About the Oneironauticum
Founded in 2008, the Oneironauticum is an international dream group that works with oneirogens.
An Oneirogen is any substance, practice, or experience that promotes or enhances dream states. “Oneirogen” originates in the Greek “oneiros”, to dream, and “gen”, to create. Both modern and traditional cultures work with oneirogens to seek guidance from ancestors, to practice oneiromancy—divination through dreams—to seek healing, wisdom, and visionary experience, and to cultivate the extraordinary through one of the most common yet remarkable human experiences: the dream.
The Oneironauticum gathers on a given night to work with the same oneirogen. Participants pursue many kinds of dreamwork: healing dreams, lucid dreams, liminal dreams, communication with the unconscious, meeting in dream worlds, oneiromancy. The list goes on. Above all, we strive to explore consciousness, to experiment with subjectivity, and to play with our own intricate, marvelous minds.
For each Oneironauticum, at least one group gathers together to sleep in the same space, using the same oneirogen. On the same night, dreamers from locations around the world also use the same oneirogen. Although they may be separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, on the night of Oneironauticum, dreamers are united community, bound by the common experience of the dream.
The Oneironauticum is founded by dream explorer Jennifer Dumpert, who posts a dream daily on twitter as @oneirofer.
Posted by Jennifer Dumpert on October 24, 2008 in All, Event Reports | Comments Off on Dreams from the Women’s Visionary Congress Oneironauticum
Though we did not undertake a group dream sharing the morning after Oneironauticum, several people related their experiences to me the next morning. One of the speakers, a caniosacral therapist who works with an activist network of recently returned Iraqi war veterans, experienced a deep encounter with her son. A junky who she fears may end up in prison, he came to her in her dream and told her that he was doing what needed to be doing and that she needed to let go of it. She found this very healing.
An impressively bearded man named Pasha...
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Posted by Jennifer Dumpert on October 24, 2008 in All, Event Reports | Comments Off on Minutes of the October Oneironauticum, by Jennifer
An inspiring, marvelous group of women and men gathered for the Women’s Visionary Congress at Wilbur Hot Springs. For Sunday night Oneironauticum, approximately forty people gathered to hear about the Calea zacatechichi, our oneirogen for the evening. Being the sort of people who like to have in depth information, several attendees asked questions about potential interactions between Calea and other substances. In the experience of Oneironauticum participants, any substances that noticeably inhibit dreaming will overpower the Calea....
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Posted by Jennifer Dumpert on October 10, 2008 in All, Event Reports | Comments Off on October Oneironauticum Roadshow
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 dreams happen in realms beyond those we consciously perceive and that the contents of dreams can convey...
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Posted by Jennifer Dumpert on October 10, 2008 in All, Event Reports | Comments Off on Minutes of the September Oneironauticum, by Jennifer
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 among:
Mugwort: Promotes lucid dreams, astral travel, visionary, psychedelic dreams. Contains thujone, the...
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Posted by Jennifer Dumpert on September 22, 2008 in All, Event Reports | Comments Off on The Next Oneironauticum is Saturday, September 27
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 grandmothers making them, but the most frequently used oneirogens include lavender, rose, mugwort,...
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Posted by Jennifer Dumpert on September 9, 2008 in All, Event Reports | Comments Off on Minutes of the August Oneironauticum, by Jennifer
In attendance at the August 16 Oneironauticum were dreamers Vibrata Chromodoris, David Shamanik, lissa ivy tiegel, Geneva Bumb Shanti, Christine Benvenuto, and yours truly, Jennifer Dumpert.
During the evening, before sleeping, we discussed dream states, as we so often do. Thanks to Jeff Warren’s excellent book Head Trip, I’ve recently been introduced to mind state called Hypnopompia, the mirror twin of hypnagogia. I thought the two were the same state, both hypnagogic states bookending either end of sleep. But in fact, where hynpagogia...
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Posted by Jennifer Dumpert on August 14, 2008 in All, Event Reports | Comments Off on The next Oneironauticum is Saturday, August 16
For the August Oneironauticum on Saturday, August 16, we’ll enjoy some leftovers.
We still have a supply of various oneirogens from previous Oneironauticum sessions. This month, session participants will choose from a number of dream inducing substances that we’ve found effective during past sessions. Available oneirogens for Saturday include:
Galantamine, or Red Spider Lily extract. For the first Oneironauticum in January, 2008, we experimented with this powerfully dream-inducing alkaloid. Galantamine produced some of the most...
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Posted by Jennifer Dumpert on July 17, 2008 in All, Event Reports | Comments Off on Minutes of the July, 2008 Oneironauticum
In attendance at the July 12 Oneironauticum were dreamers Erik Davis, Vibrata Chromodoris, David Shamanik, lissa ivy tiegel, Dean Mermell, Lesley Freeman, Christine Benvenuto, Matthew Wiegland, Leia, Tristan Naramore, and yours truly, Jennifer Dumpert.
Before going to sleep, we talked about topics relating to dreams, as we usually do. We discussed current research that attempts to explain why humans dream. Current theories include the idea that dreaming helps process short term memory into long term memory. We also discussed our recent dreams....
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Posted by Jennifer Dumpert on July 6, 2008 in All, Event Reports | Comments Off on Minutes of the June 2008, Oneironauticum at the Ojai Foundation
The most recent Oneironauticum took place during a weekend retreat at the Ojai Foundation called Visionary Practice: Ritual and Reshaping Consciousness, led by Erik Davis, Dale and Laura Pendell, David Presti, and yours truly. Not surprisingly, my part involved presenting and discussing dreams as a type visionary practice, one we all experience regularly. I also talked about how to integrate dreams into daily life via creative practice. The Urban Dreamscape provided my model. On the night of Friday, June 13, workshop attendees, along with...
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Posted by Jennifer Dumpert on June 10, 2008 in All, Event Reports | Comments Off on Oneironauticum Road Show, June, 2008
On the nights of Friday and Saturday, June 13/14, I’ll be joining Erik Davis, Dale and Laura Pendell, and David Presti for Visionary Practice, a retreat that addresses ritual and the reshaping of consciousness (see the Ojai Foundation website). As part of this event, I’ll be leading a special session of the Oneironauticum.
As part of this special session, participants in the event in Ojai will be invited to partake of the herb Calea zacatechichi, a plant used by indigenous peoples in the Mexican state of Oaxaca for the purposes of...
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