 Hi my name is Danny and welcome to Esoteric Moment. Today I have a book review for you and that is Pagan Dreaming by Nimue Brown. I wrote this on my Kindle. It is one of the coolest dream books you will read and I don't say that lightly. Dream dictionaries always kind of frustrate me mainly because books about dreaming are often like symbol a means this, symbol b means this and there's very little process or explanation about like the magic and mysticism of dreaming or even the psychology or like biology involved in it and Pagan Dreaming actually takes a look at all of those elements. First you'll notice it is not a dream dictionary. There is no specific explanation of symbols you know you can't just go to an index and look up cockroaches or make it in a dream. Instead this book really takes you through the whole process of how do you carry out dream work as a Pagan. So what do you need to be aware of as you start working with your dreams? What are the kind of influences on your sleep patterns be they your diet or your nightly ritual? There are lots of ideas on how to enhance this process and understand how your body and your lifestyle actually affects your dreams. The book also goes into a great detail about how dreams can be interpreted like not just what a symbol is but how one can interpret and decide a moment different types of dreams. So sometimes you're just dreaming about something because that's what you were thinking about during the day right? For instance I play a specific video game I might dream about that video game because my head is still thinking about that the whole night or you might have a dream that seems divinely inspired but how do you tell that versus just like a normal dream that your subconscious is working through something? That was one of my favorite parts of the book kind of the meaty chunky middle part where you really go into how you interpret a dream and how you find an interpretation process that works for you as an individual in your practice. The authors surprisingly candid about their own dreaming experience and share some pretty personal details including how their anxiety affects dreaming and some of the things they've worked through in dreaming work. A level honesty that as you know I really appreciate in the books that I read I think it makes it easier for me to relate to the author and also put whatever they're teaching or talking about into practice in my own life because I know the the raw grittiness of it a little bit better. There was one part of the book towards the end that talked about some kind of external impacts on dreaming that I didn't entirely agree with. The kind of overall theme was that one must be aware of external influences. That's super vague and generic and not really the point of the end of the book so you should read it yourself. But in particular the author had some point of views on like porn and entertainment like video games and stuff like that that was just like not quite what I would have agreed with. But the point was how do you consume conscientiously because that does affect your dream work and that does affect your spiritual practice. So I like conscientiousness in your life. I just think that the author and I fall on that line on those two topics just slightly separated but really my only complaint was the book. In the comments below I would love to hear if any of you do dream work specifically. I'm really interested in how you might incorporate that into your practice. I myself am very conscious of my dreams and have been from a very early age. I don't necessarily keep a dream journal but if there's a dream that is particularly enticing or seems especially important I'll write that in my normal journal but I always take time in the morning to kind of sit and review what I dreamed about and I'm the person who sits at parties and like let's talk about your dreams and that awkward social situation. So tell me about your dream work and how you incorporate that. I think it's a super fascinating topic from that psychology point of view and also from a pagan point of view. It's just this crazy wonderful mix of ideas that I can't get enough of. This is a book published by Moon Books which is incredibly affordable for ebooks. So if you are on a budget and you're looking for a really great pagan book I would suggest heading over and purchasing this. Of course you can get it in paperback too. If you like this author and you should or you're curious about what the tone and writing style of this author might be you should check out Annemoi Brown's blog and she is also on YouTube although only a few videos but more druids on YouTube so that's great. This author is interesting because she has lots of books on druidry and paganism but also some like steampunk fiction work and stuff so very cool. Thanks for watching and as always may you find peace in the sacred grove. I attempted at one point to use a black plain sketchbook as a book of shadows but I didn't get very far and it was never a super inspiring project. There were a few pages that I found really interesting or that I liked a lot that I've migrated or I'm in the process of migrating over to my new book.