WITCH’S BREW: A DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Our dreams are bewitching. They often invoke supernatural events. Dreams unfold inexplicably by unseen forces and mysterious tricks; Illusions appear and disappear; Transformations and invocations surge up from the depths of the unconscious.

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT…

CONCOCT A RECIPE FOR A WITCH’S DREAM BREW!

Create a list of ingredients with your most outrageous dream associations from the macabre to the whimsical. Combine sociably inappropriate behavior, irresistible feelings and raw animal power into your potion. Illustrate your recipe with dream images that may feel spooky, unsettling, or confusing. Mix in wild things, potent energies and enigmatic peculiarities. Thicken with undisciplined and untamed ingredients from your dream. Toss in spirits of the unseen realms. Make your soup stock from emotions. Blend in your feelings for flavors.

DR. JECKYL & MS. HYDE: A DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

In our idealistic culture, we turn away from the dark side to emphasize the moral, ethical puritanical side of our nature. We are raised to be unselfish, polite, noncompetitive and obedient. We are taught to cut ourselves off from darkness and to seek only the light. This split creates an adversarial position within us because this polarized, denied, dark side returns to haunt us in our dreams. As a result of being stuffed away and hidden from view in our waking world, our dream images often portray animated characters who act out in unruly ways during the night. This outrageous cast of characters may remind us of the part of us that have become lost, fearful, jealous, angry, or guilt-ridden; or the part of us that is wild, impulsive, passionate, raw, spontaneous and confident.

 

 

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT…

Collage a pair of journal pages with found images from magazines or sketch:

Side one:

Picture one or more of the lost, murky, damaged, angry, hostile, unlikable, distasteful, scary, unhappy, ill mannered, or unruly images in your dream.

Side two:

Picture one or more of the wild, raw, bright, spontaneous, rowdy, enthusiastic, creative images in your dream.

BODY MAP: A DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

The body is our container, our home, the temple of our soul. The dream has a parallel function. Like the body, a dream is a vessel of our physical, emotional and spiritual being. It stores information, memory and associations. Like the body, a dream registers responses to pleasure and excitement as well as danger, anxiety, frustration and pain.

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT:

Draw the outline of a body in your dream journal or ask someone to trace your body on a large sheet of paper. Find a location in the body for each of your dream images.

Design pathways of inner wiring between events in the dream to the message centers of the heart, the mind and the central nervous system.

Use arrows; spirals; colors; notations; found pictures and text.

HARVEST OF DREAMS: A DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

The full moon at the end of the harvest season is a holiday of thanksgiving in which we reap the bounty of the year and the fruit of our dreams.

Your Mission Should You Choose to Accept It…

CREATE AN OUTOOR DREAM BOWER

It is traditional in many religions to build and decorate a bower with the branches of trees and the harvest from the fields. Create an outdoor dream shrine with the harvest of your autumn dreams made from leaves, branches, stones and found materials in a natural setting. Decorate your bower with symbols of your dream images, both positive and negative. Find a way to honor each guest in your dwelling.