On the Shelves of the Learned Ones of the Magickal Library

Dreamers are readers. At least they will be, when they start tracking down clues and research leads our dreams often give us as homeWork assignments. Egyptian priests who specialized in dreaming were at one time called “The Learned Ones of the Magic Library” (thanks Robert). To gear up towards becoming a Learned One of dreams and of (winged) books, I’m posting this list of the dream books on my shelf. This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive bibliography of the many books available on dreams, but just a list of those books that have helped me the most in my own practice of dreaming.

Foundational Materials:

Conscious Dreaming by Robert Moss. This is Robert’s first book on dreams and lays the ground work for the subsequent developments and breakthroughs in his approach. It is a synthesis of shamanism and contemporary dreamwork that he has termed Active Dreaming. This is a good place to start for learning basic practices like dream re-entry. I’d read other books about dreams and been keeping a dream diary on and off for several years, but this is the book that really opened up my understanding of my own dreams.

The Three “Only” Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Cooincidence, and Imagination by Robert Moss. A basic manual for navigating the world by being attentive to dreams & synchronicity while using the power of imagination to become a Way Maker.

Dream Work: Techniques for Discovering the Creative Power in Dreams by Jeremy Taylor. Another “Aha” moment in this book, and a lot of good info for working with dreams in groups and using dreams for social change.

Going Deeper:

Soul Retrieval by Sandra Ingerman. After I had been journaling my dreams for a few years I started noticing a theme where I returned again and again to the sewers. Eventually I had the realization that a piece of myself had gone missing when I was in my teens. She writes that shaman’s “believed that whenever we suffer an emotional or physical trauma a part of our soul flees the body in order to survive the experience. The definition of soul that I am using is soul is our essence, life force, the part of our vitality that keeps us alive and thriving.” By keeping track of your dreams you will be given the opportunity to restore your vitality by reclaiming lost aspects of your soul. Some are even called to do this for others and the culture at large. This book is a vital bit of what Robert Moss calls “paleothic psychology”.

Singing the Soul Back Home: Shamanism In Daily Life by Caitlin Matthews. This is an excellent pan-traditional book exploring the world of shamanism. Well researched, the book is also filled with numerous practical exercises for “Walking Between the Worlds”. Magic is a practical art.

Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination, and Life Beyond Death by Robert Moss. Fun adventures in the imaginal realms including trips to the House of Time and other collaborative astral locales.

The Dreamers Book of the Dead: A Soul Travelers Guide to Death, Dying, and the Other Side by Robert Moss. It’s inevitable. You might as well start preparing for the transition. Perhaps there are family members and loved ones you need to reconnect with, or who are showing up in your dreams. This book will help you work with these situations.

Dreaming True by Robert Moss. A thorough exploration of dream precognition. Valuable also for an account of how Harriett Tubman used her dreams to help escaped slaves make it from the south to the north on the underground railroad.

The Secret History of Dreaming by Robert Moss. An excellent treatise exploring history through the lens of dreams. How dreams have shaped history. An expansion of the Harriet Tubman material is provided, along with detailed accounts of the role of dreams in the lives of hero and tree-seer Joan of Arc, writer Mark Twain, physicist Wolfgang Pauli (and his deep friendship with Carl Jung), adventurer Winston Churchill and many others.

Dreaming in the Worlds Religions: A Comparative History by Kelly Buckley

The Practice of Dream Healing: bringing ancient Greek mysteries into modern medicine. Join author Edward Tick on a very Aesclepian journey.

Beatnik Dreams

My Education: A Book of Dreams by William S. Burroughs and Book of Dreams by Jack Kerouac are collected dream journals of these two icons and illuminators. In Burroughs case this was his last book to be published before he died. In it are many riveting accounts of his travels to the Land of the Dead (see also The Western Lands) meeting up with friends and colleagues who had passed on before him. Much of Burroughs fiction was also directly inspired by his dreams.

True Fiction:

Winged Pharaoh by Joan Grant. This book is loaded with a plethora of dream teachings from the perspective of an ancient Egyptian priestess. Written by one who had been there.

Dreams Underfoot by Charles De Lint. Many worthwhile themes to explore here, as well as in other Newford books and stories.

The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft. Like many other fiction writers Lovecraft got a lot of his material directly from his dreams. If you like weird fiction his tales will definitely please. This story is instructive in modes of dream travel, of sequential or serial dreams and waking up inside the dream to become an active dreamer as Randolph Carter attempts again and again to reach the city he dreams of before he is snatched away by waking up. This is the longest of stories in his Dream Cycle, but be sure to check out the rest.

Crow and Weasel by Barry Lopez. ’ “Remember only this one thing,” said Badger. “The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away when they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves.”‘ Many of our best stories come from dreams. When we practice writing down or telling our dreams we grow our talent as writers and storytellers.

There are many more. A list like this is always incomplete and reflects my own tastes. My reading list is also incomplete and grows every day, but please add your favorite dream books to the list in the comments section.

Full Moon Dream Trailer Frags

Dream Frags/Trailers from Full Moon October 21-23, 2010

1) Cheap Plastic Multi-Product

I find a product like a plastic sheet with multi-functions like measuring the level in a juice box. I am touching it and a section of it starts bulging out with some sort gel inside that I had apparently activated. I thought – interesting but cheap and quite novelty.

2) Truck race

Somehow my consciousness was embedded in a truck in a NASCAR-like truck race. Strangely there were two guys in the truck. I am not sure of the function of the passenger. We were going quite fast and made a rather dramatic passing of three other trucks going around a sharp turn. It was successful and as we went into the pits we had made it into 7th place – as the chubby passenger scurried off to get another Mountain Dew or something.

3) Medicine Pack

I was wondering around woods and meadows and open lands. I was near the base of a large tree and found some bright ears of corn (with the husks gone) and some pine boughs for my pack. Later I was walking carefully across a swamp – not yet wet but at the point where it was likely at some point that I will be in up to my knees. I reach down into the swamp and pull out several more ears of corn, also with no husks. The corn is bright yellow and the ears are large and crescent- shaped. I also pull out a pine bough – still bright green and glistening a little.

No real strong emotions associated with these dreams. Maybe there was some mild excitement about having magick nature items from my medicine pack

Two nights later:

4) Dionysian Revelry

My son and I were in some hotel or something where drunken revelers had taken over the town and trashed the place. A drunken guy was floating on a floatie in the hotel pool playing a guitar and another a tambourine. The streets outside were thick with trash.

5) Icons Crossing Cultures

I was at some sort of exhibition where people had set up altars with icon – many of Graeco-Roman form - or so it seemed. People kept insisting the various statues were Japanese. What I thought was certainly Venus/Aphrodite – I was told it was the Japanese form called Una. When I looked at it more closely I could see some Japanese features in the face of the goddess.

Magick Bus...

HML DREAM

(I was recovering from a colonoscopy- meaning up a lot in the night, recovering from anestesia etc etc- so I was in a perfect (!?) space for a lot of dreams it seems...)

I (and Sophia) are at a huge HML gathering/convention- it is being held on a big cruise ship- really big- but it is somehow permanently docked- on what I think is an island. The weather is sunny and beautiful, the ship is filled with partiers and (much like the Esoteric Book Conference) I am meeting & greeting & chatting & laughing & socializing with a lot of people.

I clearly remember chatting up Nema and Lyrus and had a long really fun chat with Papa Nick and a lot of people Ive never met before except as names on the list- it was really fun, and a lot of magickal conversations were going on- a lot of occult images and sigils were about.

Then somehow we got ahold of a bus and piled in and had a wild party driving the bus on and off the cruise ship in a big circle- strange- but hilarious.

Black Thunder and the Intelligent Tot

Being pregnant, there have been frequent detailed dreams each and every night all of which have not been recorded though will be shortly when the move is settled. This dream blog has served as an "excuse" to write at least something down.

Last night I dreamed I met my unborn child and it was a 'she'. The name was not known but someone, a narrator-like source was telling of a possibility to feel the shape of a fetuses face and ears through a decently showing pregnant stomach. As if detached from my own body, I was looking straight at a much more pregnancy belly than exists in my reality and feeling just that; The ears and face of my child. Suddenly, the child was right in front of me, appearing as old as one year and speaking as fluently as an adult. All that is recalled of the conversation is that the child's intelligence was extremely shocking at first but that instantly, a feeling of well-being overtook me and I was quite comforted with this fact.

Then there was a dream of a black whale called "Black Thunder." There had also been one dream before both of these which if recalled later, will be posted. There was a huge platform for tourists to view this great pouring forth of water down a gigantic hill, not unlike a waterfall but not the usual ninety degree angle they are often seen flowing off of. There was a massive river that it led out unto and the sky was overcast and quite damp and very cold, the water was notably, also very chilly. As we, being myself and a crowd of people, descended down the stairs on the right hand side of the gushing downhill river, reaching the bottom, many of us crossed to the left side, where the wooden stairs led back upward but only by traversing the river with your feet, the water thankfully being low at that moment, could we reach that side. There was an air of danger at this point and I recall seeing one girl in particular who had fallen into the waters and she was scared, unsure of what lay beneath. Throughout the whole dream, as we walked, there was tell of "Black Thunder," the great black sperm whale who was known to be seen "riding" the water hill or swimming in the river below and it did not seem to have a friendly repertoire. As we headed up to the top it became apparent that getting back to the other side was somehow near impossible and yet the idea of going back down the staircase was out due to suddenly rising water levels. I thought of jumping in the river but knowing I was pregnant, this was a risk I did not want to take. As we approached the top, it was realized that the only way out was to jump off the height of the platform, into the original pool at the top, far below. After hesitating for quite some time, finally, knowing there was no other way, despite fear of Black Thunder, I jumped... All that I remember is the feeling of adrenaline, seeing the underwater view of bubbles and immersion, the gnashing of whale teeth and unconsciousness... I woke, in the dream, to find that the water levels were lessened, there was a pile of debris in the center of it, the whale had not 'eaten' me up and somehow, I felt a sense of deep connection with him or her, along with a great sense of relief.

In the Footsteps of the Keepers

...I was there, in a time warp, a priestess doing an invocation of the Goddess Athena.

I woke stating that I was of the race that existed when the ancient, white giants walked the earth. The race that preceded us. That was a time of cliff dwellers, housing carved into two opposing, rocky cliffs and down the middle of a fault line. I, as the Goddess lay my body between the two inhabited cities and supported the western side with my breasts and belly and the eastern with my back. To my feet was the setting sun. To my head in the north was a second sun rising. I lay upon an earthquake faultline.

I stated that earthquakes happen when Atlas needs to move, to shift his weight from holding the Earth. Hephaestus/Vulcan the god of lava and the hot core of Earth rises through the crust of the Earth when he needed oxygen.

I woke up stating, "I am the Goddess Athena" in tears and breathing heavily.

"In the footsteps of the Keepers"

A dream of Tennie Komar

Baby book dream

(This is not my dream, but is a dream remembered by my girlfriend, interesting enough I thought I'd share it here. She had it the morning of Saturday, 9/25).

I just appeared inside a building. It was a really tall building that looked like a library. It was a very old library. There was a lot of brick and stone in the architecture. I could look up and see several stories high.
I saw you standing at some sort of help desk with two other people. There was a young woman standing beside you and a young man on the opposite side (it was obvious that he worked there). I could hear the woman saying (in a very excited tone) "It's by the baby!" She and the man were trying to convince you that it was a book written by "the" baby. You were certain they were wrong. The book was a tan hard back book, and all of the pages were tan - just slightly lighter than the cover. There was a lot of wear on all of the edges of the cover. You took the book from the young woman - you took it in the slow and gentle manner that you would use when others would grab. You turned so that you could read the small faint words written in the spine.
You pointed to the words with really long pointy fingernails. There were waves of purple, gray and black around your nails. The letters were more like symbols used in other languages than letters. You said "No, see, it's about the baby, not by the baby." You could read the words as if they were written in English. You helped them see the symbols.
It seemed to me "the baby" was a demon, and the father of the demon had written the book about his child. The excitement of you three finding this book was obvious. It was as if you had been looking for the book for some time - you all had been.
I remember the darkness around you all. I remember the dark red and deep gray and black colors. You were wearing a long black coat. Time was moving so slowly, but just as quickly as the dream began and I had appeared in that library it was over.

Intelli-Techno-Non-Silly Putty

Snippet of a recent dream: I saw a mysterious substance with the consistency and color of Play-Doh (remember Play-Doh?) that had unusual capabilities. There was a sheen (micro mica particles?) to this stuff. A man put some of this stuff into an antique crank telephone and was able to immediately talk with the person with whom he wished to speak. He picked up the handset and without dialing was in touch with the right person. A woman put some of this stuff into an opened latch on the side of a toaster and immediately had some nice looking toast.