In this episode, we’ll be meeting the Greek gods of Night, Sleep, and Dreams — Nyx, Hypnos, the Oneiroi, Mnemosyne, and more. We’ll explore dream rituals in ancient Greece, in particular dream incubation as a means for healing and divination as occurred at the temple of Asclepius in Epidaurus and at the Oracle of Trophonios. We’ll learn about how the Greeks understood their dreams and how they are connected to the Underworld. And we’ll meet one of my favorite flowers of the Greek landscape, the often controversial — and even illegal in some countries — Poppy.

Listen below or with your favorite podcast provider

Scroll down for show notes and the transcript.

Become a Patron

Leave a Tip

Mentioned in this Episode

Placing the Story

Below is a map of the places mentioned in this episode.

Click the play button to interact with the map

Transcript

You're listening to A Temple Wild Episode 13: Hypnos & The Poppy: Ancient Greek Dream Incubation

(Music)

Hello and welcome to A Temple Wild, where we rediscover the myths of the ancient Greeks through the plants and landscapes that shaped them.

My name is Mira, and as I am recording this, it is early December, which means the nights are getting longer here in the Mediterranean as we edge closer and closer to the Winter Solstice.

And so in the spirit of the Dark, in this episode, we’ll be meeting the Greek gods of Night, Sleep, and Dreams. We’ll explore dream rituals in ancient Greece, in particular dream incubation as a means for healing and divination. We’ll learn how the Greeks understood their dreams and how they are deeply connected to the Underworld. And we’ll meet one of my favorite flowers of the Greek landscape, the often controversial — and even illegal in some countries — Poppy.

Before we begin today, I wanted to invite you to join my free newsletter, where twice a month — on the New and Full moon — I send out updates from the mythic Greek landscape. I don’t use social media, so my newsletter is the best way to stay in the know about all the Greek-inspired art and photography, free plant profiles, podcast episodes, essays, and special announcements that I have to share with you, so if you head over to atemplewild.com/subscribe you can join there for free.

And while you’re there, be sure to check out the details of the two herbal mythology tours that I am co-hosting with my friend, The Greek Herbalist, Maria Christodoulou, in autumn of 2024. Both tours will include hiking and hands-on herbal medicine workshops, and will introduce you to so many of the sacred plants that I talk about on this podcast. So this would make an amazing holiday gift, if you’re tyring to decide what to buy your Greek-ophile friend, family member, or partner. And if you bring someone with you on one of the tours, there’s a €150 discount for each person, so you can find all the details on my website at atemplewild.com/tours.

So feel free to pause this episode, jump over to my website to subscribe and check out the tours, and when you come back, let’s begin our journey into the Land of Dreams and meet the Greek gods who dwell there.

(Music)

First, we encounter Erebos (Ἔρεβος), who is Darkness personified, one of the first gods to come into being from Chaos and his name also means “gloom” and is often connected to the Underworld as a way of describing the absence of light in the depths of Hades Realm.

Sibling to Erebos is Nyx (or Νυξ as it’s pronounced in Greek), the primordial goddess of Night, also one of the very first gods. She’s often depicted in a chariot moving across the sky and according to Ovid, she wears a crown of Poppies. Nyx gave birth to many dark gods, including the twin brothers Ὕπνος or Hypnos the god of Sleep — and Thanatos (Θάνατος)— the god of Peaceful Death.

We met Thanatos in a previous episode, Plants of the Underworld, but today I want to spend a little time with his brother Hypnos.

You may know him as Hypnos from which we get our English words hypnotic and hypnosis, but in Greek his name literally means Sleep. Hypnos is often depicted as a beardless youth with wings, either hovering over or perched on top of a sleeping person, dangling a wand over someone’s head, and sometimes possibly dripping something onto the sleeper from a bowl that he holds in his hands. He’s also often depicted with his brother Thanatos carrying corpses from the battlefield.

So in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the home of Hypnos is an Underworld cave that the Sun never touches. Outside the entrance to his cave grow Poppies and other herbs, but inside it is a silent place, without animals or trees, not a “sound or whisper” from a living thing. And there, beneath a rock, emerges the River Lethe, the Underworld river of Oblivion, “which trickle[s] with soft murmuring amid the pebbles and invite[s] soft sleep.” The god of Sleep himself lies upon an ebony couch with jet-black cushions and around him recline innumerable Dreams (11.708ff).

The Dreams, called Oneiroi (Όνειροι), were black-winged entities that appear as visions to a dreamer, taking different forms — such as human, animal, monster, or object — and delivering messages and omens or prescribing cures to the dreamer. You’ve probably heard of the dream Morpheus, who according to Ovid took human form when appearing to a dreamer.

Now it’s said that the Oneiroi, the Dreams, are children of Nyx. However, in Euripedes ancient play Hecuba, the main character refers to Earth as the “mother of the black-winged dreams.” But If you look at the original Greek, the word “Earth” is not “Gaia”; it’s “Χθών” — which if you remember from the Plants of the Underworld episode, the word Χθών has connotations of being under or beneath the soil. (English; Greek line 70ff). It’s the root of our word, chthonic, which means having to do with the Underworld.

Homer refers specifically to the Land of Dreams (δῆμος ὀνείρων), which — like Hypnos’s cave — exists in the Underworld beyond Oceanos, the earth-encircling river (Odyssey 24.10 ff).

Homer also cites Hermes as sleep-bringer, using a rod or wand to lull people to sleep or to wake them at his will. As messenger of the gods, god of omens, and as a pyschopomp — one who could freely pass between the land of the living and the land of the dead — it makes sense that winged-foot Hermes would be involved in guiding prophetic dreams to the living.

And so dreams could come unbidden as omens or warnings, and the ancient stories are indeed full of them.

But there was also an ancient practice called incubation (ἐγκοίμησις) in which someone would intentionally sleep in a sacred place — such as in a cave or a temple — in order to invite a dream. The incubation dream could be a visitation from a god or a prescription for healing or an oracular answer to a specific inquiry. Incubation would typically be preceded by a series of rituals, including fasting, ritual bathing in cold spring or river water, and making offerings to the gods such as Hypnos, Mnemosyne (who is the goddess of memory who we’ll be meeting later in this episode), and Helios (god of the sun).

And this incubation happened in places all over Greece, but I think the place you might have heard of is Ἐπίδαυρος or Epidaurus, which is a town in the Peloponnese with a healing center dedicated to the god Asclepius (Ασκληπιος).

Asclepius was the mortal son of Apollo, raised and instructed in the healing arts by the centaur Chiron (Χείρων). The interesting thing about Asclepius is that he was such a skilled healer, that he even brought two men back to life, which he was able to do with Gorgon blood that Athena had given to him. But Hades, feeling deprived of the souls that were his due, complained to Zeus, and Zeus, concerned that this violation of the natural order of things — he didn’t want humans walking around and bringing people back from the dead — so instead, Zeus struck and killed Asclepius with a thunderbolt.

Apollo — Asclepius’ father — was understandably upset about this and eventually petitioned to deify Asclepius, who was brought back to life as a god but remained in the Underworld, where he could administer his healing power from the chthonic depths. Some stories say that he was later added up into the sky as the constellation Ophiacus, the Serpent-Bearer. When Asclepius was mortal, he had several children, one of whom was Υγιεία or Hygieia, goddess of Health, and they are often depicted together with serpents. We’ll be exploring the serpent in greater depth in a future episode, but for now, just know that the snake was thought of as a chthonic, or Underworld, creature and at many of Asclepius temples, non-venoumous snakes would often wander around his sanctuaries, imparting their cthnonic, healing powers.

There were several Asclepian healing temples around Greece — including Epidaurus, as well as Trikka (or modern-day Trikala), the island of Kos, and more — but it’s unclear whether incubation happened at every one of his temples. So we do know that it definitely occurred in Epidaurus, where a sick or injured pilgrim would spend several days sleeping in the dormatories at the temple in order to follow a series of preparatory rituals, including offerings and purification by way of freshwater pools and cold fountains, and then the pilgrim would sleep one night in the abaton, which was the most inner sanctuary, in order to receive a healing dream.

The dream would either be the cure — with Asclepius himself appearing to the dreamer, either as himself or a serpent, and healing them via touch in their sleep — or the dream would be a prescription, which after waking would then be immediately inscribed on a votive offering. Either way, the dream would be shared with the temple priests, who would inscribe it, adding the recorded dream as a tablet to the public display, thus bearing witness to the healing powers of Asklepios.

Now Epidaurus is a gorgeous archaeological site; if you are ever able to visit in person, I highly suggest it. Not only are you able to see the remains of the healing temple, but also the beautifully preserved ancient Theater — where patients would watch comedies and tragedies as part of their healing therapy — as well as the Tholos — which is a round structure with an underground labyrinth that’s believed to have been Asclepius’ dwelling beneath the earth. Now an interesting strucural point is that the abaton — where the pilgrims would sleep for their incubation — was built essentially underground in an effort to be closer to the god’s Underworld source of healing.

Now I can imagine this is in order to mimic perhaps older practices of incubation that would have taken place in caves. So according to Strabo, for example, there was a cave in modern-day Turkey sacred to Hades and Persephone where the priests would dream on behalf of the sick and prescribe cures based on their visions (Geography 14.1.44ff), so not only was incubation also taking place in caves, but it wasn’t always the sick themselves who would do the incubation.

But healing incubation was just one form of their dream rituals; there were also oracular incubations.

At the Oracle of Trophonios, for example, which is in Lebadeia in Boiotia, a presumably healthy pilgrim would descend into a cave where they would pass several days underground, in complete darkness, to receive divine dreams.

Before their descent, they were bathed in the River Herkyna (Ἑρκυνα), which was named after a companion to Persephone, and whose source flows from inside of a cave. After ritually washing and being anointed by youths named Hermae (after Hermes, the psychopomp), the pilgrim would then drink from two fountains: first, from the λήθη (which if you remember means Oblivion, like the Underworld River) in order to clear their mind, and second, they would drink from the fountain μνημοσύνη (which means memory) in order to aid in remembering what they will see during their descent.

On their descent, they would bring with them barley-honey cakes to appease any underground serpents they encounter — which seems a little strange to me as I’m pretty sure snakes do not eat honey or barley — but if you do remember from the episode on the Melissae, bees, like snakes, are messengers of the Underworld and also were involved in the founding of the Oracle of Trophonius, and also barley of course is a chthonic plant, sacred to Demeter.

So according to Pausanias, after climbing into a human-made chamber, the pilgrim would then descend feet-first into a small natural hole that, after getting their knees through, seemed to suck them down and into what I imagine is either a subterranean passageway or a cavern. Some hours or even days later, after a harrowing journey underground, they would come out again, feet first, from another hole somewhere else nearby.

If you remember from our discussion on karst terrain in the Plants of the Underworld episode, this area of Boiotia is likely characterized by a subterranean complex of underground rivers and caves. Now Pausanius does not mention if the pilgrim is in fact being carried along underground perhaps by water or if they are crawling their way through the dark, or simply laying perfectly still in darkness and then coming back out again after having their dream vision. But either way, it is quite the definition of an underworld experience.

To experience incubation in this way, in total darkness and silence within a subterranean chamber sounds mind-altering, to say the least. I’ve never been in a sensory deprivation tank, but I imagine this kind of incubation would be a longer, much wilder version of that, truly putting one face-to-face with their fears, their mortality, and their gods.

After their ordeal, the pilgrim of the Oralce of Trophonios would sit on a throne dedicated to the goddess Mnemosyne, goddess of Memory, in order to recount their dreams or visions to the priests. And then they would be handed off to their relatives to recover from their ordeal underground. The pilgrim would initially be, and I quote Pausanius here, “paralyzed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings.” But, Pausanias ensures us, from firsthand experience as a pilgrim himself, that after some time, he, and I quote, “will recover all his faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him” (Description of Greece 9.39.13ff).

(Music)

So something I want to highlight here is the role of memory in this process of incubation, as there was clearly a tension between the oblivion of sleep and the need to remember one’s dream.

As I mentioned, before incubation in most places, including Epidaurus, offerings were made to the goddess Mnemosyne (Μνημοσύνη) so that the dreamer would remember their vision. In the case of the Oracle of Trophonios, the pilgrim drinks from the water of memory and also sits on a throne dedicated to the goddess as part of their experience.

Now Mnemosyne was goddess of memory and the creator of language, which might seem like an interesting combination, but you can imagine that for a culture that relied primarily on oral storytelling, rather than writing, this connection between language and memory is vital. She was one of the oldest gods, and also considered the mother of the Muses, who were goddesses of the inspired arts and remembered history.

At Troezen (Τροιζήν) which is in the Peloponnese not too far from Epidaurus, there was a village there where Pausanias says Dionysos brought his mother, Semele, up from the Underworld and where Heracles retrieved the Hound of Hades from the Underworld, so there’s this very deep connection there as an entry point to Hades’s realm. And there in Troezen there was an “old altar” where they used to make sacrifices to the Muses and to Hypnos, saying that “Sleep is the god that is dearest to the Muses.” (Description of Greece 2.31.3). And so again we find this really interesting connection here between memory, sleep, and the Underworld.

But why all this connection between the Land of Dreams and the Underworld? Even at the beginning, we learned that Hypnos, as god of sleep is twin brother to Thanatos, god of death. But why are the Greeks making this connection?

Well, in slumber, each night we lay motionless, unconscious, in a kind of imitation of Death. And so sleep — and by extension, incubation — becomes an opportunity to experience death without dying. Especially when preceded by rituals that involve chthonic deities and sacred spring waters, our dreams allow those of us seeking healing — or an answer — to die to an old way of being and then be restored or healed in greater wisdom upon waking.

For the Greeks, dreams were not imagined stories or even narratives, they were actually real visitations, the gods or the Oneiroi appearing to them as a vision. So I want to read you a passage from the book An Ancient Dream Manual by Peter Thonemann. I think he does a really perfect job of explaining how the Greeks understood dreams. He says,

“Greek and Roman authors do not speak of ‘having a dream’ or ‘dreaming that x happened’, but rather of ‘seeing a dream’, where the dream is objectified or personified as a thing or person that appears to the dreamer in his or her sleep. The archetypal Greek or Roman dream is therefore not an experience…but a kind of apparition.”

OK, but that’s not to say that what appears in the dream is necessarily literal for the dreamer.

As Thonemann continues, “In their dreams [they] ‘see’ a sequence of discrete and isolated dream-elements (an eagle, a flock of sheep, a whale), each of which is then individually decoded as a symbolic representation of a person or thing in their waking world.”

But as Penelope accounts in Homer’s Odyessey, “dreams are wayward things, hard to understand, and don't at all completely come to pass for men. For there are two gates of evanescent dreams. One is made of horn; the other, of ivory. The dreams that come through the sawn ivory, are ones that deceive and bear words not to be fulfilled. The ones that come outside through the polished horn, are ones that make true things come true, when some mortal sees them” (19.560ff).

I love that passage as it creates for me a sense of journey, as the dreams, again, are passing through a gate, traveling from the Land of Dreams in the Underworld up to our world to reach the dreamer.

But how is one supposed to know if a dream is the kind that deceives or not? In ancient Greece, dream interpretation was actually a profession. Dreams were often riddles that involved wordplay or puns that only an experienced specialist could decode, or — in the case of the healing temples — it also required a physician who could understand the dream prescription and administer the necessary treatment.

For example, Steven M. Oberhelman points out in his article “The Interpretation of Prescriptive Dreams in Ancient Greek Medicine” that “a woman who had an inflamed tumor on her breast dreamt that she suckled a sheep. As it turned out, she was healed by applying a poultice of the plantain plant to the affected area.” In ancient Greek, the word for plantain “άρνόγλωσσον” is “a compound of the words άρνός (‘lamb’) and γλώσσης ('tongue’)”, so the woman with the tumor didn’t need to actually breastfeed a wooly quadruped, she instead needed to use the herb, lambstongue, in order to dissolve her tumor.

We can see why honoring the goddess Mnemosyne — inventor of language — might be just as important as making offerings to Hypnos or Asclepius, as she could help with remembering and understanding the nuance of the language of dreams.

So what does any of this mean for us? Well, I think a lot depends on your own relationship with dreams.

So I’ve met a few people in my life who say they don’t dream or at least that they don’t remember them, and I unfortunately can’t really relate to that at all. My dreams are very vivid, they’re sensorial, and usually there is a narrative or story-like quality to them. Although I’ve also had what I would consider visitations or conversations with other beings: including plants and animals and family members who have passed away, as well as various aspects or parts of myself.

When I was younger, I had a lot of nightmares - black dreams, as the Greeks called them - and so as a teenager and young adult I experimented a lot with lucid dreaming as a way to feel like I could take control over my dreams. But I don’t do that so much anymore, instead I prefer to use dreams either as a form of divination, so if I am struggling with a decision or I don’t understand the circumstances of a situation or I’m really seeking inspiration for a project, I will turn to my dreams as a way of gaining a new perspective or a deeper insight into what’s going on and also what I could do about it.

I also use dreaming as an invitation to inspiration, so I spoke earlier about this connection between sleep and the Muses, and I feel like dreams are really an opportunity for us to open ourselves to inspiration and drawing connectsions or seeing things that our waking and conscious mind cannot.

I have not yet tried incubation in the way the ancients did it by sleeping in a cave or a sacred sanctuary with the sole intention of dreaming, but the practice definitely intrigues me. I think the closest I’ve come to experiencing the kind of absolute darkness and silence that one would experience in an underworld or cave incubation that’s really only been possible with the use of earplugs and an eye mask because even living in a dark village house, there is still — unfortunately — the everpresent hum of appliances and the glow from streetlamps. And even when I go camping, there are insects and frogs and the light from the stars or the moon, so I’ve yet to experience that kind of sensory deprivation when descending into an underground sanctuary.

But there are plant allies that I’ve called upon when seeking a dream state, and so I want to introduce you next to a flower that I’ve already mentioned a few times in this episode — a chthonic plant of oblivion and euphoria — sacred to Hypnos, Nyx, and Demeter — the Poppy.

(Music)

There are many species of Poppy, but the two that I want to focus on in this episode are the wild species Papaver rhoeas, the Corn Poppy which is widely distributed across Greece — as well as the cultivated Papaver somniferum or Opium Poppy, also known as the Breadseed Poppy, which is well-known for its medicinal and culinary use.

All Poppies, in my opinion, are gorgoues, but the Corn Poppy in particular is a simple, but stunning red flower that blooms in spring in fields and disturbed areas all over Greece. There’s something so iconic about the Corn Poppy in the Mediterranean landscape with its little bursts of crimson red against the backdrop of a green and growing field.

Called Παπαρούνα in Greek, it’s often sold as a wild green at farmer’s markets in the spring and I think they are delicious. I personally prefer not to eat them raw, as the little hairs can be kind of irritating, but I prepare them in the same way as Nettles: so adding them into savory pies (like χορτόπιτα) or into soups or steaming them and then drizzling them with lemon and olive oil.

The cousin to the Corn Poppy, the Opium Poppy, is not found in the wild; it is a cultivated species grown for its taste, medicine, and beauty. It’s much taller than the Corn Poppy, reaching up to 1.5 meters or 5 feet, with grey-green leaves. Its flowers can be mauve, red, or white, and just like the Corn Poppy, the flower gives way to a very distinctive capsule.

The Poppy capsule has a flat, star-shaped cap and when the capsule is dry, the cap lifts and small holes open up along the upper rim to disperse the very tiny seeds from within the capsule. It’s quite magical looking — I have some photos in the Materia Mythica plant profile for Poppy, which I will link to in the show notes if you’d like to take a look. The seeds of most Poppy species are edible, with the Opium Poppy also commonly called Breadseed Poppy as it’s used in baking cakes, sweets, and breads. And the oil from the seeds is also edible.

Poppy leaves, whole mature capsules, and seeds have been used medicinally for thousands of years in various medicinal preparations, including decoctions, teas, poultices, infused wines, and more. The fresh, unripened Poppy capsules have also been traditionally scored with a blade and left to bleed or cry. And the exuded latex (called Opium or Poppy Tears) is then allowed to dry, then harvested and used in similar preparations, as well as inhaled or smoked. Poppy Straw (which is the whole, unscored, dried, mature Poppy capsule and sometimes also the stem and leaves) is also used.

According to the ancient herbalist Dioscorides, a wine decoction of Poppy capsules was used for sleep, a decoction of their seed was used to “loosen the bowels”, and their leaves were used for inflammation. He also describes a seed decoction as a topical treatment to induce sleep and suggests a Poppy suppository for the same purpose (De Materia Medica 4.64-5.)

According to Pliny the Elder, another ancient naturalist, “wild poppy [that’s the Corn Poppy] boiled in honey is wonderfully serviceable for making throat-cures, and also cultivated poppy [that’s the Opium Poppy] is a powerful [sleep inducer]” (Natural History 18.61.6 ff). But he warns, “if too large a dose be swallowed the sleep even ends in death” (20.76.1 ff).

So today, Poppy is considered a sedative and analgesic (which means painkiller), with different species and varieties containing varying amounts of active constituents, with Corn Poppy producing much milder effects than the Opium Poppy. Ingesting Opium induces a euphoric state (often accompanied by visions or altered states of consciousness), eases pain, and encourages relaxation and sleep. However, Opium can be highly addictive and an overdose can result in death, so for medicinal purposes, proper dosage has always been absolutely essential.

Opium contains alkaloids, such as morphine and codeine, that are used in modern medicine as sedatives and analgesics. Opium is used to synthesize pharmaceutical drugs, including oxycodone and fentanyl, as well as heroin. And the tincture of Opium is called laudanum.

In some countries, there are legal restrictions on either the growth of the Opium Poppy (regardless of its intended use), on the harvest of Opium from the Poppy capsule, and/or on the possession of Poppy seeds (even for culinary purposes).

Sacred to the gods of Sleep and Night, the Poppy is an ally for traveling through the Dream realms, particularly where Underworld journeys are concerned. And now that we understand the Poppy’s narcotic and vison-inducing qualities, we can understand why the Poppy is a flower sacred to Nyx, who wears them as a crown, and to Hypnos, as Poppies grew at the entrance to his cave where the Underworld River of Oblivion (Lethe) flows.

But the Poppy is also sacred to the goddess Demeter. As I mentioned, the wild species of Poppy, the Corn Poppy, is frequently found growing in agricultural fields alongside the life-giving grain, and so Poppy is also sacred to this goddess of agriculture. She is often depicted holding a sheaf of grain (whether Wheat or Barley) and a Poppy capsule. Poppyseed cakes were often offered to Demeter and, according to Hellmut Baumann, “when Persephone was taken off by Hades, Demeter soothed her grief with the narcotic juice of the poppy” (pg 69).

In a passage on Aphrodite, Ovid says when she was “first escorted to her eager spouse, she drank that draught” made from pounding poppy with milk and fresh honey (Fasti 4.133ff). And according to Pausanias, the statue of Aphrodite in Sicyon (Σικυών) held “in one hand a poppy and in the other an apple” (Description of Greece 2.10.5).

So like the Pomegranate fruit (to which the Poppy capsule bears a striking resemblance), the Poppy capsule contains a multitude of edible seeds and has also come to represent the dual nature of mortality and fertility, especially in its relationship with Demeter and Aphrodite.

Now given its controversial nature and all of these very deep associations with the Poppy and the Underworld, this flower has so much to teach us about being in right relationship with Nature. A flower of euphoria, the Poppy erases the awareness of pain and induces relaxation and sleep (a kind of death without dying). For this reason, its gift to the healing (and surgical) arts has been enormous. However, as I’ve said inappropriate dosage, particularly of the Opium Poppy, can easily lead one to addiction — or even death.

Opium has also been historically used by governments and pharmaceutical companies to effectively control whole populations through addiction and economic manipulation. Some countries make it illegal to grow the flower domestically while still profiting from the importation of “medicinal” Opium grown on foreign soil. So putting aside the ridiculous hubris of a government making a plant illegal, anti-Poppy propaganda and the hysteria that ensues (including the destruction of small-scale Poppy farms and arresting teenagers for possession of culinary Poppyseeds) that does very little to prevent or heal the devastation that Opium and opioid addiction causes individuals and their communities.

Now I do not say this to scare you away from Poppy, but to instead encourage you to approach the flower with a deep awareness of its gifts and its burdens. Like the forces of fertility and death, Poppy is a flower to be approached with respect and intentionality.

Though much of the Poppy controversy is centered around the Opium Poppy (Papaver somniferum and its varieties), the wild Corn Poppy is an ancestor that holds the same lessons as its more showy cousin.

With its blood-red burst in springtime, the Corn Poppy can be invited into ceremony as a guide for the Dream realms, whether for healing or oracular purposes, especially as a chthonic guide.

Now for myself, other than morphine during surgery, I have not used pure Opium latex in a ceremonial (or medicinal) context, so I can’t really speak on how to do that safely. However, I have baked Poppyseed cakes, muffins, and breads and experimented with crafting a very gentle Dream tea from the seeds (it creates a very oily brew that can be a little nausea-inducing if drunk too quickly).

But my preferred way of communing with Poppy (as I’ve written about in Alsos and mentioned in the episode Dionysos and the Vines regarding other entheogens), my preferred way is through meditation and non-ingested communion. Drawing or carving Poppy into ritual tools or onto paper, calling upon the flower through poetry or invocation, sitting beside the plant in meditation or ritual, or simply holding Poppy in my mind’s eye as a means to connect before Sleep to encourage Dreaming.

Now because one of Poppy’s strengths is inducing night-time oblivion, I also sometimes include Frankincense in my ceremonies in order to encourage remembrance upon waking as Frankincense is sacred to the goddess Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, and also to the god Helios, the sun who rises and calls us back from the Land of Dreams.

Now you might notice that with all this talk of Night and Dreams, I did not mention the Moon. And while this may seem like an oversight, it’s actually intentional because in the next episode, we’re going to be meeting the lunar plants of the Greek landscape. We’ll also be returning to Helios, the god of the Sun, and other solar deities, in that same episode.

So if you have a love for the Moon, the Sun, or their gods, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you’ll be the first to know when new episodes are published. Also, if you enjoyed this or any other episodes of A Temple Wild, please leave a 5-start review wherever you listen, it really does help other people find the podcast.

If you’d like to drop a tip in my tip jar, I would absolutely love that - there is a link in the show notes to do just that, or if you would like to be a regular supporter of my ability to keep making episodes like this, as well as all the other free plant profiles, photography, essays, poetry, art, and more that I share on my website, I would love for you join as a monthly patron. You’ll gain access to Alsos, which is a members-only area of my website where I share private posts and a monthly newsletter just for you, and you’ll also receive a monthly discount code for my shop. So you can find all the details at atemplewild.com/patron.

That concludes our journey today into the Land of Dreams. I thank you for joining me today, I hope you have a wonderful day and I will see you next time.

Hypnos and the Poppy: Ancient Greek Dream Incubation

Listen below or with your favorite podcast provider

Mentioned in this Episode

Placing the Story

Related Articles

Transcript

Join the Free Newsletter

Receive updates about new writings, episodes, and art, as well as opportunities to support my work.

Hypnos and the Poppy: Ancient Greek Dream Incubation

Listen below or with your favorite podcast provider

Mentioned in this Episode

Placing the Story

Related Articles

Transcript

Meet Linda Pappa

Meet the Greek Herbalist: Greek Herbal Tours with Maria Christodoulou

Join the Free Newsletter

Receive updates about new writings, episodes, and art, as well as opportunities to support my work.