The Fern Cabin Rental on our land has a cenote inside one of the rooms, and I never even knew! I can’t believe it’s true, but I stand on a huge rock perched inside the room, and dive in. The water feels healing, the temperature comfortable, and I swim around in bliss.
I awaken and realize it’s not true. No, there is not a cenote on our land, inside one of the houses. But then I dream the same dream a few months later, and then again, for years! I am not totally sure what it means, why I dream this peaceful, excited, watery dream about a dry place up the hill from me, over and over. It is always so real, too, and I get excited because I have discovered that we have a special water source here that we never knew about. And then I awaken so very disappointed.
Listen to Mary Morgaine read Only in My Dreams
What have you been dreaming about lately? Can you recall? Do you awake with thoughts going straight into ‘reality’ or take time to digest your dreams? What more favorable time of year for reflecting on the messages and guidance from our dreams (and honoring Mugwort!) than a Pisces Full Moon Lunar Eclipse week with the equinox, so let’s do it!
One friend told me he was just inventing a wood-fired refrigerator in his dreams, lol! I love it when my friends and family tell me their quirky dreams. Nadia was being chased by a mushroom person trying to shoot her. She tried to get the gun by sitting on his lap because she reasoned if he shot her he’d shoot himself too, but then she woke up (thank goodness and what does this mean?!!) Another friend dreamed of people keeping chickens with braided ropes on their necks like leashes, and another about a pilgrimage to the seraphim lake where a spaceship landed on the person in front of them… Hart says he hardly ever dreams but if he does, it is tedium dreams, like riding the electric lawn mower down the interstate, holding up traffic. I find when I lay my head on my pillow at night, a rush of the dreams the night before come flooding back to me. It is a fleeting yet potent sensation.
I often wake remembering all of my dreams (or at least what I think is all of them) and then by the time I step one foot out of bed—poof—they’re all gone, or blurred up, and I am unable to access them again unless something in the day triggers a recall. And even then it is not a total recall.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I kept a dream journal and wrote my dreams down every morning before getting out of bed. My midwife recommended I do it because 1) your dreams can be very vivid and insightful during pregnancy and 2) Once you have a child, you won’t have time for those sort of leisures anymore so seize the moment.
I got so into dreaming during that gestation that I thought I wanted to be a dream interpreter or analyst, or researcher or documentarian, but then I lost that dream, and it never materialized. I still look at that journal (that I made/bound myself back then!) just for recording pregnancy dreams and think I will do it again (when I retire? haha)
Dreaming is one of our brain’s superpowers that AI does not possess. Dreams take us deeper into our sub-conscious self and help us process, integrate or deal with ‘real’ life. A dream’s essence can range from profound insight, annoyance, lighthearted hilarity, pure pleasure, complete nonsense to holy terror. We have all kinds of ‘stuff’ in our psyche ready to come on stage at anytime in dreamland and express itself as who knows what. I love the sovereignty we hold because of the fact that no one knows our dreams except us, and we can choose to share them or not. Along with daydreaming, they are our most private, personal adventures. How cool is that?
Yet we kind of take dreaming for granted, don’t we?
Carl Jung’s theories and practices with dream analysis are still guiding contemporary dream psychologist after 100 years of use, and he would say that our dreams reveal more than they conceal and use our imagination’s interpretation of mythic figures or archetypes to merge the conscious with the unconscious. He taught that the act of dreaming itself is healing what needs attention and it doesn’t have to be picked apart to be effective, although studying/interpreting the dream can bring out its full potential. (Of course, trying to sum up Jung’s work in a sentence or two is ridiculous, but you get the point here— Don’t worry if you don’t know what your dream means or have any time to figure it out!)
For whatever reason, the majority of us forget our dreams so you do have to be intentional about dreaming to get the most out of its gifts on a regular basis. If I consciously go to sleep with redirecting my mind into dreams and then consciously tease them out of my memory the moments after awakening, I have more reflections I can coax to the surface, make sense of, and play with throughout the day.
Often hard to put into words, you can feel like you’ve done a disservice to the dream by even trying. Yet I love it when my family or friends try and explain their dreamworld to me. Maybe the best dream interpreters are the ones who know us best.
There’s those dreams that stand out for life, that you will never forget. Like Hart’s gold mudmen dream of 3 radiating dark figures dressed in gold, whose faces started moving and he realized it was because they were made out of mud and gold and represented Earth, making a glowing visit to him that still fills him up with goodness to this day. Like my dream in 2009, of being in a basement made of hematite while Michelle and Barak Obama showed a video to a small group of us about climate collapse and all the information they knew that they could not tell the public, including a time capsule that had been found on the moon revealing Earth’s future which was about to eliminate most humans in a couple decades. Then it jumped straight into me being on the lawn of the White House with the now deceased permaculture teacher Patricia Allison, and Michelle Obama asking for our counsel on what to do with that big Lawn. I told her it was essential to plant Rue at the main entrance/exit where she and the President used and that they, and all the leaders coming in, should stroke the leaf every time they enter and exit to receive wisdom about how to best govern the country. And Michelle did it.
There’s those visitation dreams, when you sense that actually an ancestor, or loved one, deceased or distant, truly appears and communicates to you while you’re deep in REM.
There’s the reoccurring dreams- like my Fern Cabin water scenes and the ones I had as a child about heights and falling, and the ones in my twenties where my teeth were always crumbling, and the ones over decades where I am in a car going down a steep hill and the brakes give out, and the ones I have had ever since I can remember and still have- about Snakes, Snakes, Snakes!
There’s the prophetic dreams. The ones that say, “Don’t step on the snake, don’t step on the snake.” Then that morning when you are going on your regular run, you hear the dream voice, look down, and quickly jump over a thick snake sliding across the road. The ones that say, “Don’t get in the white van, wait for the yellow car, don’t get in the white van, wait for the yellow car.” Then hitchhiking that day in the middle of Wyoming a white van approaches you and you hear the dream voice and say no thank you to the driver in the white van who then curses you out and cuts a wheelie tearing out of there and next a yellow car pulls up and you get in it and it turns out to be a wonderful experience with its own longer story…
There’s the nightmares that throw you out of dreamland into a screaming waking sweat! And the dreams you want to relive all day long and dreams you can’t get out of your head but wish you could. There’s lucid dreaming, wet dreaming, the “Did I just dream that or was it real?” dreaming, waking dreaming…
Yes, yes, there’s all kinds of dreams, and I personally find too much salt or sugar can alleviate or intensify them in not the best way. Sometimes I intentionally bring in herbs to enhance my dreams, like the wonderful Mugwort, who I am ecstatic to write a love letter to this week. Catnip, Blue Lotus, Hops, Valerian and Yarrow are some other non-hallucinogenic herbs to call in if you want to strengthen your relationship with the dream world.
What if everything we need to know is revealed in our dreams? They can guide us like a wise elder. Thomas Edison said, “Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” When I have a burning yes or no question that I cannot get clarity on in my waking hours, I like to ask my dreamteam to give me the answer either in my dreams or immediately upon awakening. I call my dreamteam ‘The dreamers who live in The Temple of Dreams,’ and I have received clarity numerous times by asking this way.
I fantasize of everyone in the world holding a dream forum for an hour every day, recording our dreams and sharing them with our particular cohort to broaden our realities and help make better choices. I guess I forgot to mention there’s also the pipe dreams;-)
Here’s an invitation to spend the next week being more attentive to your dark half- the world you experience with eyes closed, and see what the gifts of dreaming currently hold for you.
A blessed Autumnal Equinox,
From a Dream Sharer,
Mary Morgaine Squire
9/18/24
Under a bright waning moon keeping me up too much
~Love Letters To Our Plant Allies~
Mugwort
Artemisia vulgaris
Asteraceae
Dear Mugwort,
I sip on a warm mug of your dreamy tea, and begin a letter of love to you that has been writing itself in my head for a while now, as I think of you so very often. I get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside when I walk past a patch of you. I feel seen, my step lightens and I get the sense I may be able to pull off some magic today.
Listen to Mary Plantwalker read her Love Letter to Mugwort
First time we ever officially met was in 2000 at the Delphi Chiropractor Garden in New York. (I can’t believe I was 26 before I was ever introduced to you!) I was doing a garden work trade for chiropractic adjustments for my family, and you were in every bed. I immediately loved your scent that engulfed me when I began pulling you out. I remember laying back on the ground for a moment with you on my chest, and just inhaling that smell. So unusual and alluring! Who is this plant?
I asked several people who you were before I found someone who knew. I learned right away that you are wild and do not need to be in garden beds or you will grow crazy. And that the person trying to get you out will go crazy. Your rhizomes run free as the wind—I never had any success in removing you for long.
I was intrigued by your silver underbelly. Green on top of your leaf and silver beneath. I wonder now if you were one of the green ones who awakened ancient memories in me of how the world used to be? Of how we used to be with the world. I now remember well the times when we were all in close relationship with plants and called them in daily for wellness, for illness, for ceremony, for both living and dying. Now it’s only so very few of us that remember. Mugwort, thank you for bringing me back around.
You are named after Artemis, Goddess of Childbirth, the Deer, the Moon and Beauty. Protector of Wild Things. Botanical name- Artemisia. Species— vulgaris. Can you believe we named you vulgaris then turn around and use that word degradingly? Vulgur originally meant ‘of the commons.’ You were commonly used. You were known by the people! But now it means lacking sophistication or good taste. You are so not unsophisticated, quite the contrary!
Other names we have given to you are Dreamwort, Silver Moon Herb and Cronewort. Your name Mugwort could be from your past use as a brewing herb. Mugwort beer! Wort meant herb, mug meant ale. Or some say it is a derivative of the word mucgwyrt, mycg being Anglo-Saxon for midge and wyrt for root, ‘an herb whose root was used to keep away insects.’ Who knows? You do all of these things and more!
I hear you were birthed in Eurasia, and that your genus has spread seed and made over 500 species around the globe, Artemisia, geez! We call in many of your kin for medicine- Southernwood, Tarragon, Wormwood, Sweet Annie, Sagebrush…All of you containing invigorating and unforgettable volatile oils!
Moist, disturbed areas seem to attract you as I have surely found you growing wild in those kind of environments in my travels and explorations. I once had a neighbor who, when she moved in, brought you along in a pot and you looked very unhappy. I said, “What are you going to do with her?’ and she said she had recently met you and was very excited and wanted to plant you in the garden. I shared with her that you really preferred to be wild and free and already grew around here abundantly. I knew right away this new neighbor and I would be friends- someone who knew she needed you close by is definitely a woman of my heart!
In early spring, I like to eat your baby leaves, so tender and tasty! Another new growth happens this time of year, around the autumnal equinox, and I nibble these too, putting them in salads. For medicinal use, I harvest you in different stages- just your young leaves and then again later in the season when you are budding, collecting your flowering tops before they bloom. I have no experience using your root yet, but I know you yield medicine within that part of you, too.
I will pluck you fresh and put that sprig under my pillow, calling in your superpowers of dream enhancement. It is uncanny how many times I have received premonitions upon awakening after doing this, that soon come to pass. The stories say you are a dream herb, a plant for heightening our intuition, a guiding ally, and I have found this to be so very true. Thank you, Dreamwort!
I remember making a pillow of you shortly after we met, and sleeping with that for months. It supported me in being attuned to my divinity. You carry moon energy, helping us recall the Mysteries. At my New Moon fire circle, we drink your infusion and sing out, and howl with the coyotes. You bring out the wildness in us, and I love love you for it, Mugwort!
In olden times, before maps and apps, we put sprigs of you in our shoes, and you gave us directions. Nowadays, I place you on the dashboard when I travel distances, calling in that old gift. You are prized for warding off negativity- we wrap your herb in string, dry and then burn as incense to smudge and uplift. Infused in oil, we bless our special objects and tools. I bathe in a strong tea of your leaves and flowers and submerge myself in your magical powers.
The TCM moxa sticks and cones used to heat up acupuncture points are made from your silver down. You call stagnant energy to attention and get it moving again. This property is also what makes you such an ally for reproductive health. For females, we benefit from drinking your tea—you regulate menses, especially helping young women who have just started bleeding to settle into their moony rhythm. You’re a fertility herb and also aide in childbirth. And as your other namesake of Cronewort suggests, as a menopausal herb you are the best!
Being a nervine is yet another gift you have, Mugwort, big gratitude to you for helping relieve some of the stress and tension in our daily lives. And what an amazing bitter you are, a digestive system tonic for sluggish stomach and intestines! I love the way you taste as tea- not very bitter to me but I know my tastebuds are ‘unusual.’ I find as a dried tea, that you taste like cacao.
As we grow older, let’s keep calling you in. We can heat your plant and get our partner or friend (or do it ourselves) and switch the joints that ache from rheumatism or arthritis or other inflammation. I watched a documentary of aging well and admired the longevity ceremonies that groups hold in Japan, always drinking you at the center. You have been and continue to be a beautiful, free medicine for the people.
In praise and with sincere appreciation and love,
Mary Plantwalker
Weaving Community~
~The lovely Ash Sierra of Ritual Botanical makes a tincture she names Dream Walker “for vivid connection to the dream realm” that I take sometimes- it really helps! I dont even recognize the main herb in it- I think it’s tropical- Calea.
~I am so excited to soon be hosting Beth Berry, of Revolution From Home, starting in October, in Moon Cottage for a year-long program, Motherworthy, that meets 3 Wednesday mornings a month, (plus some other special connection times.) This immersion is crafted for mothers ready to reclaim joy, connect deeply with like-minded women, and transform their lives from the inside out. There’s still room for a couple more moms if you are local and this calls to you!
The way you write is comforting. Love the teachings and many uses of mugwort, thank you thank you. I had only heard of it as tea or smoke
This was a fantastic read. I just recently dreamed that I was dancing inside a worn down wooden shack, when a voice shouted "Look up to the sky! There's a ring of red lights!" I looked up through the broken roof, peeking through gaps between the planks to see... nothing but the starry sky. No UFOs in sight. I couldn't yet reach such a delightful, cosmic vision. I can still feel myself hoping and longing to see more in another dream.
My entire substack is dedicated to lucid dreaming, and your article makes me want to work more with dreaming herbs in the near future, to see what the mind can conjure up. It is such a magical experiment. Thank you!