The Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells - Judika Illes 2009

Dream Spells: Dreams, Insomnia, Nightmares, Astral Projection, and Witches’ Flying Potions
The Spells

It’s only a dream, some say, implying that something is ephemeral, unreal, unworthy of attention. Those subscribing to that notion are not occultists. For the spell-caster, nothing holds more significance than a dream. Dreams are your passport to magical realms and the ticket to your own power. Because dreams come naturally doesn’t mean that dreaming isn’t also a skill that can be learned and enhanced. From a magical perspective, dreaming isn’t a passive state. Dreaming is a primary activity of the soul. Dreams aren’t something that happens to us; dreaming is something we do. Magic spells encourage you to consciously guide and control the dream process.

Dreams are how we most frequently receive communiqués from other realms. Spiritual entities communicate in dreams, as do guardian angels, animal allies, ancestral protectors, and those who have departed. Dreams are where we receive responses to petitions; where we receive the answers to oracles. Spells are cast in dreams, healing occurs, spontaneous past-life regressions and visions of the future are achieved. Dreams replenish our psychic ability and strengthen our personal power.

During the dream state, divisions between psychic knowledge and conventional wisdom grow thin or even disappear. Psychic receptivity increases. Without dreams psychic power is minimized or even curtailed, physical health suffers; we are cut off from needed spiritual advice and intervention.

Everyone dreams. Like a running cinematic program, the average person with sufficient sleep has approximately five dreams every night. The last dream, the one that occurs just at the threshold of awakening is usually the most spiritually and magically significant.

You object: you’re sure you don’t have any dreams at all, let alone a series of five.

Most likely you’re wrong. Few of us truly don’t dream, although it’s very common not to remember dreams. Some people, unfortunately, only remember unpleasant dreams, leading to negative associations and fear of sleep. This fear, as well as trauma and stress, sometimes result in dream suppression.

True failure to dream frequently derives from chronic lack of sleep, or sometimes from medication, especially, ironically, medication taken to enhance sleep. That irony is furthered when one considers the possibility that the whole function of sleep may exist so that dreaming occurs. In other words, it’s not sleep deprivation that’s potentially a problem; it’s dream deprivation.

Because dreams are so crucial to the magic process, an occult science has evolved to control, nurture, and enhance dreaming. If you think you don’t have dreams, there are botanicals that will coax them out of the shadows. You can produce the dreams you need and desire, teach yourself to recall your dreams, and receive visitations from desired persons and spirits alike. You can control and understand nightmares so that they no longer plague you.

What actually happens during dreams?

Although there are various scientific explanations, according to many spiritual/magical traditions, each person has not one but multiple souls, including a distinct dream soul that can journey during dreams and have true experiences before returning to the body when it awakens. The dream soul then sleeps when the body is awake. This dream soul can pursue information, journey to other realms, rendezvous with other dream souls and have magical adventures impossible when awake. What happens in dreams, thus, really occurs, at least in that special realm, Dreamland.

Dreams serve as the bridge between daytime reality and Dreamland, offering information to assist us during waking hours, to improve life and provide protection.

Dreams cannot always be taken literally: they are fluid, hallucinatory, full of secret codes, private languages, and inner jokes. Dreams can be overwhelmingly joyous and ecstatic. There are those whose most transcendent sexual, spiritual, creative, and magical experiences occur in dreams. I play the piano beautifully in dreams—an ability I cannot reproduce in waking life.

Dreams can also be a source of terror: horrible things happen in dreams, worst nightmares and deepest fears are realized. Suppressed memories emerge or are they just dreams? Loved ones turn into enemies in dreams; we engage in behavior we would never countenance while awake.

The Talmud states that, “An uninterpreted dream is like an unread letter.” According to general worldwide metaphysical wisdom, dreams may be harbingers or omens; however, they rarely, if ever, cast a sentence of inevitable doom. Instead dreams carry warnings, messages of protection from watchful ancestors and guardian spirits that must be interpreted correctly in order to avert danger and disaster. Looked at from this perspective, even a bad dream may be welcomed; clues in dreams often indicate your best attempt to fix or preempt an unhappy situation. Nightmares signal some sort of imbalance or else a potentially dangerous situation, of varying degrees: usually imbedded in the nightmare are clues for preventing or remedying disaster, as opposed to submission to the inevitable.

Dream Spells

According to the Talmud, three kinds of dreams come true:

The dream in the morning

The dream that someone else has about you

The dream that is interpreted by another dream

Spell-casters’ Dream Tools: Mugwort

If an alarm clock is a dream’s worst enemy, then mugwort is a dream’s best friend. Mugwort is a member of the Artemisia family, botanicals named in honor of the Greek lunar deity Artemis. Artemis protects women, wild nature of all kinds, fertility and creativity, witchcraft, magic, and psychic ability. No other plant has more powerful associations with magic in general and dreams in particular.

Mugwort doesn’t give you psychic ability; instead it unearths what’s hidden within you and drags it, kicking and screaming if necessary, to the surface. Mugwort is not a gentle plant. It is not for everyone, for a variety of reasons. Mugwort should not be used by pregnant women or those actively attempting to become pregnant. A traditional medicinal herb for stimulating menstruation, mugwort may cause violent uterine contractions. Nor is it for children’s use. Children typically produce vivid-enough dreams, without further stimulation.

Mugwort doesn’t produce dreams for you; instead it flings open the gates to Dreamland. Even if you swear you never dream, mugwort will very likely stimulate the process. Most commercial herbal dream teas, baths, and products contain mostly mugwort. Other ingredients are required, not to enhance mugwort’s magic powers, but to make it palatable. Like its close cousin, wormwood, mugwort is among the original bitter herbs.

Mugwort stimulates the production of dreams. It also enhances clarity, vividness, and your ability to remember dreams. In addition, dreams allegedly linger longer: you may receive a little extra time to hold onto the dream and record it. Because mugwort simultaneously enhances and stimulates psychic power, your ability to understand dreams may also be enhanced. Mugwort also provides spiritual protection during dreams, encouraging acts of bravery and daring you might not otherwise attempt.

Despite these benefits, not everyone likes mugwort. Some find dreams produced under its influence too vivid, too intense, or too frequent. Some complain that all that dreaming prevents a good night’s sleep! Experiment and test your personal reactions. Mugwort may be most valuable for jump-starting the dream process: a psychic enhancement to be used only as needed.

Mugwort, as is true for many plants, is available in a variety of forms. Even more than for most other plants, these forms are not interchangeable. In other words, the flower remedy, dried herb, and essential oil all produce different effects.

Essential oil of mugwort, also marketed under its French name, “Armoise,” is not safe for use by anyone. Mugwort’s chemical constituents are more highly concentrated in the essential oil than in any other form: it is potentially neurotoxic

The dried botanical herb is safe in moderation for most people, other than pregnant and nursing women, women actively attempting to conceive, and children. A general rule of thumb for mugwort, long considered to be a women’s herb, is that if you’re not old enough to menstruate, you are not old enough for mugwort. The dried herb is used in teas, baths, herbal pillows, and various spells. An infused oil may be made from its blossoms

hiving mugwort plants are a powerful dream and magic ally. Mugwort, which grows rampant on wasteland, is not necessarily an easy plant to cultivate, just like its namesake goddess. If it grows for you, this indicates the plants willingness to work magic with you and to encourage your psychic powers. Mugwort may be grown from seed; however, it is best propagated by taking cuttings or by root division in the fall. Surround your house with it; grow mugwort in pots indoors. A witch’s garden isn’t complete without this witch’s herb

Mugwort flower essence remedy is the safest, most accessible method of use. However, be cautious: a bottle of mugwort essential oil is easily mistaken for the flower remedy. Be sure you have the right product, especially if you plan to take the flower remedy internally. Follow the manufacturer’s directions for internal dosage or add to baths and massage oils

Dream Stimulation Flower Essence Remedies

Flower essence remedies are strongly beneficial for the dream process because they work upon

soul and emotions most easily expressed through dreams. The effects of any flower essence remedy may be perceived through dreams, but the following specifically stimulate and facilitate dreaming.

Apple (FES)

Chokecherry (Pegasus)

Gum plant (FES)

Jimson weed (Pegasus)

Mugwort (FES, Pegasus)

Take in combinations of up to six remedies at a time, as per manufacturer’s directions. Place a few drops in a glass of spring water and drink before going to sleep, or rub flower remedies into the thin skin between your thumb and forefinger.

Dream Stimulation: Holed Stone

Humble holed stones facilitate dreams as much, if not more, than precious gemstones. Should you find a naturally perforated pebble or small rock, treasure it: it’s a priceless gift from Earth. These stones provide protection, and clairvoyance, and enhance all facets of the dream process.

To access a holed stone’s dream power:

Wear it around your neck

Attach it to the headboard or bed post

Post it on the wall above the bed

Tuck it under the pillow

Dream Baths

These baths are intended to be relaxing, sensuous, and soothing. Don’t toss botanicals over your head; just relax in the tub. Warm water is generally more conducive to sleep and dreams than either hot or cold. Simultaneously burning candles and dream incense in the bathroom may facilitate the process, too.

Take these baths just prior to going to sleep. Add essential oils to a bath after the water has been drawn and the temperature has been adjusted. Unless advised otherwise, adjust quantities to suit your nose, but remember: when using essential oils, less is always more.

Dream Bath (1) Dream Stimulation

This dream-stimulation bath doesn’t work on a regular basis. It’s for use as a single-use jump-start only. This bath is most beneficial for the following purposes:

To initiate your first forays into the dream-world

To stimulate a specific, new course of dreaming

To initiate a new dreaming process, after an extended period of not having or recalling dreams

To kick off any dream healing, dream oracle, or intensive dream spell

Add twenty to thirty drops of mugwort flower essence remedy (never, never, never the essential oil!) to a bath before bedtime. Follow the manufacturer’s recommendations for internal use also, if so desired. This dosage is for single-use only. If you’d like to continue using the flower remedy in the bath, reduce the dosage to no more than five drops after the initial foray.

Dream Bath (2.) Monoi Bath

Monoi is gardenia-infused coconut oil from Tahiti and one of the few commercial sources of genuine gardenia fragrance.

Draw a warm bath.

Generously massage monoi into your body.

Add a few drops of essential oil of lavender to the bath.

Get into the bath; let the water disperse the monoi.

Relax, air dry if possible, but if not pat yourself dry, rather than vigorously toweling.

Go to bed and dream.

Dream Bath (3) Mugwort Bath

Bathing in mugwort tea may be more pleasant than drinking it and equally effective.

Pour boiling water over one teaspoon of dried mugwort. Allow the infusion to cool to room temperature, then strain and add to the bath. Enhance by adding a few drops of mugwort flower remedy to the water, too.

Dream Bath (4) Romantic Mugwort Bath

A plain mugwort bath is potent but medicinal. This bath packs an equivalent punch but is sensual and romantic, too, not to mention excellent for enhancing love-dream oracles and erotic dreams. Take:

One handful of dried hibiscus flowers

One tablespoon of orange blossoms

One tablespoon of red rose petals

One teaspoon of dried mugwort

Three dried bay leaves

Place the botanicals in a bowl and cover with boiling water.

Allow this infusion to cool.

Strain the botanicals, if desired, and add the liquid to the bath.

Dream Incense

Dream incense is not burned while you sleep and dream; the burning process should be complete just prior to actually going to bed.

Close doors and windows prior to burning the incense, to intensify its effects and fragrance.

Place the incense burner on a nightstand or on a safe area near the bed.

Burn the incense.

When the incense has completely burned, provide ventilation by opening doors and/or windows as appropriate and then go to sleep. Don’t wait too long or the fragrance may dissipate.

Dream Incense (1) Delphic Dreams

Powdered bay laurel leaves

Cedarwood chips or shavings

Storax gum resin

This incense is a traditional formula, with all ingredients having associations with the Oracle at Delphi. The botanicals included cover all bases in order to provide you with an enhanced dream experience:

Bay laurel leaves assist dream recall and enhance prophetic ability

Cedarwood clarifies dreams and sharpens awareness of detail

Storax promotes peaceful sleep and soothes insomnia

Grind the ingredients together. Sprinkle on lit charcoal and burn.

Dream Incense (2) Dream Herb

Mugwort derives from the Eastern hemisphere. Other plants served similar purposes in the Western hemisphere, including one that earned the nom de plume, “Dream Herb.” Calea zacatechichi is a native of the Mexican rainforest. Burning dream herb as incense extracts its power.

Burn it in the bedroom before going to sleep, allowing enough time for the incense to burn completely.

Do not go to sleep until the incense has completely burned, inhaling the aroma instead and concentrating upon the dream adventures one wishes to experience.

Keep doors and windows closed while the incense burns, but then immediately provide ventilation before going to sleep.

Dream Incense (3) Mugwort Incense

Sprinkle ground mugwort on a lit charcoal and burn right before bedtime. Go to bed and dream.

Dream Incense (4) Next Realm

Burn the following incense in your bedroom before going to sleep in order to contact someone who has passed over into the next realm or just to see them in your dreams.

Acacia leaves

Myrrh

Star anise

Mash the botanicals up in a mortar and pestle and burn before going to sleep.

Dream Incense (5) Psychic

Blend copal, mugwort, and mastic and burn for psychic, visionary dreams.

Dream Incense (6) Rainforest Blend

Sometimes having vivid dreams isn’t enough. Other abilities must be enhanced in order to take advantage of dreams received. Copal enhances clairvoyance and reception, while providing spiritual protection as well. Combine it with dream herb (zacatechichi) and burn in the bedroom before going to sleep for maximum benefits.

Dream Incense (7) Shadows of the Past

Sometimes the dream you need to incubate doesn’t pertain to the future; the information you require is buried in your past. These botanicals are specifically used to facilitate past-life recall and also to access this lifetime’s hidden memories:

Chopped bay leaves

Honeysuckle blossoms

Lilac blossoms

Juniper

Burn the powdered ingredients on lit charcoal before bedtime.

Dream Incense (8) Triple Strength Dream Incense

Mugwort’s closest botanical friends are wormwood, also under Artemis’ dominion, and Saint John’s Wort, associated with Artemis’ brother, Apollo. Both enhance mugwort’s power as well as providing additional spiritual protection. All three plants are considered most powerful if picked on Midsummer’s Day.

Grind mugwort, wormwood, and Saint John’s Wort together, blending into a fine powder.

Sprinkle on lit charcoals and burn.

Dream Incubation Spells

Dreaming can be an adventure; one never knows what will happen, who we’ll meet, what adventures we’ll have. Although that can be very exciting, sometimes we need more from our dreams. We need dreams to be a source for specific information that we’re unable to access in any other fashion.

A dream incubation spell requests a specific dream. The technique of dream incubation becomes easier with practice; initially it may be challenging. Do not give up if the dream doesn’t occur on first attempt; persist, repeating as needed. Different dream incubation spells work for different people. Play about and experiment until you find those that work for you.

Dream incubation is an ancient technique, pioneered in early temples of healing, Earth’s first hospitals. Following spells, rituals, counseling, and healing, one went to sleep within the shrine with expectations of receiving a healing dream: either an actual healing within the dream, a visitation from the resident spirit, often in the form of a snake, individual diagnoses or treatment recommendations. Dreams may be incubated for any purpose, however.

Two types of spells for requesting dreams exist:

Spells cast to receive a specific dream. The dreamer knows exactly what dream or what type of dream is needed: Dream Incubation Spells

Spells and procedures to increase clairvoyance and psychic ability. Dreams are prophetic; however, the dreamer is content to receive dreams as they appear, not specify the exact one. These spells are classed among Prophetic Dreams (see page 366)

Dream Incubation (1) Archangel Michael Dream Oracle

Michael the Archangel’s flaming sword illuminates dreams and provides safety as you linger in Dreamland. This dream oracle affirms whether a spiritual petition or request is appropriate or not. This spell is based on surviving remnants of Alexandria’s Magical Papyri. The request for the dream is made using a magic lamp.

Cleanse and purify yourself thoroughly, using whatever methods you prefer.

This spell doesn’t assume that you have a special ritual lamp. Oil lamps were once common household articles, like a table lamp is today: it wasn’t a big deal back then for a spell to suggest using one, any more than a modern spell’s request for a spoonful of salt is an inconvenience. An “everyday” magic lamp may be used, or create one following the instructions in Ritual Tools (see pages 83—6).

Light the lamp.

Speak to the lamplight, observing it, reacting to it, until it burns out.

Repeat the following incantation periodically throughout the vigil, and it must be recited at the very conclusion:

Lamp, light the way to Archangel Michael,

If my petition is appropriate, show me water and a grave

If not, show me water and a stone.

Be silent, go to sleep, and dream.

The symbols of water and grave and water and stone were used at the dawning of the Common Era. Use them if you like or select others that suit you better; just announce explicitly the identities of the symbols.

Dream Incubation Spell (2.) Artemis Assistance Spell

Divine assistance may be requested to receive the dreams you need.

Build an altar for Artemis.

Decorate it with images of the moon and the animals she loves, especially dogs, wolves, and deer.

Light silver and/or white candles.

Sprinkle dried mugwort onto lit charcoals and burn as incense.

Describe the type of dream you need to Artemis.

Go to sleep.

Should you receive your dreams, Artemis accepts gifts of toy animals, your old childhood toys, living Artemisia plants, and moon-shaped cakes lit with candles.

Dream Incubation (3) Ask the Angels

Russian magic favors beautifully poetic incantations. These incantations follow specific formulas, usually placing the spell-caster in the heart of a mythological dreamscape (an island in the sea, the hills of Zion) before incorporating information pertaining to the specific spell. Although this formula may be used to incubate any dream, it’s believed particularly beneficial for diagnosing and identifying mysterious health ailments.

Place an object under your pillow that pertains to the question you need answered in the dream.

Chant aloud:

I lie on the hills of Zion

Three angels surround my bed

One hears all

One sees all

One tells me what I need to know.

Conclude the chant by incorporating your question, as succinctly and specifically as possible.

Go to sleep.

Dream Incubation (4) Ask the Archangels

Sometimes you need dreams to get in touch with the spirits. Sometimes you need spirits to help you receive the right dream. This dream divination is based upon traditions from Alexandria, the great Egyptian city of Alexander the Great, and dates from the first centuries of the Common Era. It invokes assistance from angels and clairvoyance from bay laurel.

Write the following incantation on bay laurel leaves:

I call upon you Uriel, Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel

Don’t pass me by

Don’t disregard me

As you bring your nightly visions, please enter and reveal to me what I wish to know.

State your wish clearly, concisely and explicitly.

Place the leaves beside your head and go to sleep.

Dream Incubation (5) Aunt Sally’s Dream Powder

A famous Hoodoo formula, designed to induce all kinds of dreams, Aunt Sally’s was believed especially effective for dreaming up lottery numbers. It was produced and marketed to work in conjunction with Aunt Sally’s Policy Player’s Dream Book and Wheel of Fortune, a dream book first published in the 1890s and still in print.

Dream books have circulated for centuries, the theory being that everything you dream is not only symbolic but also corresponds to a number. Thus according to Aunt Sally’s Policy Player’s Dream Book, to dream you are playing a violin indicates that you will soon receive good news. It also indicates the numbers 8, 12, and 28. Using a dream book, you could pick up apart your dreams, analyzing them for meanings, but also hopefully come up with some winning combinations of numbers for the lottery.

Assorted dream books and systems have been around for centuries. Aunt Sally’s, which seems to be an amalgamation of various older books, remains the most popular.

Aunt Sally’s Dream Powder consists of the following.

Cardamom

Cinnamon

Coriander

Licorice

Grind all ingredients into a fine powder.

Sprinkle on charcoal and burn before bedtime.

Record your dreams, when you awake. Pay attention to any numbers in your dreams (count things, if necessary) or make correspondences using a dream book.

Dream Incubation (6) Aunt Sally’s Post-Dream Ashes

If there aren’t any numbers in your dreams, don’t despair. There’s another way to access numbers from dream incense.

In the morning, when you awake, using either your bare fingers or a sieve, sift the ashes of Aunt Sally’s or other dream incense.

Interpret the results to receive your message.

Dream Incubation (7) Black Cat Candle Spell

Sometimes you know exactly what kind of a dream you need. This spell is used to incubate a specific dream:

Prepare your bedroom. Do everything necessary so that once the candle is pinched out, you can go straight to sleep.

Hold a black cat candle in your hand while you consider explicitly what dream you need.

Write this down succinctly and clearly on a small slip of paper.

Slip the paper into the cat’s mouth. (Use a knife to cut a slit into the wax if necessary, or attach it with oil and bit of acacia gum.)

Charge the cat with its mission and light the candle.

While the candle burns, have a relaxing bath with dream-inducing oils. Drink a dream-stimulating tea.

Keep an eye on the candle; once the paper has been reduced to ash, pinch the flame out and go to bed.

If you need to revisit this specific dream or dream-issue, because the dream wasn’t received, you weren’t able to recall details or the whole dream, or you require further information from the same dream, use the same candle. If the surface of the candle has flattened, you may rest the paper atop. If not, attach it with gum resin or make a slit into the wax and insert it.

For a totally new dream, a totally new situation, start with a new cat.

Dream Incubation (8) Bodyguard Bes

Often described as a cross between a lion and a dwarf, although Bes doesn’t figure into the grand cosmologies favored by mythology books, to the average Egyptian person he may have been the most popular spirit of all. Bes’s image was everywhere in ancient Egypt: decorating walls, spoons, cosmetic jars, tattooed onto dancers’ bodies, carved onto beds to serve as a night watchman. Typically the only male member of the spiritual entourage surrounding Isis, fierce little dancing Bes serves as a spiritual guard-dog. This ritual requests more than nocturnal protection from Bes:

Begin by preparing the ink and consecrating a black strip of cloth or a scarf to Isis.

Doctor up Dove’s Blood ink with an extra drop of myrrh and a little raspberry or pomegranate juice or grenadine syrup.

Draw an image of the protective spirit Bes on a piece of papyrus with your left hand, if you’re right-handed; the reverse, if not.

Write out the question requiring a dream answer, while reciting a Names of Power incantation. The ancients favored repetitions of long strands of magical names that they may or may not have understood. Create your own Names of Power invocation. Invoke those whom you believe will protect you and who will help send you the needed dream. Begin the incantation with: “Send the truthful seer out of the holy shrine.”

Chant your Names of Power and conclude with the words: “Come this very night!”

Take the black strip of cloth, wrap one end around your left hand and the other around your neck. Go to sleep. Bes may appear in person with your answer or you may just receive the answer.

Dream Incubation (9) Magic Lamp Spell

A magic lamp is used to stimulate this dream revelation, based on traditions from Alexandria. The original spell demanded several days of purification, at least three, in order to obtain optimal results. This means no alcohol, no meat, and no sex. Although an everyday lamp may be used for this spell, it should be ritually consecrated before use, charging it with intent and fumigating with incense.

Set up a magic oil lamp. If it’s terracotta, you may wish to decorate the body of the lamp with appropriate symbols or sigils.

Consider explicitly what you require from the dream.

Work out an incantation, which addresses your needs and requests assistance from the deity of your choice.

Place a mat on the ground to sleep on; the original spell called for a rush mat, modern versions are sometimes sold as beach blankets although perhaps any mat or blanket of natural material will suffice.

Using ink that has been scented with myrrh, write down whatever it is you need to conjure, your dream requirements, onto a strip of white linen.

Wrap this strip around an olive branch, with the words facing in.

Place it on the mat, so that when you are ready to sleep it will be by the left side of your head.

Fumigate the room and yourself with kyphi or frankincense and myrrh.

Kneel on the floor beside the lamp and repeat your incantation seven times, gazing into the flame.

Go to sleep and dream.

Dream Incubation (10) Mystery Tour

Who’s sending those anonymous letters? How to discover where your mysterious lover really lives? This Russian oracle allegedly provides identifying dream visions of specific doorways or displays directions to the location of your choice. Of course, first you have to get to sleep. Why is it that dream-oracle food always tastes so bad and dream-oracle animals are inevitably those that leave us sleepless? This spell would be so much easier if you could just borrow a little kitty-cat instead.

Take a cockroach from your neighbor’s house. (Because, of course, the dreamer’s house doesn’t have any, or because it must be a traveling cockroach?)

Put it under your pillow before bedtime and say, “Cockroach! Lead me to the door of _____ [Name your desire].”

Go to sleep. You should see the door in your dreams. You may be able to follow the cockroach’s route. If so, consciously try to pay attention to directions in your dreams so that they may be analyzed or reproduced.

Really squeamish about having that cockroach crawling around under your pillow? Other versions of this spell suggest keeping the cockroach in a locket around your neck. Much more reassuring, isn’t it?

Dream Message Spell

Send a message via dreams. The goal of this German spell is to magically induce someone else to have a specific dream.

Determine the exact dream that needs to be transmitted in as much detail as possible.

At the New Moon, place a clear quartz crystal within a glass of spring or Holy Water and create lunar-infused water by leaving it exposed to moonlight overnight.

During the waxing moon, dress your bed with clean white sheets and sprinkle the lunar water over them.

Place yarrow, wormwood, and thyme inside a muslin bag or tie up within a handkerchief.

Hold the herb packet in your hand; concentrate on the person for whom this dream is intended.

Place the packet within your pillowcase; as you go to sleep visualize the dream you’d like to send as if you were watching a movie.

Dream Oil

Dream Oil (1) Gardenia

The fragrance of gardenias inspires abundant, prophetic dreams, beckons benevolent spirits and enhances psychic ability. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the scent of genuine gardenia is rare. Commercially available products are almost invariably synthetic; what’s in the bottle smells like gardenia but doesn’t actually possess the botanical’s magic powers. If at all possible, if you possess fresh gardenia petals, create your own gardenia infused oil to spark intensely powerful dreams. (The alternative is the Tahitian gardenia-infused coconut oil known as monoi.)

Infuse gardenia petals in coconut oil (see Infusion Instructions in Elements of Magic Spells, page 31). (It may require as many as six weeks to achieve the desired intensity of fragrance.)

Strain the infused oil and discard the flowers.

Reserve the oil. Add approximately one tablespoon to a bath before bedtime to stimulate prophetic dreams.

Dream Oil (2) Gardenia Oil, Enhanced

Create gardenia-infused oil as directed above.

Take a finger-full of this infused oil and add a few drops of mugwort flower essence remedy (FES).

Rub onto the soles of your feet before bedtime to kick-start dreaming.

Dream Oil (3) Happy Dreams Oil

Add essential oils of frankincense, myrrh, and petit-grain to a bottle of blended sweet almond and jojoba oil. Massage this into the body before bedtime.

Dream Oil (4) Hidden Access

This oil is infused from honeysuckle blossoms and lilac blossoms. The fragrance of lilac unlocks the door where hidden memories, from this lifetime and those long past, are stored. Unfortunately there is virtually no version of commercially available lilac fragrance that is not synthetic. If you’d like to access lilac’s power, you’ll have to infuse your own oil.

Follow the instructions in Elements of Magic Spells for making flower petal-infused oil.

When the oil is finally complete and all botanical material has been strained out, for added enhancement add a few drops of mugwort flower essence remedy (FES).

Massage onto the body before bed or add to the bath to unlock buried memories from this lifetime or others.

Dream Oracle (1)

Write your query lucidly and concisely on a slip of paper.

Slice a slit into a poppy seed head and place the paper within it.

Sleep with this beneath your pillow to receive a response in your dreams.

Dream Oracle (2.) Doll Divination

This method, which resembles something from a fairy tale, traditionally uses a mandrake root, though ginseng or any human shaped root may be substituted.

Embellish and dress the root so it looks like a person. (German folk tradition suggests using millet for eyes.)

Wrap the root doll in silk when not in use and keep in a safe place.

Unwrap the doll and talk to it before bedtime. Tell it your concerns and questions.

Perch it on your pillow or tuck it beneath while you go to sleep and dream.

Dream Oracle (3) Saint Swithin

On Saint Swithin’s Eve, July 14th, cut the corners off a square of fine paper and burn them.

Using a new pen with red ink, write down the three things you most wish to know on the corner-less paper.

Fold the paper up; wrap three hairs from your head around it. Make a knot with each, reiterating one query with each.

Place this paper under your pillow for three nights and allegedly all will be revealed to you.

Dream Pillows

Dream pillows are an excellent venue for botanicals to stimulate and enhance dreaming. Botanicals are placed within a bag, which is then either laid under the cheek or placed beside you on the pillow. The bag should be smooth and comfortable. Botanicals are ground to a fine powder so that nothing protrudes and irritates. A dream pillow that prevents you from sleeping defeats its purpose. Dream pillows serve all sorts of uses:

Basic dream stimulation

Incubation of specific types of dreams: erotic dreams or financial dreams, for instance

Sleep enhancement

Nightmare prevention

Spiritual protection while you sleep

Specify your goal by adjusting the botanicals stuffed within the pillow. Every botanical has its own power: select those that correspond to your desire. Crafting the dream pillow is a spell: remember to charge and consecrate materials as desired. Focus on your desire and intent while you’re crafting. Every knot tied is an opportunity for an individual knot spell.

The typical dream pillow is made from muslin or some other soft material. Natural fabrics breathe better, allowing better access to the pillow’s fragrance. The pillow’s power is delivered to you via its aroma. The standardized dream pillow is 12 inches by 8 inches (30 cm x 20 cm) and requires approximately 8 to 10 ounces (around 300 g) of dried herbs. However, craft whatever pillow suits you best. A small sachet made from highly absorbent material works beautifully. Resist the temptation to stuff the pillow with herbs in the mistaken belief that increased quantity always means increased power: a flat, loosely filled pillow is more comfortable, more conducive to sleep, and thus most likely to be more effective.

Basic Dream Pillow Instructions

For the pillow, cut two matching pieces of fabric and sew them up together on three sides.

Fill the bag from the open end, and then sew this last side up, too.

Botanicals must be completely, thoroughly dry before sewing into the pillow or sachet because otherwise they may rot, producing an acrid fragrance liable to stimulate nightmares, rather than the desired dreams.

Unless they are very soft, grind ingredients to a fine powder. Comfort is the key element: rose petals are preferable to buds, which are pointy and must be finely ground. Bay leaves are superb dream enhancers but must be at least crushed. Otherwise they will protrude from the pillow and are liable to poke you in the eye.

If adding essential or fragrance oils, blend them into the dried material well, using a twig or wooden chopstick. Allow the material time to dry completely before sewing into the pillow.

If adding charms or harder roots, place them carefully in the center of the pillow and surround with softer material.

Ideally, if only for maximum effectiveness, the pillow’s fragrance should be pleasing to you. Dislike of any botanical’s aroma may signal that this plant is not beneficial for you. Irritation is liable to keep you awake, defeating the purpose. At the very least, make sure you find the fragrance neutral. Adjust the fragrance to suit your taste, keeping in mind that when you’re lying in the dark, deprived of other stimulation, especially if unable to sleep, the fragrance may be more intense than initially realized.

Crystal Dream Pillows

Many crystals enhance dreaming, but because they must be cleansed periodically (for maximum potency but also in the aftermath of disturbing visions and nightmares), don’t sew them up inside a pillow or sachet.

Place a crystal on a clean white handkerchief together with some dream herbs.

Tie it together with a blue silk ribbon.

Sleep with this under your pillow or cheek.

Take it apart and cleanse as needed.

Doctoring a Dream Pillow

Although beautiful commercial dream pillows are available, the herbal stuffing is rarely as potent as the one that you can create at home, nor as specific to your needs. Have the best of both worlds. When someone falls in love with a commercially manufactured dream pillow, usually it’s the fabric that truly attracts. If a dream pillow is too pretty, evocative or cute to leave behind, buy it, bring it home, and enhance its power.

Carefully, open the seams and remove the herbs.

Dress the original herbs with dream-enhancing oil and allow them to dry before replacing, or substitute fresh herbs of your choice.

Sew the bag back up and enjoy it.

Quick-fix Dream Pillow

Sometimes you have the herbs but lack the time or patience to sew. Maybe you just really hate sewing. In that case place dream botanicals in a white handkerchief and tie them up in a bundle with a red, blue or silver ribbon. This is not as comfortable to sleep with as a smooth, flat pillow, and the herbs do have a tendency to spell out. However, purely from a spell-caster’s perspective, this is equally as effective as a full-blown dream pillow.

Alternatively, fill a drawstring bag with dream herbs and use it as a dream pillow. Muslin is preferable to flannel, as the fragrance is released with greater intensity.

Dream Pillow (1) A Basic Dream Pillow

The simplest dream pillows contain one ingredient only: mugwort. Fill a pillow with dried mugwort to stimulate your dreams.

Dream Pillow (2) Artemis’ Dream Herbs

Fill your dream pillow with a divinity’s special botanicals to request their protection as well as their presence in your dreams. Artemis is an obvious choice because she rules the night as well as the herbs so intrinsically connected with dreaming.

Dried Dittany of Crete

Dried mugwort

Dried southernwood

Dried tarragon

Dried wormwood

Fill a white bag with a combination of the above herbs.

Add a tiny smooth silver charm to the center of the bag.

For maximum strength, create and inaugurate the pillow on a Full Moon.

Dream Pillow (3) Baby

A dream pillow to encourage a baby to sleep:

Construct a sleep pillow by placing dried dill weed and seeds inside a flannel bag.

Use a few layers of flannel, so that the pillow will be extra soft.

Keep the pillow near the crib rather than inside it, to make sure the baby doesn’t choke on any materials.

Dream Pillow (4) Children

Fill a very soft flannel dream pillow with one or a combination of the following: chamomile flowers, hops, lavender blossoms, and linden flowers. (Avoid chamomile where there’s a possibility of ragweed allergy.)

Dream Pillow (5) Divine Siblings’ Sleep Protector

Those who sleep, unpredictably, at all hours of the day or night, need 24-hour vigilant protection. Mugwort represents Artemis, Spirit of the Night, while Saint John’s Wort belongs to her twin Apollo, who radiates the power of the sun. Master archers both, have them train their vigilant eyes over you while you sleep.

Use equal parts of dried mugwort and dried Saint John’s Wort to fill a dream pillow, to obtain their unwavering protection both day and night.

For added enhancement, add small, smooth silver charms in the shape of dolphins or moons.

Dream Pillow (6) Hecate’s Pillow

Hecate provides protection at night as well as psychic enhancement, so that you can journey safely during dreams. Appeal to Hecate to block nightmares too.

Dried lavender

Dried mullein

Essential oil of lavender

Optional: tuberose absolute

Blend two parts lavender to one part mullein.

Sprinkle a few drops of the essential oils over the dried botanicals.

Allow this to dry thoroughly and use it to fill a black pillow.

For optimum results, create and inaugurate the pillow during the Dark Moon or on Halloween/Samhain.

Dream Pillow (7) Lover Dream of Me

Sometimes it’s not your own dreams that are so crucial. Give this dream pillow as a gift to someone whose dreams you’d like to enter.

Grind allspice berries and orrisroot to a fine powder.

Place them in a bowl together with dried honeysuckle blossoms, red rose petals, and hibiscus flowers.

Add a lock of your hair.

Dress with one drop of essential oil of pine and one drop of essential oil of sandalwood.

If you’d like, add one drop of menstrual blood.

Stir gently to blend thoroughly.

Allow the mixture to dry completely.

Use this blend to fill a small dream pillow and present it to the one you love.

Pillows covered in red silk or satin are most powerful.

Dream Pillow (8) Morpheus

Who can forget the sleep-inducing field of poppies in The Wizard of Oz? Poppies, the source of some of the earliest anesthesia, represent the healing, renewing power of sleep. Sacred to many deities from Demeter to Hathor, poppies are the special emblem of Morpheus, Greek spirit of dreams, hence the name morphine, derived from the opium poppy. Stuff a red dream pillow with poppy seeds, dried poppy flowers, and mugwort for sound sleep as well as prophetic, visionary dreams.

Dream Pillow (9) Prophet’s Pillow

Stuff a dream pillow with heather for prophetic and financially insightful dreams.

Dream Pillow (10) Restless Spirit

Fill a dream pillow with two parts lavender blossom to one part each of agrimony and mugwort to ease restless spirits and still fitful dreams, and to encouraging clairvoyant ones instead. (If you are a very sensitive sleeper, a mere pinch of mugwort may be sufficient.)

Dream Pillow (11) Romantic Dreams

Fill a small pillow with peppermint leaves, rose petals, and ground cloves for restful sleep and happy, romantic dreams.

Dream Pillow (12) Seraphim Summoning

Dried henna powder calls in the seraphim, the fire angels. If you’d like to experience or communicate with them, fill a muslin drawstring bag or a dream pillow with the powder and place it under your cheek while sleeping.

Dream Potions

Don’t confuse magical dream potions with medicinal sleep aids. Most of these potions are ancient recipes; whether or not they’ve since been discovered to have sedative properties is incidental. Their goal is to promote dreaming, not to forcefully sedate you into sleep. In general, drink these potions just before bedtime.

Dream Potion (1) Aphrodite’s True Love Tea

Aphrodite’s sacred tree is the apple and thus its fruit is the fruit of love.

Make apple blossom tea. Sweeten it with honey and bring it to bed. Before drinking make an invocation to Aphrodite, requesting that true love dreams be sent to you.

Dream Potion (2) Basic Mugwort Tea

Plain mugwort tea is very potent. A cup before bedtime should stimulate dreams. Unfortunately it tastes so unpleasant few will drink it. Adding honey may be sufficient to sweeten the taste for some.

Place one teaspoon of dried mugwort in a cup and cover with boiling water. Allow this to steep for ten minutes, then strain and drink.

Dream Potion (3) Basic Mugwort Tea, Flavor Enhanced

A more palatable blend:

One tablespoon dried mugwort

One teaspoon dried lemon balm (melissa)

One teaspoon dried hibiscus

Place the ingredients in a tea pot. (This is more herb than necessary for a single cup of tea. Adjust quantities to suit your needs.)

Pour boiling water over the herbs and let them infuse for ten minutes.

Strain and drink.

Sweeten with honey if desired.

Dream Potion (4) Mugwort Power Potion

If you’re able to drink plain mugwort tea, you may be able to stomach this even more bitter brew. One single cup, no more than once a week, should be sufficient to stimulate powerful dreams.

Place one teaspoon of dried mugwort and half a teaspoon of dried wormwood in a cup. Fill the cup with boiling water. Allow the tea to steep for ten minutes, strain and drink.

Dream Powder: Mimosa Magic

Mimosa Magic Powder serves three purposes:

To banish bad dreams

To stimulate good dreams.

To encourage good dreams to come true

Grind up rose petals, lilac petals, and acacia gum in a mortar and pestle.

Blend this with cornstarch.

Add a few drops of essential oils of mimosa and bay laurel. (If you like a sweeter, more floral aroma, also add one or two drops of rose attar.)

Sprinkle Mimosa Magic between the sheets, or around the bed. As an alternative, powder the body with it following a bath.

Dream Protection

While some perceive the dream-state’s hallucinatory fluidness as an opportunity for spiritual growth, excitement, and adventure, others fear sleep and dreams. Surrender of consciousness leads to feelings of extreme vulnerability. That anything can happen in a dream may be an invitation for some, a nightmare for others. That sense of exposure and vulnerability is no illusion: all sorts of defenses are surrendered together with consciousness when you lie down to sleep. Standard physical precautions are taken: doors are locked, windows bolted, the stove turned off, and burning candles extinguished to avoid danger and risk. Special magical security measures may also be taken to provide spiritual safety whilst you sleep—a wise plan for nervous and intrepid dreamers alike.

These spells are specifically designed to ward off spiritual night dangers rather than scary dreams or nightmares. (For protection against these, see the section on Nightmares, page 380.) You may wish to supplement with general Protection Spells too.

Dream Protection (1) Artemis

Use Artemis’ herbs to invoke her nocturnal protection.

Set up a shrine to Artemis within sight of your bed.

Use a statue of the goddess as the shrine’s focal point or designate a white candle or a lunar image to represent her.

Place a dog beside her: either a rubber toy model or a photograph works well.

Place wormwood and mugwort at her feet. Supplement with other herbs she favors: Sweet Annie, southernwood, Dittany of Crete.

Add pieces of silver, smooth white stones and/or empty wooden thread spools.

Tell Artemis what you need: before you retire at night, light a white or silver birthday candle to remind her of your need.

Dream Protection (2) Basic Botanicals

The following botanicals enhance sleep, or at least won’t disturb it, whilst simultaneously creating a spiritual shield to protect you while you sleep:

Angelica

Anise

Black mustard seeds

Cloves

Henna

Mugwort

Purslane

Rosemary

Rue

Saint John’s Wort

Southernwood

Sweet Annie

Sweet flag (calamus)

Vervain

Wormwood

Yarrow

Use one or any combination of the above to fill a dream pillow.

Dream Protection (3) Basic Botanical Potpourri

Place any combination of dried dream protection botanicals (see list above) inside a closed magic box. Keep the box closed except when you’re sleeping; then open it so that the fragrance radiates a protective shield around you.

Dream Protection (4) Basic Botanical Protective Circle

If you’re really fearful, cast a circle with any one or combination of the above dream protection botanicals around the bed where you sleep.

Dream Protection (5) Dream Pillow

Fill a small dream pillow with coriander seeds and dillweed to enhance sleep and dreams, and to provide spiritual protection at the same time.

Dream Protection (6) Five Finger Grass

Wrap cinquefoil (five-finger grass) in red cloth. Tie with a silver or red ribbon, knotting in your desired goal, and place this under your pillow to ward off malevolent nocturnal spirits, or hang it over the bed.

Dream Protection (7) Fragrance

Not all protective fragrances come in the form of dried herbs. Fragrances that confer protection include coconut, frankincense, gardenia, hyacinth, mimosa, and myrrh.

Position one or more of these fragrances so that it wafts over your bed. Either place the botanical beside your bed (potted plant, bouquet or cut fruit), or warm the fragrance within an aroma burner. If you do this, make sure you have the real item, not a synthetic reproduction. Synthetics may be dead ringers for the superficial aspects of fragrance but they lack the botanical’s spiritual and magic protective powers.

Dream Protection (8) Iron

Nothing protects against the terrors of the night better than iron.

Place a knife, dagger or horseshoe under your pillow while you sleep, or keep a magic sword under the bed.

Dream Protection (9) Iron Enhanced

Wrap mugwort and/or wormwood around an iron implement. Place this under your pillow for maximum spiritual protection while dreaming.

Dream Protection (10) Mugwort and Wormwood

Those botanical siblings, mugwort and wormwood, have each earned strong individual reputations as guardian amulets. Operating together, however, they’re able to provide massive-strength spiritual protection, especially while you’re sleeping.

Sleep with them under your pillow, tucked into your nightclothes or hanging from the bedpost.

Dream Protection (11) Mugwort and Wormwood Shield

Place twigs and roots of mugwort and/or wormwood across your chest while you sleep for intensified protection. Another method is to cast a circle of mugwort and/or wormwood roots around your bed.

Dream Protection (12.) Sea Spirit

Sea Spirit, also known as Ceylon Moss, is a type of seaweed. When it’s dehydrated and powdered, it’s called agar-agar, and is used as a food thickener in many Asian cuisines.

Stir a pinch of agar-agar into a glass of whiskey or rum.

Place it on a nightstand beside your bed to ward off (or sedate) any visiting dangerous spirits of the night.

Dream Protection (13) Sea Spirit/Florida Water

Add a pinch of agar-agar to a bottle of Florida Water. Keep the open bottle near your bed while you sleep.

Dream Protection (14) Sweet Grass

A Cheyenne method used for children and adults alike is to tie a piece of sweet grass root onto a necklace, blanket, clothing or cradleboard to ward off malevolent night spirits and to sweeten dreams.

Dream Rendezvous

This spell assists dream assignations. This spell may be easier to accomplish if the people wishing to meet in Dreamland work out the dream details in advance. (In other words, make plans where to meet.)

Grind and powder linden flowers and blend with rice flour. Both parties must dust their bodies from head to toe with this powder before going to sleep.

Erotic Dreams

Aphrodisiacs create erotic enhancement while you’re awake; certain botanicals stimulate sensual dreams and pleasures while you sleep.

The following botanicals provide that special effect:

Aloes wood

Anise

Cardamom

Catnip

Cloves

Coriander seed

Damiana

Gardenia

Henna

Hibiscus

Jasmine

Myrrh

Orchids

Rose

Tagetes-marigold*

Tuberose

Vanilla

Vervain

Fill a dream pillow with any one or combination of the above herbs

Instead of filling a pillow with the herbs, place them loose in a covered box kept by your bedside. Inhale this potpourri before bedtime

Make an infusion from any combination of these botanicals, except tagetes, and add to your bath

Dried plants aren’t necessarily more effective. Place a bouquet of cut flowers on the nightstand or keep living plants close enough to waft their aroma over you while you sleep

Erotic Dreams (1) Angel’s Water Bath

Add substantial quantities of Angel’s Water to your bath for aphrodisiac effect and to provoke erotic dreams.

Erotic Dreams (2.) Aphrodite’s Dream Bath

If a real lover isn’t in your bed, summon a dream lover instead. Aphrodite’s favorite botanicals incite dream-time revels. Allow yourself to air-dry; the botanicals will linger on your skin and attract real-life lovers, too. Use six drops of essential oil of myrtle and six drops of rose attar in your bath.

Erotic Dreams (3) Cat’s Tail

Place a cat’s-tail plant in a glass of water on a night-stand by your bed. This not only inspires erotic dreams but allegedly helps transform those dreams into reality. In the morning, toss the water out in your front yard.

Erotic Dreams (4) Damiana Incense

Sprinkle powdered damiana and powdered sandalwood on lit charcoals and burn.

Erotic Dreams (5) Honeysuckle

Some erotic-dream inducing botanicals are particularly powerful. Honeysuckle, in particular, is strong enough to create the desired reactions independently.

Add honeysuckle flower essence remedy (Bach flower) to the bath before bedtime

If you’re fortunate enough to possess real honeysuckle, place some on your pillow or by the bed so that its aroma wafts over you

Erotic Dreams (6) Honeysuckle Bedtime Foot Massage

Gently warm a little hazelnut oil.

Remove the oil from the source of heat and add one or two drops of jasmine absolute and a few drops of honeysuckle flower remedy (Bach flower).

Massage this into your feet and ankles when you get into bed.

Erotic Dreams (7) La Madama’s Dream Steam

Aunt Sally’s Dream Powder is also used to stimulate erotic dreams. Considering her powder possesses such power, it seems so disrespectful to refer to this mistress of dreams as ’Aunt Sally.” The image on her book resembles the Espiritismo spirit La Madama, unofficial matron saint of fortune-tellers, and offers a title of respect.

Cardamom

Cinnamon

Coriander

Licorice

Mash up the ingredients in a mortar and pestle.

Add them to a pot of water, wine or apple cider.

Gently warm until the fragrant steam permeates the area.

If the aroma doesn’t reach the bedroom, carefully place the steaming liquid into a pan and waft the fragrance around the bed with a feather fan.

If desired, pour yourself a glass of this erotic-dreams elixir to drink before going to bed.

Erotic Dreams (8) Maitresse Ezili’s Dream Bath

Maitresse Ezili Freda Dahomey is the beautiful Iwa of luxury, dreams, and love. This bath blends all three of her domains.

Fill a tub with warm water.

Add three drops of rose attar, three drops of neroli, and three drops of jasmine absolute.

Add fresh white roses, basil leaves and gardenia blossoms to the bath.

Pour yourself a glass of champagne, if desired; relax and luxuriate in the tub.

Erotic Dreams (9) Myrrh Alone Incense

Burn myrrh as incense in the bedroom to stimulate erotic dreams, if you’re sleeping solo.

Erotic Dreams (10) Myrrh Duo Incense

Burn myrrh together with frankincense, if you’re not alone.

Exotic Dreams (11) Myrrh Extra Strength Incense

Burn myrrh together with storax and labdanum (rock rose), for erotic inducement and sound sleep.

Erotic Dreams (12) Rose Bath

One cup of rose hydrosol

Five drops of rose attar

Five drops of neroli or essential oil of petitgrain

Five drops of honeysuckle flower essence remedy (Bach flower)

Add all the above “ingredients” to a tub filled with water and luxuriate before bedtime.

For maximum effect, float fresh rose petals and/or orange blossoms in the bath, too.

Financial Dreams

There are all kinds of prophetic dreams. That term is sometimes used euphemistically to refer to dreams of financial inspiration. Sometimes this means a dream advising the most profitable future investment, real insider’s information. Sometimes it refers to the desperate need to dream up a financial plan to rescue you from dire straits. Other times you just need to conjure some lucky numbers.

Financial Dreams (1) Basic Botanical

Herbs to facilitate financially providential dreams include basil, chamomile blossoms, cinnamon, coriander, High John the Conqueror, parsley, and vervain.

Place any one or combination into a dream pillow

Place herbs in a charm bag and hang it around your neck while you sleep

Place loose herbs in a covered magic box. Uncover this potpourri just before bedtime so the fragrance is released while you sleep

Financial Dreams (2.) Financial Solutions

Answers and solutions to your financial dilemmas are just out of reach. Perhaps they reside within you, if only they would rise to the surface. This ritual attempts to draw them out during dreams.

Sprinkle either infused basil oil or essential oil of basil onto a lodestone, just before going to sleep.

Get into bed, turn out the lights and gently rub the scented lodestone in a sunwise direction on your forehead. (When you awake, your forehead will probably be dirty. Don’t panic; lodestone dust is lucky.)

Keep the lodestone near the bed, so that you can inhale the basil fragrance.

Financial Dreams (3) High John’s Money Dream

Just before going to sleep, break up a High John the Conqueror root into chips and shards. (A hammer may be required.)

Place the chips into a dish.

Grind nutmeg and dried basil over these chips.

If the aroma is strong, just place the dish by your bedside.

If not, grind the blended materials into a finer powder. Sprinkle on lit charcoals and burn before going to sleep.

Lucid Dreaming Spell

Lucid dreaming is the technique of staying conscious while dreaming, thus being able to actively navigate through Dreamland rather than being the passive recipient of dreams. Various methods teach mastery of this shamanic art; however, many people have spontaneous, if brief, lucid dream moments.

Jasmine’s fragrance encourages this spontaneous lucid dreaming. For maximum effectiveness, maintain living jasmine plants in the bedroom. If this is not possible, incorporate jasmine attar into a pre-bedtime massage, or sprinkle the sheets with jasmine water.

Marriage Dream

This is more than a soul mate or true love dream. Bridewort has an affinity for marriage; allegedly this spell produces dream visions of the one you’ll marry.

Create infused oil from the blossoms of the Druid’s sacred plant Queen of the Meadow, also known as bridewort. (Instructions are to be found in Elements of Magic Spells.) Rub it on your body before bedtime to dream of the one you’ll marry.

Prophetic Dreams

The floodgates of psychic ability are completely open while we sleep. Stimulate prophetic dreams, enhance and encourage clairvoyance with various spells. Experiment to discover which ones best enhance your own innate power. Many of these techniques also encourage dreams to linger, be more vivid, and more easily recalled.

Prophetic Dreams (1) Bay Laurel Quick Pix

Bay leaves stimulate clairvoyance while awake or asleep. They are also a common, inexpensive kitchen ingredient. As a quick fix, when you desperately need a prophetic dream but don’t have time or materials for other methods, tuck some bay leaves under your pillow.

Bay leaves can be sharp: if they prick you or scatter during the night, safety pin one to each corner of your pillow.

Prophetic Dreams (2.) Basic Psychic Enhancement

Certain botanicals stimulate clairvoyance, psychic perceptions, and prophesy:

Angelica

Anise

Basil

Bay laurel

Copal

Dittany of Crete

Dream herb (zacatechichi)

Gardenia

Mimosa

Mugwort

Peppermint

Roses

Sandalwood

Syrian rue (harmel)

Wisteria

Wormwood

Use any one or combination of these herbs to stuff dream pillows. Or place any combination of them in a conjure bag, to be worn around the neck at night.

Prophetic Dreams (3) Botanical Blast

Choose any combination of the prophetic-dream botanicals listed above.

Place the loose botanicals inside a covered box, kept beside your bed.

Uncover or inhale this potpourri before sleeping, to receive a blast of its power.

Prophetic Dreams (4) Gardenia

Gardenia’s fragrance potently invokes clairvoyant dreams, as well as inviting benevolent spirits to visit. Place fresh gardenias by your bedside so that you may inhale the fragrance while you sleep.

Prophetic Dreams (5) Gardenia Crown

An intensified version of the method above, this dream incubation spell draws its inspiration from Hawaii.

Weave fresh gardenias into a lei or crown, focusing on the desired dream and knotting your goals and intentions into the garland.

Wear it while you sleep or place it beside you on the pillow.

Prophetic Dreams (6) Lucky Mystic Powder

A Hoodoo formulation said to induce psychic dreams:

Grind dried basil and vetiver root together, creating a fine powder.

Blend this powder with silver magnetic sand, until you achieve a fragrance and appearance that pleases you.

Sprinkle this powder around your bed before bedtime.

Prophetic Dreams (7) Lucky Mystic Quick-fix Powder

Sprinkle essential oils of basil and vetiver on silver magnetic sand. Let it dry out and then cast a circle around your bed with the powder.

For a really quick-fix, place magnetic sand in a dish by your bedside and add the essential oils just before you go to sleep. Don’t bother casting a circle; just turn off the lights and inhale the fragrance.

Prophetic Dreams (8) Mary Magdalene Rosemary Wand

This British dream oracle is simple to accomplish but reserved for one night only: the Eve of Mary Magdalene’s feast day, the night of July 21st.

Blend wine, vinegar, and water in a bowl beside your bed.

Soak a rosemary wand in the bowl; then gently shake off the excess liquid.

Place this wand between your breasts and go to bed without saying another word, to produce prophetic dreams.

Prophetic Dreams (9) Mary Magdalene Sleepover Party

Mary Magdalene’s Eve is considered especially fortuitous for prophetic dreams. Even without deliberate request or ritual, pay attention to any spontaneous dreams received. The following British dream spell is, traditionally, performed by three women, preferably sisters, on Mary Magdalene’s Eve. This ritual was also once a sleepover party game, perhaps instigated by parents desiring peace and quiet, since the participants can’t talk!

Blend wine, rum, gin, vinegar, and water.

Use a rosemary wand to asperge this liquid around the room(s) where you’ll sleep.

Sprinkle in all the corners, on the bed and, finally, on yourselves.

Go to bed without speaking another word until after any dreams are recorded.

Prophetic Dreams (10) Mugwort

Burn mugwort and vervain before bedtime for prophetic, truthful dreams and the ability to recall and comprehend them.

Prophetic Dreams (11) Pigpen Incubation

An ancient Italian method of incubating prophetic dreams involved sleeping in the pigpen together with the pigs. The sole requirement was that the pen contained a nursing sow with her piglets. This is obviously no longer an accessible method for most people, but if you raise pigs or know someone who does, try it and see what kind of dream this produces. If living pigs are an impossibility, or you doubt you’ll be able to sleep soundly enough to dream in their midst:

Collect pig figurines. The nursing sow with piglets is a popular image; make sure you have at least one.

Arrange them around you on the bed and tell them what type of dream you need or the information required.

This spell was traditionally combined with a petition to Saint Anthony to help you receive and remember your dream.

Prophetic Dreams (12) Rose Tea

Roses are often heavily sprayed with pesticides making them unsafe to drink. Make sure your roses are organic, and drink a cup of tea brewed from them before bedtime to stimulate clairvoyant dreams.

Prophetic Dreams (13) Saint Anthony

Saint Anthony accepts petitions for prophetic dreams on his own, without the pigs.

Place Saint Anthony’s image on your nightstand or close to the bed.

Place at least one fresh cut lily in a vase beside it.

Tell Saint Anthony what you need.

Turn off the lights; inhale the fragrance of the lily and dream.

Prophetic Dreams (14) Sweet Hag

Burn sweet flag and liquidambar (storax) beside the bedside when prophetic dreams are required. Before going to sleep, describe the dream you will have.

Remembering Dreams

The dream was desperately needed. Perhaps you needed to see your true love’s face before you accepted what might be the wrong marriage proposal. Maybe you needed a dream consultation with your grandmother regarding some vital family secrets. You ground the dream incense by hand, forced yourself to drink that bitter, bitter mugwort tea, and surrounded yourself with dream charms and pillows. You tried and practiced for weeks and finally you had the exact dream you needed! You were so excited you promptly woke up—and forgot the dream.

It’s happened to all of us. A dream is so vivid, so vital, so important we swear we can never forget it even if we try. We’re so sure of this that we see no reason to record the dream and within hours precious details are gone forever.

Dreams are by nature elusive: if you move abruptly when you awake, you will lose all or part of your dreams. Nothing prevents dreams from being recalled more than a loud, sudden alarm clock. Dreams are always retained and recalled better if one wakes naturally, whenever one is ready. If you must wake up on time, gently transitioning awake, perhaps to soft music, rather than being abruptly jolted awake, increases the likelihood of retaining your dreams.

Keep pen and paper by your bedside. Some prefer a special dream journal. As you become an experienced dreamer, you may awaken briefly following every dream, in order to record it, before returning to sleep. This shouldn’t disturb your rest: “awaken” may be the wrong word. A sort of half-sleep state is achieved, just awake enough to fuzzily perform the function of writing. This semicomatose state is the best state in which to recall and record dreams. Some learn to write in the dark, some learn to write with their eyes closed. Dream pens are sold containing tiny lights, so as to provide just enough to write by. As long as you can understand your own writing later, it’s not important to write neatly now. Transcribe dreams into a proper journal later.

Record dreams immediately: even minutes later, details disappear forever from memory. Don’t believe me? Experiment: when you awake, write down your dream immediately, then go back to sleep or about your business. Several hours later, without reading what you’ve written, recall your dream or write it down again. Go back to your first record: most will discover that the initial description included details, some crucial, no longer remembered.

Other methods assist dream recall too.

Remember Your Dreams (1) Aloes Wood

Aloes wood (not aloe vera, a different plant) is believed to deepen sleep and to create access to other realms while dreaming. It is also supposed to enable you to better remember your dreams. Aloes wood is rare: burn splinters of it at a time, while wishing for profound, magical dreams.

Remember Your Dreams (2.) Bath

This fragrant bath encourages dreams to linger longer so that you can remember them better.

Four drops essential oil of juniper

Four drops essential oil of lavender

Four drops essential oil of mimosa

Add the essential oils to a full tub of water.

Remember Your Dreams (3) Deluxe Bath

Rare, luxurious oils create an air of sensuous pleasure. This is a fairy-tale bath, suitable for Circe or Morgan le Fay. Lush and fragrant, the botanicals also stimulate vivid dreams. Keep costs down by substituting petitgrain, extracted from an orange tree’s unripe fruit and twigs, for its sister scent, neroli, extracted from orange blossoms. The fragrances are similar and petitgrain may even have greater sedative effects.

Three drops of honeysuckle absolute

Four drops of jasmine attar

Four drops of essential oil of lavender

Three drops of neroli

One drop of tuberose absolute

Remember Your Dreams (4) Dream Potion

This deceptively simple technique is highly effective, although it may take a little time to get the hang of it. Practice and persistence will be rewarded. Mugwort tea or any of the Dream Potions are deemed most effective; however, any beverage may be used.

Bring a cup of tea or glass of water to your bedside before going to sleep.

Have a sip and tell yourself, “When I awake, I will have another sip and remember my dreams.”

When you wake up, do so.

Remember Your Dreams (5) Moon Potion

This enhanced method not only helps you recall dreams but also promotes understanding and clarification.

Charge a bottle of spring water in full moonlight. Refrigerate the water.

Before going to sleep, pour a small glass of water.

Take a few sips; leave the rest beside the bed to sip as needed.

Reserve a little bit to drink just before recording any received dreams.

Remember your Dreams (6) Mugwort Massage

A sensuous method, which not only assists dream recall, but also helps clarify dreams so that you are better able to understand them.

Gently and carefully warm a tablespoon of walnut or hazelnut oil.

Bring it to your bedside.

Add two or three drops of mugwort flower remedy (FES) and/or morning glory flower remedy (FES) and massage into the soles of your feet.

Snakeskin Dream Enhancement

Hang a freely shed snakeskin over the bed to ensure prophetic dreams and banish nightmares.

Spirit-summoning Dream Spells

Dreams are the simplest, most convenient venue to converse with Spirits of all kinds. Responses to petitions of all kinds most frequently occur in dreams. The spirits may not wait for you to make the first move; often their initial approach to you comes in dreams. Maybe they’ve been approaching you for years but you’ve been unable to pick up the messages. Allies and familiars of. all kinds reveal themselves to you in your dreams: another good reason to maintain that dream journal.

Spirit Summoning (1) Dandelion Philtre

Although rare, exotic botanicals earn seductive magical reputations, one of the most potent spirit-summoners is as common as a weed:

Place a cup of steaming, hot dandelion tea beside your bed, just before you go to sleep.

Watch the steam waft up and call in the desired spirits.

Have a sip, when it cools, turn off the lights and go to sleep.

A sip of cold tea when you awake may stimulate enhanced dream recall.

Spirit Summoning (2) Divine Conversation

Now that you’ve summoned spirits, you’d like to talk. The following botanicals encourage and facilitate communication between people and spirits: anise, bay leaves, gardenia, mimosa, mugwort, roses, Saint John’s Wort, and wormwood. Fill a dream pillow with any combination of these.

Spirit Summoning (3) Divine Conversation Incense

Grind and powder any one or combination of the botanicals listed above. Sprinkle the powder on lit charcoal and burn as incense before bedtime.

Spirit Summoning (4) Enhance Reception

Angelica flower essence remedy (FES) encourages receptivity to spiritual guidance within dreams. Forget-me-not flower essence remedy (FES, Alaskan) also encourages and enhances communication with spirits in dreams. Administer both internally as per the manufacturer’s directions, or use in baths or massage oil.

Spirit Summoning (5) Potted Plants

Potted gardenia and heliotrope plants, placed close enough to the bed that their fragrance wafts over you, summon friendly, protective spirits while simultaneously enhancing your powers of reception.

Spirit Summoning (6) Spirit Water

A glass of Spirit Water placed beside the bed calls in ancestors and spirits alike.

Spirit Water’s power may be enhanced by drinking a small glass of anisette or sambuca before going to sleep.

Leave another glass as an offering for a spirit or an invitation for an ancestor.

Finish your own glass but toss the contents of the other glass away when you awake.

Stop Dreaming

Because sometimes you’ve had enough: hang a sprig of lemon verbena around your neck to halt the dream process, should you need to take a break.

Sunflower Truth Spell

If you suspect lies have been told, have the truth revealed in your dreams.

Before taking the next step, talk to the sunflower plant and explain what is about to occur and why.

Pull up an entire sunflower and gently shake it free of dirt. Otherwise leave the plant whole.

Place an offering (coins, honey, tobacco) in the hole left by the plant.

Place the sunflower beneath your bed. The truth should be revealed within your dreams.

True Love Dream Spells

Fairy tales are filled with princesses determined to wed none but their one true love, their soul mate. They’ve never actually met the guy, but he visits frequently in dreams. Perhaps the princesses tried one of the following spells:

True Love Dream Spell (1) Cards of Love

Remove all four playing cards corresponding to the gender of the person you desire from a deck of playing cards: kings for men, queens for women.

Place the four cards under your pillow to dream of your true love.

If for any reason, one card, not necessarily a court card, holds special romantic significance for you, substitute that card instead.

True Love Dream Spell (2) Cinquefoil

Burn powdered cinquefoil (five-finger grass) in the bedroom before bedtime to dream of your true love.

True Love Dream Spell (3) Daisies

After you’ve established whether or not he loves you by pulling the petals off daisies, place daisy roots beneath your pillow to dream of your true love.

True Love Dream Spell (4) Dinner for Two

After everyone has eaten dinner and left the table, discreetly pick up a knife and some salt and bread that have been left behind. Place these under your pillow to dream of your beloved.

True Love Dream Spell (5) Dumb Cakes

Cast this dream spell on a solitary evening. However, it’s a lot more fun to cast it the traditional way: during a sleepover party with sisters or good friends.

Combine one cup of flour, one cup of salt, and a sprinkle of fireplace ashes. (Scrape any ashes from out of the fireplace, but leftover ashes from some love incense or from a fireplace romance divination are most powerful.)

Add enough water to form a “batter.”

Ladle the batter onto a heated, greased griddle, so that there is one dumb cake per participant. Pretend you’re making pancakes. Flip them with a spatula.

Before each dumb cake is completely done, scratch a name or initials or some identifying mark onto the cake, so that everyone knows to whom each cake belongs.

Each time you flip a cake, add an additional sprinkle of salt. (If there’s a party, make sure everyone gets the chance to flip a dumb cake.)

What’s the next step? Eat them? Oh no, that would be too cruel! Instead, each person must place her dumb cake under her pillow to dream of her very own true love.

Why are these called dumb cakes? Not because these pancakes taste so bad you’d have to be severely intellectually challenged to eat them, but because the ritual demands total silence (not a peep!) from anyone involved, from start until the conclusion the next morning after all dreams have been recorded!

True Love Dream Spell (6) English Love Salve

Blend calendula, thyme, marjoram, mugwort, honey, and white vinegar to form a salve. Anoint your breasts, hips, and belly with it just before going to bed, to dream of your true love.

True Love Dream Spell (7) Garter Belt

Place a garter belt under your pillow on Midsummer’s Eve to dream of your true love.

True Love Dream Spell (8) Halloween

As the fire is burning down on All Hallows Eve, drop hair and nail clippings into the burning embers. Do not speak once you begin this process until after any dreams have been recorded in the morning. After the fire burns out, go to bed and dream of your true love.

True Love Dream Spell (9) Holly Leaves

Pick nine holly leaves at midnight on a Friday. Wrap them in a white handkerchief and place this under your pillow.

Total silence must be maintained from the time you venture out for the holly until awakening in daylight, or the spell won’t work.

True Love Dream Spell (10) Honey Paste

Grind dried marjoram, thyme, and wormwood into fine powder.

Gently warm some honey in a bain-marie.

Add a dash of vinegar and the powder, creating a paste.

Bring this paste to the bedside.

Before going to sleep, anoint your Third Eye area with the paste while requesting a dream to reveal your true love’s identity.

True Love Dream Spell (11) Love Dream Pills

These “pills” reputedly enable you to dream of your true lover or your future spouse, whichever the case may be…

Grind one hazelnut, one nutmeg, and one walnut and blend them together.

Cream butter and sugar together and add the ground powder.

Form nine “pills.”

Take one every night for nine consecutive nights. Keep your dream journal handy. He or she should appear.

True Love Dream Spell (12) Saint Agnes’ Eve Shoe Spell

In Great Britain, Saint Agnes’ Eve, the night preceding her feast day on January 21st, is traditionally a time for young women’s romantic divination spells. Rituals exist to receive visions of one’s true love or one’s future husband—hopefully, but not always, one and the same.

Before retiring for the night, place a sprig of thyme in one shoe and a sprig of rosemary in the other.

Place one shoe on either side of your bed.

Just before going to bed, chant:

Sweet Saint Agnes, to lovers so kind,

Please come and ease my worried mind

Show me the one with whom my heart will bind

Remain silent until morning. Your destiny should be revealed within your dreams.

True Love Dream Spell (13) Saint Agnes’ Eve Silent Spell

Another ritual for Saint Agnes’ Eve allegedly reveals your soul mate:

Fast all day and concentrate on your desire.

Before you begin the next part of the ritual, get ready for bed: put on your nightclothes, fix your bed.

The following part of the spell demands total silence. You may not utter a word or a sound until it’s time to chant the incantation.

Hard boil an egg. Cut it in half and remove the yolk. Fill the cavity with salt. Now eat the entire egg with salt, including, traditionally, the eggshell.

Walk backwards to bed uttering this invocation aloud:

Sweet Saint Agnes, work your fast

In my dreams, let this spell be cast

If ever I am to marry a man, or a man to marry me

I hope tonight him to see!

Maintain silence until morning: the oracle is revealed in your dreams.

True Love Dream Spell (14) Saint Agnes’ Garter

Get into bed.

Twist your left garter around your right stocking making a knot.

As you knot, petition Saint Agnes, murmuring:

This knot I knot

Helps me see

The face of who my true love will be.

Place it under your pillow and go to sleep.

True Love Dream Spell (15) Saint John’s Eve

Hang Saint John’s Wort over your bed, or place it beneath your pillow, on Saint John’s Eve to dream of your soul-mate.

True Love Dream Spell (16) Salt Dough

This Jewish ritual requires a little finagling in order to obtain dreams of your true love. The end result probably tastes as bad as the Saint Agnes’ Eve egg. Why is that aphrodisiacs designed to be served to a lover inevitably taste seductively delicious, while magical concoctions used to reveal that lover’s identity force the spell-caster to suffer?

Obtain salt from one house, some flour from a second, and an egg from a third.

Bring them to your home and knead them together secretly.

Eat the mixture before going to bed to dream of your love.

True Love Dream Spell (17) Shoes, Fetch My Lover

Sprinkle a pair of your beloved’s shoes with spring water or Angel’s Water.

Place a sprig of thyme in one shoe, rosemary in the other.

Place a shoe on either side of your bed.

Crawl in and dream.

True Love Dream Spell (18) Underwear Spell

This spell, at least from Step 2 onwards, is cast under a Full Moon.

Obtain an undergarment appropriate for the gender of the one of whom you wish to dream.

Perform appropriate personal cleansing spells.

Take a bucket of pure spring water or Angel’s Water and go outside at midnight under the Full Moon. (The traditional recommendation is that you should be naked, however adapt to your needs and circumstances.)

Gaze at the moon: make a petition for true love and a request to see your lover in your dreams. Show the moon the underwear.

Toss the bucket of water over your left shoulder.

Go to bed without looking back.

Place the underwear under your pillow and say aloud: “Lover, come get your underwear!”

Go to sleep.

Reserve the underwear afterwards. The spell may be repeated, as needed. Should your dream lover arrive, fumigate with Dreams of Delight or other erotic incense and have him or her wear the item for you.

True Love Dream Spell (19) Underwear Spell (2)

A Russian version of the underwear dream spell simplifies the actions but insists that the spell can only be cast on the Eve of Saint Andrew, November 30th.

Obtain an undergarment suitable for the person of whom you wish to dream, and put it under your pillow on Saint Andrew’s Eve to dream of your true love.

True Love Dream Spell (20) Wild Hoses

Drink a cup of tea made with wild rose petals before bedtime to conjure a vision of your true love.

True Love Dream Spell (21) Winter Solstice

On the eve of the winter solstice peel an onion. Wrap it in a handkerchief and sleep with it beneath your pillow. The face of your true love should be revealed to you.

Insomnia

If you can’t sleep, you can’t dream, it’s that simple. Of course, chronic insomnia causes other troubles too: you’re grouchy, irritable, and inefficient at work. Unable to sleep when you want, you may find yourself unable to stay awake at inconvenient moments. Your immune system may suffer. Because so much growth and healing occurs during sleep (or is it during dreams?) you may find yourself feeling stagnant and blocked. Many turn to sleeping pills, which can force sedation but tend to suppress dreams. Is this a problem? Consider whether you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to go and you’ll have your answer.

These are traditional magical remedies; they may or may not also have sedative or other sleep-enhancing properties. However just because remedies are magical doesn’t mean that they don’t also have profound physical impact, particularly botanical-based spells. Insomnia can be an adjunct of various physical ailments: discuss your remedy plans with your professional health-care provider before initiating any course of action.

There are sleep scientists and dream researchers who consider that the whole reason for sleep is to provide an opportunity for dreaming. It’s the dreaming part that’s really the necessity. Without ample rest and sleep, one’s psychic and magic powers suffer and weaken. Because sleep and dreams are so crucial to magic, a host of magical remedies exist to ease your way into Dreamland.

Insomnia Bath

This bath provides the soothing equivalent of milk and cookies before bedtime. Its power is proportionate to the quantity of milk used.

Gently warm goats’ or, ideally, sheep’s milk (as in counting sheep).

Blend true almond extract and several drops of essential oil of lavender into the warm milk so that the fragrance pleases you.

Add to a tub filled with warm water before bedtime.

Insomnia Incense (1)

Blend pine, juniper, and ledum and burn as incense. This soothes an insomniac to sleep while stimulating prophetic dreams at the same time.

Insomnia Incense (2)

Blend frankincense, myrrh, and sandalwood for sound peaceful sleep accompanied by clairvoyant dreams.

Insomnia Spell (1) Ancient Formula Sound Sleep Incense

Blend frankincense resin, storax resin, and rose petals together. Then burn the blend over lit charcoal near the bed before going to sleep.

Insomnia Spell (2) Basic Botanicals for Sweet Sleep

The following herbs allegedly promote sound, deep sleep:

Bee balm (Monarda didyma), also sometimes called bergamot or bergamot mint. It is not a true mint nor should it be confused with essential oil of bergamot, which is extracted from a type of Italian bitter orange.

Calendula blossoms

Catnip

Chamomile blossoms

Henna

Hops

Linden blossoms

Marjoram

Mullein

Patchouli

Poppies and poppy seeds

Tuberose

Valerian

Vervain

Vetiver

Place any one or combination of these herbs in a dream pillow.

Too sleep-deprived to sew? Try one of the quick-fix dream pillows instead (page 356).

Insomnia Spell (3) Basic Botanical Magic Box of Sleep

Place any combination of loose herbs in a closed magic box and keep it by your bedside.

When you can’t sleep, open the box and inhale deeply several times.

Insomnia Spell (4) Burton’s Sound Sleep Pillow

Sir Richard Burton, translator of the Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra, recommended a pillow stuffed with dried wormwood to combat insomnia.

Insomnia Spell (5) Crystals to Enhance Sleep

Crystal gemstones can stimulate sleep as well as dreams. Blue crystals in general are particularly beneficial. Other stones believed to encourage sleep and dreams include amber, amethyst, emerald, jet, and smoky quartz.

Charge the crystal with your desired goal prior to its initial use. Crystals’ magic power may be accessed any of the following ways:

Place one or more crystals under your pillow

Wear as jewelry against your skin while attempting sleep

Create sleep charms: hang them from your bedposts or keep a larger stone on the nightstand

Insomnia Spell (6) Datura-leaf Shoe Spell

This is an old spell, but be cautious: not only is datura poisonous, it’s also a skin irritant. Place datura leaves in your shoes, then place these shoes under the bed facing the wall to encourage sleep.

Insomnia Spell (7) Freya’s Sleep Potion

Beautiful Freya rules love, sex, and magic. Queen of Witches, original sponsor of Scandinavian shamans, Freya journeys through the sky in her falcon-feather cloak. Simple cowslip, a wild primrose, ranks among her sacred plants. It allegedly permits dream visitations from the land of the fairies, too.

Steep cowslips in wine or milk, and drink this before bedtime. Back in the good old days, wine was actually made from cowslip, ostensibly to prevent and heal insomnia. If you have some, try it!

Insomnia Spell (8) Hecate’s Bath

Once upon a time, according to legend, Hecate had a temple in the ancient city of Colchis, surrounded by vast botanical gardens. Her priestesses, including her most famous devotee Medea, were famed for their botanical knowledge. No doubt they could concoct a sleeping potion or two. This simple bath uses two of Hecate’s sacred materials—honey and lavender—to soothe the way to sleep and encourage healing dreams.

Gently warm some milk. The quantity is up to you: the more milk, the more luxurious and soothing the bath.

When the milk is warm, carefully add honey, stirring so that it blends. (Otherwise the honey will just settle at the bottom.)

Remove from the heat; add several drops of essential oil of lavender.

Add to a tub filled with warm water.

Insomnia Spell (9) Hecate’s Sweeter Sleep Bath

This bath has a sweeter fragrance: see which suits you better.

One cup of milk

One quarter cup of honey

One teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Four drops essential oil of lavender

Four drops essential oil of chamomile

Warm the milk gently over a low heat and stir in the honey.

When they are blended, remove from the heat and add the vanilla extract and essential oils.

Disperse the mixture in warm running bath water.

You can increase the quantities if desired, but maintain the proportions.

Insomnia Spell (10) Henna-Sandalwood Sleep Powder

Sift henna powder and sandalwood powder together until the mix is fine and smooth. Sprinkle onto lit charcoals and fumigate the bedroom before sleep.

If the powder is very fine, try sprinkling onto your sheets instead of or in addition to burning.

Insomnia Spell (11) Henna Sound Sleep Pillow

Henna is most frequently associated with body art and temporary tattoos. However, it has a long medicinal and magical history as well. It’s used in love spells, to reduce fevers, and, especially, to provide deep, restful, restorative sleep. Fill a dream pillow with powdered henna to promote a sound night’s sleep.

Insomnia Spell (12) Hops Sound Sleep Pillow

A tenth-century Saxon prescription suggests filling a pillow with hops for sound, restful sleep.

Insomnia Spell (13) Infused Oil of Henna Blossoms

Follow the instructions in Elements of Magic Spells for making infused oils. Remember that it may take weeks to achieve the desired intensity of fragrance.

If possible, use ben oil for the infusion. Also known as moringa oil, this was the ancient Egyptian’s favorite for perfumery and is now, after centuries, being marketed in India. If ben oil is unavailable, try safflower or sweet almond oil, instead.

Insomnia Spell (14) Jet Amber Circle of Sleep Spell

Jet and amber, crystallized botanical material rather than true minerals, work well in partnership. Beware of plastic replications with both.

Cast a circle around your bed with alternating pieces of jet and amber.

Insomnia Spell (15) Jet Amber Necklace Spell

A necklace is just a circle cast around one’s self.

Create a necklace from alternating amber and jet beads, focusing on your desires.

Create as many knots as possible, tying your intentions into each knot.

Wear your necklace to sleep.

Insomnia Spell (16) Lice Insomnia Spell

Many dream and sleep spells are romantic, but not all: a medieval spell that allegedly encourages sleep relies upon an infestation of lice, which might perhaps explain the insomnia in the first place…

Obtain a louse from the insomniac’s head.

Induce it to crawl into a bone with a hole.

Plug up the hole.

Hang the imprisoned bug around the patient’s neck.

Insomnia Spell (17) Magical Insomnia Fragrances

Sometimes fragrance alone is sufficient to soothe you and send you to sleep. Try the following essential oils:

Bergamot

Chamomile

Frankincense

Lavender

Manuka (New Zealand tea tree)

Myrrh

Neroli

Petitgrain

Pine

Rosalina

Sandalwood

Tuberose

Vetiver

This is very individual magic. Play with the fragrances until you find one that you enjoy and that works for you. (Write down formulas and proportions as you’re working so that should you discover a winner, you’ll be able to reproduce it.) There are different ways to experiment:

Blend a few drops into a tablespoon of carrier oil, such as jojoba or sweet almond. Massage into temples, soles of feet or any other areas of the body

Add several drops to a warm bath before bedtime

Place several drops in an aroma burner or essential oil diffuser and inhale the fragrance

Use any of these oils to dress a dream pillow or dream potpourri

Insomnia Spell (18) Sleep like You’re Dead Pillow

So tired and sleep-deprived, you’re starting to look at the cemetery with envy? The following botanicals have earned the nickname graveyard dust because they allegedly encourage you to sleep as soundly and peacefully as the dead: patchouli, mullein, and valerian.

Grind the botanicals together to create a fine powder.

For extra enhancement, add another botanical strongly associated with sleep—poppy seeds—the first anesthesia.

Fill a dream pillow with the botanicals and sleep.

For enhanced dreaming, add chopped-up bay leaves too.

Insomnia Spell (19) Spikenard

Warm essential oil of spikenard in an aroma burner; its scent allegedly eases fears, soothes sleep, banishes malicious spirits, and provides happy, peaceful dreams.

Insomnia Spell (20) Violet Wreath

Make a wreath from violet leaves and/or flowers; wear it for a sound night’s sleep.

Nightmares

The problem isn’t that you can’t sleep; you’re just too scared to close your eyes.

Going to sleep, a welcome relief for some, a palace of delight for others, is the living equivalent of going to hell for those afflicted with chronic nightmare. Because sleep is a place of persecution and misery, those afflicted with nightmares often avoid it at all costs, driving themselves to stay awake as long as possible. Temperament suffers, work suffers, health suffers, and magic power also suffers as a result.

Everyone has a bad dream once in a while. The occasional disturbing dream may be a warning signal of some sort, worthy of attention and careful interpretation. For those afflicted with chronic nightmare, every dream is a horror, the only good night a dreamless one. What should be a source of pleasure and power feels like being cursed and haunted instead.

There are various magical interpretations for nightmares. In some cases, it is perceived as a haunting or curse. The actual word “nightmare” derives from the German “mara,” a type of evil spirit, which squats on a sleeper’s chest, causing frightening dreams and the sensation of suffocation. Spirits haunt Dreamland, sometimes from good intent but sometimes not. Ghostly visitations may be desirable after that necromantic ritual you performed because you need to ask Great Aunt Maud that important question which only she can answer, but nightmarish when the ghost makes the first move. Then there are assorted vampires, incubi, succubi, etc.—creatures of the night that revel in creating nocturnal disturbance. Sometimes spiritual portals are accidentally opened, allowing us to witness things we should not. Sometimes, as we will see, an act of malice allows one person to send another a frightening dream.

Spells to banish dream visitations from incubi and succubi are found amongst the Vampire Spells; see pages 291—300.

Typically chronic nightmares indicate some sort of spiritual and emotional imbalance (magic, a holistic system, cannot separate the two) or even some kind of extended, unpleasant spiritual test. Avoidance of sleep and suppression of dreams isn’t the solution. Dreams must be analyzed (by professional dream diviners, if necessary), untangled, and faced, so that they will disperse and make room for sweeter, more desirable dreams.

Dreams deliver messages to us, from Earth, from Spirits, from ancestors, allies, other dreamers, and our own subconscious. What happens if someone tries to call you on the phone and can’t get through? Sometimes the caller gives up, but if it’s important and the caller is responsible and persistent, they’ll keep trying. If you fail to pick up or properly understand a dream message, that dream or recognizable variations will repeat itself until you do.

Next time, someone chases you in a dream, whether loathsome ex or fearsome creature, turn around and confront it. Calmly, firmly, ask it what it wants. Odds are those animal dreams involve an animal ally trying to get in touch with you. Animal allies come in all forms, not just cuddly bunnies. Deep fear is as much an indication of an alliance as deep love and attraction. The ally may misunderstand your reactions in the same way that you misunderstand theirs. Anxious to reach you, the more you run, the faster they chase and the more eagerly they await your return to Dreamland. The creatures don’t necessarily mean to scare you; they may even mean to assist you.

Yes, this sounds easier said than done, but it can be accomplished, although taking control of your dreams may take time. As usual, there are magical tools to assist, to provide protection, and to place bad dreams in perspective and abeyance.

Nightmare Spell (1) Animal Nightmare

According to Roman Catholic legend, Saint Margaret faced Satan who appeared in the form of a very scary, giant serpent. Was this in real life, during a waking vision or in a dream? Did Margaret run? No, she did exactly what every dream therapist tells a nightmare victim to do: she confronted that serpent and called his bluff. The snake promptly fulfilled the worst fears of every nightmare victim: mouth open wide, it swallowed Margaret in her entirety. But the story isn’t over: Margaret’s goodness and purity of heart was so powerful and distasteful to the snake that she was immediately spat out, whole, well, redeemed, and on her way to sainthood.

There’s another way of looking at that story. Saint Margaret is matron saint of childbirth and pregnancy. Snakes are the creatures most associated with that topic as well as with female reproductive health in general. Snakes are women’s spiritual and magical teachers. Perhaps Margaret wasn’t disgorged because she was just too good to die; maybe she emerged because she passed her test. Only by facing and surviving this spiritual trial by serpent was Margaret able to acquire the needed wisdom and secrets to perform her new role.

If you suffer from lurking or chasing animal dreams, keep Saint Margaret in mind.

To receive her support and assistance during your own dream trials, build her a small shrine by your bedside.

Display Saint Margaret’s image, together with that of the serpent who is now her familiar companion.

Not everyone is a saint. It can take many attempts before one is able to face one’s worst nightmare with grace and courage. Should you awaken, shaken by failed attempts, look at Saint Margaret for reassurance and then go back to sleep.

Nightmare Spell (2) Anti-Nightmare Garden

Why start a nightmare protection plan in the bedroom? Target the whole house. There’s a reason everyone in Sleeping Beauty slept so soundly. That wild overgrowth of surrounding botanicals banished bad dreams. This isn’t a suggestion to banish the gardener, too. The plants can still be manicured if you wish; however, certain botanicals provide nightmare blocking. Cast a living circle around your house.

The primary botanical nightmare-repellant is rosemary. Given the opportunity it flourishes and grows wildly. Other suggestions include:

Mimosa

Mint

Mugwort

Poppies

Roses

Rowan

Saint John’s Wort

Snake plant

Wormwood

Nightmare Spell (3) Anti-Nightmare Bedroom Garden

If a full garden is unrealistic for you, there’s nothing wrong with keeping nightmare maintenance in the bedroom.

Place potted rosemary plants in the bedroom near the bed to create a magical anti-nightmare shield. Add any of the other plants listed above, too.

Nightmare Spell (4) Banishing

This spell is most beneficial immediately after a nightmare although it can be used to disperse lingering effects long after the dream is over, too. If possible, keep a window open for the duration of the spell, to encourage dream visitations to fly away.

Write the nightmare down in detail on a piece of fresh paper.

Light a white, silver, black or red candle.

Hold the paper in the flame until it catches fire.

Let the paper burn down in a saucer or cauldron.

Cover it if necessary with a second upside-down plate so that the ashes don’t escape into the house. This is tricky because you can put the fire out. If so, just light it again. It’s vital that the entire dream is burned to ashes and removed from your home.

If possible, dispose of the ashes immediately through an open door or window. If not, place the ashes inside a brown paper bag and dispose of it outside the house as soon as possible.

Nightmare Spell (5) Banish Nightmares Oil

Create infused oil of hyacinth and lavender blossoms. Rub onto the body before bedtime to ward off nightmares.

Nightmare Spell (6) Betony

Gather betony in August without the use of iron. Dry the plants and then grind the leaves and roots. Cast a circle around your bed with this powder to protect against nightmares.

Nightmare Spell (7) Candle

Charge a yellow or golden candle with your desire for sound, peaceful, untroubled sleep. Place a glass of spring water beside it while it burns.

When you’re ready to sleep, place this glass of water beside your bed to absorb any bad dreams. (There’s no need to keep the candle burning.)

In the morning, flush the water down the toilet, whether you recall bad dreams or not. Repeat as needed.

Nightmare Spell (8) Coffee Banishing

The aroma of coffee brewing, as well as fumigation by burning coffee beans, allegedly banishes nightmares. (It also allegedly banishes sleep for many people, but that’s another story.)

A bedside coffee-maker, ready to go as soon as you push the button, may be all that’s required to banish fear-filled nights. Otherwise, sprinkle good full-strength (not decaf) ground coffee onto lit charcoals and fumigate the bedroom area before you sleep.

Nightmare Spell (9) Crystals

Certain crystal gemstones repel and relieve nightmares:

Blue crystals in general, especially angelite, lapis lazuli, and turquoise

Black crystals, with the possible exception of onyx

Chrysolite

Citrine

Topaz

How to access the crystal’s nightmare-repelling powers:

Wear while sleeping so that they are in contact with your skin

Place one or more on or beneath your pillow

Put one or more in a small flannel drawstring bag; wear it like a shield across your chest or place it beneath your cheek for comfort

Cast a circle around your bed or on your bed around you with crystal gemstones

Onyx is a stone that evokes unpredictable personal reactions. Although it is used to halt nightmares, it occasionally causes them. If you habitually wear onyx and also habitually have bad dreams, remove the stone(s) and observe any reactions.

Many magical approaches to nightmares consider the long-term results: spells for banishing them, preventing them, understanding them, and minimizing them. What action can you take when you’ve just awakened from a nightmare? Nightmare dispersal spells are intended to disperse and nullify a specific nightmare’s effects immediately upon waking.

Nightmare Spell (10) Nine of Swords Dream Dispersal

The nine of swords card in the Rider-Waite tarot deck depicts the end of the nightmare, that breakthrough moment of understanding that forever banishes a specific nightmare.

Contemplate the image to help resolve and dismiss your own horrible dream. Post it by your bedside for encouragement.

Nightmare Spell (11) Silver Bell Dispersal

Keep a bell made from real silver on the nightstand, and ring as needed to dispel a nightmare and cleanse the atmosphere.

Nightmare Spell (12) Dream Animal Bodyguards

Post protective guards in your bedroom to watch over you while you sleep. Images of your own personal animal allies and guardian angels and spirits are best; however, if you’re unsure where to turn, the following creatures may be invoked:

Snakes

Dragons

Crocodiles

Bears

Dogs, wolves or other canines

Yes, they’re fierce: that’s the point. Do you want a protector with less courage and ability?

If anyone of them strikes a particular note of fear in your heart, explore the reasons why carefully and consider—it may be the most powerful ally for you.

Nightmare Spell (13) Dream Catcher

Spiders weave dreams as well as spinning webs. In the indigenous traditions of the Native American Plains, circular webs resembling a spider’s web, known as “dream catchers,” are hung over the bed to facilitate the arrival of desired dreams while preventing disturbing dreams from reaching the dreamer. Not only are nightmares prevented, but the dreams received are happier, more vivid and exciting.

Charge the dream catcher with your desires and needs before hanging over the bed. If disturbing dreams suddenly start arriving, it may be time to cleanse the dream catcher (emptying out the vacuum bag, so to speak) by passing it through cleansing incense smoke.

Nightmare Spell (14) Dream Spirit Bodyguards

Post images of the following protective guardian spirits to watch over you while you sleep. Although the image is sufficient, the magic is stronger if you talk with them and tell them your fears and what you need.

Archangel Michael

Archangel Gabriel

Bes

The gorgon Medusa

Morpheus

Taweret

Thoth

The various spirits of iron: Brigid, Dactyls, Hephaestus, Ogun, Scatach, and Wayland the Smith

If you feel nightmares are stimulated by spiritual attack, coordinate anti-nightmare spells with general magical protective measures. (See Protection Spells, page 876.)

Nightmare Spell (15) Dream Pillow

This pillow soothes the effects of nightmares, minimizes their frequency, and hopefully banishes them. Blend anise, black mustard seeds and mullein. Fill the pillow and sleep in peace.

Nightmare Spell (16) Dreams of the Dead Invitation Declined

One particularly distressing nightmare involves a visitation from someone who is no longer alive, who invites you in the dream to come live with them. Sometimes the invitation is less explicit but no less pointed: the deceased requests that the living person hold their hand. It is an inappropriate request and makes for a very disturbing dream, especially if you knew the person well. It’s never polite to ignore an invitation. To put an end to persistent visits, you must RSVP promptly. Although the invitation comes during dreams, the response must be delivered fully awake.

Go visit your would-be host’s grave.

Take off your shoes, lie down beside the grave and cry aloud something similar to this response three times:

By God’s will and by my own will,

I’m not going with you or with any other dead person.

Don’t come after me!

Leave me alone!

Don’t come after anyone I love either—you, your friends, allies or messengers

I live in this world and not in any other.

Put your shoes back on, get up and go home, without looking back.

If journeying to the actual grave is impossible, reproduce the spell in visualization.

Nightmare Spell (17) Earth’s Protection

Metaphysically speaking flint is perceived as Earth’s bones, coral is perceived as the ocean’s menstrual blood, and turquoise as a piece of the sky. Gathered together they provide you with unfailing, perpetually vigilant magical protection from every corner of the universe. Together they also create a potent anti-nightmare amulet.

Collect at least one small piece each of coral, flint, and turquoise.

Charge each one individually by holding in your hands and focusing on your desires.

Attach them to a cord or place them within a medicine bag.

Hang over your bed or around your neck.

Nightmare Spell (18) Flower Essence Relief

Because flower essence remedies heal on the level of soul and emotion, they are particularly beneficial for healing and relieving nightmares. They will not banish them but will help you understand, assimilate and cope with them. Once a nightmare is truly understood, it loses its power over you and is usually dispersed. However, be aware that flower remedies typically work by bringing hidden secrets to the surface: there may be an intensive healing crisis. In other words, the darkest hour comes before the light. In the process of healing, flower remedies may force you to face issues long avoided and suppressed. Make sure you choose a safe time and place to initiate the process.

The following flower essence remedies relieve nightmares:

Amaranthus (Pegasus) calms and soothes disruptions caused by disturbing dreams

Grey Spider Flower (Australian Bush) relieves terror and panic and helps to assimilate mysterious nightmares

Saint John’s Wort (FES, Green Hope) relieves fear of dreams, darkness and/or sleep, and offers spiritual protection

These flower essence remedies help you understand your nightmares:

Black-eyed Susan (FES, Green Hope, Australian Bush)

Scarlet Pimpernel (FES)

Snap pea (Green Hope, Perelandra)

Nightmare Spell (19) Ghost Beads

Ghost beads are the name of a traditional Apache and Navajo charm for warding off children’s disturbing dreams. String juniper berries on yucca thread to make bracelets for the child to wear. Originally desert juniper was used, but any species of juniper could work.

Nightmare Spell (20) Hex

A true nightmare, this is not recommended for reproduction, but to consider the causes of nightmares. It’s one of the cruelest hexes of all. The sorcerer strikes at his victim through dreams. The following instructions are merely the mechanics; great magical skill is required to target the specific victim with the specific dream.

To send someone a nightmare, write a charm on red paper using a few drops of blood drawn from a perfectly black male goat as ink. The charm is then passed through the smoke of coriander seeds and storax.

Nightmare Spell (21) Iron Clad Protection

Iron, and to a lesser degree silver repels evil spirits, malevolent magic and low-level spiritual entities. Iron never rests. It works when you’re awake and it continues to do so when you sleep.

Place an iron, steel or silver knife under your pillow. Either a real knife or an amulet may used

A small amulet knife may also be worn around the neck on a chain, as can tiny scissor charms or any representation of a sharp stabbing metal device

Arrange scissors so that they’re open and place them under your pillow

An iron horseshoe placed under the pillow wards off nightmares. If you’re really scared, place it across your chest

Nightmare Spell (22) Iron Fortification

Long-term bad dreams create a detrimental effect on the dreamer. Both physically exhausted and spiritually drained, the nightmare produces a wasting effect, similar to that imposed by the Evil Eye. This spell doesn’t necessarily repel the nightmare; it strengthens, empowers, and heals the afflicted dreamer instead. Perform the spell in conjunction with other steps to understand, unravel or banish bad dreams.

To heal those afflicted by nocturnal hauntings, take an iron nail from a coffin or sepulcher.

Drive it into the lintel of a door, ideally that of the afflicted person’s bedroom. The lintel of the main entrance is the second best choice.

Nightmare Spell (23) Magic Square

Do you sleep in a four-poster bed? Create a magical protective square. Hang a different amulet from each corner. Hang another from your neck as the final touch; otherwise place a piece of wormwood under the mattress or a piece of metal, like a magic sword, under the bed.

Nightmare Spell (24) Peony Roots

Twist peony roots together, forming a chain long enough to wear as a necklace, and tie your goals and desires into any knots. Allegedly this prevents nightmares or minimizes their impact.

Nightmare Spell (25) Peony Root Beads

Beads formed from peony roots also repel nightmares.

Slice dried peony roots; as you cut each slice, visualize the abrupt, final termination of the nightmare, never to return.

Pierce each slice with a needle, forming rough bead and string these onto red cord.

Incorporate visualization and knot magic as appropriate to your situation.

Wear this necklace as a protective shield and nightmare repellant.

Peony roots are frequently sold pre-sliced. If this is the case, incorporate Step 1’s visualization into Step 2.

Nightmare Spell (26) Protection (1)

Grind and powder dried agrimony. Cast a circle with the powder around your bed to prevent bad dreams and provide protection in case any slip through the circle.

Nightmare Spell (27) Protection (2)

Betony protects against fearful visions whether sleeping or awake. Place a handful of the dried herb within a conjure bag, which may be placed in a pocket, under a pillow, or hung around one’s neck.

Nightmare Spell (28) Purslane Protection

Grind and powder purslane, which is also known as portulaca. Sprinkle this powder around your bed to prevent nightmares.

Nightmare Spell (29) Sleepwalker’s Talisman

Sometimes it’s not your dreams but one’s compulsive behavior during sleep that really comprises the nightmare. Allegedly a topaz worn on a chain around the neck serves as a charm against sleepwalking.

Nightmare Spell (30) Turpentine Protection

Turpentine has fallen out of favor, even among many artists. Make sure there’s proper ventilation if casting this spell as reports suggest that inhaling turpentine fumes may not be beneficial for one’s health. Turpentine is certainly not safe for consumption so this spell must be cast cautiously, if at all, in the presence of children, animals, and those adults who’ll gulp anything in a shot glass. (Ironically, this spell was once a common magical remedy for children afflicted with nightmares.) Turpentine also allegedly benefits anyone whose dreams are filled with torturous demonic visions.

One shot glass is required for each corner of the bedroom.

Fill each glass with old-fashioned turpentine and place each one in a corner overnight.

Empty it in the morning, disposing of the turpentine carefully and responsibly.

Replace as needed.

Nightmare Spell (31) Vervain

Suspend vervain over the bed to prevent nightmares.

Nightmare Spell (32) Water Absorption

Leave a glass of water by your bedside.

For extra strength, add camphor, but be sure not to drink the water!

In the morning, flush the water down the toilet.

Reserve the glass for this use only and repeat as needed.

Nightmare Safety Spell

Fleeing from nightmares doesn’t make them go away. This conjure bag helps you face and explore your nightmares through enhanced dream skills and the confidence that comes from magical protection.

Fill a red charm bag with agrimony, mugwort, and peppermint. Add a round iron or silver bead and wear around your neck while sleeping.

Astral Projection

The dream soul is liberated to journey during dreams. Astral projection attempts to reap the benefits of the dream-state yet also retain memory of the experience, together with conscious control of all situations. For some it is the ultimate form of travel.

According to some occult theories, the journeying soul and body remain connected by a thin silvery cord, sort of a permanent “astral umbilical cord.” Thus the soul can confidently wander with full assurance that that cord will lead back to the body, as surely as Ariadne’s thread lead Theseus safely from the labyrinth. Easier said than done; the dream soul often resists travel as long as waking consciousness remains. Sleep is what unlocks the gate for the soul. Because of this astral travel during sleep, if you can learn to stimulate and control the process, this provides the best of both sleeping and waking realms.

Astral travel can occur while awake or during sleep. Practice during waking hours, together with the study of lucid dreaming techniques, enhances the chances for successful dream astral travel. Some find it an extremely challenging process, while others take to it naturally. The soul consciously journeys, flies to a chosen destination, while the body rests passively below. Descended from shamanic rites, there are various methods to accomplish astral projection and various tools to encourage success. Even when traveling while awake, astral projection mimics the dream-state. Take whatever protective precautions you would use in dreams.

Astral projection should not be attempted under influence of intoxicants of any kind, or any pharmaceuticals. The extremely aged, frail or ill, and also those who’ve suffered sexual abuse or post-traumatic stress, are extremely vulnerable to soul loss. Astral projection can potentially be harmful in any of the above situations. If you generally possess a sense of being out of focus or of being estranged from your body, do not attempt astral projection, at least not without experienced, reliable, expert shamanic supervision. (Get references for a shaman the same way you would for a doctor, plumber or other professional.)

The end of the journey, the return to the body, is typically effortless. As soon as you awake, body and soul are automatically re-joined, although ideally this is a natural, gradual process. If you waken naturally, there are usually no re-connection difficulties.

If abruptly awakened, some actually feel a jolt. Others experience a brief moment of shock, panic, or disorientation, which may lead to soul loss (see page 562 for more on this).

Beginning Astral Travel Techniques

Basic Astral Projection

A practice method, to be performed initially while you’re awake. Repeat as needed. Some show quick aptitude for astral projection but it’s not unusual to require years of practice. Sometimes initial success is followed by a long period of challenge.

Lie down; relax; shut your eyes.

Visualize yourself standing at the foot of your bed, exactly as it is, looking at yourself.

Dream Travel

Astral travel in your dreams:

Before sleep, fix in your mind where you want to go, whom you want to visit. Fix the image of it and the image of yourself—what do you look like? What are you wearing?

Pay attention to details. Charge yourself with a mission.

Practice!

Keep a diary of your journeys.

Waking Dreams

Envision a dream before going to sleep.

Decide where you will go, and what will happen in the dream.

Then just as you feel yourself falling asleep, walk into the dream.

Practice by stepping into images: tarot cards, paintings, whatever—just pick safe appealing ones, rather than scary nightmare images. Practice emerging and returning from the images too.

There are various magical methods of enhancing and stimulating astral travel:

Astral Projection Spell

Surround the bed with fresh (potted) mugwort plants to help achieve lift-off.

Astral Travel Powder

Cinnamon

Mugwort

Sandalwood

Grind the botanicals to a fine powder.

Blend with arrowroot powder.

Sprinkle on your sheets before setting out on your journey.

Dion Fortune’s Astral Travel Powder

Dion Fortune, renowned author and occultist, suggested the following formula for astral traveling:

Benzoin

Dittany of Crete

Sandalwood

Vanilla bean

Grind all the dried ingredients into a fine powder.

Burn it on lit charcoal to accompany your travels.

Dittany of Crete and Mugwort Powder

Dittany of Crete and mugwort, two herbs closely associated with Artemis, offer assistance with accomplishing astral projection, and protection during the journey.

Burn the herbs as incense to accompany your journey

Fill a dream pillow with the combined herbs

Simultaneously appeal to Artemis for assistance with your goal

Jasper Astral Projection

Jasper crystal gemstone has strong associations with astral travel.

Lay the crystals on your chakra points, or cast a circle of jasper around you while you journey.

Moldavite Astral Travel enhancement

When a meteorite struck rock in the Moldau Valley, rock and meteorite both melted and merged, producing the delicate green gemstone moldavite—or so goes the theory of its origin. Because moldavite combines terrestrial and extraterrestrial energies, it provides grounding while simultaneously assisting astral travel. Place a moldavite over your Third Eye (brow) chakra when attempting astral travel.

ROLOR Square

This magic square allegedly enables you to fly like a crow. Write the following onto parchment, preferably using Raven’s Feather Ink:

Pin this paper to your chest. Close your eyes, relax, and see whether you fly.

Yellow Gemstone Astral Projection

Astral projection is allegedly assisted by yellow crystal gemstones. Hold them in your hand while practicing, and place a crystal on your Third Eye chakra.

Witches Flying Ointments

Modern astral travel is basically a mental and magical exercise; botanicals and crystals are used to enhance the process, but they do not produce the experience. Botanicals may also be used to produce similar, although not identical, experiences. Keeping control over the experience is among the key goals of unassisted astral travel; however, once botanical substances become the source of the journey, that control is, to varying extents, ceded.

Botanically assisted soul journeys, just like astral projection, are surviving vestiges of shamanism. Ointments to produce visions—including group visions—exist in many traditions. Many are accompanied by the sensation of flying. These ointments are the medium of shamanic journeys. The most famous may be medieval witches’ flying ointments.

What were witches’ flying ointments? Did they fly?

Allegedly, special ointments and salves, when applied to the body, allowed one to mount a broomstick and fly to witches’ sabbats.

Two theories exist, not mutually exclusive. One is that the witches, if some were really witches, were on shamanic journeys. The other theory is that the ointments provided erotic adventures instead, with the broomstick serving for those lacking more conventional dildos, not a standard household item in medieval Europe. Ointments were applied where the skin is thin and permeable: the wrists or vagina.

Flying ointment formulas revealed under torture have since been tested, and the results from scientific testing indicate that many formulas, when applied topically, will produce the sensation of flight.

Medieval witches’ flying ointments have three types of ingredients not always mutually exclusive:

Those with actual vision-producing propensity

Those that are poisonous

Those that are disgusting

Many botanical components of these salves were highly toxic: a very precise, trained hand was

needed to determine exactly how much would provide a shamanic experience, as opposed to how much would kill you. In other words, either those formulas were a lie, or whoever successfully used them was a person of skill and knowledge.

Dangerous items (and they are dangerous; do not consider reproducing these formulas) used safely could indicate shamanic skill and botanical knowledge, if one is inclined to think that way and if one is inclined to respect that skill and knowledge. However, looked at from another perspective, their use could also point to a person’s “supernatural’ ability to withstand poison or, perhaps, if one is inclined yet another way, to indicate the devil’s protection.

Disgusting ingredients are almost inevitably dead babies, typically unbaptized. Information was extracted under torture. It’s very hard to judge how much was genuine information from witnesses and how much was derived from the torturer? Under the circumstances, if the torturer asked whether you used baby fat, would you disagree?

Technically speaking, baby fat was only needed for a base. (The constant suggestion that it was used also points to early abortion wars and the identification of midwives with witches.) Every ointment or salve needs some base for other materials. Fat is merely a carrier for the potent ingredients. Any animal or vegetable fat will serve.

Despite all the pictures of witches literally flying around on broomsticks, a report from 1435 indicates that there was appreciation that the journey was shamanic, not actual: “A woman allegedly rubbed herself with ointment while seated in a large kneading trough. She immediately went to sleep and dreamed of flight. However she shook so vigorously that she fell out and injured her head.”

Basic Witches’ Plying Ointments

Among the ingredients cited in witches’ flying ointments are:

Aconite (wolfsbane)

Baby fat

Belladonna (deadly nightshade)

Betel

Cantharides (Spanish Fly)

Cinquefoil (five-finger grass)

Foxglove

Hashish

Hellebore root

Hemlock

Hemp

Mandrake

Opium

Parsley

Poplar

Poppies

Soot

Thorn apple (datura)

Tobacco

Water parsnip juice

Water parsnip is believed to refer to water hemlock, which is extremely poisonous, as are most of the other ingredients.

Russian Witches’ Plying Ointment

Rub autumn gentian into the armpits and backs of knees to be enabled to fly.

The most potent autumn gentian is allegedly picked on Saint John’s Eve at Bald Mountain.

Don’t run out and get autumn gentian. That may not be the exact plant used. Russian magic placed greater

emphasis on the process of gathering botanicals (“during the seventh minute of the fourteenth hour, under a dark moon, in the thirteenth field, wearing a red dress, pick the twelfth flower on the right”) than on precise identification of the botanical itself. This isn’t meant to be completely sarcastic. Different traditions place emphasis on different aspects of magic. Ritual, as remains true in Amazonian ayahuasca preparations, is of no less importance than ingredients.

Witches’ Plying Potion

This potion is far more innocuous than the average witch’s flying ointments. Basil tea or juice was once considered sufficient to enable a witch’s flight. (This is not a spell for pregnant women or those actively attempting to conceive, although neither are the rest of the witch’s ointments…)

Witches’ Flying Potion: Through the Clouds

Basque witches also allegedly created flying ointments although, perhaps because Mari, Basque Queen of Witches, flies on a fire bolt, the associations of flying on broomsticks are lacking. Instead of brooms, incantations are needed: rub the ointment on the body while repeatedly chanting something like: “Above all the thorns, through all the clouds …”

Safe Modern Flying Potions

Modern flying potions, far less toxic, may be able to reproduce the sensation of witches’ flight. Possible herbs include cinquefoil, Dittany of Crete, and mugwort. Experiment; add other herbs as you will.

Chop up fresh leaves. In order to get fresh herbs, you’ll likely have to grow them. Attempts may be made with dried herbs. But do not work with essential oils: mugwort essential oil, for instance, is extremely toxic.

Melt cocoa butter, shea butter or similar in a double boiler or bain-marie.

Add fresh leaves, as many as you can, mashing them down and adding more. The goal is to permeate the base fat.

Simmer, then remove from the heat.

Add approximately two teaspoons of lanolin.

Strain into a jar. The traditional tool was a sieve, however they didn’t have cheesecloth back then. Use what works best.

If the ointment is too hard, add more lanolin. Reserve and use as desired.

Stop a Flying Sorcerer

Allegedly maintaining air potatoes (Dioscorea bulbifera) on your property prevents any journeying souls, whether astrally or botanically projected, from landing without invitation.

* Tagetes is the botanical classification for what are popularly called French marigolds, Aztec marigolds or African marigolds, basically anything other than calendula, the common pot marigold, which is the only completely safe marigold. Tagetes are potentially toxic: do not ingest or apply to the body. Inhaling the spicy, sexy flowers is sufficient. An essential oil is available but fresh flowers are safer.