This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Animals gathers nine of the atlas's dream symbols, and the group divides cleanly between creatures the older traditions actually interpreted and creatures they never mentioned at all.
Snake, horse, bird, cat and dog all carry genuine ancient readings. The Talmud gives the snake a livelihood reading, more if it bites and less if it is killed, while Artemidorus separates the great serpent, tied to kingship and wealth, from ordinary snakes, tied to illness and enmity; Freud read it sexually and Jung read it as the instinctual psyche, so the confident single meaning printed in modern dictionaries is a composite of sources that never agreed. The horse gets an unusually precise Talmudic reading keyed to colour and gait, and the bird appears among the Talmud's three signs of peace, a rooster for a son and a goose for wisdom, while Artemidorus reads birds by species and flight rather than as a single symbol. The cat's Talmudic entry turns entirely on a pun available only in the local pronunciation of the word for it, which is itself evidence against any fixed meaning. The dog is classed among the Talmud's ambiguous signs, turnable by reciting a verse, and Artemidorus reads it by behaviour and ownership.
Fish, spider and bear have no traceable older interpretive tradition at all; none appear in the Talmudic dream signs and no general classical reading survives. Their now familiar meanings, insight for the fish, entrapment or fate for the spider, quiet strength for the bear, are modern dictionary constructions. The wolf sits between the two groups: Artemidorus states plainly that it signifies a violent enemy, a reading the Jungian shadow reinterprets entirely.