Halloween Dreams and the Celtic Otherworld

Through Halloween, the castrated remnants of the Celtic influence on Western culture play out through communal rituals: of giving gifts to strangers, protecting the house with carved gourds that resemble spirits, and dressing in costumes to disguise ourselves after nightfall as a wandering ghost.

But we are also culturally predisposed to dream darkly, or at least confrontationally, during this holiday.

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Hallucinogens in the Stone Age

I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to discuss the recent discovery of “prehistoric drug paraphernalia” found in a Caribbean island archaeological site dated to @ 400 BC. Bone tubes and ceramic bowls were found in a human occupation site, suggesting the use of a sniffed substance, most likely cohoba, a hallucinogen made from the beans of a mimosa species.

“Drug use in the Stoned age!” That’s been the rallying cry of the mainstream media, including this article here, which actually reproduced an image of a early hominid to depict islanders who lived during the same time as the Golden Age of Greece. It’s kind of laughable, but of course the implications for public science education are unsettling.

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Guide to Lucid Dreaming Supplements

I just uploaded my latest article that explores lucid dreaming supplements. Dream herbs and supplements are getting a lot of press these days, especially from the “life-hack” crowd.

My take is that a lucid dreaming pill is not going to be of much help for beginner lucid dreamers unless they are also engaging in mind-development practices as well.

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Dream Theater in Berkeley: Silk Passages

For those of you living in the San Francisco Bay Area, a dream theater performance is taking place in Berkeley on November 1st.

The event is part of the opening night festivities for the art show Balancing Perspectives: East Asian Influences in Contemporary Art.

Silk Passage is a dream theater performance exploring the kinetic union of body and psyche. Where else does this union pulse more brightly than in the creative act. Dreamers Lana Nasser, Denise Mewbourne and J. K. Norris join Tomoko Murakami to depart from the sunny shores of consciousness into the waters of dreamtime, where they brave the depths to bring back an act of creation.

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Dreaming in Black and White

Do we usually dream in black & white” Or is the color in our remembered dreams just hard to remember? This has been a perplexing question for dream scientists for half a century, with most studies not able to report a firm conclusion.

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Children’s Snoring and Cognitive Deficiencies Linked

Science Daily published this article last week about the new links between snoring and mental deficiences in children. The results are a little perplexing, especially where sleep apnea is concerned.

As expected, they found that children with snoring had lower regional cerebral oxygen concentration than healthy children. But, paradoxically, they found that children with sleep apnea, which is usually considered a more severe degree of sleep-disordered breathing, have higher regional cerebral oxygen concentration than children with just snoring.

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Google is Pro-Ecstasy, Professors Claim

For a change of pace, a recent study suggests that taking ecstasy only once can cause memory impairments. According to Keith Laws and Fabrizio Schifano from the University of Hertfordshire,

ecstasy users show significantly impaired memory when compared to non-ecstasy users and that the amount of ecstasy consumed is largely irrelevant. Indeed, taking the drug even just once may cause significant short and long-term memory loss. Professor Laws findings are based on the largest analysis of memory data derived from 26 studies of 600 ecstasy users.

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Lucid Nightmares - Fear, Initiation, and Beyond

This is my final post on scary lucid dreams, also known as lucid nightmares. So far, we have looked into attitudes about nightmares, and some of the stumbling blocks to appreciating lucid nightmares at face value. Now, in part V, we’ll explore some alternative ways to frame these important experiences.

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Lucid Nightmares & Frightening Near Death Experiences

Today I want to talk about lucid nightmares using the metaphor of frightening Near Death Experiences (fNDEs). Both of these states of consciousness are under-reported, most likely due to the taboos I explored in Part I of this series.

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The Dark Side of Lucid Dreams

Welcome to part III of my series Lucid Nightmares.

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