Blue Lotus + Mugwort

Since my period finished a few days ago, I thought I'd try again--this time I mixed 1 blue lotus flower with 1 tablespoon mugwort and had a cup of tea with all of that right before bed, but I found it really hard to fall asleep! Reading online, some sources say it can actually boost your energy? And one account writes of how mugwort is actually a stimulant for them. So maybe at my highly sensitive insomniac state, it's not a good idea to continue mugwort for night time purposes.

Blue Lotus - Day 2 Trial - 1/8/25

 I took 1 flower in tea before bed, but with my sleep schedule being off, it's hard to say if it's working or not. Perhaps I should wait till after my period for my sleep to stabilize before trying again.

Blue Lotus -- Day 1 Trial -- 1/6/25

 9 PM

I smoked one bowl of blue lotus. But I made a ritual about it. I cleared my desk and put candles on either side of my "shrine". Then I turned off the lights and played "A Mystic's Dream" by Loreena McKennitt. I put my new Cleo de Nile Monster High doll on the table so she was sitting next to me facing me. Then I prayed to Hathor, Egyptian goddess of love, motherhood, beauty. I forgot my exact chant, I sort of just felt the music and chanted whatever came to mind. 

And then I smoked the bowl. Slowly. I took breaks, writing, thinking, feeling, reflecting over the next hour. 

4 AM 

I drank tea made from 1 blue lotus flower. Nothing spectacular happened in my dreams -- my favorite part was eating some particularly delicious tiramisu cream at an urbane city bar that an old coworker had taken me to. The chef's tiramisu cream was delicious, light, and fluffy. So I guess a very sensory dream? Perhaps I took the lotus tea too early, because I fell asleep more around 7 AM or so. Tomorrow I shall delay the tea to be drunk closer to 4 AM.

Other notes:

I've been flaring since around December 16 of last year. Today I woke up feeling much better than yesterday. The change is sudden and unusual. Only tomorrow will tell if this is a blip or not. I can stand up straight again for the first time in two weeks (the overall red inflammation and smaller, acute cuts on my stomach, limbs, and shoulders and neck kept me almost permanently hunch-backed for the past two weeks). If I were to put a number to my feeling of sudden improvement, for the past two weeks I've been at a 7-8 on the pain scale. Today I feel as if I were at a 4. It's strange because this is the week before my period, when I expected to be feeling worse, not better. I haven't changed anything or gotten any sunlight for the last month (how could I, when I wake up in such pain, at 4-5 PM?). A few days ago, I dreamed that I stood up straight and noted mentally that it felt odd to be standing up straight after so long. This was before any blue lotus experimentation. The nights are still cold and long. But what happened to me today?

In fact, I stopped taking ibuprofen or loratadine completely as of 3 days ago. My pain should be worse, not better.

Possible cofactors:

Been taking turmeric more religiously?

Suja Turmeric shot includes 1 billion CFUs probiotics Bacillus coagulans, 200 mg echinacea, 5000 mg turmeric.

Blue Lotus - Nymphaea nouchali var. caerulea

I feel like every child eventually gravitates towards one mythology or another. I think my parents were hoping I would go the Judeo-Christian way for meaning, but come on, let's face it. All those little baby angels and cutesy cherub faces? Not as cool as having a falcon or lion's head, an underworld where Anubis judges your heart and feeds those heavier than a feather to the crocodile god, and definitely not as cool as mummies. I remember reading one of those Eyewitness books about mummies, with real-life pictures of mummies on every page, and it gave me a quick thrill to turn the page, gasping and pulling my finger back if I found I had unknowingly put it right on the mummy's picture. I know Egypt wasn't the only place to have mummies, but the animal heads on the gods and goddesses, the awe-inspiring pyramids, combined with the mummies (who can forget that awesome 1999 movie "The Mummy") really became a singular entity in my mind, and captured my imagination. 

 I think I refound that interest last summer. When the heat is intense and the sun beats down so that you can barely breathe, it's easy to imagine you're walking the sands of the desert, blinding light glaring down on you, searing your skin, and now that I wrap up my skin so much, I really identify with mummies.

So it does seem coincidental that one of the herbs known to help with dreaming was also important in Egyptian society. There are a lot of depictions of the blue lotus, along with the white lotus, in ancient Egyptian art. They used it to cover a number of pharaoh's mummies. And in Egyptian mythology, the blue lotus became the symbol of the sun, because it opened in the morning and closed at night.

I'll be experimenting with the effects of blue lotus upon my dreams in the coming weeks. For the first week, I will be having 1 flower head steeped in hot(not boiling) water for 10 minutes, about 1 hour before sleep. For the second week, I shall try 2 flower heads. My memory recall is pretty good nightly -- I remember at least one dream upon waking up, so I think I'm ready for this step. Wish me luck -- is it possible that Celeste Moonshine is the reincarnation of an Egyptian? Only time will tell!

Christmas Eve with H

I dreamt I was somewhere in a strange town next to the sea. I had the vague feeling that I didn’t remember how I had gotten here so I asked a guy next to me, "Where is this?” He muttered some gibberish and then said the words, "fever dream". Then I knew that I was dreaming. I thought about what I wanted to do and then I thought I want to see Hung, (my cousin who died in a hit and run in 2011). I ran backwards through the grass behind a house that looked kind of like one of those old British houses with a lot of rooms and several floors and a lot of doors at the back. I listened to the sounds behind the doors and they were in Vietnamese. I thought this must be the Catholic Vietnamese school I used to go to. I heard them preparing to go outside, so I waited excitedly the doors opened and children ran out, but none of them was Hung. It makes sense looking back because he never went to that school with me. Disappointed and confused, I ran around the front of the building. At which point, it became the entrance of my aunt’s daycare. I went inside and to the left where my aunt’s office was. Adults I used to know at the daycare came streaming out and then somewhere in the back I saw Hung. He was a teenager wearing glasses and had short fluffy hair. I think I saw him at the daycare because he spent a summer hanging out with me there long ago. We walked out of the daycare, but when I turned again, it wasn’t him! It was some strange tall Middle Eastern looking man. I freaked out at first, but he said, "You can’t always expect me to be who you want me to be!" Then I calmed down, because I realized he was right. I had this glorified image of him after he had died, but I had to let him be who he really was, which was mostly a mystery to me now. And that was ok. Everything went back to normal after that. We went on a car ride together. He made jokes like he used to and made me laugh. For example, there was this really sour looking woman going into the daycare kitchen. She had over plucked eyebrows and a sour pout. Hung said, "She looks like a bitch." I giggled upon hearing a "bad" word because my parents never let us say things like that. I think I felt like I was Phong's age again (a kid I just finished tutoring in Bulgaria, about 12 y old). That was it--just a car ride and dumb jokes. The dream ended very naturally, fading to blackness, and I woke up.