Perhaps you are recalling in your dream either an actual visit to a slaughterhouse or a photograph of a slaughterhouse. In that case, it may be that what you saw on your visit or in the photograph (or read in the caption) has preyed on your mind ever since. In any case, to get at the meaning that is pertinent to you, it may be necessary to relive the dream to note your emotional reaction. Generally there are the following possibilities:
(1) Raw animal flesh may signify ‘raw3 emotions or instinctive drives.
(2) Carcasses obviously mean death.
(3) If your reaction is one of disgust, it may be that you are expressing revulsion at the practice of killing animals in order to eat them. Perhaps your dream is pushing you towards vegetarianism.
Equally, however, it may be that what you find disgusting is raw animality - that is, your own raw nature bereft of its skin, the thin (or thick) veneer formed by social-moral-cultural deposits - in which case we are back at (1) above.
(4) If the dream centres on the killing of animals, is it you who are doing the killing? If so, the animals probably represent aspects of your own animal nature (sexuality, pre-eminently); and your unconscious may be warning you against repressing or suppressing some natural urge.
(5) Possibly the dream may be suggesting to you that you ought to forsake all fleshly pursuits in favour of‘higher’ spiritual pursuits. (This remark should not be taken to imply that spirituality can be pursued only by abandoning sexual and other sensual pleasures; heightened sensuality is fairly typical among mystics, and in some Indian and Oriental mystic-meditative traditions the spiritual is sought in and through the physical.)
(6) Animals were at one time - and in some parts of the world still are - slaughtered as a religious sacrifice.
See Also: Sacrifice.
[1](See Also: Slaughterhouse)
[2]