Old Solutions, New Problems
A history with Wicca helps my insomnia
Like many girls my age, I dabbled in Wicca in high school. My parents weren’t particularly religious, and I considered myself an atheist in middle school. But it was hard to deny the appeal of the Goddess. American culture is unkind to teen girls.
On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow complained, “Nowadays, every girl with a henna tattoo and a spice rack thinks she's a sister to the dark ones.” I nodded sagely, agreeing completely. Never mind the henna on my hands and the jars of cinnamon in my bedroom.
When I was 17, my father took sick: aortic aneurysm. Which led to the discovery of the need for quadruple bypass surgery, and also surgery for a thoracic aneurysm. His insides were a mess of fucked up blood vessels. His surgeries were conducted at Saint Joseph’s, a huge hospital in Atlanta, one of the best.
The general waiting room, downstairs, next to the gift shop, had a water feature and plants. Obviously the hospital had Catholic symbols everywhere, too. I was effectively powerless, so I’d just sit by my mother and pray to the Goddess. When I came home, I burned candles (sprinkled with cinnamon) and cast spells. I knew it wasn’t real, but it still felt real.
To say I was lost, to say I was vulnerable after my father died when I was 18 would be an understatement. His death was the turning point of my life, and that included sleep. My sleeping troubles started in earnest as a teen and then spiraled out of control. In our spare bedroom, I’d hide away with the dial up internet. Usually I was just looking for pictures of Sailor Moon or Xena, but I also started listening to Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM. Maybe Bell was right about. . .the paranormal?
My friends did their best to care for me. Petra introduced me to her aunt, a practicing Wiccan and all around very cool person. Aunt Tara taught me about the wonders of crab rangoon and to be generous with the vanilla extract when baking. She showed me her athame, and it was the only time in my entire life I’ve ever actually felt a spiritual connection to something. She kindly shared her email address with me, too.
After another sleepless night with Art Bell, my despair, desperation, and desire for answers and conclusions, came to to a head. I can’t remember now the specific topic that led to my greatest hope and delusion. I wrote to Aunt Tara about it, and she wrote back: Art Bell is bullshit.
Aunt Tara saved me from a world of conspiracy. Even now I feel the call. I’ve lived a life of fantasy, of stories, of not being able to tell dreams from waking life.
Despite all that, I have returned to Wicca over the years. It’s a comfort. It’s fun. It briefly fills a hole that will never close.
So in 2024, when I couldn’t sleep and was haunted by nightmares, I again turned to Wicca and neo-Paganism. My nightmares felt so real. Maybe I really could divine messages. Maybe a higher power was at work. That made as much sense as messed-up brain chemistry.
Additionally, my placebo effect is very strong. Maybe praying to a sleep deity would be enough to fix my sleep. I read books, websites, and created Pinterest boards, all while waiting to finally see a psychiatrist and later the CBT-I doctor.
I decided Brigid and Inanna would be my reference points. Each night, I made symbolic offerings: art to Brigid, and passion (sometimes love, sometimes blood) to Inanna. Please accept these signs of my devotion and help me sleep.
Desperate, I wrote a spell for myself:
“I use the tears that I did weep
To protect me while I sleep
Good dreams may stay
Bad dreams please go away
Let none harmed be
Three times three
So mote it be.”
I visualized a moat of dried salt water crust around my body, with a calm sandy beach beyond. It worked! Maybe 10% of the time, and really that was likely due to chance. But still.
Near the end of my time with my CBT-I doctor, we spent time on rewriting dreams and creating scripts. The doctor asked me to spend five minutes writing about a recent dream, and to include every detail I could remember:
I have been traveling. Right now I am somewhere in Western Europe. I don’t know which country. I call my mother. My call goes to voicemail. I want to tell her about my travels. I am traveling with friends. I call her again late in the evening (Europe time). Still voicemail. The trip itself is nice–it’s somewhere like France, the Netherlands, Germany. I just want to share what is going on, visiting in museums. But I keep calling and only get voicemail. These are also cell phones, a silver Nokia. Some texting but no video calls. Instead of having fun, I’m worried about my mom. In this dream I never hear back from her, but in others I sometimes do.
In my dreams about traveling, there is usually water. In this dream, I can see a river and a bridge. I am in a big city but my immediate surroundings–my hotel, I guess–are sparse. Not much furniture. Stuff in boxes. The dominant color are blue and brown, with gleaming glass and metal.
I wake up sad, angry, worried. Where is Mom? Is she okay? Why can’t I just enjoy things?
All of our appointments were online. He watched me silently through the screen as I wrote. I read it out loud to him, my voice shaking even though the plot was quite tame. He asked if I’d mind sharing my writing with him, so I took three crappy photos with my phone and emailed them to him.
We talked a little bit about what the dream might mean This particular one was straightforward. Still, I cried, because I always cry. Then we talked about how we might “rewrite the.” What could I do differently? He watched me silently again as I wrote that I will call my mom once a day on this trip, not repeatedly. And then I will call my husband, who would want to hear all about my travels. I will start unpacking the boxes and make my surroundings more comfortable.
I was instructed to read the rewrite, memorize it, and repeat it to myself before going to bed.
And I laughed at honestly how similar the process was to the spell I had created for myself a year earlier. But this rewrite did work. In conjunction with medication and therapy. But it did work.
