Dreaming in the Dark Times 2: Flowers for the Dead

Article: Flowers for the Dead

Series: Dreaming in the Dark Times

As I write this, I am steeping blue lotus (Egyptian Water Lily), Lion’s Mane mushroom (powdered extract) and honey in hot water for about 1 hr. It is my intention on this Christmas night to dream deeply as a way to gather information about my future and the destiny of my family. It’s a shamanic practice that most people have access to. This winter and holiday week, I’ve gathered in my home, powerful herbs and foods that strengthen my connection to the darkness and to life with my eyes closed. I have Afrikan Dream Roots (Silene Capensis), Moldy blue cheese, Blue and red water lilies, Afrikan Dream Seeds (Entada Rheedii), mugwort, Zacatechichi, white sage, various mushrooms, damiana, passion flower, valerian, salvia divinorum, tart cherries and pistachios nuts.

Each of these things has a function and effect on dream or sleep. However, in many humans these effects vary. The goal tonight is to take restful sleep using the water lily but also to have memories and mental clarity of the lion’s mane mushroom. One of the challenges with the water lily is related to urination. I’ve taken this as a tea for many years and as with most water-soluble ingredients in plants and fungi, if the human body senses how this thing changes our senses or perceptions away from baseline, the natural mechanisms autonomically move to remove the substances. In the same way Psilocybin can be pissed out, such is the fate of Nuciferine (the ingredient in lotus and lily flowers). So I am anticipating a visit the restroom in between sleeping and dreaming. My toltec teacher calls waking up in the middle of the night a shamanic lucid dreaming technique known to our tradition as “splitting the night” which can help a person to better remember their dreams in the second half of the sleep cycle.

Since starting this practice I have noticed more astral projection, more dreams within dreams, more thinking about life, death and consciousness in dreams and lucidity. My goals for my family and tribe remain with future sight and understanding premonitions. These are things that my son has, that my mother and her mother have.

I drink the tea and prepare for bed by reading. I am reminded that like many of the substances at the herbal apothecary where I work, water lily and lotus are active when smoked. Even earlier this week I had the most pleasant smoke of Zacatechichi after guiding friends on a mushroom medicine walk in Sedona, AZ. The effects of smoking lotus, Aztec dreaming grass (Zacatechichi) or Amanita Muscaria (Fly Agaric Mushroom) have usually been powerful hypnagogic agents for me. This means that they sedate me to a place between waking and dreaming and often times in this place I see visions or experience sounds from another dimension.

This has happened to me with Salvia divinorum too, but that’s a store for another article entirely.

Sweet dreams and lucid landings until next time.

Hugh T Alkemi

Yoga Swami and Encinitas History

Readers and Yoga Adventurers, Just recently called the Yoga Mecca of the USA, Encinitas CA and Yoga Swami (where I teach two days a week) are special and are a must visit for any yoga adventurers. See the article in the winter 2008 copy of the Encinitas magazine. http://www.encinitasmag.com/about.html Encinitas, Swami's Surf Spot, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, and Leucadia...can be consider spiritual vortex hotspots. This evident in the number of places to worship just on the coast (west of hwy 101) near the cliffside beachs or Swami's and Moonlight. So my mother's family (mexican americans) lived in Encinitas during the period of time when Paramahansa Yogananda (the Swami that Swami's is named after). This time period was about the 1930's- 1940's. At this time Encinitas, was well liked by Swami Yogananda and he settled there for sometime. Swami Yogananda was a capricorn and he was a very involved meditator and yoga practicioner. His foundation still exists in E

Dreaming in the Dark Times 4: Mold and Sage

Article: Mold and Sage Series: Dreaming in the Dark Times Many times growing up in Southern California have I communed with White Sage (Salvia Apiana). It grew in my hometown. It grows on the property that my family and I own in Aguanga, CA. I learned to pick it and bundle it before I was fully initiated into manhood (sometime between my first sexual experience and my first sweat lodge with a Lakota Medicine woman). I recently made some Dreaming Jaguar smokes at my old job site (Happy High Herbs/Rainbow Bliss Botanicals in Tempe AZ) and included white sage but wasn’t able to continue making them because of the popularity of this herb and the trouble keeping it in stock. I really just included it for flavor then. I had forgotten all the dreams I had of the sage fields before. In the last week, for the first time in many human years, I returned to my family land and the sage fields. I made offerings of guardianship and good will towards the sage plants on my land and collected a modest

Journey of Las Medicinas y Church of the Sacred Spiral

Dear Friends, Some of you joined us and many of you heard that last weekend we completed a beautiful series on the Magic Cactus with our Ethnobotany students. I held space along with some of my dearest friends and presented a series of Neo-Shamanic altars and rituals. The divine Earth we walked upon for our journey to healing was a blessed and sacred site that my family owns on the back side Palomar Mountain. As we got out of the city and into the country, I prayed for perfect weather and perfect community. Sunday throughout the ritual and the hiking that preceded said ritual, I was overwhelmed with GRACE for those who chose to stay behind and not attend this journey. I honored their path and allow them to continued to build trust in themselves and the medicine work and in nature and weather. When we arrived, the weather was perfect and mild and incredibly...there was rain everywhere except for where we hiked. All week and the day before, people were scared of bad weather and hard time

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