Wading: Any image that involves water is connecting to your emotional experience. When you wade through water, you are generally up to waist-high, which is a definite commitment to being wet but still a manageable amount to navigate by virtue of walking. To understand this symbol in a dream, apply this same sensibility to your emotional experience: enough feeling to be considerably felt, but not so much that you can’t continue to walk through the feelings.

Wagon: This very slow and archaic mode of transportation is most associated with the settlement of the United States by virtue of pioneers moving westward. In this way, the wagon is intrinsically bound up with the idea of taking great risks, eschewing the comforts of stability, and moving into new territory. Look to where in your life you are branching out into the unknown.

Waiter: As a person in your dream, the person bringing you your food is a character aspect of your personality. Since a waiter is the direct line of access to sustenance, this person’s symbolic meaning connects to your ability to nurture and provide self-care. Consider the behavior and effects of the waiter in your dream as reflecting your own relationship with how well you are taking care of your needs.

Waiting Room: The implication of a waiting room is that something important is about to happen. If your dream takes place in such an environment, look to where in your life you may be anticipating an event or a change in direction. If you know what you are waiting for in your dream, add that to your interpretation.

Wake: A significant part of the grieving ritual in many traditions, a wake is where we gather around the body of someone who has just passed in order to pay our respects and mark the beginning of the process of letting go. In this way, a wake in a dream signifies that something has been sacrificed that will undoubtedly need to be processed in some way, and you are put on notice that a cycle of change is just around the corner.

Wall: Walls are boundaries that turn what would otherwise be an open space into something specific and functional. By compartmentalizing thoughts and ideas in our minds, we are able to manage our thoughts and feelings more effectively, and walls are symbolic of the structure that allows us to function in this way. The walls in your dreams represent this ability; the condition of these walls is to be interpreted as either helping this process or an indication that this process is being challenged.

Wallet: A wallet is a container for your money and identification. This makes it a symbol for your easy access to prosperity and self-awareness. If you have lost your wallet or it has been stolen in a dream, you are feeling separated from your ability to feel abundant and confident in who you are. If the wallet in your dreams belongs to someone else, you may need to examine new ways of connecting to prosperity and identity.

Wallpaper: Wallpaper is a covering that makes a room more pleasing in an aesthetic way, but as a symbol it is more connected to that which it is covering up. If there is wallpaper featured in your dream, take a look at what you are hiding or wanting to be kept out of view in your life.

Wand: The primary tool for the wizard or witch, the wand is a focal point for the energy to manifest your heart’s desire. Connected to the principles of alchemy, the wand is a symbol for your ability to make radical changes in your life and to exert control over things that may not be controllable. An instrument of the wizard, the wand is the tool that allows this magical archetype to wield his or her power. The presence of Harry Potter in the zeitgeist has normalized this image as something accessible to all individuals. A wand in a dream is asking you to consider your own power to create anything you desire.

War: War in a dream indicates that shifting boundaries are causing enormous upheaval. The object of war is for one entity to obtain the land and/or resources of another. Therefore, war in a dream indicates change on such a large scale that it can only be accomplished by the use of major force. Our world is a set of organized boundaries that we know as countries. Our psyches are divided in a similar way. These boundaries are, ultimately, fluid. Things change—sometimes dramatically—which leaves us feeling vulnerable. When the change is sudden and violent, the unconscious may use a dream of war to express the enormity of the internal shift that’s occurring.

Warehouse: You have some unfinished business or may be trying to postpone something. You also may be preparing to take action on something soon, but it is not yet time. Warehouses are places where we gather and store items that will later be distributed for their intended use. What is key to this symbol is that the storage is temporary—what is kept in a warehouse is eventually going to be moved somewhere else. In a dream, a warehouse is a symbol of change. In the arc of any transformation, a warehouse points to the middle of a greater shift—a point at which resources are gathered but have not quite yet arrived at their final destination.

Warts: Warts are unsightly growths that are created by a virus. They have long been associated with witches in fairy tales as evidence of their evil or bad intentions. If you have a wart or warts in your dream, you may be seeing the visible results of resentments and anger issues that have been previously hidden.

Washing: When some type of washing occurs in a dream, you are cleansing or clearing out something that no longer serves you. The primary symbolic meaning for any kind of bathing connects to this desire to be clean and available for social interaction with others. This can connect to unconscious feelings of dirtiness that are both literal and metaphorical. There may be ways in which you are feeling unclean and in need of purification. Anything that involves water in a dream is going to connect somehow to issues of emotions. Using water to bathe might point to a need or desire to immerse yourself in the realm of your feelings in order to cleanse yourself of the pain that life sometimes brings.

Washing Machine: As a function of routine, clothes are kept clean in this mechanism. In this way, a washing machine is a symbol of this impulse to keep elements of your life at a certain level of condition. You may be expressing a need to clear off thoughts or feelings that are unwanted.

Wasp: Like bees and ants, wasps have an overall totem energy that connects with community regulation and interdependent structure. Wasps are predators by nature, and lower forms of insects are their prey. Therefore, in the higher order of things, wasps regulate the population of the insect world by virtue of their predation instincts. If you are dreaming of wasps, you are looking to tap into your instinctive ability to manage large structures of thought and imagination. Consider that a wasp dream may indicate that this instinct is overworking itself and that you are being called to relinquish an obsessive need to control things that are really beyond your ability to control.

Watch: While this is soon becoming an archaic object in the realm of keeping time, the watch is a symbol of measurement and staying connected to the rhythm of life. More importantly, any mechanism of keeping time is about connecting with the world in agreement so that things can unfold simultaneously. If there is a watch in your dream, you may need to be more connected to the movement of your life and schedule and how that relates to the pace that other people are operating at.

Water: Water is the ultimate symbol of emotions in a dream. It also connects to things that rise up out of the unconscious mind. In fact, it could be said that emotions themselves are evidence of something that is occurring in the unconscious mind. In this way, water connects to both emotions and the unconscious. Human beings are made up of a great deal of water, and the welling up of feelings can cause this precious liquid to leak inexplicably out of your eyes in the form of tears. In this way, the presence of any water in a dream is asking you to consider the emotional side of your nature. The larger the body of water, the more feelings the dream is expressing. If the water is potentially overwhelming or dangerous, as in a tidal wave or waterfall, then the sense of danger must be added to your interpretation, as we are often afraid of feelings when they are greater than we think we can handle. Feelings flow and so does water, so the quality of movement of the water in your dream is pointing out the way in which you are experiencing your emotions. A slow creek is like a small amount of emotional flow that is significant but sustaining and calming. A raging river is more like the force of feelings that are much more intense and, if not navigated well, can be dangerous to your sense of well-being. Rain is the most like tears, and weather patterns in dreams that involve water may be pointing out the way you are experiencing or avoiding the easy flow of emotions associated with some current life experience.

Water Heater: Any image that relates to water is about your emotional experience. Hot water implies the addition of anger or other passionate sensibilities. Keep in mind that a water heater has the function of providing comfort and sanitization to your life. A healthy relationship to your emotional expression does the same. Look to how well you are connected to fluctuations in your emotional expression of water-heater features in your dream.

Waves: Energy moves in waves, and any dream that features this motion is connected to the fundamental structure behind all movement. Waves in water are about emotional fluctuations. Waves that are more related to the physical laws of the universe are similar, but are more about thoughts and shifts of intellect. When waves are easy to navigate, all is well, as you can easily allow yourself to move with them. However, they can suddenly become overwhelming in the dream world, and if this occurs, you are examining your relationship to things beyond your ability to control.

Web Cam: This relatively new invention allows more direct connectivity in the world through the Internet. As this way of connection expands through technology, it creates a new level of consciousness. The web cam is the new “eyes” of this consciousness. How are you allowing yourself to be seen in this new world that is being created? What is it that you wish to explore in others? These are the questions that a dream that features a web cam is asking you.

Wedding: A wedding is the ceremonial joining of two aspects of character in a commitment to work together in order to create a new way of being in the world that the relationship represents. The ritual of a wedding is the declaration of your intention to have a significant shift of perspective. If your life is calling forth a transformation, a dream about a wedding is significant evidence that the change is at hand.

Weeds: Your random thoughts of worry, doubt, and anxiety may be crowding out your ability to feel joy. Weeds are the unwanted plants that disrupt our sense of harmony created by the lovely flowers or vegetables we would rather have growing in our gardens. If allowed to, weeds would overtake what we are cultivating and strangle the life out of what we have chosen to plant. In a dream, weeds represent these ubiquitous thoughts, habits, and patterns.

Weights: Weights are used to counterbalance the muscles in the body in order to help them expand and grow. Weights connect to the principle that controlled effort is a part of the idea of change. If weights appear in your dream, you desire to increase and expand certain aspects of your identity and are willing to make the effort to create that change. Such a dream may also point to resistance to the work associated with facing change. Look to the context of the dream to illuminate which sensibility is being expressed.

Well: The availability of emotional sustenance from deep places is what this dream is expressing. Anytime water is featured in a dream, what is being expressed is the state of your emotional life. Water is the necessary ingredient to sustaining life. A well is dug to provide consistent access to this lifegiving elixir. In the symbolic world, there is a correlation between water as emotion and water as life-sustaining substance. We need water to live, and our souls need emotional balance to thrive. A well is often a community resource, so the state of the well in your dream may be revealing your current life’s relationship to your own feelings and how much you may have to give to others. If your well is running dry, you may need to consider your own needs first. If it is overflowing, take a look at how your emotional life may be more than you can contain.

Welts: A welt is evidence of wrongs done, the aftermath of attack, or an underlying problem that is now beginning to become noticeable. Your interpretation will vary depending on the part of the body that is affected. The arms relate to strength and action, and the legs connect to movement and motivation. The hands represent creativity, and the face connects to the persona you show to the world. Additionally, consider that a welt on an exposed part of the body means your wound is visible to others. An area that is generally covered by clothing may connect to the ability or desire to hide your wounds.