Some Occult Dynamics of Sleep

Excerpt from my upcoming book, Sacred Homemaking

The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Sacred Homemaking. Sacred Homemaking is a working hypothesis advocating the creation of protective magical shapes within the home from various angles: the physical plane, where experience is blunt and direct; the etheric plane, which is the plane of energy and vibration; and all of the planes above the physical and etheric, which are the astral, mental, causal, and spiritual planes. For more insight into the way I have come to understand the planes, please investigate my TikTok channel @whitewitchoftheprairie or these articles:

https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/tag/astral+plane
https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/tag/etheric+plane

The pathological fear of aging, rest, and death is prevalent in our civilization. Modern people do not have a healthy view of death and dying, to the point where certain industries' existence depends on profiting from hysterical reactions to aging, such as the cosmetic surgery industry. Nevertheless, we face a small death every night: sleep. In an age of electric lights and digital convenience, a good night's sleep is one of the most elusive prizes offered in life. Very few get it on the regular, present company included.

What is Sleep and What are Dreams? The Real Petit Mort

Sleep is a kind of small death. To sleep is to end the processes of one day and begin the next, for nothing can be born without the death of something before it. The physical body uses sleep to process its waste: the reason why it’s not advisable to eat anything significant before retiring is because the body goes into Phase 2 when it slumbers. It takes the digested food and turns it into poop and pee in Phase 2, and it can only do one job well at a time. While heart rate slows and conscious brain turns off, the subconscious wakes up so the soul may wander the astral plane unfettered from its Meatworld moorings.

The astral plane is a collective place, but just like the physical plane, it is not controlled by any single person. The rules of the astral are different from the physical world: for one, it is a world where our perceptions are even more faulty than in the physical world of sensation. A house can exist on the astral plane, but unlike on the physical plane, its location and features can change depending on the dreamer. It can flit in and out of existence. It can become large or small, adding or losing rooms, or it can morph into another place altogether. This is because the astral is dependent upon memory as far as we humans are concerned, and the way something appears depends on both our memory and the memory of others, including the spirits of other humans, animals, places, trees, and objects.

Despite the ramblings of “experts”, we cannot truly control our dreaming state at every moment, nor should we try. This is not to say we should not make an effort to cultivate balanced emotional reactions in dreams; actually, dreams can act as an effective sandbox for the way we behave in daily life. For instance, if you dream of murder or being murdered, it is a golden opportunity to look into your memories of that dream in discursive meditation to unpack the animosities behind the dream. Perhaps those animosities are coming from you or coming towards you, but once you have sorted it out, you will have a great deal more control over your waking emotions when they are inevitably triggered by Meatworld life.

The more meditation work you do on the few dreams you can remember (if you can remember your dreams at all) the better you will function during your waking life: anxiety will be put in its proper place, irritating people won’t be able to get an instant rise out of you, and you’ll gain insights into the reasons you were incarnated with your unique mind and body. That said, outside from thinking about dreams, the physical objects in your bedroom matter: they can affect the etheric and astral planes through careful choice and manipulation.

You’ve likely heard all of the physical plane suggestions to improve sleep. Avoiding caffeine anywhere near bedtime, drinking mildly sedative teas such as chamomile, lemon balm, hops, and valerian, scenting the room with lavender, putting up blackout curtains, regular exercise, wearing socks to bed, avoiding electronic screens, bathing by candlelight, fasting or eating only fruit a few hours before bedtime, and keeping the bedroom cool are all sound strategies to help the sleep process.

Bathing is one of my go-to ways of ensuring a good night’s rest. Taking a bath cleanses both the etheric and physical bodies. I usually take a bath at night, which washes off both physical and etheric grime. If I feel especially worn out or overloaded by the day’s events, I wash my hair even if my hair is not technically dirty. When negative etheric energy piles up, it often accumulates at the back of the head, the temples, and around the neck. Washing those parts cleans the slate and clears the path for better dreams.

Bedroom cleanliness and arrangement matters. When you make your bed in the morning, you are saying to it in the most direct, physical way that you appreciate it. A harmonious color scheme for your bed via its linens, throw pillows, or blankets is an important seal of thoughtfulness. Nice-looking pillows, blankets, and sheets help the bed to be proud. If the bed knows you care for it, it will care for you. Every morning, when you make your bed, thank it for its hard work as you would a team of people who fought off the evils of the world while you slept.

Arrange your bedroom in a way that feels good to you. Depending on the source, there are a million different suggestions about which direction your head should be oriented in sleep despite there being only four directions on the map. Move your bed and sleep in one orientation for a week. If it does not feel right, move it again and try another direction. It really is that simple. Far more important is the tidiness of your bedroom and the daily appreciation of the bed.

Clutter, dust, and dirt in the bedroom is visually disturbing, and the last thing you want before you enter the astral plane is images of a mess dancing in your brain. Hide or remove screens, collections, clothing, and the other detritus of life so you are not subconsciously affected by it.

Sleep is a series of dives through the layers of increasingly subtle planes. Though we exist on all of the planes all of the time, our perception of ourselves is far more limited. Perception informs consciousness. Just as light is a wave, yet it is also a particle, we perceive ourselves as particles despite also being waves.

When you sleep soundly and for an adequate amount of time, your body repairs while your Meatworld brain turns inward. The more deeply you sleep, the more your astral body is able to detach and decompress from your physical and etheric bodies. When someone is comatose, he or she is about as detached from the physical body as a human can get without actually dying. If you don’t sleep all that well, you will often find yourself trapped in the lower astral plane. Depending on your state of self-realization and development, your lower astral state can range from generic pablum to all-out war with malevolent spirits. You can improve your lower astral experience during your waking hours by doing spiritual work, discursive meditation, praying, and unrelentingly committing yourself to being the change you want to see in the world. Nevertheless, even those who do not sleep soundly dive through the upper astral planes during sleep: we all do that no matter what our spiritual situation. The key difference between a yogi (or someone who is very spiritual) and a spiritual novice is the yogi’s ability to bring the information he receives from the upper astral into his conscious mind at will. Yogis do not require as much sleep as you and me because of this ability, which is gained only one way: arduous spiritual work and balance of the inner and outer planes.

Night Terrors, Hypnogogia, and Sleep Paralysis

Aside from pragmatic, physical plane remedies to encourage better sleep and becoming a yogi, you can address the etheric plane and the astral planes while you sleep with simple natural magic. Modes of improvement in natural magic in the bedroom affect the astral plane via the etheric plane.

The word nightmare comes from Old English maere, a female spirit that was said to suffocate sleepers. The Night Hag is a common experience around the world: every culture from the beginning of time has its version of the creature that steals into sleeping rooms to sit upon the chest of the slumberer. Though the Night Hag experience may have to do with the difficulty most of us have with breathing as we sleep – apnea is as common as dirt – it is also real on the astral plane. There is an entire class of nasty creatures, mostly in the lower astral planes, whose raison d’etre is to attack sleeping humans by sitting on their chests and stealing their energy, usually in the form of breath. Most humans are assaulted in their sleep by the Hag and her co-horts (they can be male or female). Most humans have no idea this is happening, much like the leper who does not know his hand has been nearly burned off because his nerves are always misfiring. Considering modern humanity is in a religious Dark Age, it can be thought of as a leper colony of the spirit. Use of drugs, especially serotonin reuptake inhibitors, opens the gateway for these opportunistic spirits. Religious practices such as traditional mass, prayer, offerings, discursive meditation, and banishing rituals keep the Hag away on the astral plane. All are suggested whether or not you are aware of being attacked.

When we humans sleep, we are sitting ducks for astral attack, whether this is from other people (intentional and unintentional) or from any random spirit who wanders through the ecosystem. This kind of openness to astral attack occurs regardless of our age and belief system unless there is a strong routine of discursive meditation, prayer, banishing, and natural magic in place. In order to repel attacks on the astral, we can look to different forms of remedy that address different planes of existence.

Interfering with the Hag on the etheric plane is easy. Simply put up to four bowls of vinegar out near your bedside and keep them freshly stocked night after night. Vinegar scrambles malefic entities when they attempt to manifest on the etheric plane. If we could see vinegar fumes working on the chest-sitter, we would witness it penetrating it and exploding its etheric body like what happens to astronauts in space if they lose their space suit. Gods and angels, however, are free to come and go because their bodies are more subtle than the Hag’s. Bowls of salt do the same thing, as salt is protective, but because salt does not osmose into the air as readily as liquid, it tends to be combined with water – hence holy water. Sprinkling hot pepper into vinegar or salty water is also advised, as well as protective herbs such as lavender or sage, which can do double duty in helping sleep via their aromatherapy effects.

Using a weighted blanket made of tiny glass beads works to insulate the etheric body in much the same way insulation in a house’s walls keeps warmth from escaping to the outside. Glass is an etheric insulator. The tiny particles of glass inflict the death of a thousand cuts upon malefic entities that try to pierce through to the sleeper inside: think of a tasty burrito that is wrapped in broken glass. Since etheric energy is contained by glass, the sleeper’s body does not lose the energy at night and the energy goes largely unseen on the astral, also preventing other forms of interference in the world of dreams from malefic entities.

I often sleep under a weighted blanket after spraying my hair down with vinegar water and either braid it or sleep with my head wrapped in a turban. My hair benefits from vinegar water because it is much softer and more manageable. The real benefit comes from vinegar evaporating from my head while my body is wrapped in a glass bead burrito: malefic entities shrug and move on because I am not worth the trouble.

Sacred Bedside Geometrics

The next remedy crosses the etheric into the astral. Hanging or displaying a geometric shape near the bed casts a protective net around the sleeper, acting as both a guard and as a distraction to the entities who are looking for trouble around your bed. In the entity’s case, the shape appears as an alluring yet dangerous whirlpool or spiderweb. Humans and non-human beings alike are attracted to repeating, symmetrical shapes.

Common symmetrical shapes such as the Sri Yantra, Metatron’s cube, the Seed of Life (Hexafoil), the Unicursal Hexagram, and even symmetrical shapes made on the toy known as a Spirograph are suitable for placing beside the bed. Mandalas from the Buddhist tradition certainly cross-pollinate with more Westernized sacred geometry: there is an old saying that great minds think alike that may be relevant here. Furthermore, the medium in which the shape is expressed is not at all limited to ink and paper. Kitenge, a traditional African type of batik, is a form of art on fabric. The highly repetitive, symmetrical shapes and bright colors of kitenge provide a protective, demon-deterring effect in the form of cloth, which may serve to explain why kitenge are used in important life events. Kitenge are worn by African women from Ghana to Ethiopia to Botswana during weddings and funerals. Babies are wrapped in them, which puts a formidable barrier between the baby and the malefic entities who would try to hurt the baby or infest his or her space.

The Navaho tribe, among others, has its famous wedding baskets. A wedding basket, woven with love and care to symbolize the human journey through the worlds of darkness and light, provides a two-fold barrier on the etheric and astral plane. Anything woven, knitted, or stitched by hand has etheric potency as the weaver pours her etheric energy into every symmetrical knot. The Ojibwa dream catcher was first documented by settlers in the 1800s. The Ojibwa and other tribes used the handwoven objects, often made of a stick bent into a hoop and netted string, to hang by sleeping infants as a form of protection. The quilting traditions of the British Isles, Canada, and the USA are prime examples of using color and symmetry to repel evil spirits from the sleeper. Whether or not the quilt is consciously crafted with the intention of repelling evil spirits from the astral, the effect of the symmetrical design is the same as the previously mentioned bedside geometrics. The Amish hex sign spells its purpose out plainly in its name: it is meant to repel evil witchcraft. Instead of being placed near humans, the hex sign protects sleeping animals in and around the barns where they are painted.

Circling the globe again, Islam has the potent tradition of mosaics. Placing mosaics throughout one’s space basically turns it into a demon’s kryptonite. Muslims avoid the use of human or animal shapes in their artwork and there may be good astral plane reasons for this. Though malevolent beings are confused and defeated by symmetrical shapes on the astral, they seem to gain power through the shapes of human and animal forms. The haunted doll trope in horror movies exists because a doll of any sort is an easy way in for a malefic entity. What tends to happen is a child plays with a doll, often for several years, and a wandering spirit takes up residence in the doll. The child lends the spirit more energy by playing with it and doting on it. Sometimes these spirits are benign, but in today’s cruddy astral conditions, a doll can become a host for a malefic being. This can easily be avoided by asking for a divine spirit or god to bless and protect the doll when or after it is given to the child. That said, it is a good idea to put the child’s doll, stuffed animal, or action figure collection away at night or keep it out of sight in the bedroom.

Haunted Objects

One of the reasons it is so important to let go of objects, including “stuff” that needs to go to the landfill, is that objects can become haunted by malefic spirits that bring misfortune and bad luck. Neglect is a form of ignorance, that is to “ignore” or “not know”. What you do not know can and will hurt you. Just as it is not a good idea to hang out with unhappy and unlucky people, surrounding yourself with unhappy, unlucky objects in the form of neglected clutter can wreak havoc in a million and one unseen ways. Stuff that has been stolen has bad energy that will turn around and bite the hand that stole it: that’s why the homes of shoplifters and kleptomaniacs are especially grubby no matter how clean they are on the surface. Stuff that has been gotten by questionable means, such as the unearned McMansions of the conspicuous consumption elite, has a grubby feeling on a grand scale. Something will always seem off about the McMansion if you are even remotely psychically sensitive, and this “offness” is pervasive even if the space is beautifully and tastefully decorated. Whether it is in a rich or poor person’s space, a hoard is a psychically overwhelming force and not with the powers of goodness. The reason for this is that neglected stuff is a Wendigo – the more of it you amass, the more you want. The only cure is to release it into the infinite and let go of your addiction to amassing too much stuff.

Stealing objects, coercing someone into buying you objects, and subsisting off of massive unearned wealth and the wealth of others have deleterious effects both on your karma and daily personal energy. The reason I do not steal is not only ethical, it is out of my selfish interest in not attracting the diseased energy of stolen or unearned objects. If you have stolen an object, give it away and donate the cost of what was stolen either to the place you stole it from or to a charity that has the same vibe as where you stole it from. For instance, if you stole a book from the library, give the book away and donate its cost to the library itself or to a charity that helps children learn to read. If you still have a toy that you got by being a brat and throwing a tantrum as a child, give it away to Goodwill with blessings from the gods to whomever inherits it and donate its current cost to a children’s charity. Finally, if you have truly screwed the pooch and lived in a luxurious and greedy way, give up that lifestyle, physically pare it down, and consider moving into a smaller and humbler domicile. Donate whatever you can to a good charity that helps the homeless find permanent residences. Firmly resolve not to do that anymore, live more simply and thankfully, and it is very possible your terrible luck and depression will likely clear along with your conscience.

When an object is severely haunted or possessed, your best bet is to bury it in the ground, upside down if it has an upside for a face or a top of any sort. Another cure is to drop the object in a deep lake or ocean. Burial has the effect of invoking the spirits of the Earth or Water to claim the physical and etheric body of the haunted object. Burning the object is more dangerous as the instant release of the object’s body being destroyed can temporarily empower it and allow it to move to a new host, depending on the vulnerability of spaces, people, and animals in the immediate surroundings.