Students make scent sachets and anointing oil

For my Oneironauticum experience, I slept with a sachet, working with the scent of mugwort. Over the course of the night, I woke several times throughout the night, either because the smell was too strong—in which case I moved it away from my face—or because it had grown too weak—so I pulled it closer again. Interestingly, I found that bringing the scent closer to my face caused me to remember dreams I’d had earlier in the evening, in...

On Thursday, August 20, the students in my dream work class at Pacifica Graduate Institute (Brook, Casey, Christina, Corinne, Estelle, Eugene, and Suzanne) as well as five faculty members (including Mikita, Erik, and me), and about a dozen other students from other classes gathered to prepare for Oneironauticum. The oneirogen of the month was mugwort, taken one of three ways. Some of us stuffed sachets with dried mugwort, sprinkled with mugwort...

The next Oneironauticum is Thursday, August 20th. This special session will take place in Santa Barbara, on the campus of Pacifica Graduate Institute, during the two-day session that marks the beginning of a class I’ll be teaching on dreams. Students and faculty will participate in person and, as always, we welcome remote participants. For this session, we’ll be working with mugwort as our oneirogen. Mugwort contains thujone, the active...

I’m with some friends, and observing a landscape that has an approximately 20” embankment to a higher plateau. Apparently I’ve only been existing on the “lower” one, and my friends tease me about not having been on the “higher” one. The plateau is a beautiful Arizona-type desert. I walk on this plateau and the immediate landscape changes to a tennis court with impressively giant (as in narrow, long, not wide or deep) cracks in the...

I dreamt that Charles Manson had been released from jail and that during his 40 years in captivity he had gotten his barber certification. I worked for a large corporation (much like I really do) and the corporation was really into a new feel-good program for prisoner rehabilitation, and we had hired Charles Manson as an on-site barber. Everyone was all freaked out about having the guy so close to their head with scissors, so I made a big speech...