Dream pillow: which herbs, and how to make one

The plant of this articleMugwort · Artemisia vulgaris★★★★★5.0(103)from €7.00View →

The last sovereign territory. You enter through the plants, through silence, through a return to the dreams of the elders.

Short answer. A dream pillow is a small sachet of dried herbs slipped under the pillowcase. Nothing to drink: you breathe in the plant through the night. The herbs used most often are mugwort, lavender and chamomile; the Entada seed is kept whole.

Where it comes from

It has several origins, each with its own age.

• Calea, in Mexico. The Chontal of Oaxaca smoke Calea, drink it, and place its leaves under the pillow before sleep (Díaz, 1979). Christian Rätsch adds: the fresh herb (Rätsch, 2005).
• Imphepho, in South Africa. In Afrikaans, imphepho is called kooigoed, stuff for the bed: mattresses were filled with it for its scent.
• Betony, with Hildegard of Bingen. Whoever is pursued by bad dreams keeps betony at home at bedtime, she writes in the twelfth century. Today it is sewn into a small sachet, laid on the chest at night: a cousin of the pillow (Breindl).
• Kusha grass, with the Dalai Lama. During the Kalachakra ceremony, he hands it out: it is placed under the mattress and under the pillow, for clear dreams (Moss, 2009).
• Lavender, in England. Folklore says it brings true dreams when it sleeps under the pillow.
• The love dream, in Europe. Slovak girls slipped maidenhair fern under their pillow to dream of their future husband (Rätsch and Müller-Ebeling, 2013). On Midsummer night it was a sprig of St John's wort; in England, yarrow, with a verse that ends Pray tell me tomorrow (Storl, 2012). In Mecklenburg, a mandrake, for prophetic dreams (Rätsch, 2005).
• Mugwort. Its pillow belongs to a more recent tradition, carried by the herbalists of the twentieth century (Gladstar, 1993) and alive among today's dreamers. Our article on mugwort tells what the older texts say.
• The Entada seed. Our words, from the first product page: you carry it with you for a few weeks to fill it with your prayers and intentions, and you can also sleep with it, under your pillow.
• A cloth, a question. A sangoma prescribes David Cumes a white cloth under his pillow, for his dreams (Cumes, 2004). A medieval Jewish text places a written question there, to fall asleep on it (Bulkeley, 2016).

These customs are told as stories. The recipe keeps to the plants on our product pages.

How to make one

1. A small cotton or linen sachet.
2. A handful of well-dried leaves or flowers, up to 50 g: drying keeps mould away. One herb or several: mugwort and lavender go well together.
3. The sachet closed, slipped under the pillowcase: the weight of your head releases the scent (Bennett, 2014).
4. A notebook by the bed: a few words on waking, one image, before you move.
5. When the scent fades, every two or three months, renew the herbs.

Robin Rose Bennett suggests sewing them with children: they choose the fabric and hand you the flowers.

What is known

Mugwort's effect on dreaming is still to be measured. Dreamers describe sharper dreams, better remembered on waking. Tradition lends it an influence over dreams; we promise nothing, you observe.

For the dream herbs you drink, our guide goes through them one by one.

Sources

• Díaz J.L. (1979). Ethnopharmacology and taxonomy of Mexican psychodysleptic plants. Journal of Psychedelic Drugs 11:71-101.
• Gladstar R. (1993). Herbal Healing for Women. Simon & Schuster.
• Rätsch C. (2005). The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants. Park Street Press.
• Rätsch C., Müller-Ebeling C. (2013). The Encyclopedia of Aphrodisiacs.
• Storl W.-D. (2012). The Herbal Lore of Wise Women and Wortcunners.
• Moss R. (2009). The Secret History of Dreaming.
• Breindl E. Hildegarde de Bingen, foreword by François Brune.
• Bennett R.R. (2014). The Gift of Healing Herbs.
• Cumes D. (2004). Africa in My Bones.
• Bulkeley K. (2016). Big Dreams.

Mugwort★★★★★5.0(103)from €7.00View →