Description
Book SynopsisInvoking Mnemosyne--Greek goddess of memory and eloquence, daughter of Heaven and Earth, mother of the Muses, and archetypal deity of the Asklepion dream temple tradition--this book initiates you into full dream consciousness, offering a lucid-dreaming ritual experience in the spirit of the Mystery Schools of antiquity.
Explaining how a conscious dream life is essential for self-discovery, deep integration, and healing, lucid-dreaming instructor Sarah Janes presents exercises, techniques, and initiations to help you explore the inner depths of your psyche. These realms, accessible through dreams, can help you to form a better understanding of who you are. Sharing her more than a decade of research on Sleep Temples and Mystery Schools of the Esoteric Tradition, Sarah explores the evolution of imagination, memory, and consciousness throughout the ages and proposes that dreams have been fundamental in the creation and development of culture. Dreams play an important role in ancestor worship, afterlife beliefs, animism, religion, and wisdom traditions. Sarah reveals how dreams offer us an opportunity to remember and directly experience our divinity, to transcend the limitations of our mortality and enter timeless, imaginal realms.
Employing the power of story to affect the mind and lay down new neural pathways--as if one were really
living the story--Sarah begins each initiatory chapter with a psychodramatic narrative. Using symbolism and powerful imagery, these stories help you generate the perfect dreams for each stage in the initiation. And by becoming a better dreamer, you can make better, more aware decisions in your waking life.
Trade Review“Sarah Janes’s
Initiation into Dream Mysteries reads like a perfect dream. Not only through the vivid reanimation of the dream cults of antiquity but also through the mellifluous prose by which it is brought to life, the reader (or initiate) is taken on a special journey--as intellectually insightful as it is spiritually inspiring. The text is the synergy of a depth of knowledge and love for the world—mingled with the initiatory stories interspliced throughout, hypnotically elaborate and evocative--that will lift you up to taste that same awakening that was the intent of these very oneiric practices of old.” * Pascal Michael, lecturer on psychedelics, altered states, and transpersonal psychology at Alef Trust *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
INTRODUCTION Ka, the Creative Spirit
Dreaming, Memory, and Consciousness PHASE 1
The Dawn of Dreams
Paleolithic to 10,000 BCE
Initiatic Story: Chrysalis
PHASE 2 Into the Bronze Age
Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age 10,000 to 4500 BCEInitiatic Story: Death in Anatolia
PHASE 3
Dream Writing and Ritual
The Ancient Near East 3300 to 1200 BCEInitiatic Story: Threshold
PHASE 4
Temple Sleep and Dream Sanctuaries
Ancient Egypt 3150 to 332 BCEInitiatic Story: Amunet’s Dream
PHASE 5 Island Dreams
Minoa 3500 to 1450 BCE Initiatic Story: Bee Asleep
PHASE 6Dream Panacea
Ancient Greece 500 to 530 BCE
Initiatic Story: The Pool of Mnemosyne
PHASE 7
Dreams of the Future
Starting . . . Now Initiatic Story: My House Is Arkady
Meditations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
