Minutes of the August 09 Oneironauticum
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 essential oil, to work primarily with the scent. Others made an anointing oil to absorb the mugwort through the skin. Still others made a tea from the dried leaves and stems. Some people tried a couple different methods simultaneously.
The next day, several of the Pacifica students, who were just finishing a nine day intensive of 12 hours of class time a day (with breaks), said they’d had the first really good night of sleep in a long time. Many other participants—both those from Pacifica and remote participants—reported remembering more snippets of dreams than full dream narratives. Interestingly, some of the people who had this experience normally remember greater numbers of long, narrative dreams, and others normally don’t remember dreams. Personally, I usually remember 2 – 3 long narrative dreams a night. With the mugwort, I remembered 3 such dreams, but also a few separate short snippets of dream.