How to Incubate Your Dreams

 [This article is part of a planned series on practical methods for performing dream magic, from basic techniques to more advanced topics.]

If you’ve ever wanted to dream about anything or anyone you want, from your loved ones and gods, to returning to previous dreams and exploring your persistent dream world, this can be done through the ancient oneiric technique of dream incubation, which allows us to intend the images of our dreams.

In the ancient world, dream incubation was performed at cultic temples through elaborate sleep rituals including purification rites, sacrifices, priestly prayer, music, incense, and the unique atmosphere or sleeping situation of the temple. However, modern research using statistical analysis to study large sets of dream records has shown that dream recall and content are responsive to waking attention, which is called the Continuity Hypothesis. We tend to dream about the things that matter to us, in the ways and to the degree they matter to us. If you’ve ever had something on your mind to such a degree that it’s appeared in your dreams, you may have unintentionally incubated its oneiric appearance.

What this means is that the most basic method for incubating dreams is to think about what you want to dream about—but to think about it frequently, and with a deep sense of meaning or emotional importance—and with the belief, intention, or expectation that the dream will occur. You can also heighten the success of dream incubation by focusing on the subject of your desired dream before falling asleep, and holding it as a firm resolution in your mind as you drift off. This can be done through both verbal and visual means.

First, you can frame your desired dream as a clear statement of intent which you repeat to yourself as a form of auto-suggestion as you fall asleep (and even throughout the preceding day). It can also be effective to pray to whatever deity or source you believe your dreams come from, or other forms of repetitive, focused verbalizations such as mantras or nomina magica. One of the most interesting interesting examples of this are the ‘dream word of the perfect nature’ discussed by Ibn Khaldûn in the Muqaddimah.

Even more powerful than verbal autosuggestion is to incubate a dream through visualized imagery. Lucid dreaming and Tibetan dream yoga practices for instance utilize focusing on naturally occurring hypnogogic imagery or specific symbols called an ‘anchor,’ which is the visual equivalent of a mantra. You can also actively visualize scenes from or about the intended subject of your desired dream, which can transition directly into the dream once you fall asleep. This is the method used for reentering previous dreams, whether shortly after waking up from one, or even when recalling it years later. Another visualization method for entering dreams is to imagine transitions between the waking and dreaming worlds, such as stepping through a doorway or gate, which draws on the ancient metaphor of the Gates of Dream; or imagery of descent such as climbing into a cave, diving into a lake, etc. which draw on the spatial metaphor of the unconscious as depth.

Because the unconscious is difficult to directly influence through conscious thought, sometimes it can be helpful for incubating dreams to utilize its sensitivity to ritual and symbolism, as was used in the ancient dream incubation temples. Standard ritual forms including setting an intention, praying, purification, donning vestments or jewelry, giving offerings, invocation, and sleeping in specific places and postures help signal to the mind that this sleep is special. Purification can include both more stringent spiritual practices such as fasting and abstinence as well as more everyday calming activities such as taking a relaxing bath or letting go of waking anxieties before bed. You can also burn incense or put herbal sachets under your pillow, which can have powerful effects on the senses and memory. In ancient incubation rituals, the dreamer would often sleep wrapped in the kin of a sacrificed animal, while special robes and talismans were worn in oneiromantic spells like those found in the Sepher Raziel and other grimoires. For a modern equivalent you could make or consecrate a special set of ‘ritual pajamas’ or a sacred blanket.

One important element of ancient incubation rituals that is more difficult to perform in the modern world is the practice of sleeping in special, sacred, or remote locations. Often, specific sites were seen as powerful to sleep at because they were associated with a particular god or spirit who would bring the dream. At the same time, these practices also serve a psychological purpose of either moving the dreamer outside the bounds of society or into a contained interiority, which signals the significance of the sleep. As such, you can make your bedroom more sacred for sleep, move the positioning of your bed, or make a dream altar on your bedside table.

A last method for incubating dreams is to use Subpulvinar or under-the-pillow magic, which may be one of the oldest and most consistently practiced methods for influencing dreams. Subpulvinar magic essentially concretizes your verbal or visual intention into a tangible symbol or object—such as a written dream request or drawing of the desired dream—which is then symbolically taken into your unconscious dreams through the association of pillows with both sleeping and the head.

Regardless which of these methods you use, being able to regularly dream about what you want is one of the major, groundwork practices for magically working with dreams.