The symbols or elements that appear in a dream are at the very heart of Spirit led interpretation. Symbols are the images that appear in our dreams and make up the metaphors that must be understood in order to properly understand the dream itself. Thus, symbols are the alphabet of God's picture language. Interestingly enough, the original Hebrew language was not composed of letters as we currently understand them, but rather of pictographs - symbols used to universally represent certain words, phrases or concepts. So it would seem that even from the earliest of times, God has always spoken to His people through the use of symbols, metaphors, and pictures.
It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and when it comes to dreams it would seem that the moving pictures of our minds may be worth ten thousand. That is of course, if the pictures are properly interpreted. One of the biggest challenges in Biblical Dream Interpretation is the temptation to assume a symbol always means the same thing. The problem is that any given symbol can have a different meaning depending upon the context in which it appears and the dreamer who experiences it. While it has been pointed out in previous articles that numbers and colors can have somewhat consistent meanings, this concept quickly breaks down when one moves away from these two categories and is not even universally applicable there.
It is essential that anyone wishing to truly understand the meaning of his or her own dreams, much less interpret those of others, avoid the use of so-called dream dictionaries. While such lists of dream symbol meanings can be a valuable resource, the reader who then assumes that the particular list they are using is unquestionably applicable to the dream they are attempting to interpret often misuses the list. Lists of dream symbol meanings (INCLUDING those provided by Dream Stories) are a tremendous resource, but they are absolutely NOT a substitution for discernment and listening to the voice of Holy Spirit as to the meaning of any given symbol at any given time.