Editorial method

Sources and how we use them

Dream Symbolist is a reference library, not a single voice. Every interpretation on the site is meant to be traceable to a named tradition and, where one exists, a specific work, edition and passage. Where traditions disagree, we say so rather than blending them.

What we promise

  • Interpretations name the tradition they come from: a classical text, a religious tradition, a named modern author, or a psychological school.
  • We do not invent ancient origins, quotations or correspondences between traditions. A similarity between a dream image and a tarot card is presented as a comparison, not as proof that they mean the same thing.
  • Illustrations on this site are contemporary artwork made for it. They are not historical objects, and tarot images labelled as illustrative are not reproductions of a published deck.
  • Reviews of readings or services are published only after first-hand, comparable testing. None are published yet.

Dreams

  1. Artemidorus, Oneirocritica (2nd century CE)The oldest surviving dream manual; cited from the Daniel E. Harris-McCoy edition and translation (Oxford, 2012).
  2. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 55a–57bThe classical rabbinic discussion of dreams and their interpretation, cited by folio.
  3. Dream interpretation attributed to Ibn SīrīnWorks circulating under the name of Muhammad ibn Sīrīn (d. 728); attribution of the printed compilations is contested and is noted as such wherever they are cited.
  4. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)Cited from the James Strachey translation; used for the psychoanalytic tradition, labelled as such.
  5. C. G. Jung, Man and His Symbols (1964)Used for the Jungian reading of archetypal images, labelled as such.

Tarot

  1. A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911)The text that accompanied Pamela Colman Smith’s deck; public domain. Card descriptions and Waite’s divinatory meanings are cited from it.
  2. Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (1980)The most influential modern reading of the Rider–Waite–Smith deck; the source of the “Fool’s journey” framing.
  3. Israel Regardie (ed.), The Golden Dawn (1937)The source for the Golden Dawn attributions (Hebrew letters, elements) that Waite adapted.

Astrology

  1. Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos (2nd century CE)Cited from the F. E. Robbins translation (Loeb Classical Library, 1940) for the Hellenistic foundations of Western astrology.
  2. Bṛhat Parāśara Horā ŚāstraThe foundational text of Jyotiṣa (Vedic astrology); cited from the R. Santhanam translation (1984). Used for nakshatra and yoga pages.
  3. William Lilly, Christian Astrology (1647)The standard early-modern English text on horary and natal technique.

Angel numbers

  1. Doreen Virtue, Angel Numbers 101 (2008)The contemporary teaching from which most popular angel-number meanings derive. Each number page names the specific teaching it reports rather than presenting it as ancient.