Before I start defining what the dreamspace is, let’s look at a few other terms. Why? Because if you practice magic, you probably already use the dreamspace, but perhaps you don’t use the same word for it. If you don’t know what any of these things are then I’m not just giving you one definition, but like 5 definitions in one.
So Christopher Penczak calls it the Inner Temple, other terms include Astral Temple, Mind space and Mind palace. I have even heard people culturally appropriate the Aborigine term Dreamtime. This space is a little closer to the astral plane, but in my experience, I don’t actually think it is part of the Astral Plane. It is very personal. So personally, I avoid the term “Astral” when describing it. Obviously, it is used for spiritual practices and magic, so it could be distinguished slightly from terms like mind space and mind palace because they are used as memory aids. There is a different purpose, but essentially, this acts and responds in exactly the same way, so I think there’s such an overlap between these mnemonic devices (tools for aiding memory) and the dreamspace (which is used for spirituality). I don’t think they’re actually that different in anything other than purpose. Finally, a word worth mentioning is pathworking. David Rankine mentions this in his Climbing the Tree of Life, where he describes it as creative visualisation and in the examples given, he means visualisation of the room you are in. M. Belanger and a band called Stratovarius call it the dreamspace, as do I.
What is the dreamspace?
When working magic we often need to access deeper aspects of the self. Sometimes we need a visualisation that we can get lost in. The dreamspace is the space inside our head in which we can carve out a space for us to mentally enter into. Our own dreamspace is not cleanly cut off from our dreams or from other people’s dreamspaces, in fact, it’s that very bleed between different dreamspaces which makes this so useful. As a person enters a state of trance or self-hypnosis the dreamspace gets closer and closer to dreaming consciousness. A type of astral travel or dream walking that can be triggered from the dreamspace becomes accessible to us as we get closer and closer to lucid dreaming state. Please note that this is slightly different to Astral Projection where a full astral body is generated and the consciousness is transferred over to it, but it is still valid travel.
Through our own dreamspace, we can spring our awareness into an energy double of the world we live in, and meet and communicate with people in the ether. Like many dreams, our ability to recall our memories from this consciousness is often difficult when we are awake, but when achieved, we have a lot of unlocked potential through the bleed between our dreaming side and our waking side.
Often when working ritually we need to focus entirely on the purpose of the ritual and having a space we can mentally enter into where everything in the space can be manipulated to form symbols that are consistent with the aim sought enables a level of concentration that aids magical ritual action.
Is this weird?
So doing spiritual stuff with dreams is unusual, isn’t it? Is it just a modern practice? No, the Ancient Greeks have been incubating dreams as a means to understand and resolve things. In fact, they had temples devoted to it. So is it just a Western practice? No, yoga has a technique called Nidra, which uses sleep for meditation and Tibetan Buddhists use lucid dreaming too. Also in both Native American spiritual practices and Daoist wizards seekers often are forced into altered states of consciousness similar to those between waking and sleep through inhaling smoke and hot air so they may have visions which allow them to connect to spirits. Finally, forgive me if this is wrong because it was only taught to me verbally, but many Tibetan rituals become internalized over time and performed through simple mantras called Japa, while the Monk or practitioner imagines deeply within themselves that they are performing the full ritual, in their dreamspace so to speak. So, this practice occurs from East to West and goes back many years. It is surprisingly common in many different magical and mystical practices.
Before you start
It’s time for some colouring in. Before you start stepping into your dreamspace you need to design it. You also need to design yourself. You have an appearance in the dreamspace too. This representation of you is called your Eidolon. (Eidolon is a Greek word. In English it is pronounced Eye-Doe-Lon and in Greek is Eee-dhawe-lon where the dh is as the th in “the”).
You will want to create a building or garden decorated with symbols that represent you all around it. Ideally, something enclosed and protected. Something that speaks to the ritualist. Some people make it very spiritual clean and minimalist, others have it cluttered with pride flags that represent them, TV shows, games, books, comics and stuff they grew up with. I have known people to choose the homes they grew up in. In some cases, I have known people to pick a fantasy from their childhood that was less hostile to them than their home environment.
It is helpful when working through the sort of magic that you might come across in my writing and most hermetic to have doors to worlds of each of the 4 Empedoclean elements and 7 astrological “planets”. I have known people to use a door similar to that in Howl’s Moving Castle for rolling multiple doors into one. You can simply add corridors with doors as and when you need them. It is easier to start simple and grow more complicated.
Mine has become very complicated over the last 15+ years. I have an area with 4 doors to the elements, with an upstairs to the arch-element and a corridor to the entrance of Solomon’s temple with a ritual bathing area outside of it. The temple has an area for each sephirah and beyond the veil of Paroketh lies my angel that transcends space and beyond him an abyss where all time begins to be meaningless, everything happening and happened at once, the beginning and end of all light, life and time. I can go beneath the temple and find a layout resembling the sephiroth-related temples described in Garden of Pomegranates for work relating to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. From there I can step through hidden doors onto crystal steps which wind through the stars with doorways into each planetary sphere and each of the Enochian aethers (though I tend to access Enochian aethers through ritual words rather than visualisation). Finally, a tunnel outside the temple goes into the underworld where I see the rivers of Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron, Cocytus and finally Lethe and cross the first river to commune with the dead. Your own version need not be so complicated or ritualistic, but mine grew to be this complicated as I added to it while doing new types of work. Start simple, but don’t be afraid to change it. For each door make sure it can be closed in case you need to protect your space.
Your own Eidolon should look like you. It can be stronger, older, younger, taller, have a different gender expression or whatever you need to feel like you have authority. You can be dressed normally, in a suit, in armour, in sacred robes or whatever you feel is right for your work. You can change it however you need after you made it and don’t need it to be set in place.
Once you have designed the space and your own representation and noted it down it is time to begin.
Activity
- Firstly allow yourself into an altered state by relaxing and focusing on the breath for a good few minutes. You have come across a short relaxation method in the earlier energy work exercises, but you want to extend that. You could also run through a self-hypnosis induction if you know how.
- Now get yourself comfortable. If you want to avoid falling asleep, you can hold your arms in the air. Should you start to fall asleep your arms will drop and hopefully wake you up. Close your eyes and continue to focus on your breath.
- Draw energy into your core and picture yourself as a point of light in a black space. As you breathe out, breathe the energy in your core into your Eidolon surrounding your point of light.
- Now imagine yourself in your Eidolon. Open your Eidolons eyes and carefully look down at your Eidolon’s body. Imagine yourself grounding through your Eidolon’s body.
- Now repeat and surround yourself with your design of dreamspace. Putting up walls, furniture, shelves and decorations, until it is complete.
- Walk through the space for a while before you continue on to the next exercise.
Psychic Dreamwalking by Michelle Belanger is a perfect book for this topic. I can’t comment on Penczak‘s Temple series, I have not read them, but what I have read of his books was very accessible to beginners. So Inner Temple of Witchcraft gets a mention here. David Rankine’s Climbing the Tree of Life is really recommended but only for people interested in the Qabalah. A Garden of Pomegranates by Israel Regardie has plenty of information that can be used for qabalah pathworking.