visitation dreams

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

Sleep Paralysis and Spirits

Are spirits real, or are they just irrational stories meant to explain things that science now explains better? This is the way the question of spirits is framed by many. According to many recent polls, belief in ghosts in the West hovers around 60%, and one British poll found that more people believe in ghosts [...]

Friday, October 31st, 2008

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 [...]

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

Dreaming as Shamanic Archaeology

Just found an interesting article by Dr. Ron Masa about his practice of shamanic dreamwork. He tells a story about a women who discovered through her dreams a generations-old trauma that has been passed down through her father’s lineage.
Many psychologists have suggested that deep family-of-origin issues can be seen to manifest in our dreams, [...]

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

Night terrors aka Sleep Paralysis

Gyrus from Dreamflesh made this connection between false awakenings and sleep paralysis: in both of these altered states, we feel like we are “awake” and aware of our surroundings. In a false awakening, this certainty of “awakeness” turns out to be a lucid dream about where we are actually sleeping. In sleep paralysis, [...]

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007