A Dictionary of Dream Symbols
by Eric AckroydThe dream may be drawing your attention to a martyr complex, habitual and compulsive self-punishment, self-denial or self-denigration. Such negative conditioning can be got rid of only by reconditioning, by making positive affirmations every day: for example, ‘I love myself dearly5, ‘I accept myself totally5, ‘I have a unique value5, and ‘I desen e all the good things life offers me.5
Your unconscious may be telling you it is time to let the old you die, to make way for the new and truer you. The self-image you have accepted and conformed to in the past is probably too lopsided and needs to be supplemented by utilizing capacities or qualities that have till now lain dormant; or it may have led you completely astray from your true self, in which case it needs to be removed altogether.
Perhaps the dream is expressing a feeling that you are being abused or undervalued by other people.
(2) Arc you doing the sacrificing? If so, what is being sacrificed will usually represent some aspect of vour personality - desire, ambition, habit, prejudice - that you have given up or are being urged (by your unconscious) to give up. (If an animal is being slain, it will probably symbolize an instinctual impulse or emotion.) This is one of many cases where you have to decide whether a dream is descriptive or prescriptive: showing what you have done (and asking you to stop doing it), or showing what you ought to do. You should have no difficulty in
knowing whether you have done what the dream depicts.
If you have, the dream is asking you not to do it.
If you have not done it, the dream is asking you to do it, for the sake of personal fulfilment.
It is important to remember that sacrifice is meant to be creative: it is the giving up of something in order to achieve and enjoy something better. And if you think ‘better’ has nothing to do with enjoyment but means simply what duty requires, then you need to remember that making a sacrifice either resentfully or merely for duty’s sake is bound to be destructive in its effects both on you and on those you are in relationship with.
It is also important to remember that ‘To everything there is a season... a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast aways (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 6). There comes to us all a time for transcending animality (e.g. making sex a vehicle for love and adoration) but to attempt such things before the proper time can only breed resentment and end in disaster. Your dreams will tell you the time!
(3) Is your act of sacrifice a violent one? If so, it would suggest that some (partly unconscious) mechanism of self-punishment is at work in you and you urgently need to ask yourself why you feel guilty. Almost certainly the cause will lie in early childhood and will be an entirely innocent desire.
The Big Dictionary of Dreams
by Martha ClarkeIt is possible that you make a martyr of yourself or that you have self-blaming tendencies. In this case, you probably feel that everyone else makes light of you, forgetting your talents and qualities.
If you make a sacrifice, you should consider what it is that you are sacrificing. An animal could signify your natural instinct; a person that you know, and aspect of yourself that you do not want to accept. In spiritual terms, the ego should be sacrificed so that the divine you can enter into the light.
In antiquity, sacrificial rituals were a way to appease the gods and add fertility to the earth. They sacrificed people for the good of cosmic and social unity. In Egypt, Osiris was quartered by his brother, Seth; in Greece, Orpheus was ripped to pieces by a group of women; in Christianity, Jesus was crucified. These acts of divine delivery still exist in modern life.
