Meanings
What signs, dreams and numbers mean
Plain answers to what a sign, a dream or a repeating number means, with what each named tradition says and how much weight that source can carry.
Numbers
Numbers that keep turning up on clocks, receipts and license plates get read in three quite different ways: as messages, as personalities, and as words that sound like other words. Each answer below says which way it is reading from.
Animals and birds
Almost every animal has been read as a good sign in one place and a bad one in another. The entries below set the readings side by side, with the source for each, so you can see how much of a meaning comes from the animal and how much from the culture doing the reading.
- What does it mean when you find a white feather?
- What does it mean when a crow appears?
- What does it mean when you see or hear an owl?
- What does it mean when a butterfly appears?
- What does it mean when a black cat crosses your path?
- What does it mean to see a magpie?
- What does it mean when a ladybird lands on you?
Dreams
Dream readers have been at this for thousands of years and have never agreed. Some treat a dream image as a fixed symbol, some as a part of the dreamer, and some as a message that only means something to the person who had it. These entries give each school's reading and say which school it is.
- What does it mean to dream about teeth falling out?
- What does it mean to dream about falling?
- What does it mean to dream about being chased?
- What does it mean to dream about water?
- What does it mean to dream about a snake?
- What does it mean to dream about an exam you have not prepared for?
- What does it mean to dream that you are flying?
Omens and signs
Most omens people still repeat are household custom: a penny, a pinch of salt, a mirror, a bird at the window. They were handed down by word of mouth, which is why two people in the same family can tell different versions of the same one.
Body signs
An itchy palm, a ringing ear and a twitching eyelid have all carried a folk meaning for centuries. The meanings below are custom, and each page says what ordinary thing in the body is more likely to be going on.