The Big Book of Practical Spells: Everyday Magic That Works - Judika Illes 2016
Remembering Your Dreams
Dreams
Other powers: your Magic Allies
The second you move abruptly or even sit up, you begin to lose fragments of your dreams. That's why noisy, ringing alarm clocks that make you jump are so destructive to dreams. If you need an alarm consistently to wake you, try to set the volume as low as possible or better yet, wake up to music that will transition you awake rather than jolting you up.
Keep a pad and paper near where you sleep. Think of the dream state and the waking state as ends of a spectrum, rather than rigidly divided. You need to be awake enough to write but asleep enough to recall your dream accurately, one foot in both worlds, as it were. As soon as you transition out of a dream, write down everything you remember, every tiny detail, with minimal movement and minimal light. Don't go back to sleep, intending to write down the dream later, assuming that because it was intense or significant it will be remembered. Try this experiment: write down a dream immediately and then later when fully awake, before you read what you've written, try to reproduce the dream. You will be amazed at how many details have already dissipated into air. Write down all your dreams, even the ones you think are boring and insignificant now. Months later, go back and read your journal. You will begin to discover your personal vocabulary, the symbols that pop up over and over. Write down the dates of your dreams and keep a daily journal as well. You may discover you have prophetic abilities you've never recognized.
A trick to remembering your dreams: keep a glass of water or mugwort tea by your bed. Take a sip before you go to sleep, telling yourself, “When I awake, I will have another sip and recall my dreams.” This isn't an instantaneous process: gradually you will remember more of your dreams. If you're aware that you dream but the dreams remain elusive, just out of reach, rub warmed hazelnut oil into the soles of your feet at bedtime. Add a drop of mugwort flower essence to the warmed oil for intensification, sort of like fine-tuning a television to improve focus.