Dagger
A dagger in a dream normally suggests a symbol of potent male power. Alternatively, it can also represent treason, betrayal, or hostility.
Daisy
This flower can symbolize innocence, beauty, and purity. The color of the Daisy is also associated with the sun and can represent illumination and enlightenment.
Dam
Dreaming of a dam can represent repressed or restrained emotions. You may feel like opening up or crying, but instead, just hold everything inside.
Dance
A rich symbol, dancing may have various connotations depending on the dreamer. Dancing may represent love and romance, however, it can also represent a sense of freedom from constraints.
Danger
Any form of danger warning in your dreams can represent an actual warning to be cautious in some aspect of your life. Other parts of your dream can help you to determine what part of your life needs further attention.
Darkness
As the polar opposite to light, darkness is often linked with evil and death. To dream of darkness can represent a number of meanings depending on the tone of your dream. This dream can symbolize a fear of the unknown, feeling lost, and can also be metaphorical of the unconscious, the womb, or unforeseen possibilities.
Dawn
Closely connected with light, dawn can signify a new stage in your life, a fresh start, a new understanding, or the debut from light to dark.
Dead/Death
Dreaming of death does not necessarily symbolize physical death, however, it can represent a fear of it. Violent death can symbolize anger and aggression. To dream of dying, especially if you are unhappy or distressed about it, can signify a letting go of something. It could be an old part of yourself, an old portion of your life, or a close relation or friend. However, to dream of a lifeless corpse can represent a weakening state or a kind of death in your life that comes from devoting yourself to a miserable and lifeless routine.
Decapitation
Beheadings or decapitations in dreams are not necessarily omens of death or punishment, they can be indications of fears or worries about punishment or death. Dreams such as these can have a variety of different meanings from losing touch with your emotions to losing control of yourself or a situation that you are currently dealing with. As with many dream symbols, decapitation greatly depends on the tone, feeling, and setting of your dream.
Decay
To dream of decay may symbolize the degeneration of a situation. More positively, it can represent the death of an old situation before the start of a new state.
Deer
Although deer are largely associated with hunting, they tend to symbolize grace and gentleness in a dream. In ancient folklore, deer were messengers of the Fairies, which can indicate that they are representatives of your unconscious mind.
Demon/Devil
Demons and Devils, normally allied with evil, do not necessarily point to a dark and potentially corrupt meaning. Demons and Devils can represent intelligence, cunning, and even sexuality. These symbols can often symbolize the unconscious, distinctively a shadow of your own self.
Dentist
Associated with childhood experiences, dentists often signify anxieties, or fears of pain. This dream symbolizes the primary of inflicting pain that is “for your own good”. Fundamentally, the profession of dentistry is the drilling and removal of decay and then the remolding with new dental material. This dream may symbolize a need for extraction, of decay, in a situation within your own life.
Descent
To dream of descending, be it physically by stairs, elevator, or falling, may represent deterioration in energy or status. (See Falling)
Desert
Dreams of deserts can be a straightforward indication of emptiness, poverty, loneliness, exhaustion, loss, or even death. However, deserts often have a different representation for those dwelling in different locales. The translation of this dream symbol relies heavily on your associations with it and the tone and setting of your dream.
Dessert
Desserts in your dream can represent a few things, such as, indulgence, over-indulgence, celebration, reward, and/or temptation. As desserts are, traditionally, served after a meal has been completed, it can symbolize the final stage or completion of a project or situation.
Detour
A dream of encountering a detour can almost be taken at face value. It often means that you have run into some sort of obstacle in your life that you need to find a way to get over or around.
Dice
Dice are associated with the more general dream symbol of Gambling as they are tokens of chance or even fate or destiny. (See Gambling)
Digging
To dig in your dream can represent a conflict to uncover your own reputation or integrity. Seeking to find something that you have lost or buried, or an exertion to bury some disagreeable aspect of your past. Any downward directional action can indicate a digging into your own subconscious or past in an effort to better comprehend your self.
Dirt/Dirty
Commonly associated with farming, dirt in your dream can represent fertility and growth. Anything underneath the ground may represent your unconscious mind. Due to society’s preoccupation with cleanliness, being dirty can be connected with feelings of guilt or unworthiness. It might also signify sexual musings.
Discovery
Discovery in a dream can have a positive and a negative symbolic meaning. Positively, discovery may indicate a new phase in your life or the recovery from a major trauma that you experienced. Negatively, it may represent a discovery of something that has been concealed for some time. Dream discoveries often indicate anxieties rather than something actually being hidden.
Dismemberment
If you dream of being dismembered, but the feeling is not so unpleasant, it may indicate the closing or ending of one phase of your life and the beginning of a new phase of your life. If you dream of dismemberment and feel much fear or anxiety, this may point to a sense of coming apart or losing control in an aspect of your life.
Diving
To dream of diving into water can have a Freudian perspective, which may represent sexual intercourse. Another viewpoint is that large bodies of water tend to symbolize the unconscious, so diving may represent a jumping in to explore your own unconscious mind.
Doctor
Doctors in dreams symbolize healing and/or the desire for healing, either physically or mentally. Doctors can also signify authority or your higher self.
Dog
Dogs, like the larger symbol of Animals, can represent our natural selves, either in the positive or negative sense of the Animal symbol. However, a dream of dogs can represent a number of different metaphors from running with the pack which can symbolize a need to stay anonymous and join the crowd, to loyalty, to abuse, to tenacity, friendship, or even exhaustion.
Dogs can also, as in ancient times, be associated with the animals that guarded the underworld and can be messengers of the unconscious mind. Again, as with many dreams, the symbolic meaning of the dog relies heavily on the tone and texture of your dream.
Doll
Dolls in your dream can symbolize children, your childhood, or of being childlike. There can be a variety of different meanings from this symbol, such as fashion and beauty represented by manikins, manipulation which can by represented in your dream by puppets, or even voodoo dolls which indicate a sense of revenge.
Dolphin
Since large bodies of water indicate the unconscious, see creatures, such as dolphins, can represent messengers from your unconscious or an explorer for your unconscious mind. Dolphins can also symbolize the connection between our conscious (air) and our unconscious (water) selves. They can also represent our thoughts (air) and emotions (water). As guides to the unconscious, dolphins can also be recognized as rescuers should you feel that you have gone off course.
Door/Doorways
Freud believed that a door or other entrance stands for one of the body’s openings. Dreaming of passing through a door and into a hallway is open to sexual interpretation, however, it could also mean that the way out of some personal difficulty is right in front of you. Doors and Doorways can have a variety of meanings and greatly depends on the tone and usage of a door or doorway in your dream.
An open door may indicate a new opportunity or the entering into a new facet of your life. To have to choose between many doors may indicate a junction in your life in which you must make an important decision. A locked door may signify something that you have repressed or hidden away, whereas a simple closed door may symbolize an opportunity that is no longer available to you. (See Entrance/Entryway)
Doppelganger
To dream of facing yourself is traditionally believed to be an omen of death, however, it is more likely to reveal an awareness of mortality. Meeting your younger self suggests a desire for the security of your childhood years. While meeting your older, aged, self can express fears for the future. To dream of meeting an uncharacteristically menacing self symbolizes your own dare or sinister alter ego.
Dove
As participants in the larger meaning of “Birds”, a dove or doves in your dream can have a wide range of meanings such as peace, holiness, to love, especially if you see two of them appear in your dream.
Dragon
Dragons can symbolize the same connotation that snakes and serpents represent, however, they can also represent other ideals in the eastern and western traditions. In western translations, dragons are associated with heroic knights and the evil dragons that they slay to save the damsel in distress. This dream can symbolize a struggle between the noble and ignoble characteristics of your self. In eastern traditions, dragons symbolize spiritual beings associated with sky and air (Chinese Dragons have wings), which can point to a very different set of symbolic messages.
Drawers
A dream of drawers can impart a sense of being hidden or of hiding something away. Drawers can also represent your own inner being so a disorganized drawer may indicate internal turmoil and a neat and orderly drawer can signify psychological order.
Drinking
Considering that water represents the unconscious, drinking it may indicate a nourishment or replenishment from your unconscious. To drink alcohol may symbolize a desire for pleasure or escape.
Drowning
Again, since large bodies of water symbolize the unconscious, drowning in your dream may signify a feeling of being overwhelmed by your unconscious or repressed issues. Water can also symbolize your emotions and dreams such as these sometimes occur during times of crisis or at turning points in your life. Further, dreams of drowning can also represent a dying or rendering of your old self to start a new phase in your life.
Drum
Drums can represent anything from the rhythms or life, to dancing, to ejection, or even to primordial urges. As with all dream symbols, this one depends on the nature and setting of your dream.
Duck
Ducks fall under the umbrella of the dream symbol of “Birds”, particularly when they are flying. However, as marine creatures as well, ducks can submerge through the realm of your unconscious or emotions. As this is the case, a diving duck can represent an exploration of your inner self, discovering your emotions or unconscious mind.
Duty
This dream symbol can represent a compulsive behavior or can indicate that control issues are posing problems within your life.
Dwarf
Traditionally, dwarves are recognized as fairy tale creatures that possess magical qualities and powers of divination. Dwarves can represent good luck, but can also have a negative aspect, representing a part of your psyche that is dwarfed or repressed.
Dynamite
A strong symbol for anger, dynamite can represent aggressive or explosive emotions. If you dream of dynamite that has not yet exploded, but is just about ready to, this may indicate a volatile situation or issue in your life that is ready to do likewise. However, dynamite can also be affiliated with firecrackers, which can signify celebration.