Today’s (optional) ritual:
Get cosy, and make yourself a Dream Tea with Tulsi, Blue Lotus, Melissa and Rose petals.
Put this Album on, I have tried it on newborns and it will calm any soul.
Record your dreams in the next few days, more details at the end of the article.
The witchy season is upon us, so I wanted to start this newsletter by exploring the strange case of the donne de fora from Sicily, which got me reflecting on the role of dreams in oppressive societies.
In the 16th Century, there were almost 500 cases of witch trials by the Spanish Inquisition in Sicily. 65 of these cases record the donne de fora. Most were women, organized in small covens, but were thought to be dualistic beings containing “half masculine, half feminine”, animal and human, good and evil. They were considered fairies by many locals, sort of like protectors, and witches by others. None of them were wealthy, and in their belief structure, not all of them were human, some were fairies. Most of the human donne met at night, in their dreams.
According to Gustav Henningsen, a folklorist and historian, and one of the few who studied the donne de fora, ‘the Sicilian fairy-cult was a daydream religion that allowed poor people [mostly women] to experience in dreams and visions all the splendours denied them in real life.”
There is a recorded witch trial in which a fisherman’s wife describes flying on goats to Benevento, near Naples, where she would eat at rich banquets and have (consensual) sex with various men. Sexually liberated, and swimming in abundance! She says that this seemed like a dream because when she woke up, she was in her bed. “And she left filled with happiness of the joy she received from it….and because the (the king and the queen) gave her means to cure the sick so that she could earn some money because she had always been poor.” This dream-like telling was not enough to convince the Inquisition to execute the donne.
Henningsen argues that “there are no witches amongst the twenty-five people burned for heresy in Sicily in the period in question”, and Alessandra Sorbello confirms that “the Inquisition ‘held firm to the Canon episcopi’s denunciation of witchcraft as a popular superstition,’ thus, contrarily to the rest of Europe (mostly Germany, France, and England), Sicilian witches and sorcerers were rarely convicted and executed. There was no witch-hunt in Sicily.” I wonder then if the donne di fora were simply oppressed women who got together to dream. And I wonder, how did they wake up from their dreams in the morning? How did it change their lives? Was this world they created at night, and the stories that came from it a way to imagine a new reality for women in Southern Italy? How would these dreamers look today? What would their names be?
In her socio-magic video at the Venezia Biennale, artist Elisa Giardina Papa imagines them as a gang of teenage “tuners” who ride through the utopian city of Gibellina Nuova (Sicily) on bikes customized with disruptive sound systems.
The consequences of injustice go beyond physical suffering. The patriarchal-capitalist system is depressing, it pushes us into a fast-paced life where rest, slowness and introspection have almost no space. It is not a coincidence that 82% of trans individuals have considered killing themselves, or that in the US, depression is prevalent first amongst Hispanic communities, then African-Americans, then white people.
This is a good moment to remember what the Gnork, the evil werewolf in the Neverending Story says: “People without hopes (and dreams) are easier to control”.
In her essay, writer and activist Rachel Cargle tells the story of Harriet Tubman, a railroad conductor who in 1860 woke up from a dream with uncontrollable excitement. “My People Are Free!!” she sang as she sat for breakfast. Three years later, the emancipation of African Americans took place. “Harriet had such a vivid dream of freedom that she celebrated as though it had already been achieved,” writes Cargle. Stepping away from the doom and gloom narrative we are inflicted with requires a high dose of hoping, can dreams help us with this?
As Cerena Caesar writes in an essay “Beginning with Freud, modern psychology has found that unconscious processes affect a person’s behaviour,” dreams can therefore offer release from suffering, or initiate action. “Our unconscious mind works all the time, but when we sleep, it is allowed to uninhibitedly process information, solve problems, resolve conflict, and drive creativity.”
Dreams can be really powerful. An essay I wrote for Atmos Magazine which I consider a highlight in my writing career, came to me as a sentence in a dream, which I developed and worked on in real life until it bloomed into this piece - almost a year later.
The greek lyric poet Pindar of Thebes suggested that the soul is more active while dreaming than while awake: could we consider dreaming as soul work?
The role of dreams, therefore, is not only to give hope but to converse with your subconscious, to do inner work. If the social paradigms that create the oppressive systems that we live in also exist within us, then inner work is something we can do to dismantle them. There is a lot of deconditioning to do; having emotional and spiritual awareness is incredibly important in the revolution, and dreams can help with that.
I recently had a dream that I was in a science lab where a group of people and I could reconnect to an old memory through electrodes and a helmet. Little plot twist, instead of seeing the memory, we would FEEL it. I asked the machine for a happy childhood memory, and it was delivered. In the dream, I felt as if a thousand butterflies were taking flight inside my stomach, I was in awe and joy but I didn’t see anything, I just felt it all over my body. The hairs on my arms tensed up.
I woke up wondering: what would the world look like if we could feel memories?
How to keep a dream record? ✨
If you want to do this, all you need is a pen and paper, or a voice recorder, placed right by your bed. It is important to do this as soon as you wake up (yes with crusts in your eyes). If you don't remember at all what you dreamed of, write/voice record how you are feeling first thing in the morning, if you remember bits of it, write those bits. Dreamwork takes a little time, and it increases each day, little by little. In the end, you are essentially learning a new language! Notice what conversation your subconscious is having, and try not to judge it, but feel a connection or tenderness towards it.
Sweet dreams folks!