The Witches' Book of the Dead (21 page)

It has even been suggested in such popular blockbusters as 1999's
The Sixth Sense
that the dead can better communicate with the living while the latter are asleep. Witches and sorcerers have always known this, and have taken advantage of it from ancient times. If the dead could invade the dreams of the living, it was supposed, then perhaps the Witch could employ those spirits to influence the living while they slept. Having used dreams to communicate information to others many times over the years, I find it works even better when the dead are involved, since they can keep doing the work when I've moved on to other tasks.

To perform this form of magic, you will want to get a comfortable chair and set it before your altar of the dead. Be sure to do this at a time when you know that the person you seek to influence will be asleep. You will need a black and white candle, your incense, and an offering for the dead, preferably honey wine or a blend of milk and honey, in your libation chalice (see
chapter 4
).

Go into a visionary state and light the black and white candles and the incense, saying,
This black candle shall draw the energy of spirit while the white candle shall help to usher my will upon the spectral winds. Let this sacred smoke lift my desires and make them reality
.

Pour half of the contents of the offering from the libation chalice into the offering cauldron, for the dead are always served first. Drink from the chalice and say,
As I drink from the wine of the dead, so I shall go into the realms of the dead, to return later to the living when my work is complete!
Pour the remaining offering into the cauldron, for the dead are also served last!

Sit in the chair before the altar of the dead with the skull across from you on the altar. Gaze into the eyes of the skull as long as you need to in order to create a bond with the spirit and connect to the realms of the dead. When you can feel the shift, say,
I ask of the spirits of the beloved dead! Go into the dreams of [name of person you wish to see visited]. Let him/her dream of [your message or imagery you wish for that person to experience]. Let these [visions/words] burn into his / her mind that my will be known!

Now, sit back in the chair and close your eyes. If you would like to participate in the work of the dead, this would be a good time to meditate and journey with them on the spirit winds to the place
where your intended is sleeping. With the spirits at your side, go into the dream world of the individual and work with the dead to help in bringing the messages you wish to impart. When you come out of the dream-state, the dead will still be working long into the night.

• • •

Creating Your Own Rituals

The rituals above represent but a few powerful examples of the many ways one can call on the spirits of the dead in necromantic magic. Some of the most powerful rituals will be those that you create or modify yourself as they come from the heart. Just as I have taken ancient ceremonies and adapted them for modern use, over time you will infuse these practices with your own soul's voice. And so the legacy of magic will continue to grow and evolve through the ages with creative new ways for reaching the spirits.

11
Dreaming the Dead

For those of you who are still reluctant to interact with the dead, don't be. You've almost certainly already experienced them. In fact, you're probably experiencing them nightly, whenever you drift off to sleep. Yes, the most common way we experience contact with the dead is in our dreams. Spirit visitation dreams are often so realistic that people who experience them question whether or not they were actually dreaming. Such nocturnal incidences typically involve meaningful communication, intense emotions, and sometimes even physical contact. Modern therapists are inclined to explain these lifelike “dreams” as merely the result of wish fulfillment. However, in ancient times people knew such visits to be true encounters with the dead.

Witches have always been masters of dreams, and have always known the ancient truth that dreams are a crossroads between the living and the dead and that, by dreaming, we can actually travel into the Death Current, communicating with spirits on their own vibrational plane of existence. As you learned in
chapter 2
, bringing yourself into a visionary state allows you
to reach into supernatural worlds. Well, in dreams you're already there, so it's not something you have to work at. Dream visits seem to depend heavily upon conditions on the Other Side rather than on our ability to make them happen. Such visits are usually spontaneous, occurring within a few days or weeks after a person dies. They provide an opportunity to say good-bye, to bring closure, to impart advice, or perhaps to issue a warning of things to come. While it can be difficult to summon the dead in dreams, an understanding of such visitations is useful, because your ongoing work with the spirits will increase the likelihood of these experiences. It's important to prepare your dreaming consciousness, especially at times when a friend or loved one has passed away. As you advance in skill, you will be able to call the dead to visit you in your dreams.

Ancient Legacies

The ancients placed a great deal of importance on dreams and their ability to build bridges between the worlds of the living and the dead, the gods, totem animals, and other inhabitants of the unseen realms. Many early cultures, including the Greeks, Hebrews, Africans, and Native Americans, made almost no distinction between dreams and other kinds of visionary experiences that happened during the day or night, while sleeping, in trance, or even in waking consciousness. For them, dreams were yet another facet of reality. The emphasis was placed on the content of the experience, and on the ability of the dreamer to perceive and communicate with otherworldly realms of existence.

When we refer to our dreams today, we simply say that we “have” them, as though they belong to us and arise from within us as a part of our own psyche and subconscious mind. The ancients had a much different view: dreams were real experiences that the dreamers witnessed. Thus, they did not “have” dreams but rather saw them. The gods, the dead, and other supernatural beings made real visits to the dreamer, emerging from their hidden domains into the realm of mortals.

We see the great significance of dreams in the pages of classical Greek literature. Various Homeric epic poems and tragedies tell of the dead appearing in dreams to offer instructions and impart warnings. Such dreams are said by the storyteller to be objective events that happened independently of the dreamer, and do not arise from within. Spirit visitation dreams were a serious matter and were initiated by supernatural forces outside of the dreamer's own consciousness. In some tales, they entered a person's bedroom through the keyhole and stood at the head of the bed while they delivered a usually somber message.

The Greeks believed that if you were not properly buried when you died, your spirit could not pay the ferryman to cross the river Styx to the realm of the underworld and would be doomed to wander the Earth until proper burial rites were performed. Under such circumstances, you were allowed to return to a living person in a dream and ask for burial.

The Greek dead also appeared in prophetic dreams, usually to warn a person against a dire fate much like the ominous portents heard during necromantic practice. In Aeschylus's tragic trilogy, the
Oresteia
, Agamemnon, the King of Argos, comes home from the Trojan War and is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra. Later he returns from beyond the grave to appear in a dream to warn Clytemnestra that she will be killed by their son, Orestes, to avenge his death at her hands. Despite Agamemnon's warning, Clytemnestra is unable to avoid this act of vengeance and is killed.
²⁹
While prophecy can sometimes allow us to change the course of fate, seldom do we have the courage it takes to alter our path and manifest a new destiny.

Around the seventh century BCE, Greek culture absorbed an Eastern idea about dreams: that instead of being visited, the dreamer traveled out-of-body at night to visit the realms of spirit in order to receive important information. Such visions could be of a direct or symbolic nature. This concept was embraced by Orphism, a Greek religious movement that influenced many of Greece's later great thinkers, including Pythagoras and Plato.

Plato referred to dreams as “the between state,” a real place where the human soul went during sleep to meet the gods and supernatural beings who
are otherwise inaccessible. He said that dreams are another way to experience the world besides through sense and experience.

Plato keenly observed that dreams embody the heights and the depths of human consciousness. The heights were the revelations of the gods and the depths were dreams emanating from our dark, instinctual side. Dreams provide an outlet for instinct, “the lawless wild-beast nature” that exists in all of us, said Plato—centuries before Freud would make the same observations. Furthermore, Plato believed that dreams could be controlled in order to discover hidden truths. If we go to sleep with the “appetites” under control, and if our lives are in harmony and balance, then the rational side of the soul would be free to experience the mysteries of the divine, know the truth of the ages, and peer into the past, present, and future.

Saint Augustine believed that only a holy person could receive dream visits from the dead, like his friend Saint Ambrose, who was visited by saints Gervasius and Protasius. Augustine said this was God's will. Less saintly people were not considered to be so favored, and were thought not to be able to receive such visits, nor were they thought to be able to return after death to appear in dreams.

Once Christianity supplanted virtually all other religions, dreams as a method of spirit interaction became isolated to incidences of saintly intervention. Although the Bible tells of important dream events (but not involving the dead), dreams largely lost their importance in favor of the Church as the medium to the divine. Manifestations of the dead in any form, including dreams, were not to be trusted because they were masquerades by the Devil. An exception was made for dreams about the lamenting dead who appeared to ask for prayers to ease their time in Purgatory, or of those of the saints.
³⁰

However, the idea of dreams as a means of spirit communication was kept alive. Professor of Hebrew Literature Galit Hassan Rokem makes mention of sixteenth-century rabbis who are said to have been asked how to handle a situation in which “a dead person comes in a dream and asks to be removed from his grave because he is buried next to a heavy sinner.”
Another of the deceased “asked in a dream that his clothes be buried with him.” In that particular instance, “the rabbi showed special resourcefulness by suggesting that the clothes be distributed to the poor, so that the dead man's soul be clothed with charity in its eternal abode.” While there is nothing specific in the Hebrew Old Testament about the dead communicating through dreams, Professor Rokem offers a number of examples from the Talmud.
³¹

The Dreams of the Necromancers

The connection between sleep, dreams, and death has always been strong. Sleep has been referred to as the “little death,” and dreams have been seen almost universally to be links to the underworld, for the dead often appear in dreams.

The Greeks and Romans were among a number of earlier cultures that consulted dreams for certain purposes. Especially important were dreams for healing, and seekers made pilgrimages to remote sites where priests assisted them in summoning the gods for help with all manner of ailments and injuries.

The art of calling the dead into dreams, a form of dream incubation, was an important rite at ancient
nekuomanteions
—temples where oracles would divine hidden wisdom from the whispers of the dead. In fact, the surviving accounts of necromancy at the Greek oracular sites point to ritually incubated dreams as the primary means of communication with the dead.

After powerful rituals were performed with offerings made and prayers spoken, the necromancers slept on the skins of sacrificed animals and expected to see the dead in their dreams. They believed that the spirits would appear to answer their questions, prophesy the future, and warn of imminent danger. Upon awakening, the priests would aid the dreamers in interpreting the messages received from the Other Side.

Witches and Dreams of the Dead

As this is a book about Witchcraft, we cannot neglect the role of the Witch when discussing dreams of the dead. The archetypal, mythical Witch was long considered a nocturnal creature, creeping into the dreams of her victims to torment them, and sometimes sexually molest them, stealing their seed and causing impotence. I'm sure psychiatrists could have written volumes had they been practicing in the time of the Witch persecutions that plagued Europe over several centuries. Instead of hanging trees and stakes, we'd have had many a couch occupied by terrified villagers whose dreams included the spectral forms of Witches seeking to terrorize them in the shadowy night.

The connection between Witches, dreams, and the dead goes as far back as the Fertile Crescent, woven into the beliefs of Mesopotamia. Originally, the Mesopotamians believed that there were both good Witches and evil ones, and that to be a Witch alone was not worthy of persecution. Later, Witches became scapegoats and the domain of temple exorcists who specialized in banishing their powers, further demonstrating my point in
chapter 1
that spiritual power became consolidated to priesthoods while practitioners of natural magic were demonized. Among the powers of these dark Witches was the ability to send dreams to their prey in the form of clouds. Often, those enchanters who do appear in the dreams of the tormented are thought to be the shades of Witches who have died, having assumed a nearly demonic presence in death, existing only to assail the living. Magical rituals known as the
MaqlÛ
, meaning “burning,” were conducted during festivals of the dead to help banish these villains of the night.
³²
In my own research into ancient sources for the archangel Michael, I came across a reference for Mukhla, the Sumerian archangel of the Sun-God.
³³
I cannot help but wonder if this reference to the ritual of fire known as MaqlÛ ties in somehow to the great archangel who represents the element of fire to both Witches and ceremonial magicians.