Preparations for Sacred Sleep
Since sacred sleep is an act of union with our deities, it is wise to ensure that we’re in a clear, calm, and focused spiritual state before retiring. Asking a goddess or god for a dream message while drunkenly falling into bed almost guarantees a lack of results.
The suggestions that follow are just that—suggestions. Your actual preparations for sacred sleep may vary for a number of reasons: your environment (no bathtub; an ocean nearby); your health (not eating after dark may imperil your life during certain illnesses); the nature of your messenger (don’t eat fish just before invoking a goddess that forbids the eating of fish); and other factors.
The following discussions are based on ancient practices as well as personal experience. Feel free to use them in preparing for sacred sleep.
Timing
Timing can be of great importance in determining when to practice sacred sleep. A feast day associated with your goddess or god would be highly appropriate, as would seasons or months directly or indirectly connected with the deity (spring for plant goddesses and gods; summer for sexual deities; fall for harvest deities; winter for darker deities). This may mean quite a wait.
The Moon
A second method involves the phases of the moon. The moon has a significant effect on the human body, mind, and emotions, and its phases can be a useful guide:
Waxing Moon: Questions involving new ventures, creativity, fertility, growth, healing, love, joyous emotions, relationships, health, conception, childbirth, babies in general, money, families
Full Moon: Questions of all types
Waning Moon: Questions regarding the past, past lives, wisdom, sources of knowledge, teachers, depressing emotions, endings
Lunar goddesses are, of course, best invoked at the phase that most closely matches their influences.
Cycles
Human cycles are yet another factor that can be used to determine the ideal night for sacred sleep. Many women acknowledge that menstruation marks a time of greatly enhanced spiritual power. The male fear of women’s power during menstruation, evident in many cultures, may have been the unacknowledged reason for the male concept that women are “unclean.”
Because menstruation is a time of increased power, many women discover that their dreams are radically altered. Dreams at such times may be far more active and involved with sex, violence, and conversations with animals, among other experiences.332 In addition, though the true nature of PMS is currently under discussion, it is possible that longer periods of sleep each day late in a woman’s cycle can offer her the means to dream away many of the undesirable effects of this often-trying time.333 Since sacred sleep just before and during menstruation produces more vivid and powerful dreams,334 this may well be an excellent time to ask a deity (specifically a goddess) for a sacred dream.
During pregnancy, most women experience an increased number of dreams.335 This may be due to the deeper levels of sleep that women experience during the early stages of pregnancy.336
Sacred sleep can be practiced during pregnancy, but it will probably be most productive in the first and second trimesters. By the third trimester, the dramatic physiological changes occurring within the woman’s body often disturb sleep. Dreams near the end of pregnancy tend to be concerned solely with the baby and with the pregnancy itself.337 However, during all stages of pregnancy, asking for dreams from goddesses associated with childbirth seems quite reasonable.
The Next Day
Another consideration is far more mundane: will you be able to awaken naturally on the following morning? Ancient texts confirm that most divinely inspired dreams occur in the last few hours of sleep, when the soul is freest from mundane influences.338 Having an alarm clock (or a child) jolting you from sacred sleep is far from the ideal, and may well prevent you from completing an important dream. If this is a problem, plan sacred sleep when you won’t have to rise with an alarm clock the following morning.
Finally, having laid out this feast of choices, I’m forced to state that none of them are truly necessary. Sacred sleep can and should be used when needed. It can certainly be utilized as an emergency measure at any time.
Trust yourself. You’ll know when to call your messenger.
Diet
Eat lightly before dusk prior to sacred sleep; eat little or nothing after sundown. Heavy meals and meats should be avoided if at all possible. These tend to distract the psychic mind, and thus prevent the appropriate connection with deity. Artemidorus states that the dreams caused by “immoderate” eating before sleep shouldn’t be examined, for overindulgence prevents truthful dreams.339
Easily digested foods (fish and lightly steamed vegetables) are the ideal. Many foods are linked with deities, and these can be eaten during the day as a part of your special dream diet.
Fasting and extreme diets were often a prerequisite to ancient dream incubation,340 but there is no need to starve before sacred sleep. Medically supervised fasting can have its spiritual uses, but it’s not necessary for our purposes.
Alcohol and Prescription Drugs
Galen wrote that wine was forbidden for up to fifteen days prior to sacred sleep.341 Philostros wrote that wine was banned from the temple of Asklepios at Pergamon because it soiled the “ether of the soul.” 342 He also wrote that dream interpreters refused to hear dreams that had occurred under the influence of alcohol.343 Most other ancient cultures agreed that the dreamer should be free from alcohol for at least twenty-four hours before incubation.
Research performed in the last three decades seems to suggest that certain drugs inhibit the production of dreams, including alcohol,344 tranquilizers, and sleeping pills,345 but that caffeine may actually stimulate dreams.346 The nature of caffeine’s role in producing dreams is unclear, but perhaps, after caffeine’s stimulating effects have largely worn off, sufficient levels of this alkaloid remain in the system to stimulate the mind during sleep, thus producing dreams. Despite caffeine’s potential for enhancing the production of dreams, it isn’t recommended as it can inhibit sleep itself.
Alcohol should be considered to be a non-sacred and limiting influence for sacred sleepers. It’s best to avoid alcohol, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills before sacred sleep.
Chastity
The idea that sex is “unclean” seems to have developed as a male method of imposing social control over women, and is most certainly directly linked with menstruation. Many earlier cultures, however, integrated sex (symbolic or actual) in certain festivals. Additionally, temple prostitution, involving both men and women, was a common practice in Mesopotamia. A strong sexual element can be found in the religious rites of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Britain; in Africa, China, Japan, India, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Even medieval European churches contain sexually explicit carvings.
Still, most ancient Mediterranean cultures were fairly adamant: sexual relations were not permitted before sacred sleep. The amount of time varied, but it was usually at least twenty-four hours. Temple records continuously state that “the dreamer was pure.”
Today, we have different views concerning sex, and few women consider themselves to be “unclean.” Sexual activity before sacred sleep need not be of great concern and, indeed, sex before asking a sexual goddess or god for a dream could be highly appropriate. I would suggest, however, performing your dream ritual after sex, not before.
332. Taylor, Red Flower: Rethinking Menstruation, p. 35.
333. Ibid., pp. 37–38; Shuttle and Redgrove, The Wise Wound, p. 92.
334. Shuttle and Redgrove, op. cit., p. 92.
335. Garfield, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Dreams, p. 163.
336. Ibid., p. 163.
337. Ibid., p. 165.
338. Jayne, The Healing Gods of Ancient Civilizations, p. 220.
339. Artemidorus, The Interpretation of Dreams (Onierocritica), p. 21.
340. Ibid., p. 70; Jayne, op. cit., p. 278.
341. Jayne, op. cit., p. 278.
342. Ibid., pp. 278–279.
343. Artemidorus, op. cit., p. 70.
344. Hartmann, The Biology of Dreaming, p. 51; Garfield, op. cit., p. 27.
345. Taylor, op. cit., p. 38.
346. Hartmann, op. cit. p. 51.