Dreaming of a Plant Spirit:

A Case Study of Health-Related Dreams Using Amazonian and Western Approaches

Mary Gomes and Victoria Brekelmans

For millennia, people have consulted dreams for information about health and healing. Most famously, the Aesclepian dream temples of ancient Greece employed dream incubation to access healing information or to facilitate healing encounters (Papageorgiou, Konstantinou, Lambrinoudakis, Papageorgiou, & Yiannopoulou, 2022; Risse, 2015). Dream imagery has been used historically and is used to this day in Classical Chinese Medicine as a method of diagnosing organ disharmonies (Campany, 2020; Montakab, 2012; Struve, 2020).

In the past few decades, there have been a number of firsthand accounts of prodromal dreams: dreams that convey diagnostic information. In Healing Dreams (2000), Barasch recounts early information about thyroid cancer obtained through nightmares; this led to interventions that may have saved his life. Sacks (1999) recounted a case in which a woman dreamed of becoming a stone statue shortly before succumbing to Parkinson’s disease, which restricts physical movement.

Systematic studies of prodromal dreams suggest that dreams can be helpful diagnostic tools in early detection of illnesses such as breast cancer (Burk 2015, 2017). Among migraine sufferers, dreams that precede migraines tend to involve elevated themes of anger, aggression, misfortune, and apprehension (Heather-Greener, Comstock, & Joyce, 1996). Thematic analysis of dreams in a student sample found a positive correlation between poor health and dream imagery involving medical themes, bodily misfortune, injuries, and illnesses (King & DeCicco, 2007). For a thoughtful discussion of the variety of ways that dreams can convey diagnostic information, see Sabini (2013), as well as earlier work in which she drew from a sample of 60 dreams to illustrate ways in which dreams can contribute to the diagnosis and prognosis of a variety of illnesses, and attitudes toward treatment (Sabini, 1981).

How are healing dreams to be understood? One possibility, the one most consistent with current academic views of dreams, is that dreamers are picking up on subtle physiological cues within the dream state (Garfield, 1991; Burk, 2015, 2017). This likely explains a substantial part of the phenomenon of prodromal dreams, but it seems incomplete when faced with another form of healing dream: one that directly points not only to a diagnosis but also to a specific cure that is beyond the knowledge base of the dreamer. In this paper, we will explore a pair of dreams of the latter type, that is, dreams that suggested a treatment previously unknown to the dreamer, which had beneficial effects. This type of experience is difficult to explain using Western scientific theories. However, it is consistent with Indigenous shamanic frameworks of healing (see Luna, 1984; Jauregi, Clavo, Jovel, & Pardo-de-Santaya, 2011).

Case Study: Victora’s Dreams

Context of the Dreams

Victoria first reported two dreams during coursework in Psychology at Sonoma State University. At the time, she was suffering from chronic health issues, primarily fibromyalgia, that were resistant to treatment. She had suffered from nightmares for much of her life, which were often violent and terrifying, although the specific images and characters appearing in this current dream series were new. She was enrolled in two different courses in the spring of 2018, taught by the first author, with assignments involving dream analysis. In these courses, she wrote about two different dreams, both of which she concluded were related to her health issues. The two dreams had overlapping imagery which seemed to point to a synchronicity involving a plant-based remedy for her illness.

The assignments in the two classes were very similar: both instructed students to select a significant, recent dream, choose one or more images from the dream, and work with those images using the first two steps of Johnson’s dreamwork process as outlined in Inner Work: Using dreams and active imagination for personal growth (1986): 1) generating associations to the image, and 2) applying those associations to significant life dynamics. Johnson’s method is a highly accessible process based on Jungian theory. It guides people systematically through a series of steps that lead from the manifest content of the dream to an interpretation based primarily on 1) the dreamer’s own associations to the various dream images, and 2) the connection between those associations and various inner dynamics in the dreamer’s life. Throughout the process, the dreamer is guided by an internal “felt-sense,” which Johnson refers to as a sense that the association or dynamic “clicks,” that is, it creates “a rush of conviction from somewhere deep inside…[that intuitively feels like] you have tapped into the energy behind your dream” (p. 56). After applying this process to the central elements of the dream, the dreamer arrives at an interpretation, which Johnson describes as “the central, most important message that this dream is trying to communicate” (p. 87), and enacts a ritual, “a physical act that will affirm the message of the dream” (p. 97). Due to limitations on page length and time, the assignment only required the first two steps of associations and dynamics; an interpretation and ritual were optional. Victoria included elements of all four steps in her papers.

In the sections that follow, material from the Victoria’s papers, including the dreams themselves, the context of the dreams, and her applications of Johnson’s method, will be paraphrased or directly quoted.

Dream #1: The Dream of the Four Women

The first dream was a nightmare that had been recurring for several weeks. At the time of the dream, Victoria was suffering from a flare-up of fibromyalgia, an autoimmune condition. In her paper, she described her experience of the disorder:

“I often experience intense, widespread body pain. It greatly impacts the way I live my life, and I’ve been working on living a positive life with it ever since I was diagnosed a few years ago. Through lifestyle, diet, and medication, I have been able to limit my flare ups and live my life in a more positive way. However, stress can often cause a flare up to occur. Since I’m prone to anxiety, I can easily get pulled into a stress-related flare up. When this happens, I have a tendency to shut down and isolate myself from the world. It’s something I’ve been working on through mindfulness practices, but when I had this dream, I was stuck in an isolation cycle.”

In the dream, a voracious, spider-like female figure killed and dismembered a woman (referred to as “the victim”) and threatened the dreamer, who was protected and ultimately saved by a fearless purple-haired woman with a Goth, edgy style. The spider woman stabbed the purple haired woman in the right side, perhaps fatally, and was proceeding to eat her entrails. Despite this, the purple-haired woman was undaunted, mocking and taunting the spider woman as the dream concluded. The dreamer was unharmed.

Several dream images stood out to Victoria, including the victim character, the spider woman, and the purple-haired woman. Below are her reflections (associations and dynamics) to each, quoted from her first dream analysis paper:

“Victim character.

I find her interesting because I never saw her face, nor did she play a major role in the dream. The one time I see the dream from her perspective all I feel is pain. Obviously, that’s my immediate association with the victim character—pain. I also associate her with helplessness and fear. She is hiding by herself in the bathroom instead of seeking comfort with me and the other woman in the living room. Isolation is another association that I have with her. By being alone, she puts herself in danger and is literally cut into pieces. Overall, this character comes across as weak and alone. A couple of the associations that click with the victim character are pain and isolation. These themes show up in my life quite frequently as I deal with my autoimmune disease.

Spider woman.

My immediate association with her is fear. I’m quite scared of spiders and this woman is a humanoid representation of them. More than that though, she emanates horror. She’s like the twisted villain in a children’s cartoon. Aside from just being frightening, this spider-woman is extremely powerful and all-consuming. Her hunger is so intense that she has to devour all the other dream characters in order to satisfy herself. Without hesitation, she hunts down what she wants and she takes it. While she is not one to be admired, there is something wonderful about that aspect of her. As much as I dislike her, I know that she is as much a part of me as any other character in my dream.

I believe that the spider-woman is a representation of the fears that are holding me back. I’m scared about the future, getting into graduate school, the health and well-being of my family, and even just doing well on my next test. Fear is a bigger part of my life than I would like it to be. The woman in the dream hunts me down and tries to kill me just as I feel that fear does in the waking world.

Purple-haired woman.

I find her particularly interesting because I never saw the dream from her perspective at any point. I was myself, the victim, and the spider-woman, but I was not the purple-haired woman. Nevertheless, I knew in the dream that she was a part of me. As if second nature, I knew she was my protector. I associate her with being carefree and unapologetic. She dresses the way she wants without a second thought or care as to what others think. I also associate her with wisdom and bravery. She always knows what to do and she is fearless in the face of danger. While being all of those things, she still manages to care for me and keep me calm in that horrifying situation. This woman seems like she can do anything and everything.

More than anything, I think the purple-haired woman is representing what’s missing in my life right now. She’s everything I wish I could be. She is unapologetically herself and she doesn’t care what other people think about her. I’m constantly worried about how I appear to the outside world. I want to be taken seriously in my chosen career path and in school, so I feel that I hide a good portion of my true self below the surface. This woman doesn’t do that. She is incredibly brave in a way that I wish I could be. I deal with rather debilitating anxiety on an almost daily basis… The fact that I never saw the dream from the view of the purple-haired woman makes me think that I am quite literally missing her perspective in my waking life.”

Dream Incubation

Victoria connected the dream to her health struggles, as she was in a cycle of pain flares and isolation at the time it occurred. Given the context of her chronic health issues, first author Mary Gomes encouraged her to have a conversation with a colleague, Dr. David Sowerby, who has experience with deriving health-related information from dreams. He often uses a dream incubation process, as described in his book Intuition and Dreams (2012). As Victoria reported in her second paper: “We discussed the idea that my dreams may be trying to give me answers to the cause and treatment of my autoimmune disease. With that in mind, I have been incubating my dreams to answer those questions.” As part of the dream incubation process, she asked herself “what is the message?” and “what is the cure?” every night before sleep for approximately one month. When she examined the dream that follows, it was intuitively clear to her that it was addressing the incubation questions.

Dream #2: Candy Coated

In her resulting incubated dream, she developed pains from eating sweets and then ran off into the forest, where she was stabbed in the right side by a male assailant. Looking around for help, she noticed that there were spiky, purple-flowered plants growing around all the trees. She was then rushed to the hospital, where a part of her liver, covered with candy sprinkles, was removed. The remaining part of her liver was also coated with sprinkles. In her second dream analysis paper, Victoria focused on two dream images, the candy-coated liver and the spiky purple-flowered weeds:

“Candy-coated liver.

I found this image particularly interesting, because I am not a huge fan of candy. Matter of fact, I especially don’t like candy sprinkles. The first description that comes to mind when I think of them is sickeningly-sweet. I don’t think my unconscious could have hit that more on the nose. Another association I have with this image is a block or a clog. My liver, being completely covered like it was, literally couldn’t function because it was blocked by all of the candy. The fact that my liver was the organ that was damaged was also interesting, because it was in the exact place where the dark figure stabbed me in the torso. I also associate this area of injury with the previous dream that I shared with you, because it’s also the same place where the purple-haired woman was injured.

In this dream, my liver wasn’t functioning properly, not only because of the stab wound, but also because it was clogged. The term “sickeningly-sweet” hit it right on the nail. I think that my liver is literally the sick part of my body right now. While I’m not a fan of candy, due to stress, my diet has not been the best lately, and my autoimmune symptoms have gotten worse. The candy seems like it ties directly into my current poor diet, even though it may not be the literal representation of it.

Spiky purple-flowered weed.

The next image I would like to work with is the spiky purple-flowered weed, which through research, I discovered was a milk thistle. My first association with this image is the color purple. Immediately I thought of the purple-haired woman from my other dream. The fact that the flowers were also spiky reminded me of her more edgy style. The weeds were also growing around the base of the trees where I fell after being injured. My association with this is being protected. The fact that these flowers were growing around the trees made it seem like they were a barrier to anything trying to harm the trees.

For this image I have done a little bit of research. What I found absolutely blew me away. Initially, I didn’t know what type of weeds these were. I have seen them before, but I didn’t know what they were called. I found out that they are called milk thistle. I planned to simply leave the webpage with this information. However, I was drawn to a link on the search page that said something along the lines of, “milk thistle and the liver.” When I clicked on it, I discovered that milk thistle has been used to detox and treat liver issues for a very long time. Beyond that, I also found a link to a doctor with a theory that liver issues can cause fibromyalgia, which is what I have. I was shocked and I felt I had to include that information for my dynamics of this image to make sense.

Obviously, I think this image applies directly to my health struggles and how my unconscious is trying to tell me what I need in order to fix them. The fact that the purple-haired woman was in my first dream and acted as my protector, and the milk thistle, with the purple flowers, was in my current dream and acted as the tree’s protectors, was not a coincidence. My inner voice was definitely trying to tell me something and the way that I came across those web-links also doesn’t seem like an accident.”

Summary of Analysis

Victoria connected the plant to the purple-haired woman from the first dream, due to the physical resemblance and also because the spiky shape of the flowers was similar to the woman’s edgy style. The flowers seemed to be protecting the trees, which corresponded to the protective role of the purple-haired woman.

In her follow-up research looking at plant photos on line, Victoria discovered that the spiky purple plant was milk thistle. Further research revealed that milk thistle is used to detoxify the liver, and that some medical professionals are starting to explore the role of the liver in fibromyalgia, information which was unknown to Victoria prior to the incubation process.

Outcome

As a result of this information, Victoria began taking 1000 mg milk thistle capsules once a day. Within several weeks, she noticed significant reductions in her pain levels and overall symptoms. In her words, “I went from having flareups multiple times a week, with pain so bad I stayed in bed and just sobbed, to having flareups once a month or less, and they were merely uncomfortable. It also helped me sleep better and improved my daily fatigue” (Brekelmans 2022, personal communication).

The improvements have continued to the present, nearly eight years after the dreams. While she still has some chronic health issues, they are no longer debilitating: her flare-ups, fatigue, bodily pain, insomnia, and nightmares are all under control. She is able to function normally in her life. In addition, she had previously suffered from infertility and irregular periods, but then her cycle regulated about a year into taking the milk thistle, and she conceived and gave birth to a healthy child. In a follow-up communication two years after the dreams, she stated “to say this dream series changed my life is putting it mildly. I’m a different person because of the messages my unconscious sent me” (Brekelemans, 2020, personal communication).

There are several ways that the dream provided health-related information. In both dreams, the “dream ego” was stabbed in the area around her liver. This aspect of the dream is consistent with the idea that bodily processes, which may normally lie below the threshold of consciousness, may be accessed through imagery in the dream state (Garfield, 1991; Burk, 2015, 2017). But the dreams also provided information that is harder to account for in a conventional Western worldview. Victoria encountered knowledge through the dreams that she didn’t personally possess, even unconsciously. First, the dream directly provided images of a readily identifiable milk thistle plant, both in its ordinary appearance (the spiky purple-flowered weed of the second dream) and perhaps in a personified form (the purple-haired woman of the first dream). Significantly, Victoria didn’t know the identity of the plant she saw in the second dream until she researched it.

Second, her follow-up research, prompted by the dream, provided information on the role of milk thistle in supporting liver function, and the possible role of the liver in fibromyalgia. While this information was potentially available to her prior to the dream, it was the dream that prompted her successful internet search. Taken as a whole, together, the dream analysis and new information led her to a highly effective intervention.

Connection to Amazonian Shamanic Healing Practices

Western conceptions of reality have trouble accounting for medicinal knowledge being conveyed through the appearance of a plant, or a plant personification, in a dream. However, this is entirely consistent with the worldviews and the plant healing practices of several Indigenous Amazonian cultures. These traditions have been documented by many Indigenous scholars and non-Indigenous anthropologists over the years (Luna, 1984; Narby, 1999; Narby & Pizuri, 2021; Jauregi, Clavo, Jovel, & Pardo-de-Santaya, 2011).

For example, anthropologist Narby engaged in a dialogue with traditional Shawi healer Pizuri about the nature of tobacco and ayahuasca from Indigenous and Western scientific perspectives (Narby & Pizuri, 2021). Pizuri recounted his encounters with the animate essences of these healing plants and plant combinations, which often took human or animal form. He described the spirit of tobacco as “a tall brown man” (p. 12), while ayahuasca took multiple forms, including a jaguar, bat, hummingbird, and a group of doctors and nurses (pp. 45-46.)

Anthropologist Luna (1984) conducted ethnographic interviews with four Mestizo shamans from Iquitos, in Northeastern Peru, documenting that

Crucial to shamanic practices is the belief that many plants, if not all plants, each have their own ‘mother’ or spirit. It is with the help of the spirits of some of these plants, which I have called ‘plant teachers,’ that the shaman is able to acquire his powers (p. 139).

Interestingly, several of Luna’s interviewees referred to a relationship between plant teachers and dreams, stating that some of these plants, when ingested, brought on vivid dreams, and that the spirits of the plants could present themselves and teach the shamans within the dream state. These plants were believed to teach, in part, by bestowing their physical qualities: “Many of the plant teachers are very tall trees, that resist heavy rains, winds, and inundations. The shaman will then be able to withstand the elements in the same way” (p. 141). Luna adds that “the appearance of the spirits can vary greatly. They assume different human or animal forms…Quite often the spirits present themselves as small people of beautiful and strong constitution” (p. 141).

Ethnobotanists Jauregui, et. al. (2011) extended this work through a series of interviews with 29 curanderos from Shipibo-Konibo, Ashininka, Matsiguenga, and Mestizo ethnic groups in the Ucayali region of East-Central Peru, who are “healers locally respected for their traditional medicine knowledge and practice” (p. 742). They similarly identified the concept of “plantas con madres” (plants with mothers), referring to encounters with plant spirits, often personified in human or animal form. These encounters occur in visionary states, including dreams and psychedelically induced visions, often in response to “plant diets” (extended retreats characterized by strict fasting protocols and ingesting selected plants in order to gain knowledge of them) or ayahuasca ceremonies. These plants with mothers are considered to be “the cornerstone of the learning and practice of traditional medicine” of many Amazonian cultures (p. 740). The researchers documented the curanderos’ understanding of plant spirits, as illustrated by the following quotes: “The plants sing and speak to you if you listen to them with respect, and they allow you to see by way of visions and dreams” (p. 742); “The mother [of Nicotiana rustica] appears in dreams and visions as a man with short hair, large, strong, dark-skinned, and with a silver highly adorned tunic” (p. 746). Further, “the mother of chiric sanango (Brunfelsia grandiflora) is a man of fire who teaches you to be an upright healer. It is a vegetable that helps you to dream and not to forget your dreams” (p. 748). The authors concluded:

According to the participants’ beliefs, knowledge is not transmitted orally by healers but through the mothers, spirits or entities that inhabit the natural world. Therefore, the knowledge transmission is of a trans-verbal nature as it occurs via dreams, visions, and ikaros [melodies associated with specific plants and healers] (pp. 749-750).

Plant spirit encounters have occurred among Westerners as well. For example, following a participant-observer methodology in his research, Jauregui undertook a plant diet himself, observing first-hand that during such diets “dreams are remembered more frequently and with more clarity. In some of remembered dreams, plants appeared accompanied by different entities, mostly anthropomorphic and zoomorphic, and sometimes with unidentifiable forms” (p. 743). Eliot Cowan, founder of the cross-cultural practice of Plant Spirit Medicine, which draws from Huichol shamanism, Western herbalism and Chinese medicine, described his own encounters with personified plant spirits in the book Plant Spirit Medicine (Cowan, 1995). For example, in waking visionary states, he experienced plantain as “a young woman with enormous wings sprouting from her shoulders” (p. 29), and scarlet pimpernel as “a gruff unshaven man dressed in a tight t-shirt and black pants” (p. 122).

It is possible that the dreams reported in this paper are yet another instance of an encounter with a plant spirit taking place spontaneously, in the dreams of a person whose culture has no tradition of plant spirit medicine. Experiences such as these bring us face-to-face with the conflicting cosmologies found in Indigenous and Western cultures. Navigating such encounters asks us to be deeply reflective and respectful of differing worldviews, rather than privileging Western concepts in relating to such phenomena.

Plant Agency

In recent years, scholars such as anthropologist Callicott (2013) and environmental scientist Dev (2018) have emphasized the Indigenous belief that plants can convey knowledge about themselves to humans through a form of interspecies communication involving “plant agency” – the idea that plants can take initiative in communication. Callicott calls on Western science to develop “new ways of thinking about these relationships [regarding plant-human interaction] that more fully incorporate the Indigenous understanding of plant agency and plant-human communication.” (p. 38) Dev’s goal is to “explore what science and knowledge production might look like if we begin with the premise that other-than-humans can know, act, and produce their own worlds” (pp. 3-4). For both of these researchers, plants are not seen as passive objects of knowledge but rather as active subjects in a collaborative process.

Callicott and Dev caution against the temptation to interpret encounters with healing plants through a lens of Western scientific reductionism, which colonizes knowledge by extracting it from its source in Indigenous cultures and worldviews. Dev states, “by excluding researchers’ personal relationships with plant spirits, we reproduce racialized knowledge hierarchies that continue to place plant spirits in the realm of ‘indigenous beliefs,’ and thereby construct those holding these beliefs as less valid knowers” (p. 5).

The concept of plant agency implies the possibility that a plant such as milk thistle can act with agency within the dream state to provide healing knowledge to a human, overcoming boundaries of species, culture, and worldview.

Conclusion

How are we to understand what took place in this dream sequence? We take seriously the truly astonishing possibility that specific, effective plant healing knowledge can be conveyed through a dream to a Westerner with no prior cultural knowledge or background in plant spirit healing. This dream sequence invites us to stretch the boundaries of our understanding of dreams, plants, and the connections between them. We hope that this case study contributes to the growing body of scholarship documenting encounters between human and plant intelligence in such a way that acknowledges and respects the possibility of plant agency, and the traditions of Indigenous knowledge that help us to understand these experiences.

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