Last night, I had one of the more interesting conversations I’ve had in these many months. Nox Mente (“Night Mind”) is a podcast devoted to dreams and dreamers; each week co-hosts Niish and Jerry interview guests in the occultural community about their dreams and beliefs about dreaming. It’s a great premise, a fascinating show, and a little bit of a party. They run the show as a live YouTube event, and then the podcast goes out through regular podcast channels on Thursdays.
I have decent dream recall, I guess. Most nights I catch a scrap or two as I’m waking up. Very, very carefully, I reach one hand out into the frigid air to grab my phone, fire up the voice recorder, and slur and mumble my way through whatever I can recollect in my fuzzy morning voice . I try to move as little as possible. A dream is like a sand mandala balanced on a plate on a tightrope in the face of an oncoming westerly. Blink too hard and it’s gone.
But for almost a year now I’ve been collecting my dreams - the recurring ones, the magical ones, the (very few) lucid ones. I give them weird titles, which is supposed to help you fix them in your mind. Like so:
The Matter of the Nap Blanket
The Giant Danish
Altar by the Garage
Fishing for Sharks
Escape from the Asylum
The Lost Citrine
The Culture of the Midshipman
Inheriting Poe’s House
The Spy in the Cemetery
(It really does work - I can remember a bit of all them just from the names.)
Anyway, I got to talk about some of my most powerful dreams and the effect they’ve had on me, on my magical practice, on my opinions about reality. I talked about the spooky plaster cast of my head that haunted my childhood nightmares, and the library dream I had the night after Dad died, and the dream where the cat looked at me in rabbit form and said, “Hmm. Not quite human. Not quite animal either.” I talked about the dream that taught me how divination works, and the one with the tarot reading where The Moon had been substituted for The Star. And we explored the nature of spirits and gods and telepathy and staying lucid.
In short it was like getting to talk about all your favorite stuff, without folks’ eyes glazing over (as far as I know) and nobody laughing nervously and eyeing the exits (as far as I could tell). So thanks, Jerry and Niish. May you saunter forever through the moonscapes of Oneiros, learning what cannot be taught!