A QUEST FOR A TEMPLE TO SLEEP IN
www.themysteries.org
ONE DREAMING MIND
I didn’t get into drugs when I was a kid because my dream life truly astounded me. I have always been very thoughtful about not fudging it up. I even told my dad once that I wished I could just live in my dream world forever and not real-life Croydon.
Beddington Lane did not feature prominently in my nocturnal landscapes — which were more like admixtures of East Asian industrial ports, J.G. Ballard books and fecund tropical oil paintings. Those contemporaries of mine that would enthusiastically devour any illicit offering from the Roundshaw Estate, did not seem to have the same sort of concerns about probing their inner world too abysmally. My two very best school friends did share my ideas though — Sonya Hart was from Romani gypsy stock and Felicity Fernandez was going through a devil worshipping phase in rebellion against her Catholic mum — so they had their own reasons. I think all three of us had seen and felt things that took us to what were sometimes delightful, sometimes perplexing edges (and I’m not just talking about the ‘ghost’ in Three Men and A Baby). So we did witchy things instead and believed for many years that we caused the hurricane of 1987. I had visions, sleep paralysis and experienced altered states quite regularly. Reality didn’t seem tremendously confirmed at all. When I read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman later, I resonated with the idea of the morphing daemon companion that settles on a consistent form as a child matures. That is exactly what growing up felt like to me and often still does.
DREAM STATE AS GATEWAY TO ENDOGENOUS ALCHEMY
The fashionable fly-overs to self-discovery for the moment are pharmacologically-induced altered states and the experiences procured by taking entheogenic and shamanic plant- medicines. Whilst this ethnobotanical wisdom is undeniably hugely important and relevant; lustration, fasting, dreaming, close observance of nature and sensory deprivation offer other magical, albeit less compelling — “Psst! Mate! Wanna not eat anything and be on your own for a fortnight?” — routes to endogenously provoking episodes of mind-melting one-ness and divine perspicacity. These practices of close-contemplation and nothingness, also tend to play a significant role in the schemas of long-standing cultural traditions, the knowledge of which is oft felt to be giving a sort of unfettered thumbs-up to a psychedelic Eat-As- Much-As-You-Like-at-Deep-Pan-Pizza-party. Whether it is within the comfortable confines of a summer festival in Dorset, or hygienically administered after a lot of form-filling at an
impeccable Imperial lab, a purging, a mastery can still be missing from these liminal excursions. Perhaps this fast-track, Easy Jet option is exactly that, perhaps you just don’t need to do the ground work. Mind you, imagine if everyone that had ever dropped acid or smoked DMT miraculously became a shaman. It would be pretty awesome actually.
Dreaming remains the greatest source of inspiration, creative delight and personal insight for me. I have practiced lucid dreaming since I was little. During a group exercise at a dream conference in London, the parapsychologist Stanley Krippner helped me to remember my first ever lucid dream, in which I was a black cat sitting in a rocking chair, licking my paws. I keep a dream journal and am still in thrall of this most commonplace and yet numinous altered state. I have made life choices, embarked upon quests and made hilarious mistakes as a result of what I have taken to be meaningful and sometimes portentous dreams. When you start asking, it is true that most people have.
Years later I was leading lucid dream workshops with the artist Luciana Haill (Luciana works with EEG and was resident in the Department for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at the University of Sussex) and researching the culture of dreaming for my lecture club in Hastings (The Explorers’ Club), and one of our lecturers — David Luke (University of Greenwich/Breaking Convention) introduced me to the history of ‘sleep temples’. It felt as though everything fell perfectly, dream-like in to place and my life’s true quest began.
THE EVOLUTION OF DREAM EXPERIENCE
We might reasonably suppose that our ancient ancestors experienced the world, and perceived their relationship to it, rather differently to us. We can only speculate as to how the average 42,000 year old brain may have differed in structure and neural connectivity to our own. How brain regions might have been organised and electrically entangled before human beings started using complex language, social organisation, drawing symbols to convey meaning and inventing and utilising writing, technology and trade is something of a mystery. The brain is a chimera of energy and matter, we know that its neuroplastic qualities enable infinite shifting and reconfiguring. Through culture, habit and environment, this labyrinth of learning will never stop revising. Research into the evolution of cranial size and form, shows the volume of the human brain has actually reduced by about the size of a tennis ball over the last 20,000 years. Its decrease is seen to correspond specifically with an increase in social groupings. Perhaps as our ancestors were removed by abstraction from the closest possible contact with the natural world, their perceptive tools for evaluating it withered. One could put forward a counter theory to Terence McKenna’s famous — ‘Stoned Ape’ one, whereby our ancestors were always pretty psychedelic, until living apart from nature severed their symbiotic cords and slowly wasted a tennis ball chunk of brilliance.
Perhaps we took to the plant medicines as a way to re-connect, before it was lost forever. I’d call it the ‘Straight Ape’ theory.
As our brain and body modifies our perception, our senses, our awareness, emotions, memory and intuitions; our very reality, the world and even time and space is modulated too. The American psychologist Julian Jaynes put forward the proposition in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) that ancient humans experienced consciousness as a sort of auditory hallucination. He claimed it was a directing, internal voice of ‘God’ that arose in the brain’s right hemisphere as a result of neural activity in the left. We should look to studies in animal consciousness and the neurobiology of indigenous peoples to better understand the mechanisms. Jaynes thought the switch from a ‘bicameral’ mind to modern consciousness (linguistic meta-cognition) occurred over a roughly 1,000 year period starting around 1800BC. Let us say (just for argument’s sake neuroscientists!) that Jaynes was at least on to something — how might these postulated ancient brains generate and mensurate something as otherworldly as a dream?
ENVIRON-MENTAL SENSITIVITIES
Let us begin at the beginning and start with the placement of these structures. Contemporary geological surveys of healing temple sites generally reveal a combination of interesting strata, fault lines, volcanic activity, mineral deposits, geomagnetic anomalies and sometimes mildly radioactive waters (boron and radon — in low concentrations — are still celebrated for their health-giving properties in spas all over the world). Natural springs were often a major feature of the temples for the rites of purification and were traditionally viewed by many cultures as gateways to the underworld. The ancients made much of the presence of lucky spirits and auspicious entities, which were believed to dwell in caves, forests, hills and mountains. Every conceivement of nature was endowed with spirit, as in the animistic traditions that perpetuate today. Unusual rock formations and geological outcroppings were viewed as an uprising from the deities of a subterranean universe that mirrored the one above. In an unpolluted black sky, we can well imagine our ancestors regularly saw a celestial splendour of breath-taking proportions at night. They will also have witnessed on occasion the lucent tracks of earthbound meteorites raining down from the heavens and when these fallen stones were discovered and recognised for their alien provenance, they were frequently idolised and adored.
The naturally occurring magnetic power of terrestrial lodestones (thought to be imbued with their power by lightening bolts) and magnetised meteorites was viewed reverently by ancient people everywhere. The practice of geomancy (Earth Magic) and chthonic
(underworld) worship is well documented. At the Samothrace temple complex of Eastern Macedonia for example, initiates of the mystery cult were invested with magnetic iron rings, phylactery wrought from the metallic veins of the body of the ‘Great Mother’ — Earth. These divine talismans, ritually crafted under a certain prescribed constellation, were believed to confer protection and connection to the gods. Samothracians were described as addicted to the study of the secrets of nature, and nature provided the bedrock for the mythology of their Great Gods, as it does for all the greatest gods.
THE IMBROGLIO OF MAGNETIC ‘SENSE’ AND CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS
Magnetoreception in the animal kingdom is evidenced in migrating birds, turtles and across bacteria, arthropods, molluscs and members of all major taxonomic groups of vertebrates. The magnetic sense of modern humans is not fully understood, but there is a chemical called a ‘cryptochrome’ which is a blue-light receptor in the eye and it is this evolutionarily old flavoprotein which is suspected of serving at least part of the function of a ‘magnetic sense’. Clear downstream pathways to the brain remain rather elusive, but cryptochromes can be found in mammalian pineal organs. Interestingly cryptochromes (‘hidden light’ in Greek) play a pivotal role in the generation of circadian rhythms in plants and animals — the 24 hour cycles which regulate sleeping, waking and feeding and are associated with cell regeneration and the release of neurotransmitters and hormones.
DREAMS OF A DIVINE NATURE
The meaningfulness dreams held for ancient people is well-documented within countless cultures and texts of antiquity. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Hieratic ‘Dream Book’ of Ancient Egypt, to the prophecies of the Old Testament, the Dream of the Rood, the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus and the dream spaces of Popol Vuh and the Vedas. Dreams were of daily concern and a prevalent source of divination. It is unsurprising our cognizant, luxuriously dreaming ancestors erected great temples and sanctuaries dedicated to the incubation, preparation and dissecting of their dreams. Perhaps neurobiologically the human connectome during this period of evolution was simply more wired for experiences of ‘lucidity’ — a scientifically recognised state of consciousness within which a dreamer can be aware whilst in a dream that they are dreaming and can often exert control over its unfolding.
Throughout ancient history dreams were regularly described as being communication with the divine, revelations from God, visions of the future and past, warnings and blessings. The Egyptians also believed dreams offered a window through which it was possible to observe the actions of the dead, though these dreams were not viewed especially auspiciously. The Egyptian word for ‘dream’ is represented by a combination of the hieroglyphic symbols for
‘open eye’ and ‘bed’ — Therefore: Dream =′′rswt′′(awaken)/(openeye)+′′qed′′(sleep)/(bed) and can be read as ‘awaken within sleep’. A perfect description of the lucid state.
TEMPLE SLEEP IN EGYPT
Thousands of years ago Egyptians built temples for ‘temple sleep’, a sacred exercise to bring about healing. This tradition is believed by some to have been begotten by Imhotep, the revered polymath serving under the Third Dynasty Pharaoh Djoser. Egyptologists ascribe to Imhotep the design of the stepped pyramid in Saqqara and he was the High Priest of Ra at Heliopolis. Imhotep was deified two thousand years after his death and his birth mythologised so he became ‘Son of Ptah’. As a deity of medicine and healing, his influence presided over the temples, in which we find the earliest description of hypnosis and dream and hynagogic imagery being used for healing. The temples were open to anyone that believed in the god to which it was dedicated, but visitors were required to be pure before entering. Periods of fasting and bathing preceded ritual magic (texts say pieces of linen had the name of the requested God written upon them and were burned in oil lamps). The Egyptians used the very rock ’n’ roll-ish combination of lavender and chamomile to promote sleep (oh, and sometimes opium in cases of insomnia). Thyme was used to combat snoring. After this period of purification, chanting and prayer, a sleep was induced, within which, ideally, a ‘divine dream’ would either cure directly or provide a dream interpreter or priest with the necessary instructions to implement the appropriate cure.
GREEK PRACTICES
The Greeks were of course heavily influenced by the Egyptians and had a comparable sleep temple model. Asklepios was their temple deity of choice, he officiated over healing and the medical arts. Asklepios is recognised by his symbol of a wooden staff around which a snake is entwined. The ‘Rod of Asklepios’ — which reflects so many insignia employed by cultures all over the world, from the copper serpent and staff of Nehustan in the biblical Book of Numbers, to Ningishzida of Ancient Mesopotamia, the Kundalini serpent of Dharma and the Caduceus of Hermes and even the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the deceitful serpent — is still used today as a symbol of medicine and healthcare. ‘Snake and stick’ is basically a classic.
In Ancient Greek mythology Asklepios is son to the god Apollo and the human woman Coronis, who was killed for being unfaithful to her husband and laid out on a funeral pyre to be roasted for this indelicacy. Apollo however, very benevolently cut the child Asklepios from Coronis’s mortal, flaming womb and rescued him. He took the newborn to the centaur Chiron, who raised him and taught him the art of medicine. According to legend, in exchange for some kindness granted by Asklepios, a wise snake licked his ears clean and
imparted secret knowledge. This knowledge enabled Asklepios’s medical prowess to reach supernatural proportions (bringing the dead back to life for one) and eventually his skills exceeded that of Chiron and even his own father Apollo. Zeus killed Asklepios with a thunderbolt after he brought Hippolytus back from the dead in exchange for gold. Apollo was obvs well pissed off by this, so he retaliated by killing the Cyclopes who crafted Zeus’s dangerous thunderbolts. Eventually the two did make it up and Zeus placed the body of Asklepios in the sky, where he became the constellation and astrological inconvenience of Orphiucus (The Serpent Bearer). His most splendid earthly legacies, can be found at the Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus and The Temple of Asklepios at Pergamon in Aeolis (now Turkey), famed for its sacred spring at the nucleus of the sanctuary. These are both UNESCO World Heritage Centres.
THE SERPENT OF SLEEP
Snakes were considered sacred to the Greeks, symbols of fertility, regeneration and healing. The creatures (specifically the non-venomous Zamenis longissimus — which is actually called the ‘Aesculapian Snake’ because of this old speciality) were collected in numbers at the temples, sometimes in great pits. The revered serpents would slither unmolested around the sanctuary, keeping patients reminded of their location, purpose and intention no doubt, and maybe double-licking their ears if they were lucky. I think it is worth noting that snakes are sensitive exponents of magnetoreception, and scientific research puts this down to a biomineralisation of magnetite in their tissues — which actually also occurs in human beings. Magnetite is often also a component of healing springs and may serve to ‘magnetise’ the water. Perhaps it is conceivable that some aberration in snake movements or habits in specific geological locations drew the attention of ancient human observers or that humans themselves in these times were more sensitive to these magnetic powers?
Greek sleep temple visitors slept in an area known as an ‘abaton’ within the temple, upon a sacred skin called a ‘kline’ — from which we derive the word ‘clinic’. Much health-related jargon comes from these sleep temples in fact. ‘Panacea’ and ‘Hygieia’ were two of Asklepios’s daughters, temple attendants were called ‘therapeutae’ — and ‘The Father of Medicine’ Hippocrates and prominent Greek physician Galen were amongst their number. The Hippocratic Oath begins…“I swear by Apollo The Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the Gods and Goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture…”
ROMAN ADOPTION
By the time we get to the Romans, we move into even more gods and goddesses, and in later times in Britain, demonstrated by the worship of Sulis Minerva at Bath, Celtic
polytheism made temple dedication increasingly localized, as the Romans sought to mollify the pagans. The essence of the ancient practices of ‘temple sleep’ have seemingly proved fruitful though, as they have, by this point, endured for at least a couple of thousand years.
TEMPLE AT LYDNEY PARK
So I shall take you on a little trip, to the ruins of a nice Romano-British sleep temple in Gloucestershire, at Lydney Park, overlooking the Severn Estuary, atop a dewy, damp hill, red-earthed, iron-rich and chalybeate spring-fed. A perfect spot. Young deer fidget in the ferns and bob in pods as if in verdant water. A muddy path bridges a little stream that tastes of blood and our footsteps curve up the hill. A ritual grade recalling Asklepios’s serpent.
The Roman sleep temple on the Lydney Park Estate in Gloucestershire is believed to have been built around 365AD. Traditional Roman practices in this instance merged with the worship of a Celtic deity by the name of Nodens, to whom the site is dedicated. It was actually J.R.R. Tolkien who conducted much of the research into the philology of ‘Nodens’ and concluded it to be cognate with the Irish mythological King Nuada of the ‘silver-hand’. Nodens was a deity associated with the sea (the site offers an excellent view of the Severn Bore), healing (which often incorporated, where appropriate, the licking of wounds by dogs), hunting and fishing. Dogs were sacred to this site and may have been kept for their salubrious licking. The animal instinct of licking is known to promote healing by kickstarting the blood-clotting mechanism. A dog’s saliva actually has bactericidal effects for E.Coli. Many small canine statuettes as votive offerings have been found on the site and a beautiful bronze one of these has become the emblem of Lydney Park.
LAND OF NOD(EN)
Tolkien, (who was already professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford at this time) was an assistant to distinguished archaeologists Sir Mortimer Wheeler and his wife Tessa as they began excavation on the site in the late 1920s. The work at Lydney is thought to have become inspiration for Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Even the ring theme itself may have been sparked by the dig — which unearthed a curse tablet inscribed thus: “To the God Nodens. Silvanus has lost a ring. He has [vowed] half its value to Nodens. Amongst all who bear the name of Senicianus, refuse thou to grant health to exist, until he bring back the ring to the Temple of Nodens.” Poetically enough the ring did materialise. But it was dug up in a plow field in Hampshire, in 1785. Only Senicianus had a new inscription placed on it: ‘Seniciane vivas in deo’ (Senicianus, may you live in God). It can be seen in the Vyne Museum at Basingstoke. The Vyne has decided to keep it, I don’t know how their health is.
Tolkien was sure to have been intrigued by the mysticism and folklore surrounding the site, which had been called ‘Dwarf Hill’ by the locals, due to legends of hobgoblins and little people living within it. The site was riddled with holes and tunnels. It was first an Iron Age fort and then the Romans dug too, leaving open-cast mines, or ‘scowles’ throughout the hill. This Swiss cheese-like foundation, led to the collapse of the temple at one point which was rebuilt during Roman times. The complex consists of a bathhouse, guesthouse and abaton. The bathhouse and abaton are still very clearly delineated, but the guesthouse is much grown over. The Lydney Park Estate house has a tiny museum in it dedicated to the many findings on the site.
I would have laid down for a dream, but it was wet and cold and the ground was covered in deer shit and stinging nettles (thanks Nodens). I would still like to go back with preparations. I love to think of the dreams incubated on that spot. It’s a magical place. On the way home we stopped off at Silbury Hill and went to a Psychic Parrot Fair that was advertised by a comically pixelated banner in Avebury. It was the best Sunday Quest ever.
sarahjanes@hotmail.com
Sarah Janes, 2016
ONE DREAMING MIND
I didn’t get into drugs when I was a kid because my dream life truly astounded me. I have always been very thoughtful about not fudging it up. I even told my dad once that I wished I could just live in my dream world forever and not real-life Croydon.
Beddington Lane did not feature prominently in my nocturnal landscapes — which were more like admixtures of East Asian industrial ports, J.G. Ballard books and fecund tropical oil paintings. Those contemporaries of mine that would enthusiastically devour any illicit offering from the Roundshaw Estate, did not seem to have the same sort of concerns about probing their inner world too abysmally. My two very best school friends did share my ideas though — Sonya Hart was from Romani gypsy stock and Felicity Fernandez was going through a devil worshipping phase in rebellion against her Catholic mum — so they had their own reasons. I think all three of us had seen and felt things that took us to what were sometimes delightful, sometimes perplexing edges (and I’m not just talking about the ‘ghost’ in Three Men and A Baby). So we did witchy things instead and believed for many years that we caused the hurricane of 1987. I had visions, sleep paralysis and experienced altered states quite regularly. Reality didn’t seem tremendously confirmed at all. When I read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman later, I resonated with the idea of the morphing daemon companion that settles on a consistent form as a child matures. That is exactly what growing up felt like to me and often still does.
DREAM STATE AS GATEWAY TO ENDOGENOUS ALCHEMY
The fashionable fly-overs to self-discovery for the moment are pharmacologically-induced altered states and the experiences procured by taking entheogenic and shamanic plant- medicines. Whilst this ethnobotanical wisdom is undeniably hugely important and relevant; lustration, fasting, dreaming, close observance of nature and sensory deprivation offer other magical, albeit less compelling — “Psst! Mate! Wanna not eat anything and be on your own for a fortnight?” — routes to endogenously provoking episodes of mind-melting one-ness and divine perspicacity. These practices of close-contemplation and nothingness, also tend to play a significant role in the schemas of long-standing cultural traditions, the knowledge of which is oft felt to be giving a sort of unfettered thumbs-up to a psychedelic Eat-As- Much-As-You-Like-at-Deep-Pan-Pizza-party. Whether it is within the comfortable confines of a summer festival in Dorset, or hygienically administered after a lot of form-filling at an
impeccable Imperial lab, a purging, a mastery can still be missing from these liminal excursions. Perhaps this fast-track, Easy Jet option is exactly that, perhaps you just don’t need to do the ground work. Mind you, imagine if everyone that had ever dropped acid or smoked DMT miraculously became a shaman. It would be pretty awesome actually.
Dreaming remains the greatest source of inspiration, creative delight and personal insight for me. I have practiced lucid dreaming since I was little. During a group exercise at a dream conference in London, the parapsychologist Stanley Krippner helped me to remember my first ever lucid dream, in which I was a black cat sitting in a rocking chair, licking my paws. I keep a dream journal and am still in thrall of this most commonplace and yet numinous altered state. I have made life choices, embarked upon quests and made hilarious mistakes as a result of what I have taken to be meaningful and sometimes portentous dreams. When you start asking, it is true that most people have.
Years later I was leading lucid dream workshops with the artist Luciana Haill (Luciana works with EEG and was resident in the Department for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at the University of Sussex) and researching the culture of dreaming for my lecture club in Hastings (The Explorers’ Club), and one of our lecturers — David Luke (University of Greenwich/Breaking Convention) introduced me to the history of ‘sleep temples’. It felt as though everything fell perfectly, dream-like in to place and my life’s true quest began.
THE EVOLUTION OF DREAM EXPERIENCE
We might reasonably suppose that our ancient ancestors experienced the world, and perceived their relationship to it, rather differently to us. We can only speculate as to how the average 42,000 year old brain may have differed in structure and neural connectivity to our own. How brain regions might have been organised and electrically entangled before human beings started using complex language, social organisation, drawing symbols to convey meaning and inventing and utilising writing, technology and trade is something of a mystery. The brain is a chimera of energy and matter, we know that its neuroplastic qualities enable infinite shifting and reconfiguring. Through culture, habit and environment, this labyrinth of learning will never stop revising. Research into the evolution of cranial size and form, shows the volume of the human brain has actually reduced by about the size of a tennis ball over the last 20,000 years. Its decrease is seen to correspond specifically with an increase in social groupings. Perhaps as our ancestors were removed by abstraction from the closest possible contact with the natural world, their perceptive tools for evaluating it withered. One could put forward a counter theory to Terence McKenna’s famous — ‘Stoned Ape’ one, whereby our ancestors were always pretty psychedelic, until living apart from nature severed their symbiotic cords and slowly wasted a tennis ball chunk of brilliance.
Perhaps we took to the plant medicines as a way to re-connect, before it was lost forever. I’d call it the ‘Straight Ape’ theory.
As our brain and body modifies our perception, our senses, our awareness, emotions, memory and intuitions; our very reality, the world and even time and space is modulated too. The American psychologist Julian Jaynes put forward the proposition in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) that ancient humans experienced consciousness as a sort of auditory hallucination. He claimed it was a directing, internal voice of ‘God’ that arose in the brain’s right hemisphere as a result of neural activity in the left. We should look to studies in animal consciousness and the neurobiology of indigenous peoples to better understand the mechanisms. Jaynes thought the switch from a ‘bicameral’ mind to modern consciousness (linguistic meta-cognition) occurred over a roughly 1,000 year period starting around 1800BC. Let us say (just for argument’s sake neuroscientists!) that Jaynes was at least on to something — how might these postulated ancient brains generate and mensurate something as otherworldly as a dream?
ENVIRON-MENTAL SENSITIVITIES
Let us begin at the beginning and start with the placement of these structures. Contemporary geological surveys of healing temple sites generally reveal a combination of interesting strata, fault lines, volcanic activity, mineral deposits, geomagnetic anomalies and sometimes mildly radioactive waters (boron and radon — in low concentrations — are still celebrated for their health-giving properties in spas all over the world). Natural springs were often a major feature of the temples for the rites of purification and were traditionally viewed by many cultures as gateways to the underworld. The ancients made much of the presence of lucky spirits and auspicious entities, which were believed to dwell in caves, forests, hills and mountains. Every conceivement of nature was endowed with spirit, as in the animistic traditions that perpetuate today. Unusual rock formations and geological outcroppings were viewed as an uprising from the deities of a subterranean universe that mirrored the one above. In an unpolluted black sky, we can well imagine our ancestors regularly saw a celestial splendour of breath-taking proportions at night. They will also have witnessed on occasion the lucent tracks of earthbound meteorites raining down from the heavens and when these fallen stones were discovered and recognised for their alien provenance, they were frequently idolised and adored.
The naturally occurring magnetic power of terrestrial lodestones (thought to be imbued with their power by lightening bolts) and magnetised meteorites was viewed reverently by ancient people everywhere. The practice of geomancy (Earth Magic) and chthonic
(underworld) worship is well documented. At the Samothrace temple complex of Eastern Macedonia for example, initiates of the mystery cult were invested with magnetic iron rings, phylactery wrought from the metallic veins of the body of the ‘Great Mother’ — Earth. These divine talismans, ritually crafted under a certain prescribed constellation, were believed to confer protection and connection to the gods. Samothracians were described as addicted to the study of the secrets of nature, and nature provided the bedrock for the mythology of their Great Gods, as it does for all the greatest gods.
THE IMBROGLIO OF MAGNETIC ‘SENSE’ AND CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS
Magnetoreception in the animal kingdom is evidenced in migrating birds, turtles and across bacteria, arthropods, molluscs and members of all major taxonomic groups of vertebrates. The magnetic sense of modern humans is not fully understood, but there is a chemical called a ‘cryptochrome’ which is a blue-light receptor in the eye and it is this evolutionarily old flavoprotein which is suspected of serving at least part of the function of a ‘magnetic sense’. Clear downstream pathways to the brain remain rather elusive, but cryptochromes can be found in mammalian pineal organs. Interestingly cryptochromes (‘hidden light’ in Greek) play a pivotal role in the generation of circadian rhythms in plants and animals — the 24 hour cycles which regulate sleeping, waking and feeding and are associated with cell regeneration and the release of neurotransmitters and hormones.
DREAMS OF A DIVINE NATURE
The meaningfulness dreams held for ancient people is well-documented within countless cultures and texts of antiquity. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Hieratic ‘Dream Book’ of Ancient Egypt, to the prophecies of the Old Testament, the Dream of the Rood, the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus and the dream spaces of Popol Vuh and the Vedas. Dreams were of daily concern and a prevalent source of divination. It is unsurprising our cognizant, luxuriously dreaming ancestors erected great temples and sanctuaries dedicated to the incubation, preparation and dissecting of their dreams. Perhaps neurobiologically the human connectome during this period of evolution was simply more wired for experiences of ‘lucidity’ — a scientifically recognised state of consciousness within which a dreamer can be aware whilst in a dream that they are dreaming and can often exert control over its unfolding.
Throughout ancient history dreams were regularly described as being communication with the divine, revelations from God, visions of the future and past, warnings and blessings. The Egyptians also believed dreams offered a window through which it was possible to observe the actions of the dead, though these dreams were not viewed especially auspiciously. The Egyptian word for ‘dream’ is represented by a combination of the hieroglyphic symbols for
‘open eye’ and ‘bed’ — Therefore: Dream =′′rswt′′(awaken)/(openeye)+′′qed′′(sleep)/(bed) and can be read as ‘awaken within sleep’. A perfect description of the lucid state.
TEMPLE SLEEP IN EGYPT
Thousands of years ago Egyptians built temples for ‘temple sleep’, a sacred exercise to bring about healing. This tradition is believed by some to have been begotten by Imhotep, the revered polymath serving under the Third Dynasty Pharaoh Djoser. Egyptologists ascribe to Imhotep the design of the stepped pyramid in Saqqara and he was the High Priest of Ra at Heliopolis. Imhotep was deified two thousand years after his death and his birth mythologised so he became ‘Son of Ptah’. As a deity of medicine and healing, his influence presided over the temples, in which we find the earliest description of hypnosis and dream and hynagogic imagery being used for healing. The temples were open to anyone that believed in the god to which it was dedicated, but visitors were required to be pure before entering. Periods of fasting and bathing preceded ritual magic (texts say pieces of linen had the name of the requested God written upon them and were burned in oil lamps). The Egyptians used the very rock ’n’ roll-ish combination of lavender and chamomile to promote sleep (oh, and sometimes opium in cases of insomnia). Thyme was used to combat snoring. After this period of purification, chanting and prayer, a sleep was induced, within which, ideally, a ‘divine dream’ would either cure directly or provide a dream interpreter or priest with the necessary instructions to implement the appropriate cure.
GREEK PRACTICES
The Greeks were of course heavily influenced by the Egyptians and had a comparable sleep temple model. Asklepios was their temple deity of choice, he officiated over healing and the medical arts. Asklepios is recognised by his symbol of a wooden staff around which a snake is entwined. The ‘Rod of Asklepios’ — which reflects so many insignia employed by cultures all over the world, from the copper serpent and staff of Nehustan in the biblical Book of Numbers, to Ningishzida of Ancient Mesopotamia, the Kundalini serpent of Dharma and the Caduceus of Hermes and even the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the deceitful serpent — is still used today as a symbol of medicine and healthcare. ‘Snake and stick’ is basically a classic.
In Ancient Greek mythology Asklepios is son to the god Apollo and the human woman Coronis, who was killed for being unfaithful to her husband and laid out on a funeral pyre to be roasted for this indelicacy. Apollo however, very benevolently cut the child Asklepios from Coronis’s mortal, flaming womb and rescued him. He took the newborn to the centaur Chiron, who raised him and taught him the art of medicine. According to legend, in exchange for some kindness granted by Asklepios, a wise snake licked his ears clean and
imparted secret knowledge. This knowledge enabled Asklepios’s medical prowess to reach supernatural proportions (bringing the dead back to life for one) and eventually his skills exceeded that of Chiron and even his own father Apollo. Zeus killed Asklepios with a thunderbolt after he brought Hippolytus back from the dead in exchange for gold. Apollo was obvs well pissed off by this, so he retaliated by killing the Cyclopes who crafted Zeus’s dangerous thunderbolts. Eventually the two did make it up and Zeus placed the body of Asklepios in the sky, where he became the constellation and astrological inconvenience of Orphiucus (The Serpent Bearer). His most splendid earthly legacies, can be found at the Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus and The Temple of Asklepios at Pergamon in Aeolis (now Turkey), famed for its sacred spring at the nucleus of the sanctuary. These are both UNESCO World Heritage Centres.
THE SERPENT OF SLEEP
Snakes were considered sacred to the Greeks, symbols of fertility, regeneration and healing. The creatures (specifically the non-venomous Zamenis longissimus — which is actually called the ‘Aesculapian Snake’ because of this old speciality) were collected in numbers at the temples, sometimes in great pits. The revered serpents would slither unmolested around the sanctuary, keeping patients reminded of their location, purpose and intention no doubt, and maybe double-licking their ears if they were lucky. I think it is worth noting that snakes are sensitive exponents of magnetoreception, and scientific research puts this down to a biomineralisation of magnetite in their tissues — which actually also occurs in human beings. Magnetite is often also a component of healing springs and may serve to ‘magnetise’ the water. Perhaps it is conceivable that some aberration in snake movements or habits in specific geological locations drew the attention of ancient human observers or that humans themselves in these times were more sensitive to these magnetic powers?
Greek sleep temple visitors slept in an area known as an ‘abaton’ within the temple, upon a sacred skin called a ‘kline’ — from which we derive the word ‘clinic’. Much health-related jargon comes from these sleep temples in fact. ‘Panacea’ and ‘Hygieia’ were two of Asklepios’s daughters, temple attendants were called ‘therapeutae’ — and ‘The Father of Medicine’ Hippocrates and prominent Greek physician Galen were amongst their number. The Hippocratic Oath begins…“I swear by Apollo The Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the Gods and Goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture…”
ROMAN ADOPTION
By the time we get to the Romans, we move into even more gods and goddesses, and in later times in Britain, demonstrated by the worship of Sulis Minerva at Bath, Celtic
polytheism made temple dedication increasingly localized, as the Romans sought to mollify the pagans. The essence of the ancient practices of ‘temple sleep’ have seemingly proved fruitful though, as they have, by this point, endured for at least a couple of thousand years.
TEMPLE AT LYDNEY PARK
So I shall take you on a little trip, to the ruins of a nice Romano-British sleep temple in Gloucestershire, at Lydney Park, overlooking the Severn Estuary, atop a dewy, damp hill, red-earthed, iron-rich and chalybeate spring-fed. A perfect spot. Young deer fidget in the ferns and bob in pods as if in verdant water. A muddy path bridges a little stream that tastes of blood and our footsteps curve up the hill. A ritual grade recalling Asklepios’s serpent.
The Roman sleep temple on the Lydney Park Estate in Gloucestershire is believed to have been built around 365AD. Traditional Roman practices in this instance merged with the worship of a Celtic deity by the name of Nodens, to whom the site is dedicated. It was actually J.R.R. Tolkien who conducted much of the research into the philology of ‘Nodens’ and concluded it to be cognate with the Irish mythological King Nuada of the ‘silver-hand’. Nodens was a deity associated with the sea (the site offers an excellent view of the Severn Bore), healing (which often incorporated, where appropriate, the licking of wounds by dogs), hunting and fishing. Dogs were sacred to this site and may have been kept for their salubrious licking. The animal instinct of licking is known to promote healing by kickstarting the blood-clotting mechanism. A dog’s saliva actually has bactericidal effects for E.Coli. Many small canine statuettes as votive offerings have been found on the site and a beautiful bronze one of these has become the emblem of Lydney Park.
LAND OF NOD(EN)
Tolkien, (who was already professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford at this time) was an assistant to distinguished archaeologists Sir Mortimer Wheeler and his wife Tessa as they began excavation on the site in the late 1920s. The work at Lydney is thought to have become inspiration for Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Even the ring theme itself may have been sparked by the dig — which unearthed a curse tablet inscribed thus: “To the God Nodens. Silvanus has lost a ring. He has [vowed] half its value to Nodens. Amongst all who bear the name of Senicianus, refuse thou to grant health to exist, until he bring back the ring to the Temple of Nodens.” Poetically enough the ring did materialise. But it was dug up in a plow field in Hampshire, in 1785. Only Senicianus had a new inscription placed on it: ‘Seniciane vivas in deo’ (Senicianus, may you live in God). It can be seen in the Vyne Museum at Basingstoke. The Vyne has decided to keep it, I don’t know how their health is.
Tolkien was sure to have been intrigued by the mysticism and folklore surrounding the site, which had been called ‘Dwarf Hill’ by the locals, due to legends of hobgoblins and little people living within it. The site was riddled with holes and tunnels. It was first an Iron Age fort and then the Romans dug too, leaving open-cast mines, or ‘scowles’ throughout the hill. This Swiss cheese-like foundation, led to the collapse of the temple at one point which was rebuilt during Roman times. The complex consists of a bathhouse, guesthouse and abaton. The bathhouse and abaton are still very clearly delineated, but the guesthouse is much grown over. The Lydney Park Estate house has a tiny museum in it dedicated to the many findings on the site.
I would have laid down for a dream, but it was wet and cold and the ground was covered in deer shit and stinging nettles (thanks Nodens). I would still like to go back with preparations. I love to think of the dreams incubated on that spot. It’s a magical place. On the way home we stopped off at Silbury Hill and went to a Psychic Parrot Fair that was advertised by a comically pixelated banner in Avebury. It was the best Sunday Quest ever.
First Published in the Journal of Paranthropology
Sarah Janes, 2016
sarahjanes@hotmail.com
