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Fighting nightmares

  
 
MrCoffeeBean
14:22 / 16.01.06
ive been having realy bad nightmares for about five months now, cant get rid of them. Anyone got any good ideas on how to use magic to kick them out of my head?
Maybe someone got some idea about some entity to work with?
Shamanic work on myself didnt work, and the nightmares seem to be too down me subconsious to be able to kick a servitor.
All ideas are welcomed. Thank you.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
14:29 / 16.01.06
Try constructing a gris gris bag of appropriate materials and sleeping with it under your pillow. I've got rid of someone elses chronic nightmares with this method before. Worth a go. Involving a deity is a bit like swatting a fly with semtex.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
14:47 / 16.01.06
Also, of course, nightmares generally have a lot to do with stress. Is there a lot of stress on your plate at the moment? Maybe look at what can be done to remove that stress? What are your habits prior to sleeping? Avoid eating anything heavy for several hours before sleep and try a 15 minute meditation before you go to bed. Look at the practical and physical things you can do before you try and deal with it on a magical level, or at least take the two approaches in tandem.
 
 
MrCoffeeBean
15:17 / 16.01.06
well..stres.. you mean like no money, on prozac, unemployd, on wellfare and no girl... and shit like that? Thats my life for the last couple of years but even on sleeping pills i get nightmares. And thats a biy unusual i think...

i stopede drinking coffee late in the afternoon/evning a long time ago, turned to hearbal tea. just read (in Penczaka "City magick", pretty good book) that peppermint a herbal of healing maybe its good for mental healing to, its worth a try. Otherwise its very nice before bedtime...
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
15:19 / 16.01.06
Ah, Prozac--I used to have shocking nightmares on SSRIs. Could be that.
 
 
charrellz
15:25 / 16.01.06
Meds have given me nightmares as well. I bet anything it's the prozac. Tell your doc about the dreams. Also I second all of GL's advise.
 
 
Chiropteran
15:54 / 16.01.06
In addition to the above, smudging your sleeping area with thyme before bed (or, depending on your situation, having someone else smudge after you've fallen asleep) works well for some people, myself and my son included. I used to burn it over charcoal, but now I just wrap it in a paper packet and light it up, on a fire-safe dish. (It can smell a little suspicious, though, so use your discretion with nosey neighbors or sensitive roommates.)

Mullein leaf can also reportedly help control nightmares - I usually use it in a bag, or as an ingredient in an annointing oil (for a slightly different, but related, purpose).
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
16:05 / 16.01.06
nutmeg essential oil stimulates dreaming...

but I don't know if that might make the nightmares more intense.

anyone know of the relationship between nutmegs and dreaming?

--not jack
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
16:09 / 16.01.06
nutmeg FAQ kind of.

on second thought, MrCoffeeBean, looking into this a bit further, nutmeg might be a really, really bad idea to deal with what you're going through.

forget I typed anything

--not jack
 
 
Quantum
16:26 / 16.01.06
Valerian tea is fantastic but doesn't mix with booze (gives you nightmares) so maybe not- Rescue Remedy is great all round and sometimes relieves stress induced nightmares, so I'd give that a try.

BTW I like that Penczak City Magic book, have you read anything else of his? The Inner Temple of Witchcraft has some quite interesting stuff, I can't vouch for the rest.
 
 
Quantum
16:31 / 16.01.06
...and if it's really bad you could resort to lucid dreaming or shamanic techniques, but (as always) listen to Gypsy Lantern, tackle the cause first with common sense and then with teh scary majiks. Chamomile tea with Rescue Remedy is my ill-informed prescription.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:36 / 17.01.06
well..stress.. you mean like no money, on prozac, unemployed, on welfare and no girl... and shit like that?

First rule of effective results magic has got to be: Discover the root cause of the problem and direct your attention towards that, rather than just fire fighting by treating the symptoms.
 
 
Seth
10:43 / 17.01.06
Your main issue to get over first is your stated aims, that is to *fight* and *get rid of* your nightmares. What you’re essentially saying here is that you’re in conflict with yourself and want to throw away a part of yourself that is giving you valuable feedback. This has to change first, and it involves no small amount of courage and will.

I’ve rarely had recurring nightmares. When I did have them, the methods I chose for dealing with them (lucid dreaming, shamanic work, journaling) were by far the best tools for the job. However, I’m a strong advocate of adhering to principles when I do magic work, and here’s a few that applied to me and may also apply to this:

- There’s nothing wrong with feeling bad. Accepting it is far healthier than fighting it.
- If you’re having strong emotions then that is always valuable feedback from which you can learn more about yourself.
- Don’t be quick to try and remove your pain. If that is taken away, what kind of a person remains? Always look at the side effects of anything you do.
- If your fear is an indicator that your circumstances need to change, change the circumstances rather than remove your fear.
- You are solely responsible for your own happiness. No-one and nothing else can give you that in any form that you can sustain yourself.
- Amongst other things, life is pain and suffering and hard work. As soon as you accept that you transcend it.
- Always set up dialogues, strike bargains, negotiate. Whether it’s with other people or parts of yourself. Approach rather than retreat, talk rather than fight. Do it with respect and a firm friendliness. If you make a bargain always be as good as your word.
- What seems good in the short term may be disastrous in the long term. Consider all consequences.
- Utilise everything. Symptoms diagnose problems. Everything is useful in some context. Escpecially nightmares: they're so valuable to pour over and pay attention to an spend time considering from all possible angles that your future may just depend on it.
- Be quick to apologise, and if you're going to give an apology do it sincerely with no hint of a passive aggressive aim. "I'm sorry and..." is much more acceptable than "I'm sorry but..." Especially if you have been fighting a part of yourself that you want to get rid of.
- Wayne Coyne: "Everybody saves their own life.
 
 
Katherine
10:58 / 17.01.06
You could try a herbalist to see if they can help, I think this is important if you are on any kind of drug especially considering what you are on. Mainly because they have the experience on what herbs to avoid with meds.

Personally I think there is something bothering you which is coming out in dreams/nightmares. Is there a definate link between these dreams?
 
 
Seth
11:00 / 17.01.06
Oh, and:

- You have no choice but to change, but you can choose how you change. Adapt or die.
 
 
Morgana
11:52 / 17.01.06
Peppermint is cooling, so I think you should only take it, if your nightmares go along with "hotness" (like sweating). But it could be exactly the wrong thing, if your fear is cold. Perhaps you should try some sedating herbs instead, like St. John's worth (usually takes some time to get results). But I agree it would be a good idea to talk to your doctor about your medication first.
 
 
Evil Scientist
14:27 / 17.01.06
Coming in from the purely chemical side of things, and in agreement with the posts by Mordant and Charrellz, I'd check with your doctor. Sleep disruption is a listed side-effect of fluoxetine hydrochloride (Prozac), and I noticed on a few of the studies I googled that abnormal dreams were mentioned by one or two participants.

The dreams may have nothing to do with the drug, but if you are showing one side-effect you might start showing others. Best to get it checked out.
 
 
xytar with a Z
16:33 / 30.03.06
this may be a good time to follow up on MrCoffeeBean

So how are you doing? any changes? if so what?
 
 
nimue
12:07 / 06.04.06
i've been plagued by nightmares my entire life-- incredibly vivid, terrifying ones. the absolute best methodology i've been given for dealing with them came from a dear friend of mine who is a social worker (and quite jungian in her approach).

she told me that often what seem to be the worst, most horrible dreams are actually the most revealing and important. working with her to understand my dreams, i realized that many of the difficult nightmares i had were actually signaling a pretty deep change within myself. by unpacking the dreams, i came to understand them better. at the time i was having a lot of dreams involving death and dismemberment; i was also reading an awful lot about shamanism. in that case, i realized that one explanation for what i was dreaming about was that it was my way of articulating the scariness (and exciting possibility!) of deep change. although the dreams remained scary while i was having them, understanding this helped me to remove the fear during the day time and see that they were actually really important for comprehension of where i was at that time in my life.

another technique taught by a friend of mine is to engage with a character from the dream during your waking life and ask him/her why he/she was there and what kind of message he/she was trying to offer. it sounds kind of silly, but it actually works.

i hope this might help a little bit...
 
 
girakittie
06:57 / 07.04.06
I know this post is old, but I didn't see this mentioned.

I had recurrent bad dreams for several years as a teenager.

I didn't get rid of them until I started sleeping with a dreamcatcher hanging in the room. Originally made by Native Americans, they are purported to keep bad dreams away.

Being of a magical bent, however, I did take the precaution of setting the intention that if a dream was meant to come to me for guidance or wisdom, that it be allowed through the web. That seemed to work for me for several years. I don't sleep with one hanging in the room anymore (Okay, I just realized something humorous. When I moved into my new apartment six weeks ago, the previous tenants left a dreamcatcher and it is hanging in my bedroom. So apparently I am using one again.) What I was going to say is that I stopped using one because I wasn't getting hardly any dreams and I was worried about how that might be affecting me. However, I'd also made a lot of changes in my lifestyle and approach before I decided to stop using it and I did not notice a significant increase in bad dreams.
 
 
Paolo
08:40 / 07.04.06
I learned a useful little magical technique which has helped me sort out a series of nightmares I experienced several years ago and I offer it here in the hope that it will help some people here. Its a three stage process called IOB (Identify, Objectify, Banish) which I pinched from Donald Michael Kraigs "Modern Magick"

For the Identify Stage you need to sit down and identify what is causing the nightmare. This is where you need to do some serious soul searching and look over your past to see what the cause might be. Typical causes could be scarring incidents in the past, fears which have grown out of control or whatever, or in my case a tendency to be over interested in Typonian magic and the works of Kenneth Grant

When you have identified the cause of the nightmare then personalise it. Perhaps draw a picture of it to give yourself a mental hook with which to be able to visualise the cause of the nightmare itself - But not the actual nightmare(s) of course.

Then banish it. This does depend on what banishing you use (see below), I use pentagrams and archangels so what I did was draw the pentagrams and visualise the Archangels in the relevant quarters etc and then visualise the cause identitied in the previous stage as outside it. My visualisation then involved it being surrounded and bound by more pentagrams before being dispatched by the Archangel Michael and reduced to free energy which was absorbed by the earth. You will need to adapt what banishing you use around this technique if you dont use the pentagram banishing formula.

I use a version of Lesser Banish ritual of the pentagram because its the first one I learned and in my experience nothing can get past it when I di it properly (ir not lazy and rushed). My version (nowadays) uses a different deity for the God names (actually a Goddess) as I dont work the Judaic/Christian System any more but it does retain the use of Archangels as they are anthropromorphised universal energies which are excellent for protecting and healing etc and not incompatible with any other system as far as I am aware. I am sure that any banishing which uses protective entities such as Gods/Goddess or Archangels (as opposed to just white light) would be effective here however as you are drawing on the universe itself to actually banish and this is far more effective than just using white light, which in my opinion seals the aura but is less effective in banishing.
 
  
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