Reports from the last Oneironauticum are posted over at Urban Dreamscape, and it sounds like it was intense and productive for everyone!
The dreamers took our Dreamtime Somalixir, a combination of Spagyrics to facilitate lucid, deep, and meaningful dreams. The reports are that it worked very well, and the dreamers were happy with the intensity of the effects and the dreams’ contents and recall.
If you’ve known us for a while, you have likely heard our symphony analogy before. When we discuss our formulas or just combining different single Spagyrics, people ask if the individual Spagyrics get lost or overwhelmed, and wonder how to know which one is working, and what it’s effects are.
We explain that it is like a symphony: each instrument contributes to the collective harmony of the symphony’s singular sound, but at the same time, a careful ear can pick out individual instruments from the whole. An instrument can also stand out in a solo, supported by the other instruments, but in a way that allows its own unique voice to ring out over the others. Plant intelligences sing to us this way, as well, when respected as individuals and supported in harmony.
The dreamers’ experiences in the Oneironauticum last week illustrate this perfectly. From the whole of the formula, everyone had intense and powerful dreams. But, at the same time, each of the herbs in the formula spoke out in its own voice, different from person to person.
In this dream, the dreamer speaks of dying and becoming a ghost, and discovering what he calls the “ghost enablers”, entities who create accidents which spill things that ghosts can then eat and take energy from. It is a powerful dream which gave me chills to read about, so true it seemed in its depiction of the afterlife activities of those still here as spirits.
A European herb with a long history of sacred use, Mugwort is an herb of travelers, growing along the edges of roads and showing the path with its almost glowing silvery leaves. Mugwort is also the herb of more astral-level traveling, as is done in dreams and skrying.
We included Mugwort in our Dreamtime so that dreamers could travel with ease, see the path, and be protected, but another use of Mugwort comes to mind here: in many places where it grows, it is called “ghost plant”. Everywhere Mugwort grows, it is used ceremonially for protection, especially from ghosts and the spirits of the dead.
In some cultures, Mugwort is also used to contact or control the dead, speaking to them in dreams or using the plant as a charm to lure the spirits into a trap, to then be gently removed from the house or kept as an astral servant. Here is an interesting account of such a ritual in Korean shamanism.
This dream made both of us here laugh, it sounded so fun and also connected so perfectly to one of the most special herbs in the Dreamtime: Wild Red Asparagus.
This plant comes from China, where a special, large-rooted type of asparagus is grown for its tonic properties. In those many-acre fields of regular asparagus, occasionally harvesters will find one root that is red. This rare root will be saved separately, as it is very special and unique in effect.
It was the ancient Taoist warrior monks that discovered Wild Red Asparagus’ amazing tonic properties of Shen, or peacefulness, and its more dramatic effects also. They took the herb to fly, both literally and figuratively, in their subtle energies, bodies, and dreams.
Energetically, Wild Red Asparagus lifts the spirit and brings perspective and a detachment from worldly concerns. But the ancient warrior monks also taught that it would actually lighten the body, and they used it in their martial arts training. These legends are the source of the cliche kung fu movies’ depictions of warriors who can leap to the rooftops and run up walls, and traditional Taoists seeing this would say “he took his Wild Red Asparagus today!”
Another interesting report was of seeming to wake, but continuing in a dream, from which the dreamer seemed to wake again, only to dream again, and so on in a loop. This is the intelligence of Calea, an herb used by the Mazatec to intensify dreams and gain spiritual insights from them.
Scientific studies of Calea have shown that when using it, the sleeper goes into the REM (dreaming) state almost instantly after falling asleep, and then wakes as soon as the dream is over. Repeated many times through a night; this experience often becomes a loop of diving into dreams and coming out into a not-actually-waking state.
There are more interesting reports on the Urban Dreamscape site, including this dream of following a path (Mugwort’s voice) dressed in white socks, a note from the Silene in the formula (see this post for more on white in Silene dreams). I love the rice pudding dream from Jennifer, the organizer. If only there was more rice-puddingness in the universe . . . .
The next Oneironauticum will be on March 28th, working with our Waterlilies Somalixir. Watch this blog for thoughts on that special formula, and read these articles to see what’s happened so far in this collaborative project.
Keep dreaming, and keep telling us about your dreams!
