently questioned. I felt uncertain too for a moment.’ Ivor S.
In some dreams, a group of people represent what is meant by the word God. This may sound unlikely, but the unconscious, because it is highly capable of synthesis, often looks at humanity as a whole. Collectively humanity has vast creative and destructive powers that intimately affect us as individuals. Collectively it has performed miracles that looked at as an individual, appear impossible. How could a little human being build the great pyramid, or a space shuttle? The Bible echoes this concept in such phrases as ‘Whatever you do to the least of one of these, you do to me.’
Example: ‘I was outdoors with a group of people acting as leader. We were in the middle of a war situation with bullets playing around us. Maybe aeroplanes were also attacking. I was leading the group from cover to cover, avoiding the bullets. Paul W.
Despite feeling attacked, either by external events, or from inner conflicts, Paul is using leadership skills to deal with his own fears and tendencies. If a friend told us he had just had an argument with his wife and was going to leave her, we might sit down and counsel them by listening and helping them to sort out the hurt feelings from their long term wishes. We might point out they had felt this way before but it passed – in other words give feedback they had missed. In a similar way, our various emotions and drives often need this sort of skill employed by ourselves. This unifies us, leading to coping skills as in Paul’s dream.
Pepper
Warming up ones emotions; livening up the situation. It can also indicate irritation or stimulation. It is used to mean bombard someone or something when we say we peppered them with questions. It could be used to suggest the warming up of a relationship, a situation or sex. Can even represent a sexual stimulant if hot peppers.
It can indicate something you use to add to your pleasure. Or a deterrent if you feel attacked. It might indicate hot stuff, enthusiasm, or too hot to handle.
Green and red peppers: Adding goodness if sweet peppers. Can also link with your cooking or eating.
Example: I had been chopping green peppers in the afternoon. In the dream I was chopping peppers with a very sharp knife and I stabbed my hand. I woke and my hand – I was in agony with the pain. I was leaping round the bedroom trying to flex my hand.
Example: I went back to get some pepper sauce. I think a piece of my food fell on the table because when I returned with my pepper sauce and plate of food in my hand, I saw a cockroach. I felt grossed out by it and did not bother to pick it up my food.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do I have a hot temper, or heated feelings and desires?
Is there a current situation or something that is stimulating me?
Do I cook with pepper or peppers a lot?
Do I like or loathe them?
See Settings in Dreams – Because Factor – Key Words
Perfume Scent Smell
A smell can remind us of a particular situation or person. Odours attract, repulse, relax or offend. So they depicts feeling responses and intuition, and may summarise what we feel about a person or situation. Frequently in dreams a smell expresses an intuition of something rotten in ones life if the smell is bad. See Nose
A pleasant smell can indicate feelings of attraction, as with perfume or good food smell
Bad smell: Frequently in dreams a bad smell expresses an intuition of something rotten in ones life. Rotten might mean ‘bad’ emotions felt in a relationship; a hunch or feelings about something, as in the example; memories. So it might show feelings others or you feel about someone or a situation.
Example: ‘I went back in time in circles, almost as if going unconscious. I went back and back and then there came this awful smell such as I’ve never experienced. I always felt it was the smell of death. I would wake terrified. One night my husband, a practical and down to earth man, said he would read me to sleep to see if it helped me not have the dream. It made no difference I still had the nightmare. Imagine my surprise though. He said ‘I knew you’d had the dream again for there was an awful smell in the room for a minute.’’ Mrs E. C.
Example: While upstairs my wife had come up. As we walked down we got near the toilet and I suddenly smelt powerful smell of shit. It was like the inside of a dead turkey. I somehow connected it with my wife, but asked her if my son or someone had just being to the toilet. She said, “Yes, I had. But I had only done a pee”. Anyway, the smell went and I sat in the sitting-room. She went out then came in again and as soon as she was near the door I smelt a strong blast of shit. Now I knew it was connected with my wife and told her it was in relationship to her. She asked how, and I knew I deeply felt she was like a bag of shit. I saw her face – all the skin on her face – as like a thin paper bag full of shit. I tried to tell her this but my mouth and body just would not say it. I tried but no words would come. I looked at her and the skin looked like it covered shit. It looks like a paper bag, and if punctured shit would come out. Eventually I mumbled out something about shit, and began to realise this was how I saw her, like a middle-aged shit bag.
Good smell: Good feelings; non verbalised intimations or love.
Example: The bear is just sitting there on the flat steps and looking at us. It didn’t look mean now, only calmer and looking tired. I grab grandma by the arm and told her to get behind me…I can smell her scent and feel the warmth from her arm…I hold her get behind me and look at the bear.
Also explainable by the large number of idioms regarding smell.
Idioms: On the right scent; throw someone off the scent; in bad/good odour with; odour of sanctity; smell a rat; smell of grease paint; smells fishy; something stinks to high heaven; like stink; raise a stink; what you did stinks.. See: nose under body.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Does this odour call up a particular person or experience, and what is it that I relate to?
Is this about a feeling, attraction, repulsion, or the smell of something fresh or stale?
Is it a play on words such as ‘I smell a rat’, ‘something smells fishy’, ‘stinks to high heaven’, ‘stop and smell the roses’, and so on?
What did you make of or feel about the smell?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Martial Art of the Mind – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Perspire Perspiration Sweat
Strong emotion, deeply moved, excitement, fear, intense feeling. It can also suggest you are feeling ill at ease about how others feel about you if you are worried about your body odour.
Mostly fear. As we get near to experiencing areas of our memory or inner feelings that disturb us, rapid heartbeat and perspiration are some of the first signs. Also excitement or feeling we are repulsive to others if we feel the perspiration is obnoxious. Pleasurable exertion.
Physiological effects can be caused and switch suddenly through our changing emotions. See Martial Art of the Mind
A pounding heart and sweating can be caused by sleep paralysis. See Sleep paralysis
Sweating and trembling often occur as a realise of unconscious emotions arise when reliving a traumatic experience. They also can occur as a person gets near to the hugeness they carry within them. See Reaction to the unconscious
But sweating is a natural process of regulation and is a way of losing excess heat in the body. Bad smelling perspiration is a sign of an unhealthy body. Somebody recently told me that they sweat enormously when it is reasonably hot, and said it was showing a good system. But people complain when the weather turns warm and also when it is cold. It doesn’t mean their system is working well, but it shows their body does not adjust to changes of temperature. I know of a man who doesn’t have to add great amounts of clothes in the cold weather and is not feeling uncomfortable and sweaty in summer.
Analyses of thousands of hair, blood and sweat samples of people in Britain by Dr Stephen Davies, of the Biolab Medical Unit in London, has clearly shown that toxic elements accumulates with age. Simultaneously, levels of essential elements decline, leading him to conclude that our overexposure to toxic elements and under consumption of essential elements has exceeded the human body’s capacity to adapt and successfully detoxify. The lack of sufficient essential elements makes lead, cadmium, mercury and aluminium even more toxic. The combination of these factors is no doubt lowering our overall intellectual performance and emotional stability. Taking vitamin C can detoxify Lead; zinc counteracts cadmium; selenium counteracts mercury.
Example: One woman dreamt the same dream from childhood. She was walking past railings in the town she lived in as a child. She always woke in dread and perspiration from this dream. At forty she told her sister about it. The response was, ‘Oh, that’s simple. Don’t you remember that when you were about four we were walking past those railings and we were set on by a bunch of boys. Then I said to them, ‘Don’t hurt us our mother’s dead!’ They left us alone, but you should have seen the look on your face.’ After realising the dread was connected with the imagined loss of her mother, the dream never recurred.
Idioms: break a sweat; don’t sweat it; in a cold sweat; no sweat; sweat blood; sweat bullets; sweat of ones brow; old sweat; sweat it out; work up a sweat.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Is this about a fear or other intense feeling?
Does this represent some strong emotion, or exertion?
What am I breaking out in a sweat for?
See Being the Person or Thing – Characters and People in Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Pestle
Masculine force, or drive, breaking down problems. Also phallus, when thinking of the sexual use of the words pound or grind.
Pet Pets
Very often depicts our feeling of responsibility or caring; our feelings of affection, such as we might feel for a pet; our natural drives such as procreation, desire to be ‘petted. These feelings may have been ‘house trained’ – meaning perhaps being over disciplined – or caged, or not fed, depending on dream. Therefore the action in the dream will indicate what one is doing with this side of ones nature. sometimes it is feelings of being like a pet – only being able to do what the person you are dependent upon wishes.
But it depends how you have treated pets or animals. Many children and adults torture pets or animals.
An unfed pet: Often has to do with our feelings of responsibility toward caring for someone else, or caring for ones own basic needs. May be the children have grown up and left, and there is no one to spend ones caring and affection on. Or else we are so busy we forget our own needs.
Baby pets: If in a woman’s dream may signify her maternal drive, her desire for children; ones own dependent self and feelings.
If we have kept a pet such as you dream about: What the pet in the dream depicts rests very much on what the dreamer’s relationship with the pet was. For instance a woman whose daughter kept a rat that was well liked, would have completely different associations and feeling responses in connection with rats than many people.
In the dream of a child: Usually refers to the child’s feelings of being dependent. A pet is a creature that depends on humans – perhaps the child – to feed it and care for it. It cannot make any decisions of its own because it is imprisoned in a cage of some sort. So a child often uses the pet to depict its own condition of dependence and inability to make many of its own decisions. The dream may also be a way to child experiments with ways of developing independence. See: animals.
Example: My pet mouse had babies. I dreamt that the babies had opened their eyes and were running about. Q.C.
This is the dream of a young boy of five. We explored the dream and he said that a pet was something that couldn’t do anything for itself and needed looking after. When asked if he had any feelings about this he said that he sometimes felt like a pet, as he couldn’t do things for himself without his parents consent.
We looked at what it meant that the babies had opened their eyes, and Q. said that when baby mice open their eyes it means they are ready to be independent. This led him to realise that he wanted to be more independent. So from that time on he started doing more things for himself instead of depending upon his parents.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Does my dream show any feelings of friendship or affection?
Is dependence on someone else, or someone who is dependent on me shown?
Am I not caring for the dream pet, or my own basic needs?
See Animals – Being the Person or Thing – Conditioned Reflexes
Petal
Sensitive and gentle parts of your nature, that may be crushed or destroyed.
Petrify
The normal expression of yourself is blocked through fear or lack of confidence. As an example, you may love your father, but be petrified of showing it due to his cynicism.
Petrol
Emotional energy and drive. Potentially explosive emotions. See: Fuel.
Fuel/gas: Feeling drives; motivation; whatever has ‘fuelled one’s drive’. Petrol/gas is also a resource, something you know you can call upon to achieve something or ‘get somewhere’. So having an empty tank would suggest you have no such resources of energy, or motivation or ‘drive’ to achieve what you desire or need to do. It can sometimes indicate exhaustion and poor health. So it might indicate a change of diet or life style – getting more rest?
There is an interesting complexity here as you need resources – money – to get the resource of fuel.
Out of fuel/gas: No motivation or energy to do what you want. This could also be frustration and irritability or the loss of a meeting or opportunity. Feeling stumped.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What is my dream saying about my energy or resourcefulness, and how does that apply to me?
If I am without fuel is there any indication of how I can get it or why I am on ‘empty’?
Is there any sign in the dream what my relationship with my energy reserves is?
Try using Secrets of Power Dreaming – Being the Person or Thing
Petticoat
Inner feelings that few see. Sometimes symbolises sexual feelings, or even psychic body or aura. See: Clothes.
The colour and type alter the meaning of petticoats, but in general they signify something like petals do on a flower. A flower is the sexual organs of the plant, and the petals draw attention to the flowers central offering of pollen, nectar and its need to reproduce. So petticoats suggest a softness and femininity, a wrapping around the wonder a woman offers in her physical and emotional love.
A dream might show something like iron or starchy petticoats, and so this is the complete opposite, suggesting an emotional and sexual starchiness or hardness.
In some dreams the petticoats suggest a sort of wrapping around the fundamental sexual feelings or urges. In other words many women would be offended if one suggested their dress or tight blouse was to attract a sexual partner. So they are wrapping their feelings in a sort of obscurity. Petticoats sometimes depict this in a male or female dream. So removing them is to uncover the more fundamental feelings and awareness.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What colour is the petticoat and what does that suggest to me – what do I associate with that colour? See: colours.
What activities or feelings surround the petticoat in the dream?
What do the other clothes or events in the dream suggest about attitudes or stance being expressed here? See: underclothes.
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Phantom
Pharmacy Pharmacist
See: Chemist.
Phlegm
Rubbish, blocked emotions, fears about health, poisons in system of body, or mind. Sluggish, stagnation.
Phoenix
The ability to find a new impulse, new strength, new growth even in death; the power in oneself to transform the dying, depressed, dark and desperate into new endeavour and growth. It is a fact that we are all dual in nature and so have the dual nature of life and death. Death is as much a part of life as birth. But it is through death that life renews itself.
The following insight arose from a dream the person explored.
Example: Our body is all the time dying as thousands of cells die, and in doing so the new and living body can continue. Suddenly I realised that this was the meaning of the phoenix – it was consumed by the flames, and yet it arose anew. We have the fire of life within us, that in consuming us gives birth to us continuously. It is the warmth of our body, the warmth, even passion, of our emotions and that is life – continuous through death.
Our bodies renew themselves every day: stomach cells renew every five days; our skin cells are replaced every month; the skeleton is replaced every three months; the raw material of DNA is replaced every 6 weeks; our brain cells are completely new every year. The whole body is replaced every two years. Quoted from “The Biology of Belief” by Dr. Bruce Lipton.
This may be represented in your dreams as a phoenix. See: Death; birds.
Useful Questions and Hints:
What did I feel about the phoenix in my dream?
Do I ever feel some part of me is dying?
What about the feeling of renewal?
See Archetype of Rebirth or Resurrection – Jesse Watkins Enlightenment – Being the Person or Thing