Myths and Patterns

Myths and Patterns

My uncle was telling me about a dream that he had; he was sleeping and someone broke into the house and started to kill everyone in the house (He said there were a lot of people in the house for some reason). He woke up to confront this problem and grabbed a gun to shoot these intruders with, but when he started to shoot the gun turned into a snake. A dream like this has two very important ideas hidden within it. First it has what has been called an archetypical pattern, this means that there was a stage in which the dream takes place. This house would symbolize him as a whole, and the people in it would be his different emotions served for this certain even that the dream pertains to.

In my junior analysis I could say that this even could pertain to the shooting that my uncle was in when he was in the police for back in California. To me this is showing the anxiety that this shooting has caused him. I think that his mind is telling him that had he not shot the guy others would have died, this is where the mythological symbolism of the snake comes into play "Snakes often seem to represent simply instinctual energy." (Hall 87) His instincts led him into his actions, and thus saved many lives.

This dream had been bugging him for a while, and had I not known about the mythological ideas behind a dream I would never have been able to decipher it (of course it may be wrong, but this was just an example). These patterns within our dreams give little hints and tips; but they also vary from culture to culture and even person to person. What a snake could symbolize to one mind does not mean; however, that it will