The Snake
Few images arrive in a dream with as much force as the snake. It is also one of the figures people log most often in Archetype Matrix.
What Jung wrote
Jung came back to the serpent again and again. In Symbols of Transformation he reads it as a figure of the instinctual, earthbound layer of the psyche, the part that lives below thought. Because a snake sheds its skin and appears renewed, he also tied it to rebirth, and to the healing serpent wound around the staff of Asclepius.
In his 1932 seminar on Kundalini yoga he treated the coiled serpent at the base of the spine as an image of psychic energy waiting to rise. For Jung the snake was rarely only frightening. It could poison and it could heal, often in the same story.
- C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, Collected Works, Vol. 5
- C. G. Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, seminar of 1932
What the world is logging
Counts include every entry naming Snake, Serpent or A Snake.
Logged with the mood
- Calm41%
- Anxious17%
- Happy14%
- Angry13%
- Excited9%
- Sad6%
Where it is logged most
- United States18
- Türkiye11
- United Kingdom3
- Brazil3
- Australia3
Most common moon phase
Last Quarter (18 entries)
Counted from anonymous Archetype Matrix entries. Updated October 8, 2026.
What we don’t do
We won’t tell you what your snake means. Jung himself distrusted fixed dream dictionaries and held that a symbol can only be read in the life of the person who dreams it. Archetype Matrix only counts: who logged the same image, where, and in what mood.
Other symbols
ForestOceanBoatAlienOld WomanShadowLionDogWolfWaterEagleMirrorFishHorseGoldOld Man
