On Sunday, October 12, I’ll be leading a special session of the Oneironauticum as part of the Women’s Visionary Congress at Wilbur Hot Springs. Participants in the event will be invited to partake of a tea made with the herb Calea zacatechichi, a plant used by indigenous peoples in the Mexican state of Oaxaca for the purposes of oneiromancy, a form of divination based on dreams. In some Mesoamerican cultures, people believe that...

Crafting Dream Pillows Making morning...

In attendance at the September 27 Oneironauticum were dreamers Erik Davis, lissa ivy tiegel, Dean Mermell, Lesley Freeman, Christine Benvenuto, Katherine Rochlin Fenster, Anna Rockwell, Juliana Snowfox, and yours truly, Jennifer Dumpert. We began the evening by crafting dream pillows stuffed with herbs, flowers, and essential oils that promote dreaming. Each dreamer chose a combination that suited his or her own dream intention from...

The next Oneironauticum, is next Saturday September 27. For this session, we’ll work with olfactory oneirogens (dream inducing substances). Folk remedies have long included herb stuffed pillows, used for curing headaches, colds, and other minor ailments. From this tradition, we also get the dream pillow, filled with flowers and herbs that hold a scent known to promote vivid dreams. As many variations exist on these pillows as there were...

This turned out to be an extraordinary night of dreams, rich in detail and emotion. Dale Pendell’s calea zacatechichi liqueur was prominently effective right from the start, with a period of hypnagogic shopping through rows and rows of little items—bottles of pills mutating into little stuffed toys, all in great quantity and detail. I realized as I was experiencing this that the imagery may have been influenced by my day’s trip the grocery...