The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols (Dictionary, Penguin),   ISBN:9780140512540

Customer Rating: 

I have several books on symbols and this is among my favorites. It's very comprehensive and thorough, but as another person mentioned it is definitely a thinker's book. It isn't in league with books suggesting that seeing __ means you'll "embark on a great journey..." and seeing __ means you'll "die in 5 days", it isn't a glorified fortune cookie =P. If you're serious about symbology, I very much recommend this book. It's a wonderful resource to have.

Customer Rating: 

I wholly endorse this book. The authors, using clear and lucid prose, manage to touch upon every major symbol and symbol system I can think of. With such a diverse major as mine, I thought I'd be using a number of books on symbols. As it turns out, this is the only book I use. It has everything. If you're reading this, I'm assuming you need a book on symbols. Be warned, however, the best guide to symbolism is your imagination and intuition. But sometimes you need a guide. Use this one. You won't regret it.

Customer Rating: 

I have done considerable research looking for the single best dictionary of symbols with regard to the accuracy of their interpetations, and this is the book. I bought several copies.

Customer Rating: 

This book is well written, comprehensive and fun to read. I own about a half-dozen books on symbols and symbolism and this one is hands down the best I currently own. This reference book would get five stars from me if it wasn't for one critical flaw, no index. The book is structured in such a way that it makes finding what your looking for easy, but I just like having a index for a quick lookup.

Customer Rating: 

I purchased my first copy 10 years ago and have been working with my dream symbols for nearly 20 years. I've been enticed to purchase newer ones since then with photos and graphics ( I now have nearly a dozen symbol dictionaries) -- thus I am clearly drawn to these things.

However, I find there is always a trade off. Publishing costs and space taken up for these visuals means less text and less substance. So while I have an initial pleasure in perusing the ones with pictures I often find these don't really have anything to do with my dream images -- they are indeed usually intriguing works of art but not particularly helpful for serious symbol analysis.

Thus the most consistently helpful symbol book, to which I always return when I seriously want to know a range of possibilities for my dream images or concepts is the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols by Chevalier, Cheerbrant and Buchanan-Brown. The authors have done a monumental work bringing so much substance to it, managed to remain relevant for decades even though it was first published in France in 1969 with the second edition in 1982, and by now reading it is like coming home.

A another benefit of being all text (seriously the text is not that hard to read, the print is of excellent quality with crisp deliniations between entries, references, etc.) is that the act of researching my dream images does not itself start interfering with the memory of my own visual image, as pictures might.

To each his own preference ... but for persons more experienced in working with dreams, I think the substance here will be recognized as highly valuable.