A homily for the New Moon on May 26, 2025.
Dearly Beloved,
Blessed New Moon, dear ones. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and in the name of the Divine on this, the New Moon in Gemini.
I want to always be honest with you, dear ones. I want to always lead with my vulnerability and to speak to you with an open heart. So I want to be clear: I’ve been struggling a bit these last two weeks since the Full Moon. Some of that has been due to current events, of course. I’m sure a lot of you are struggling with the way the world seems determined to go down in flames in as banal and awful a way as possible as the American Empire collapses all around us. But some of it has been strictly personal.
I have bad dreams, you see. Almost every night. The reasons are prosaic and boring, just another story of childhood abuse and trauma (please don’t blame my late father, I was raised by my mother and her family), teenage homelessness, and chronic illness. Sadly, these things are all too common in this aching world. I have meds and I do daily invocations of Hermes in His aspect as Hegetor Oneiron (Hγήτωρ Ονειρον), and that definitely helps with both frequency and intensity, but I still don’t get much restful sleep. This last week I had some pretty horrible nightmares almost every night and I am pretty raw right now.
So I am moved this month to speak on that place we go each night when we close our eyes. That state of being that lies between waking and deep, sound, restful sleep. That realm that lies beyond the Gates Of Horn and Gates of Ivory.
I am moved to speak on dreams.
I have always been fascinated with dreams. My sleep disorders started at the age of eight, and back then there was a franchise of horror movies that obsessed me, the “A Nightmare On Elm Street” series. I watched them over and over, not because they scared me, but because the movies actually took dreams seriously. Wes Craven understood the power of dreams, both good and bad, and the heroes in his movies always found ways to cope with and defeat their nightmares. One of my first personal heroes was Nancy Thompson, played by the wonderful Heather Langenkamp, and the first lesson I learned from her was that you have to take the nightmares seriously. “It’s just a dream” doesn’t work. You have to care about survival. You have to be ready to fight. My nightmares isolated me in a maze of images and terrors that no one around me could understand, but in those early years those silly slasher movies showed me a path to follow.
The next lesson I learned was that it’s okay to be afraid. Fear is normal and fear can even be helpful. Sometimes the most rational thing you can do is scream and run away. Fear can become a good friend, a cold place in your gut that you can use to center you when the world goes a bit crooked, and a guide to show you how to get home safe at night. Fear—so long as it doesn’t paralyze you—can be a goad to survival and a spur to courage. Some mages will tell you that fear is an enemy, and “Liber Librae” says that “fear is failure, and the forerunner of failure”, but in my opinion only a child thinks that puffing out their chest and pretending to be fearless makes them seem very grown up. Real wisdom is recognizing that fear serves a purpose and has lessons to teach.
The final thing that I learned was that dreams are real. Oh, I don’t mean that the things that happen in them are physically real, of course. I’m not that crazy. I mean that the symbols, feelings, and images of our dreams have a sort of reality all their own and have real lessons that they can teach us. Like stories and myths, dreams have their own kind of logic, their own kind of meaning, and if we attend to what our dreams—even our nightmares—have to teach us, we can become more than what we were before. Dreams, like visions, can be initiatory and sacramental, and by exploring our dreams, even when they are deeply unpleasant, we can grow and transform in important ways inaccessible by other methods.
As mages and mystics, this is doubly, even triply, true. I have learned invocations and new magickal techniques, met spirits that have become huge parts of my life, undergone moments of initiation, been guided into new regions of the astral plane, and been called out on my bullshit by deities, all in dreams. I have discovered a more or less consistent “place” I call the Nameless City, where I frequently return, sometimes as often as one night in every ten. This enormous city, full of labyrinthine streets, libraries, museums, and shops full of secrets, lecture halls where classes are always being taught, and wandering, befuddled people who seem to be other dreamers just as mystified as myself, stands on the edge of a seemingly endless sea reminiscent of Clive Barker’s “Quiddity”. I wander its streets and through rooms, hallways, and buildings, always to return to that sparkling, purple sea before I awake, and I often wonder what—and who—is on the far shore.
So yes, I mean what I say. Dreams are real, and what happens in them is meaningful, even when it is horrifying. They are not always true, of course. Most dreams seem to come through the Gates Of Ivory, after all. But they are meaningful, and they often have much they can teach us. Even the nightmares can be an opportunity to learn. Even the nightmares can teach us new magick. Even the nightmares can be a chance to flourish, a chance to thrive.
And we all deserve to thrive, don’t we?
So let us make the bed and turn down the sheets. Let us say our goodnights and lay our heads down upon the pillow. Let us close our eyes and let ourselves drift…off…to…sleep…
Let us dream.
Blessed New Moon, dear ones.
In love,
Soror Alice
Art: Jean-Bernard Restout, “Morpheus”, (1771)
Thank you for this Alice. Your post are always interesting, but I found this one particularly helpful. By the end, I forgot you were talking about nightmares and seemed more like an adventure series or a quest.
Thank you so much, San. I respect your opinion a great deal and I am always happy to know that my work is landing.