July 17, 2025 • 57 mins
What if the eight hours you spend sleeping each night could become your most powerful magical laboratory? In this enchanting conversation, Granddaughter Crow welcomes Nikki Wardwell Sleath—occultist, author, and direct descendant of Samuel Wardwell who was executed during the Salem Witch Trials—to explore the transformative practice of dream sorcery.
Nikki unveils the true meaning of occultism as the study of hidden mysteries, challenging negative stereotypes and emphasizing how this knowledge can be practically applied in our daily lives. She explains why building authentic relationships with deities and energies is essential for effective magical practice—comparing it to developing friendships rather than making transactional demands of strangers.
The heart of their discussion centers around dreams as gateways to expanded consciousness. Nikki challenges conventional scientific perspectives that view dreams merely as brain processing, instead revealing how dreamscapes transcend time, connect us with spirits, and allow us to practice magic without physical limitations. She shares remarkable experiences of precognitive dreaming and collective dream divination that demonstrate the transpersonal nature of dream consciousness.
Listeners will discover the revolutionary concept of creating "magical neural pathways" through lucid dreaming—becoming fully aware while dreaming—which enhances magical abilities even in waking life. Nikki provides insights into how anyone, regardless of their spiritual tradition, can begin working with dreams as powerful tools for healing, shadow work, and accelerating magical development.
What hidden treasures await you in the dreamscape tonight?
Nikki Wardwell Sleath
Nikki is also directly descended from Samuel Wardwell, one of the hanged in the Salem witch trials. Nikki Wardwell Sleath is an occult teacher, author, and the founder of the Society of Witchcraft and Old Magick. She’s formally trained in American Witchcraft,is a dream and shamanic energy healing facilitator and holds a Master’s degree in Integrative Health and Healing. Nikki is the author of several books with more forthcoming and can be found at www.nikkiwardwellsleath.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Granddaughter Crow (00:01):
Welcome to Belief, being and Beyond with
your host, Granddaughter Crow.
Hi everyone, granddaughter Crowhere, welcome to yet another
episode of Belief, Being andBeyond, and this time we're
going to dash in a little bit ofoccult yes, and talk about
(00:25):
dreams.
I am so excited to have myspecial guest on today.
It's Nikki Wardwell Sleath.
Really quick, before I bring onNikki, Nikki is a direct
descendant of Samuel Wardwell,which actually was hung in the
(00:47):
Salem Witch Trials, so that,like I talk about ancestors all
the time and that is a stance,and I just really wanted to
highlight that.
Also an occult teacher, authorand founder of the Society of
Witchcraft and Old Magic.
She's formally trained inAmerican witchcraft and also
(01:09):
dreams shamanic energy healingfacilitator and also holds a
master's degree in integrativehealth and healing.
You can always find Nikki andall of her books and everything
that's coming up atwwwnikkiwardwellsleithcom.
So hi, nikki, thank you forbeing on the show, welcome.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (01:33):
Hi, oh my gosh, thanks so much for having
me.
I loved meeting you throughLlewellyn Con and when you
mentioned your podcast to me Iwas like this is going to be
energetically amazing.
Granddaughter Crow (01:47):
Oh, thank you, I really appreciate you
taking the time.
And the first thing that I wantto know I've watched a lot of
your interviews to includeLlewellyn Khan 2025.
People go check that out.
Amazing All of the authorsthere.
But one thing that you say andidentify as is an occultist, and
(02:13):
I love that because I don'tthink that it's talked about
enough.
You know, many people go to thegeneric I'm a witch,
da-da-da-da-da, but whyoccultist?
And could you tell us what anoccultist?
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (02:30):
is yeah, well, I feel I like reclaiming
words that don't need to havenegative connotations to them,
but that do because of terribleperiods of history.
Terrible periods of history.
(02:51):
So I feel like the word occultcauses people to bristle a
little bit because theyinstantly think that it's like a
dark demonology, you know,dredging up things that are
shadowy.
And that's not.
It really just means hidden.
Occult just means like themystery.
So being an occultist justmeans that.
You know, I consider myself astudent of all manner of
(03:13):
combinations of energy andconsciousness, and I always say
to my students, because that'sall there is, every single thing
you can experience, conceive of, encounter is some combination
of energy and intelligence orconscious awareness, and that's
it.
And so those are things, though, that we can't see with the
naked eye, and science has verylittle explanation for a lot of
(03:36):
these things.
You know, these things that wecan experience energetically,
things in spirit, and so I likethat term because it has a few
sort of insinuations that witchdoes not have, even though I am
a formally trained witch.
I'm a formally trained Reikimaster teacher and a formally
trained teacher and facilitatorof active dreaming, which is a
(03:59):
shamanic style of dreamingcreated by Robert Moss.
I have these titles, but witchtends to be used in so many ways
now that people don'tnecessarily know what you mean,
and witch can just be someonewho kind of identifies with a
earth-based spiritual lifestyle.
(04:20):
Occultist implies more of theapplication of an academic and
studious vantage point upon yourstudy of the mysteries and of
the unseen, and that there's nosort of limit to it.
You know so, and I'm all aboutthe development of actual skill
(04:44):
in the body, what I call sorceryskills or mage skills, and
these are things that studyingthe occult, like the old
grimoires, the philosophers ofantiquity, and then bringing
those teachings to the forefrontof today so that my students
and the public can still benefitfrom them.
You know, this requires a lotof digging, a lot of
(05:14):
intellectual application.
So occultist is more accuratefor me in terms of that very
studious approach which is alsopractical.
It's studious so that we canhave an effect on the practical,
but I like it to be broad.
So that is why I use that title, because I also sort of, you
know, have my feet in a lot ofdifferent waters.
(05:38):
I'm not only a witch, you know,I am also a healer, you know, I
am also a dream teacher, amongmany other things, half of which
I forget half the time becausethere's so many.
You know I couldn't just, butit works for me.
Yeah well, I am a formallytrained witch and, as you
(06:06):
mentioned, directly descendedfrom one of the hanged in Salem,
samuel Samuel Wardwell, myeight times great grandfather.
I do think we need todestigmatize that word as well,
and I did write a book aboutthat, called you Might Be a
Witch.
That was back in 2017.
But you know so again, whichhas come to the forefront and
(06:29):
has so many people nowidentifying that I'm going
deeper and identifying as anoccultist and trying to help
people.
Granddaughter Crow (06:39):
Not be afraid to do that as well, I
love it because when I firsthear it I think student, teacher
, resourcer, you know,researcher, sorceress, magician,
constant, continuous learning,constant, continuous curiosity
(07:02):
of things that are esoteric andor hidden from the naked eye.
And I 100% am all in theclasses that I teach.
I'm like all is energy, people.
That's not a philosophy, that'sscience.
Check it out, albert Einstein.
All is energy, be it past,present, future, da, da, da, da
(07:25):
da.
And really what we're doing isworking in the energy and we can
do this so many different waysand I love that You're saying
the same thing.
Yeah, yeah it is.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (07:36):
It's the same thing.
It's quite universal.
Started to go deeply into theirexploration of magic and
spirits and the mysteries has isgoing to come to that same
conclusion.
So, no matter what yourtradition, no matter what you
know background you came from,if you're going deeply enough,
(07:57):
it's all energy andconsciousness in all different,
extremely unique and amazinglybeautiful combinations you know,
and that's what we're studying.
So I don't think the occult, youknow, should be.
Scary Dreams are of the occult,you know ceremonial magic is of
the occult.
The intelligence of you knowyour favorite crystal is of the
(08:21):
occult.
It's all it all is.
So I love that Not to be fearedNot to be feared, you know.
Granddaughter Crow (08:30):
that also brings me to another thing that
I love about.
When I was looking at thethings that you do and the books
that you write, you know, andjust kind of getting a summation
of what you're bringing to theworld, and one of the things
that really popped out as atheme for me is that you are not
(08:53):
just bringing concepts, you'rebringing concepts with
application, which I think isimportant.
Which I think is important.
It's very, very importantbecause, like you said, we can
sit here and go oh yeah, I wentdown to the witchy shop and I
(09:13):
bought a deck of tarot cards anda pendulum and I am now a witch
and you put it on, you know, inyour wherever, and you never
really utilize it.
And then you call on a deityevery now and again and you're
like hey, could you please dothis?
I'll, I'll give you a gift andyou take it to.
(09:35):
Oh honey, no, this is not.
Yes, you can do that, but youneed to build relationships, you
need to have practice.
You need to build relationships, you need to have practice, you
need to have discipline.
You need to actually, becauseanother book and I, we are
definitely going to get into thedream book and all of that, but
the one that you did before,that about.
(09:57):
You know the the goddess sealsyes, even though I don't have a
copy at my disposal right now, Iwas like wait, this really is a
yes, the goddess seals, let'sgo ahead and take.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (10:16):
Yep, yeah this is a really gorgeous book,
you know, and it's it is.
It is full of directlyapplicable magical symbols.
It's actually modeled after thekey of Solomon the King,
because I was acclimated to thatwork as a neophyte in my own
(10:42):
formal witchcraft training andthose are old angelic seals that
King Solomon was said to have,you know, created through
channeling the intelligences ofthe angels he was speaking to,
organized them into planetarycategories so that the magician
could understand the vibrationsand then use them as it's like a
bat signal.
(11:03):
So, you know, a seal is like aVIP calling card.
It's like having the phonenumber of someone directly
rather than flinging through theyellow pages when you're
looking for a contact you knowor a resource.
It's like you know alreadyyou're, they're pre-recommended.
Basically, it's like you wantto get a roof on your house.
(11:24):
Well, do you want to just golike eeny, meeny, miny, moe, you
know, online and pick somebody,and then you're like, ooh,
don't know.
Or do you want the friends whoknow you to recommend someone
that they already know is greatat this and that you can trust
and that you know they're goingto be safe for you to interact
(11:46):
with?
So the God.
So basically, I learned how touse the seals from the key of
Solomon in that way for magic,and I saw how powerful it was.
And but for years I'm goingokay, this is great, this makes
me more effective, this gives meresources and deeper skill.
(12:08):
However, I'm not really one whofeels called to the angels.
I was looking for these sealsfor the goddesses for years,
especially the Morrigan andHekate, some of these beings
that I felt really called totheir teachings and their
magical skill sets, and for agesI'd be searching and not
(12:30):
finding it.
And so finally I said, well, ifI need this, if I want this,
there must be other people thatdo too.
So I started going into sacredspace with the goddesses that I
felt called to do the most magicwith, and creating these seals
and consecrating themceremonially and then setting up
all of the instructions that Ihad channeled, the magical words
(12:52):
, all of the things, so thatother people could use them too.
So, yeah, the Miskatonic booksdid an amazing job.
This is the regular hardcoveredition.
And then there's also a fancy,fancy leather bound one that
comes in like a clamshell casewhere you lift it out and
there's a secret compartment forlike a metal, like if you're an
occult library person that's.
(13:13):
But this one, I mean, it'sactually pretty reasonably
priced for what it is and it isa grimoire.
All my original art is in thereon all of the seals.
They did a really nice job, butthen for each they also
included a graphic designversion of all of the seals as
(13:34):
well, so you can use them indifferent ways.
But, yeah, I think it'simportant that people have tools
and I think it's important thatwe have grimoires that are
accessible to serious magiciansnow, because a lot of people are
intimidated by the oldgrimoires because the language
is archaic.
Sometimes the instructions saythings like thou must don the
(13:59):
linen vestments that were spunby a virgin in the hour of
Mercury, on like the first darkmoon of the season after the
vernal equinox, and then youhave to build a three by three
altar of solid gold and then youhave to, you know, meditate for
12 hours a day and we're like,hey, in our world, how are we
(14:19):
going to do stuff like that?
So we need real tools andinstructions that work now.
Yes, we can take inspirationfrom those concepts and the
ancient philosophers and themages of yore, but we need to
find a way to do the magic hereand now, because this is the
world we're living in.
Granddaughter Crow (14:39):
That's exactly right.
I absolutely love that and Ican't wait to check out that
book.
It just it's.
I love seals because it'spictorial, it's a symbol and I
know, as we get into the dreambook, you do have a lot of
symbols in there and activatingsymbols.
(14:59):
So, but you're absolutely right,being able to make it in real
life, real time and do the workbehind what all of that energy
is, instead of just going well,I'm just going to you know, call
Hecate, and not trulyunderstand what you're doing or
(15:24):
how to respect, honor and bewith and build that relationship
with.
I often say that you know, thisisn't, this isn't like a
grocery store or a supermarket.
This is something where youliterally build relationships
with the energy right, theconscious energy in the forms
(15:48):
that it's revealing itself toyou, and I really find that
that's extremely important.
And I want to hear yourthoughts on what is the
difference between being justdoing it conceptually and then
really getting in and activatingit, and why would we want to
really dig in and activate youknow our magic, instead of just
(16:11):
hold it conceptually?
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (16:14):
Well, I mean when you dig in and get
invested and build relationshipswith other intelligences, that
naturally generates way moreenergy that is flowing between
you.
So when you just do thingsconceptually, that means
(16:34):
literally, you know, in themeaning of those words, means
that what you're doing exists onthe mental plane.
Conceptualizing is on themental plane of existence, but
we have a physical plane.
That is part of our existencehere and that's generally where
people want manifestationresults is on the physical plane
.
You know, when people doabundance magic or creative
(16:58):
magic or, you know, advancetheir career or find love or
enhance their communications,but no matter what you're doing,
whether it's healing, youusually want to see and feel the
results here so that you canenjoy them in this physical
reality in which we arecurrently mostly anchored.
You know, that's how I look atit Like we're in a physical body
(17:22):
right now, in a dense existencethat has gravity and all kinds
of laws of physics and stuff,and this is where our lives are
playing out.
This is our group consciousnessthat we are currently sharing
and we want to see results here.
So you don't want to keep yourmagic only in the mental plane.
That would be like saying youknow you're only okay with
(17:45):
experiencing things invisualization and in imagination
, but not drawing that here.
So how do you draw things fromthe mental plane?
So how do you draw things fromthe mental plane to the physical
plane, energy and so, yeah, youknow I do.
I talk about that in both thegoddess seals and in dream
sorcery, about when you'reworking with spirits and magic.
(18:07):
You need to lay some goodgroundwork.
You know, in both books I giveideas for meditation techniques,
offerings and things that canhelp you grow that, that vested,
cyclical connection that existsbetween you and another being.
You know, think about how youmeet and befriend other people.
(18:29):
You know you don't just walkinto a party and meet.
Your friend says like, oh, meetthis house builder.
And you say, oh, my God, it'sso nice to meet you.
Can you come over and reside myhouse real quick?
Like, you know, I'll pay you.
(18:49):
You don't like, that's not howit works.
You know you, you're meetingthem at a party.
This is a social thing.
You're both individual peoplehaving your own lives.
You would be like, oh, reallynice to meet you.
That's interesting.
How did you get into that?
What do you specialize in?
Like, how's the business going?
Do you want to do more of thiswork.
You know, you kind of get toknow somebody what do they care
about?
And then get to know a littlebit about you and that you are,
(19:20):
you know, empathetic.
In that way, you build aconnection where you can just
activate the seal and be likehecate.
I love what.
I guess what we should do.
Yeah, it's like when you callyour friend, you know, and
you're like we should go down tothe park this weekend and pick
up some garbage together andthen we'll go for a hike and
(19:41):
maybe have a picnic and havesome fun together.
You know like I want to have funand understand my friends, my
colleagues, my collaborators, mydeities, my spirits, and do
stuff that we're both vested indoing.
So that stuff is so importantand I'm really glad you asked
about that, because we weretalking about this too just
(20:01):
before we began.
I think the idea that so manypeople are really inspired about
magic and spirituality anddoing this kind of work and we
have so many amazing books andstuff available to us nowadays
and people will get excited andthey'll read that book and read
the whole book, sometimeswithout actually, you know,
(20:23):
activating the steps or doinglike, hey, maybe I should record
myself in my phone reading thismeditation from this book aloud
and then sit down in sacredspace with some offerings, with
the door shut and the ringer off, and do it full out like take
the time, make the work sacred,but you have to bring the work
(20:44):
to to your physical life and thephysical plane in order for it
to grow yeah, I love, I amdigging exactly what you're
saying.
Granddaughter Crow (20:53):
It's almost like from my position as a
practitioner.
I am like, honestly, why wouldthe gods and goddesses or the
energy that be, or Mother Earth,or all that I deify and find
sacred, if I can't show up forthem, why would I ask them to
(21:16):
show up for me?
This isn't.
This is a relationship.
This, you know.
I'm like, if I am going to askyou to show up for me, first I
am going to figure out who youare, how we can build a
relationship.
I'm going to be offering mytime, I'm going to be offering
my energy, in whatever form theyfind it, because that makes me
(21:44):
go.
I mean, at that point I'm like,and they offer, I feel like,
okay, I earned this gift,instead of, oh well, I can't
(22:04):
take that, or you know, anddisrespect it.
It's it's receptacle.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (22:07):
Totally and you want to feel good about
it too.
You know, no one likes to be ina friendship where the other
person is constantly like canyou do this for me?
Oh, can you do this for me thenext day?
Oh, can you do this?
Can you lend me this?
Can we do it?
It has to be a two-way street,and so that's why I do put
myself in service of the godsthat I work with in a lot of
(22:30):
ways.
I mean even in the act ofco-running.
I'm a co-facilitator now of thefacilitator of the Morgan's Call
Retreat, and that is, you know,we don't get paid.
We work on that all year long.
You know, I write rituals, Ihelp train people in their
oracular speech and the thingsthat we offer.
(22:51):
You know, it takes all year toput that event together and I
teach classes at it, and wedon't get paid for any of that
stuff.
I just do it because theMorrigan is awesome.
The Morrigan is awesome.
This is me telling you guys that.
But when you have someone thatyou really respect and that you
love working with in your life,who is a spiritual being, you
(23:11):
know that's a way of being inservice sharing with other
people that, their stories,their energy, that they then get
to have a foothold here, youknow, in this reality where they
probably don't have a physicalbody like we do.
So by us doing things like thatmaking offerings, sharing their
poetry, sharing their storiesthose are ways that you can feel
(23:35):
good about giving themsomething energetically that
benefits them and then, in turn,you can feel good about
whatever gifts happen.
When you call in, you know, toinvolve them in your magic.
Granddaughter Crow (23:48):
I absolutely love that.
I love that I could do a wholepodcast just on that.
I love that I could do a wholepodcast just on that.
Totally, you just had anotherbook that released in May 2025
(24:11):
called Dream Sorcery the Ritualand Magic of Lucid Dreaming, and
I love that you say that it'sthe ritual, because what we were
just talking about really helpsus to kind of understand the
approach of the book, meaningthis is not just a dream
interpretation book, this is notjust, you know, one of those oh
, I saw a spider in my dream,you know da-da-da-da-da it's.
(24:32):
It comes from a veryactiveistic, occultist point of
view to be able to put this inpractice.
Because I I was watching youone time and you said something
about we spend one third of ourlife dreaming.
Why don't we do somethingmagical with that?
And I was just like yes.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (24:53):
Yes, yeah , the ritual means you're
exactly right and it's a greatsegue from the conversation we
were just having Doing activethings in your life to
predispose you to be able to domore magic in your dreams.
And how you can do thispurposefully is by training
yourself to become lucid in yourdreams more often.
(25:15):
When you are lucid, that meansyou suddenly become 100% aware
that you are sleeping anddreaming.
There are various stages ofthat, but full lucidity means
you remember who you are, whereyou are, when you are, and you
would remember anything that youhad intended to do in dreaming
(25:38):
while you were awake next timethat you became lucid.
So if you become lucid, you'llgo.
Oh, my God, that's right.
I wanted to summon Isis in mylucid dream, so then you could
stand there in your dream bodyand say I want to speak to the
great goddess Isis, and then yourelease expectation and watch
(25:58):
and wait in the dream scene tosee what happens.
And this is like one tinyexample of so many ideas that I
present in dream sorcery forways that you can have amazing
magical experiences.
And, by the way, theexperiences that you have in
lucid dreaming they change you.
(26:18):
You come forth from thoseexperiences knowing you've sort
of been rewired by them.
You can get downloads andthings and divinations that are
so much more organic than whatwe can do while we're awake
because of the density of thesephysics.
Here we don't have thoselimitations in lucidity.
(26:43):
So we can do all kinds of stuff, including practice like
ceremonial magical techniques.
You know, if there's somethingthat you, for example, like to
chant or do or say or like aprayerful gesture, Trying those
things out in lucid dreamingshows you literally what the
energetic output of that thingis.
So, for example, I've gotthere's a chant that myself and
(27:03):
a lot of the Morrigan folks useat retreat and during ritual,
which is part of her ancientpeace prophecy.
That's written in Old Irish inthe myths and the first few
words of it are shidh ko nev nevko dovin, and it means peace to
the sky, sky to the earth.
This is from the ancient Irishstuff and so sometimes, you know
(27:26):
, we've used this a lot inwaking to like draw this sort of
connecting earth and sky energydown through our central column
so that we can be balanced andcentered, you know, um, by
honoring her, but also by usingthese old ways, and we chant it,
and so I've been able to gointo lucid dreaming.
(27:49):
Remember that I wanted to seewhat happens when I intone these
chants there, and then you getto literally see and feel what
that energy does upon thelandscape, upon the other dream
characters that are there, andit'll blow your mind, Like any
magic that you do.
It doesn't matter what it is.
(28:11):
You know I talk about activatingrunes, doing invoking and
banishing pentagrams,shape-shifting.
I've gotten to feel firsthandwhat it feels like to be a raven
.
You know you can't.
You can't do that physicallyhere, except for in the mental
plane or the journey scape, youknow.
(28:32):
But, like in lucid dreaming,you can do it literally and you
know it's interesting.
I was talking to someone theother day about this.
So when we dream, the cortexfires just as though we were
doing those actual actionsphysically.
So, for example, if you have adream and you're running your
(28:55):
motor, cortex fires the same wayit does when you're running in
physical life, except that weare in sleep paralysis mode.
So luckily, most of us aren't,unless we have a sleep disorder
or something.
But my question instantly isthen well, what the heck
pathways are firing when I'mflying in a dream?
(29:16):
Because I don't have physicalwings.
What neural pathways are firingwhen I shoot fire out of my
palms in a dream, because Ican't do that here.
Where are the neural groovesfor this?
We have them.
We do.
So I believe we activate thesenew magical pathways because a
(29:37):
lot of times if you do that in alucid dream and then you wake
up, you can still feel theenergy of it for a long time
after you're awake.
Then I know it's doingsomething.
It has helped me to increasethe effectiveness of my mage
skills, meaning the magic I canjust project off the body on the
(29:57):
fly in the moment.
It has really catapulted thosethings.
It's like that alchemical labthat lets you witness the
mysteries in a hastened way thatwe can't, otherwise wouldn't be
able to do because our finitebodies are only here for a short
time.
(30:17):
So, we want to make the most outof this particular dense
physical life experience thatwe're having, and we really
should, because this is magical,like I, kind of.
I have a personal belief thatwe came here for a reason like
to experience this.
You know what I mean.
Like all the sensation thatcomes with being here in this
plane is rich.
(30:37):
It's like you know, it blowsyour mind if you really get into
it and think about it.
But we should try to make themost of this reality.
And I think, think about it.
But we should try to make themost of this reality and I think
getting those magical downloadsfrom the expansiveness of all
the other unlimited realitiesaccessible to us in dreams and
bringing it here into ourphysical life is a way to really
(31:04):
evolve and deepen what you knowto be true.
I love that.
So just I'm like you know, Iwant people to go for it.
Granddaughter Crow (31:12):
I love that because I often do talk about
our neural pathways are kind oflike different, like okay, if I
want to go to work, I take thisroad, like literally in the
physical realm.
The same is in the brain.
If I want to get this objectdone or this task done, I go
(31:33):
through this same roadway.
But if one were to buildstraighter roadways or bridges
or I could fly there and open upthe mind, like you said.
There and open up the mind,like you said, literally your
brain is kind of building thesenew I love it new magical neural
(31:55):
pathways.
Then your creative space andmore of your own divine divinity
and connection to divinity,your magus, your alchemist
inside, your magician within,then that comes in and creates.
(32:15):
It's just mind-blowing, it'smind-blowing, it is.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (32:20):
It's as though those magical neural
pathways, when opened andstimulated by these experiences,
connect you more deeply andmore plugged in to this
enchanted worldview.
You know to the ability to livein the magic that is here all
around us but which is hardoftentimes for us to tap into,
(32:43):
especially in this day and agewhere we've been raised in a
more scientifically basedsociety, you know, a society
that has historically prizedscience over spirituality and
minimized things like dreams,imagination, psychic experiences
, spirit experiences.
(33:04):
We need to bring that back up,you know.
We need to become again likethe society that really values
dreams and enchantment andintuition and empathy and all of
that.
We need that.
It's interesting I heard oncethis was so many years ago, I
(33:26):
think this must have been backwhen I was doing my master's
Someone talked about the Earthand the hemispheres of the Earth
, like parts of the earth, willbe on a different part of their
trajectory.
(33:56):
So what we had for a long timewas here in the West we were
going way high up the curve onthe science end of things, and
in the East they were still morein the science end of things,
and in the East they were stillmore in the spiritual end of
things.
And then we are now starting tohave some resurgence of going
back into the spiritual end ofthings and the East is getting
(34:19):
very scientific and they alwayssay that like the best points in
history and I think we'vealready just passed it, by the
way.
So now we're going to be inprobably another crappy point.
But the best points are whenthe wave of the West and the
wave of the East intersect inthe middle, when they're both in
(34:40):
the mid-range of experiencingsomething new, but then they'll
go to extremes, and that's aslong as my arms are.
But you know, so the the um,those intersections, and I think
you know we've been growing uphere in the west in a time where
, yeah, we, we've been told askids, at least like in my
(35:03):
spiritually bereft upbringingyeah, we've been told, oh, it's
just your imagination or it'sjust dreams, and I'm like, right
, I don't know.
I think it's more and it's timefor us to actively, you know,
engage it.
We can only improve how thingsare going by engaging this stuff
(35:24):
on the personal level.
Loads of us.
Granddaughter Crow (35:28):
Yes, you know, I often think of it that,
in this dimension that we areexisting in in human form, the
law of duality, that there arethe polarities, and having the
polarities is really abouthelping us to understand where
center is, is really abouthelping us to understand where
(35:51):
center is.
You know, and there was onetime in my life that I was going
through, you know, divorce andjust difficult times, and I felt
the polarities, I felt theduality within my own system,
within my own life, within myown heart, within my own life,
within my own heart, within myown head, and I began to go.
(36:12):
I am the point at which twoopposites cross.
I am the point at which twoopposites cross what you're
saying, the intersection betweenthe dualistic, whether it's
science versus, you know, theEast versus West or all of that,
(36:34):
the intersection is where thebeauty is and taking the ride on
the whole, you know, rollercoaster that it is.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (36:44):
Right, yeah, because, like you said a
lot of times, we don't know whatelse there is unless we have
the perspective.
Granddaughter Crow (36:52):
So, how.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (36:53):
You know.
People are always like oh, whyis there despair?
You know, why is theresuffering?
Why is there grief?
You know people Well, becausemaybe we wouldn't know what
bliss and joy and union were ifwe didn't understand the other
side of things.
Yep, you know.
(37:14):
So, yeah, I mean, in the lawsof hermetics they talk about
this and there's like thependulum mechanic where you know
that if you experience thispoint of amazing bliss, by the
laws of the universe things willswing over into the point of
despair, the equal and opposite.
(37:35):
You know the energy exchange thecycles that are natural and
inherent in everything whatkeeps going around and around.
But when you understand thatthe pendulum is going to keep
cycling, you can kind of stepoff and watch the despair and
understand it from the vantagepoint of bliss, until it swings
back over there again.
Then you can jump back in andengage.
(37:56):
It helps your own, your mageskills are like largely that of
emotional regulation.
Granddaughter Crow (38:05):
Yes, so I, based on that that's a really
good segue to like thinking whatyou just said in the scientific
mind and how it's alldownplayed in childhood.
Oh, that's just yourimagination, it's just a dream
and kind of coming into more ofwhat would be getting back to a
(38:28):
world that can dream.
And so, based on that and Iknow that you've got a lot of
thoughts I can see you just likegetting thoughts.
First question what is thedifference between how you, as
an occultist, understand dreamsversus how science lays out
(38:51):
dreams?
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (38:53):
This is why I wrote the book.
So because science and Westernpsychology tend to present us
with the idea of dreams as beingthe crap the brain does to
regulate itself after a day, andthey look at dreams, and even
some people who do a really goodjob looking at dreams present
(39:14):
it as everything inside of thedream relates only to you and
your mind and everything in thedream represents you or a part
of yourself.
I, as an occultist, do notbelieve this, because I have had
all these psychic experiencesthat have taken me in dreams and
(39:34):
other places outside of timeand outside of myself.
So I'm writing this book onlucid dreaming for the magically
minded person who believes thatwe can be having real spirit
experiences and contact withother beings in our dreams, who
has noticed that a lot of ourdreams are precognitive, meaning
(39:56):
that we are transcending time.
I have so much documentation inmy dream journal of
precognitive dreams.
This is my proof.
It'll happen exactly a lot oftimes.
Sometimes it's metaphorical orsometimes it's another form of
pre-rehearsal, but precognitivedreaming happens in a decent
percentage of dreams foreveryone.
(40:17):
You wouldn't know it unless youwere documenting and being very
diligent about that andcultivating good recall and all
of that stuff which my book canhelp you do.
That too, you know, and all ofthat stuff which my book can
help you do that too.
I have stuff in there for that.
But when we are going ahead intime, that shows us that our
conscious awareness is notstaying just tethered to the
(40:38):
body in the here and now.
It is trans-temporal.
And all these people I knowloads of people who have had
spirits, beloved spirits of thedead, the ancestors come and
tell them things that theycouldn't have known, that saved
their lives, you know, or thathealed them, which they couldn't
have done without, like theseare real spirit contacts.
It's not just you making stuffup in your mind.
(41:00):
So I believe that dreams aretranspersonal.
I just led a huge workshop atMystic South last weekend down
in Atlanta, having a group ofabout 75 people do active dream
work together, and then I hadthem write their impressions of
their dreams on an index cardand hand them all into me and
everyone asked divinationquestions of their own in their
(41:22):
own notebooks, not sharing.
And then I shuffled all thecards and handed them back out
and do you know what happened?
The dreams that everyone hadlegit directly answered the
divination questions of whoeverrandomly got that card.
Because our dreams are sotranspersonal and so
interconnective, like that is athought responsive place where
(41:46):
all of our intelligences can goand intersect and learn from
each other, why are we notmaking use of this alchemical
classroom, this spirituallyevolutionary place that we all
have access to as our magicalbirthright, as conscious beings?
We all have it.
Yeah, you know.
Anyone who says they're notdreaming they're just not
(42:07):
remembering that we're dreaming.
We are all dreaming everysecond, that we're sleeping, not
just in REM sleep either, allthe time, I mean there's so much
we can do.
Granddaughter Crow (42:20):
Yeah, I love that Because the concept
that I think kind of almostdelineates or explains that, the
delineation between you know,the you know having my own
dreams, and I've heard thescience scientists say, oh, your
brain is pooping out everythingyou know or whatever.
You know all that and I'm likefine with that, that's fine If
(42:43):
my brain needs to do that.
But the beauty is is that andI'm just going to go here the
word psyche.
A lot of times we understandthe word psyche to be an
individual phenomenon.
When I have seen and experiencedthe word psyche as a collective
(43:07):
exchange without words, whetherit's telepathy or in the
experience that you just talkedabout, it's an interactive,
external, and the best way Iexplain this is like I don't
hold a psyche inside of me asmuch as only I am like a fish
(43:30):
swimming in a pool of water andthat water being the psyche.
So that's kind of the different, the leap between oh, I dreamt
that because I saw an orange ona commercial to wait a second, I
actually need some vitamin Cbecause da, da, da, da, da and
(43:52):
putting a little bit morethought and extracting the
interpretation and meaningaround it instead of sloughing
it off, and I believe that magicis happening all the time.
But if we don't see it, wedon't see it.
But when we do occultiststudying, we began to recognize
what is always there.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (44:13):
I know that was a mouthful, so yeah,
you're so right, we're reallyjust going deeper, you know, and
that doesn't mean that we don'thave dreams that have symbolic
and emotional significance to us.
We absolutely can.
And it doesn't mean that youwon't have dreams that pertain
to the stuff you were thinkingabout in waking.
(44:33):
You know, if you watch, ifyou're going to binge 10
episodes of the Walking Deadbefore you go, if you're going
to binge 10 episodes of theWalking Dead before you go to
sleep, you're going to have somezombie apocalypse dreams.
Okay, and that that doesn'tmean your dreams are only based
on what you're thinking about.
It just means that dreams are athought responsive environment,
so the things that you'rethinking about can lead you down
(44:53):
those paths of experience.
But then your consciousnessreally gets to experience the
zombie apocalypse firsthandthrough your dreams, because all
of your dreams are realexperiences that you're having.
Actually, you know your mind isgetting to experience all these
things that we don'tnecessarily get here to help us
learn and understand more.
(45:14):
So, yeah, it is reallyinteresting to think about that.
I think it's important,especially for those who already
have either like an earth-basedspiritual practice or other
enchanted worldview typepractices where you are seeking
that which lies beyond the nakedeye, that which connects you to
(45:36):
something greater, but maybenot in a structured religious
way.
The dream time is the, maybethe best way to explore this,
because it is so universal.
It does not have to adhere todogma.
You know dogma, you know it isthe.
(46:01):
It's the best place to exploreconsciousness that there is,
because you get to do anythingthat you could fathom here, but
without the limitations of thephysical world.
So it is like raw intelligence,you know it is like being a raw
, intelligent, supernaturalspirit that can move around and
do whatever you want, becauseyou know your dream body can't
get hurt so you can do all theexperiments.
And to look at dreaming as anencapsulated thing that is just
(46:26):
within this bony cranium, it'sreally really kind of, you know,
ripping us off, really kind ofyou know, ripping us off.
Granddaughter Crow (46:38):
Yeah, I agree.
And another beautiful pointthat you make in your work and
in your book is, well, that Ithat I extracted from it is it
doesn't matter necessarily whatmagical path, you don't have to
say I'm an occultist, I'm awitch, I'm a shaman, so I can
(46:58):
work with this book.
You can be whomever and workwith this skill set that maybe
we have forgotten called dreamtime, with dreamscapes and dream
abilities that we weren'tencouraged to do.
(47:18):
And now, if given thepermission, I'm like, oh, you
mean I have permission, becausesometimes I'm in a dream and I'm
like, oh, this is the part whenI run and that never works out.
Maybe I'll try flying this time.
I mean, I do that kind of stuffall the time and then I'm like
(47:39):
think up and I start flying, youknow, and so I play a lot in my
dreams.
But the beauty is that thiswork that you're doing will
enhance any spiritual path andany relationship with the divine
as it reveals itself to thatindividual.
And also, it sounds like youcan do healing.
(48:02):
You can do.
I mean I was almost like wait,this is ketamine therapy, you
know.
I mean this is, like, you know,trauma resolution, like there's
, it's endless, whatever you cando so much, so much.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (48:15):
You can do direct healing, shadow work,
ancestral healing, time travel.
You name really poised to takeoff with some of this material
(48:41):
quite easily.
Like I think you know, it won'ttake a lot for you to be.
You're like one hair below,being lucid more often, I
believe.
The second thing is that youwere alluding to yeah, actually
anyone who is looking to expandtheir footprint in the dream
(49:02):
realms and do more with it willbenefit from this.
You don't have to be a witch.
I give enough basics thatanyone can engage the material.
I do have a lot of stuff inthere for the witches and the
occultists.
The last whole part of the bookis about what is some of the
magic you can do at your altar.
You know, or like in yourwaking life that feeds this
(49:24):
cycle.
So waking magic to helppredispose you to becoming lucid
, so that you can do more magicin lucidity, so that you become
a better magician, so that youcan.
So it's a virtuous cycle and itreally does fuel, fuel itself
like that, if you take thisattitude.
Granddaughter Crow (50:02):
You said quote we need to come back to
being a dreaming society again,end quote.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (50:09):
What does that mean?
Well, you know my mentor inactive dreaming.
That is Robert Moss.
So I did years of in-person,24-7 retreats with him and he is
a teacher of shamanic dreaming.
He calls it the Robert MossSchool of Active Dreaming,
because active meaning thatwe're not only dreaming when
(50:30):
we're sleeping, dreaming rightnow.
We need to wake the up to thiswaking dream that we are in if
we're really going to engage itand be present and do our best.
And so his mission that I'vebeen hearing, you know, year
(50:50):
after year after year of manyyears of training as one of his
dream facilitators is that wedesperately need to return to
becoming a dreaming societyagain, because in doing this we
find the threads that connect usall, not those that divide.
We find that this is, it's aconnective, unifying place.
(51:12):
You know, the dream realms arethat which connects everything.
It's that which connects us tothe greater intelligences of the
universe and which alert us tothe realities of this dream in a
deeper way.
So that is.
He taught me that goal and thatmotto, but I'm trying to do my
(51:32):
best to spread it because I dobelieve deep within the marrow
of my bones that it isincredibly important and that it
only happens one at a time, butthat we need to.
We need this domino effect.
We need to go back to being adreaming society once again, I
(51:53):
love that, I absolutely lovethat.
Granddaughter Crow (51:56):
I I could, I could just sit here and think
about what that would actuallylook like.
I think that it would look likewe would get less surprised, or
maybe we would.
We would just be like, oh okay,yep, there it is, you know.
(52:19):
And being able to not onlyactivate that scientific, left,
logical aspect of our mind, ourconsciousness, that is so
upholden in the Western societyat this point, and to be able to
also have that creativity thatyou know beauty, the dreaming,
(52:42):
the music, all of that and kindof balance it all out, so that
the expression it's almost likewe forgot half of our
intelligence.
You know, and if not more Ican't, you know, there's no
scale, but we forgot a, a veryhuge part of our intelligence
and so we can only get so far.
(53:03):
We need to be able to activatethe other part of us that is
given to us and move forwardyeah, we really do.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (53:14):
we really do.
We really do, I mean, and it'sit's super important.
You know Robert talks about all.
He has studied and researchedthis his whole life and has
written numerous books ondreaming that have inspired me
to do the work I'm doing now.
But he talks about indigenouscultures where the tradition was
(53:37):
to wake up each morning andnothing happens before.
Everyone shared dreams and thenthose dreams would be used to
understand what was happening inthe community at that time or
to make decisions.
That would be for the best goodof everyone.
And I believe that if we canreturn more towards being a
(54:00):
dreaming society, that we drawforth more of the juice of
empathy, of humanity, ofconnectivity and things that
truly lead us in aheart-centered way, because we
understand who we are connectedto much more.
Also, understanding and being adreaming society means having a
better relationship with death,and that fear is something that
(54:24):
burdens our society because wehave a very unhealthy
relationship with it.
That which happens in the night, in magic, is equated to death,
and that which happens in theday is equated to life light and
dark, night and day, life anddeath the cycles that all relate
to each other in parallel.
So bringing forth the magic ofdreams into day-to-day life is
(54:48):
to bring the understanding ofdeath and the cycles of
interconnectivity of us all tothe forefront.
Granddaughter Crow (54:55):
Well said, well said my newfound soul
sister, nikki.
I love you.
Nikki Wardwell Sl (55:02):
Granddaughter Crow.
I really really do.
I feel like our energies arereally like flowing on the same
current.
Granddaughter Crow (55:10):
Yeah, they absolutely are, and you guys
pick up are and you guys pick up, follow, follow Nikki.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (55:23):
What is your handle on Instagram?
Yeah, it's Nikki WardwellSleeth, all over the place.
So I'm Nikki Wardwell Sleeth onyou know, just like it's, just
like it is right here Two Ks onInstagram, on same on facebook
and same with my website, whichis just nicki wardwell sleethcom
.
So there's links to the socialmedia there and, you know, to
(55:44):
the books there and stuff.
But, uh, yeah, I welcome, youknow, uh, people who want to
follow me, to have more contacts, to share dream material with
and ask questions.
Uh, for, you know, as well asfor bringing in the spirits, you
know, of our ancestors and thedeities and our higher selves,
(56:07):
um, more directly into ourday-to-day lives.
Um, I'm here for it we're herefor it.
Granddaughter Crow (56:14):
We're here for it.
Is there any?
Is there anything else that wedidn't cover or that you feel
inspired to say to the, to thelisteners and to the viewers?
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (56:26):
no, I just want to say thank you to
you, granddaughter crow, forhaving such a great show and for
being inspired to bring thiskind of material to people,
because we really, really needit.
So I would just say that I wisheveryone bright and inspiring
dreams, and especially in this,our shared waking dream.
Granddaughter Crow (56:47):
Well said, well said, well said Well.
Thank you guys for payingattention to yet another episode
of Belief being and Beyond.
I am your host, GranddaughterCrow.
Like, subscribe, share withthose that you're like.
I bet Aunt Sally would likethis.
I bet whoever you think isgoing to most benefit from this
(57:10):
information, and if you'relistening to this on a podcast,
you can text the show commentbelow.
And anyway, I love you guys, Ilove you, I love you, I love you
and we will see you on theflippity flip.
Welcome to Belief, being and Beyond with
your host, Granddaughter Crow.
Hi everyone, granddaughter Crowhere, welcome to yet another
episode of Belief, Being andBeyond, and this time we're
going to dash in a little bit ofoccult yes, and talk about
(00:25):
dreams.
I am so excited to have myspecial guest on today.
It's Nikki Wardwell Sleath.
Really quick, before I bring onNikki, Nikki is a direct
descendant of Samuel Wardwell,which actually was hung in the
(00:47):
Salem Witch Trials, so that,like I talk about ancestors all
the time and that is a stance,and I just really wanted to
highlight that.
Also an occult teacher, authorand founder of the Society of
Witchcraft and Old Magic.
She's formally trained inAmerican witchcraft and also
(01:09):
dreams shamanic energy healingfacilitator and also holds a
master's degree in integrativehealth and healing.
You can always find Nikki andall of her books and everything
that's coming up atwwwnikkiwardwellsleithcom.
So hi, nikki, thank you forbeing on the show, welcome.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (01:33):
Hi, oh my gosh, thanks so much for having
me.
I loved meeting you throughLlewellyn Con and when you
mentioned your podcast to me Iwas like this is going to be
energetically amazing.
Granddaughter Crow (01:47):
Oh, thank you, I really appreciate you
taking the time.
And the first thing that I wantto know I've watched a lot of
your interviews to includeLlewellyn Khan 2025.
People go check that out.
Amazing All of the authorsthere.
But one thing that you say andidentify as is an occultist, and
(02:13):
I love that because I don'tthink that it's talked about
enough.
You know, many people go to thegeneric I'm a witch,
da-da-da-da-da, but whyoccultist?
And could you tell us what anoccultist?
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (02:30):
is yeah, well, I feel I like reclaiming
words that don't need to havenegative connotations to them,
but that do because of terribleperiods of history.
Terrible periods of history.
(02:51):
So I feel like the word occultcauses people to bristle a
little bit because theyinstantly think that it's like a
dark demonology, you know,dredging up things that are
shadowy.
And that's not.
It really just means hidden.
Occult just means like themystery.
So being an occultist justmeans that.
You know, I consider myself astudent of all manner of
(03:13):
combinations of energy andconsciousness, and I always say
to my students, because that'sall there is, every single thing
you can experience, conceive of, encounter is some combination
of energy and intelligence orconscious awareness, and that's
it.
And so those are things, though, that we can't see with the
naked eye, and science has verylittle explanation for a lot of
(03:36):
these things.
You know, these things that wecan experience energetically,
things in spirit, and so I likethat term because it has a few
sort of insinuations that witchdoes not have, even though I am
a formally trained witch.
I'm a formally trained Reikimaster teacher and a formally
trained teacher and facilitatorof active dreaming, which is a
(03:59):
shamanic style of dreamingcreated by Robert Moss.
I have these titles, but witchtends to be used in so many ways
now that people don'tnecessarily know what you mean,
and witch can just be someonewho kind of identifies with a
earth-based spiritual lifestyle.
(04:20):
Occultist implies more of theapplication of an academic and
studious vantage point upon yourstudy of the mysteries and of
the unseen, and that there's nosort of limit to it.
You know so, and I'm all aboutthe development of actual skill
(04:44):
in the body, what I call sorceryskills or mage skills, and
these are things that studyingthe occult, like the old
grimoires, the philosophers ofantiquity, and then bringing
those teachings to the forefrontof today so that my students
and the public can still benefitfrom them.
You know, this requires a lotof digging, a lot of
(05:14):
intellectual application.
So occultist is more accuratefor me in terms of that very
studious approach which is alsopractical.
It's studious so that we canhave an effect on the practical,
but I like it to be broad.
So that is why I use that title, because I also sort of, you
know, have my feet in a lot ofdifferent waters.
(05:38):
I'm not only a witch, you know,I am also a healer, you know, I
am also a dream teacher, amongmany other things, half of which
I forget half the time becausethere's so many.
You know I couldn't just, butit works for me.
Yeah well, I am a formallytrained witch and, as you
(06:06):
mentioned, directly descendedfrom one of the hanged in Salem,
samuel Samuel Wardwell, myeight times great grandfather.
I do think we need todestigmatize that word as well,
and I did write a book aboutthat, called you Might Be a
Witch.
That was back in 2017.
But you know so again, whichhas come to the forefront and
(06:29):
has so many people nowidentifying that I'm going
deeper and identifying as anoccultist and trying to help
people.
Granddaughter Crow (06:39):
Not be afraid to do that as well, I
love it because when I firsthear it I think student, teacher
, resourcer, you know,researcher, sorceress, magician,
constant, continuous learning,constant, continuous curiosity
(07:02):
of things that are esoteric andor hidden from the naked eye.
And I 100% am all in theclasses that I teach.
I'm like all is energy, people.
That's not a philosophy, that'sscience.
Check it out, albert Einstein.
All is energy, be it past,present, future, da, da, da, da
(07:25):
da.
And really what we're doing isworking in the energy and we can
do this so many different waysand I love that You're saying
the same thing.
Yeah, yeah it is.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (07:36):
It's the same thing.
It's quite universal.
Started to go deeply into theirexploration of magic and
spirits and the mysteries has isgoing to come to that same
conclusion.
So, no matter what yourtradition, no matter what you
know background you came from,if you're going deeply enough,
(07:57):
it's all energy andconsciousness in all different,
extremely unique and amazinglybeautiful combinations you know,
and that's what we're studying.
So I don't think the occult, youknow, should be.
Scary Dreams are of the occult,you know ceremonial magic is of
the occult.
The intelligence of you knowyour favorite crystal is of the
(08:21):
occult.
It's all it all is.
So I love that Not to be fearedNot to be feared, you know.
Granddaughter Crow (08:30):
that also brings me to another thing that
I love about.
When I was looking at thethings that you do and the books
that you write, you know, andjust kind of getting a summation
of what you're bringing to theworld, and one of the things
that really popped out as atheme for me is that you are not
(08:53):
just bringing concepts, you'rebringing concepts with
application, which I think isimportant.
Which I think is important.
It's very, very importantbecause, like you said, we can
sit here and go oh yeah, I wentdown to the witchy shop and I
(09:13):
bought a deck of tarot cards anda pendulum and I am now a witch
and you put it on, you know, inyour wherever, and you never
really utilize it.
And then you call on a deityevery now and again and you're
like hey, could you please dothis?
I'll, I'll give you a gift andyou take it to.
(09:35):
Oh honey, no, this is not.
Yes, you can do that, but youneed to build relationships, you
need to have practice.
You need to build relationships, you need to have practice, you
need to have discipline.
You need to actually, becauseanother book and I, we are
definitely going to get into thedream book and all of that, but
the one that you did before,that about.
(09:57):
You know the the goddess sealsyes, even though I don't have a
copy at my disposal right now, Iwas like wait, this really is a
yes, the goddess seals, let'sgo ahead and take.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (10:16):
Yep, yeah this is a really gorgeous book,
you know, and it's it is.
It is full of directlyapplicable magical symbols.
It's actually modeled after thekey of Solomon the King,
because I was acclimated to thatwork as a neophyte in my own
(10:42):
formal witchcraft training andthose are old angelic seals that
King Solomon was said to have,you know, created through
channeling the intelligences ofthe angels he was speaking to,
organized them into planetarycategories so that the magician
could understand the vibrationsand then use them as it's like a
bat signal.
(11:03):
So, you know, a seal is like aVIP calling card.
It's like having the phonenumber of someone directly
rather than flinging through theyellow pages when you're
looking for a contact you knowor a resource.
It's like you know alreadyyou're, they're pre-recommended.
Basically, it's like you wantto get a roof on your house.
(11:24):
Well, do you want to just golike eeny, meeny, miny, moe, you
know, online and pick somebody,and then you're like, ooh,
don't know.
Or do you want the friends whoknow you to recommend someone
that they already know is greatat this and that you can trust
and that you know they're goingto be safe for you to interact
(11:46):
with?
So the God.
So basically, I learned how touse the seals from the key of
Solomon in that way for magic,and I saw how powerful it was.
And but for years I'm goingokay, this is great, this makes
me more effective, this gives meresources and deeper skill.
(12:08):
However, I'm not really one whofeels called to the angels.
I was looking for these sealsfor the goddesses for years,
especially the Morrigan andHekate, some of these beings
that I felt really called totheir teachings and their
magical skill sets, and for agesI'd be searching and not
(12:30):
finding it.
And so finally I said, well, ifI need this, if I want this,
there must be other people thatdo too.
So I started going into sacredspace with the goddesses that I
felt called to do the most magicwith, and creating these seals
and consecrating themceremonially and then setting up
all of the instructions that Ihad channeled, the magical words
(12:52):
, all of the things, so thatother people could use them too.
So, yeah, the Miskatonic booksdid an amazing job.
This is the regular hardcoveredition.
And then there's also a fancy,fancy leather bound one that
comes in like a clamshell casewhere you lift it out and
there's a secret compartment forlike a metal, like if you're an
occult library person that's.
(13:13):
But this one, I mean, it'sactually pretty reasonably
priced for what it is and it isa grimoire.
All my original art is in thereon all of the seals.
They did a really nice job, butthen for each they also
included a graphic designversion of all of the seals as
(13:34):
well, so you can use them indifferent ways.
But, yeah, I think it'simportant that people have tools
and I think it's important thatwe have grimoires that are
accessible to serious magiciansnow, because a lot of people are
intimidated by the oldgrimoires because the language
is archaic.
Sometimes the instructions saythings like thou must don the
(13:59):
linen vestments that were spunby a virgin in the hour of
Mercury, on like the first darkmoon of the season after the
vernal equinox, and then youhave to build a three by three
altar of solid gold and then youhave to, you know, meditate for
12 hours a day and we're like,hey, in our world, how are we
(14:19):
going to do stuff like that?
So we need real tools andinstructions that work now.
Yes, we can take inspirationfrom those concepts and the
ancient philosophers and themages of yore, but we need to
find a way to do the magic hereand now, because this is the
world we're living in.
Granddaughter Crow (14:39):
That's exactly right.
I absolutely love that and Ican't wait to check out that
book.
It just it's.
I love seals because it'spictorial, it's a symbol and I
know, as we get into the dreambook, you do have a lot of
symbols in there and activatingsymbols.
(14:59):
So, but you're absolutely right,being able to make it in real
life, real time and do the workbehind what all of that energy
is, instead of just going well,I'm just going to you know, call
Hecate, and not trulyunderstand what you're doing or
(15:24):
how to respect, honor and bewith and build that relationship
with.
I often say that you know, thisisn't, this isn't like a
grocery store or a supermarket.
This is something where youliterally build relationships
with the energy right, theconscious energy in the forms
(15:48):
that it's revealing itself toyou, and I really find that
that's extremely important.
And I want to hear yourthoughts on what is the
difference between being justdoing it conceptually and then
really getting in and activatingit, and why would we want to
really dig in and activate youknow our magic, instead of just
(16:11):
hold it conceptually?
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (16:14):
Well, I mean when you dig in and get
invested and build relationshipswith other intelligences, that
naturally generates way moreenergy that is flowing between
you.
So when you just do thingsconceptually, that means
(16:34):
literally, you know, in themeaning of those words, means
that what you're doing exists onthe mental plane.
Conceptualizing is on themental plane of existence, but
we have a physical plane.
That is part of our existencehere and that's generally where
people want manifestationresults is on the physical plane
.
You know, when people doabundance magic or creative
(16:58):
magic or, you know, advancetheir career or find love or
enhance their communications,but no matter what you're doing,
whether it's healing, youusually want to see and feel the
results here so that you canenjoy them in this physical
reality in which we arecurrently mostly anchored.
You know, that's how I look atit Like we're in a physical body
(17:22):
right now, in a dense existencethat has gravity and all kinds
of laws of physics and stuff,and this is where our lives are
playing out.
This is our group consciousnessthat we are currently sharing
and we want to see results here.
So you don't want to keep yourmagic only in the mental plane.
That would be like saying youknow you're only okay with
(17:45):
experiencing things invisualization and in imagination
, but not drawing that here.
So how do you draw things fromthe mental plane?
So how do you draw things fromthe mental plane to the physical
plane, energy and so, yeah, youknow I do.
I talk about that in both thegoddess seals and in dream
sorcery, about when you'reworking with spirits and magic.
(18:07):
You need to lay some goodgroundwork.
You know, in both books I giveideas for meditation techniques,
offerings and things that canhelp you grow that, that vested,
cyclical connection that existsbetween you and another being.
You know, think about how youmeet and befriend other people.
(18:29):
You know you don't just walkinto a party and meet.
Your friend says like, oh, meetthis house builder.
And you say, oh, my God, it'sso nice to meet you.
Can you come over and reside myhouse real quick?
Like, you know, I'll pay you.
(18:49):
You don't like, that's not howit works.
You know you, you're meetingthem at a party.
This is a social thing.
You're both individual peoplehaving your own lives.
You would be like, oh, reallynice to meet you.
That's interesting.
How did you get into that?
What do you specialize in?
Like, how's the business going?
Do you want to do more of thiswork.
You know, you kind of get toknow somebody what do they care
about?
And then get to know a littlebit about you and that you are,
(19:20):
you know, empathetic.
In that way, you build aconnection where you can just
activate the seal and be likehecate.
I love what.
I guess what we should do.
Yeah, it's like when you callyour friend, you know, and
you're like we should go down tothe park this weekend and pick
up some garbage together andthen we'll go for a hike and
(19:41):
maybe have a picnic and havesome fun together.
You know like I want to have funand understand my friends, my
colleagues, my collaborators, mydeities, my spirits, and do
stuff that we're both vested indoing.
So that stuff is so importantand I'm really glad you asked
about that, because we weretalking about this too just
(20:01):
before we began.
I think the idea that so manypeople are really inspired about
magic and spirituality anddoing this kind of work and we
have so many amazing books andstuff available to us nowadays
and people will get excited andthey'll read that book and read
the whole book, sometimeswithout actually, you know,
(20:23):
activating the steps or doinglike, hey, maybe I should record
myself in my phone reading thismeditation from this book aloud
and then sit down in sacredspace with some offerings, with
the door shut and the ringer off, and do it full out like take
the time, make the work sacred,but you have to bring the work
(20:44):
to to your physical life and thephysical plane in order for it
to grow yeah, I love, I amdigging exactly what you're
saying.
Granddaughter Crow (20:53):
It's almost like from my position as a
practitioner.
I am like, honestly, why wouldthe gods and goddesses or the
energy that be, or Mother Earth,or all that I deify and find
sacred, if I can't show up forthem, why would I ask them to
(21:16):
show up for me?
This isn't.
This is a relationship.
This, you know.
I'm like, if I am going to askyou to show up for me, first I
am going to figure out who youare, how we can build a
relationship.
I'm going to be offering mytime, I'm going to be offering
my energy, in whatever form theyfind it, because that makes me
(21:44):
go.
I mean, at that point I'm like,and they offer, I feel like,
okay, I earned this gift,instead of, oh well, I can't
(22:04):
take that, or you know, anddisrespect it.
It's it's receptacle.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (22:07):
Totally and you want to feel good about
it too.
You know, no one likes to be ina friendship where the other
person is constantly like canyou do this for me?
Oh, can you do this for me thenext day?
Oh, can you do this?
Can you lend me this?
Can we do it?
It has to be a two-way street,and so that's why I do put
myself in service of the godsthat I work with in a lot of
(22:30):
ways.
I mean even in the act ofco-running.
I'm a co-facilitator now of thefacilitator of the Morgan's Call
Retreat, and that is, you know,we don't get paid.
We work on that all year long.
You know, I write rituals, Ihelp train people in their
oracular speech and the thingsthat we offer.
(22:51):
You know, it takes all year toput that event together and I
teach classes at it, and wedon't get paid for any of that
stuff.
I just do it because theMorrigan is awesome.
The Morrigan is awesome.
This is me telling you guys that.
But when you have someone thatyou really respect and that you
love working with in your life,who is a spiritual being, you
(23:11):
know that's a way of being inservice sharing with other
people that, their stories,their energy, that they then get
to have a foothold here, youknow, in this reality where they
probably don't have a physicalbody like we do.
So by us doing things like thatmaking offerings, sharing their
poetry, sharing their storiesthose are ways that you can feel
(23:35):
good about giving themsomething energetically that
benefits them and then, in turn,you can feel good about
whatever gifts happen.
When you call in, you know, toinvolve them in your magic.
Granddaughter Crow (23:48):
I absolutely love that.
I love that I could do a wholepodcast just on that.
I love that I could do a wholepodcast just on that.
Totally, you just had anotherbook that released in May 2025
(24:11):
called Dream Sorcery the Ritualand Magic of Lucid Dreaming, and
I love that you say that it'sthe ritual, because what we were
just talking about really helpsus to kind of understand the
approach of the book, meaningthis is not just a dream
interpretation book, this is notjust, you know, one of those oh
, I saw a spider in my dream,you know da-da-da-da-da it's.
(24:32):
It comes from a veryactiveistic, occultist point of
view to be able to put this inpractice.
Because I I was watching youone time and you said something
about we spend one third of ourlife dreaming.
Why don't we do somethingmagical with that?
And I was just like yes.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (24:53):
Yes, yeah , the ritual means you're
exactly right and it's a greatsegue from the conversation we
were just having Doing activethings in your life to
predispose you to be able to domore magic in your dreams.
And how you can do thispurposefully is by training
yourself to become lucid in yourdreams more often.
(25:15):
When you are lucid, that meansyou suddenly become 100% aware
that you are sleeping anddreaming.
There are various stages ofthat, but full lucidity means
you remember who you are, whereyou are, when you are, and you
would remember anything that youhad intended to do in dreaming
(25:38):
while you were awake next timethat you became lucid.
So if you become lucid, you'llgo.
Oh, my God, that's right.
I wanted to summon Isis in mylucid dream, so then you could
stand there in your dream bodyand say I want to speak to the
great goddess Isis, and then yourelease expectation and watch
(25:58):
and wait in the dream scene tosee what happens.
And this is like one tinyexample of so many ideas that I
present in dream sorcery forways that you can have amazing
magical experiences.
And, by the way, theexperiences that you have in
lucid dreaming they change you.
(26:18):
You come forth from thoseexperiences knowing you've sort
of been rewired by them.
You can get downloads andthings and divinations that are
so much more organic than whatwe can do while we're awake
because of the density of thesephysics.
Here we don't have thoselimitations in lucidity.
(26:43):
So we can do all kinds of stuff, including practice like
ceremonial magical techniques.
You know, if there's somethingthat you, for example, like to
chant or do or say or like aprayerful gesture, Trying those
things out in lucid dreamingshows you literally what the
energetic output of that thingis.
So, for example, I've gotthere's a chant that myself and
(27:03):
a lot of the Morrigan folks useat retreat and during ritual,
which is part of her ancientpeace prophecy.
That's written in Old Irish inthe myths and the first few
words of it are shidh ko nev nevko dovin, and it means peace to
the sky, sky to the earth.
This is from the ancient Irishstuff and so sometimes, you know
(27:26):
, we've used this a lot inwaking to like draw this sort of
connecting earth and sky energydown through our central column
so that we can be balanced andcentered, you know, um, by
honoring her, but also by usingthese old ways, and we chant it,
and so I've been able to gointo lucid dreaming.
(27:49):
Remember that I wanted to seewhat happens when I intone these
chants there, and then you getto literally see and feel what
that energy does upon thelandscape, upon the other dream
characters that are there, andit'll blow your mind, Like any
magic that you do.
It doesn't matter what it is.
(28:11):
You know I talk about activatingrunes, doing invoking and
banishing pentagrams,shape-shifting.
I've gotten to feel firsthandwhat it feels like to be a raven
.
You know you can't.
You can't do that physicallyhere, except for in the mental
plane or the journey scape, youknow.
(28:32):
But, like in lucid dreaming,you can do it literally and you
know it's interesting.
I was talking to someone theother day about this.
So when we dream, the cortexfires just as though we were
doing those actual actionsphysically.
So, for example, if you have adream and you're running your
(28:55):
motor, cortex fires the same wayit does when you're running in
physical life, except that weare in sleep paralysis mode.
So luckily, most of us aren't,unless we have a sleep disorder
or something.
But my question instantly isthen well, what the heck
pathways are firing when I'mflying in a dream?
(29:16):
Because I don't have physicalwings.
What neural pathways are firingwhen I shoot fire out of my
palms in a dream, because Ican't do that here.
Where are the neural groovesfor this?
We have them.
We do.
So I believe we activate thesenew magical pathways because a
(29:37):
lot of times if you do that in alucid dream and then you wake
up, you can still feel theenergy of it for a long time
after you're awake.
Then I know it's doingsomething.
It has helped me to increasethe effectiveness of my mage
skills, meaning the magic I canjust project off the body on the
(29:57):
fly in the moment.
It has really catapulted thosethings.
It's like that alchemical labthat lets you witness the
mysteries in a hastened way thatwe can't, otherwise wouldn't be
able to do because our finitebodies are only here for a short
time.
(30:17):
So, we want to make the most outof this particular dense
physical life experience thatwe're having, and we really
should, because this is magical,like I, kind of.
I have a personal belief thatwe came here for a reason like
to experience this.
You know what I mean.
Like all the sensation thatcomes with being here in this
plane is rich.
(30:37):
It's like you know, it blowsyour mind if you really get into
it and think about it.
But we should try to make themost of this reality.
And I think, think about it.
But we should try to make themost of this reality and I think
getting those magical downloadsfrom the expansiveness of all
the other unlimited realitiesaccessible to us in dreams and
bringing it here into ourphysical life is a way to really
(31:04):
evolve and deepen what you knowto be true.
I love that.
So just I'm like you know, Iwant people to go for it.
Granddaughter Crow (31:12):
I love that because I often do talk about
our neural pathways are kind oflike different, like okay, if I
want to go to work, I take thisroad, like literally in the
physical realm.
The same is in the brain.
If I want to get this objectdone or this task done, I go
(31:33):
through this same roadway.
But if one were to buildstraighter roadways or bridges
or I could fly there and open upthe mind, like you said.
There and open up the mind,like you said, literally your
brain is kind of building thesenew I love it new magical neural
(31:55):
pathways.
Then your creative space andmore of your own divine divinity
and connection to divinity,your magus, your alchemist
inside, your magician within,then that comes in and creates.
(32:15):
It's just mind-blowing, it'smind-blowing, it is.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (32:20):
It's as though those magical neural
pathways, when opened andstimulated by these experiences,
connect you more deeply andmore plugged in to this
enchanted worldview.
You know to the ability to livein the magic that is here all
around us but which is hardoftentimes for us to tap into,
(32:43):
especially in this day and agewhere we've been raised in a
more scientifically basedsociety, you know, a society
that has historically prizedscience over spirituality and
minimized things like dreams,imagination, psychic experiences
, spirit experiences.
(33:04):
We need to bring that back up,you know.
We need to become again likethe society that really values
dreams and enchantment andintuition and empathy and all of
that.
We need that.
It's interesting I heard oncethis was so many years ago, I
(33:26):
think this must have been backwhen I was doing my master's
Someone talked about the Earthand the hemispheres of the Earth
, like parts of the earth, willbe on a different part of their
trajectory.
(33:56):
So what we had for a long timewas here in the West we were
going way high up the curve onthe science end of things, and
in the East they were still morein the science end of things,
and in the East they were stillmore in the spiritual end of
things.
And then we are now starting tohave some resurgence of going
back into the spiritual end ofthings and the East is getting
(34:19):
very scientific and they alwayssay that like the best points in
history and I think we'vealready just passed it, by the
way.
So now we're going to be inprobably another crappy point.
But the best points are whenthe wave of the West and the
wave of the East intersect inthe middle, when they're both in
(34:40):
the mid-range of experiencingsomething new, but then they'll
go to extremes, and that's aslong as my arms are.
But you know, so the the um,those intersections, and I think
you know we've been growing uphere in the west in a time where
, yeah, we, we've been told askids, at least like in my
(35:03):
spiritually bereft upbringingyeah, we've been told, oh, it's
just your imagination or it'sjust dreams, and I'm like, right
, I don't know.
I think it's more and it's timefor us to actively, you know,
engage it.
We can only improve how thingsare going by engaging this stuff
(35:24):
on the personal level.
Loads of us.
Granddaughter Crow (35:28):
Yes, you know, I often think of it that,
in this dimension that we areexisting in in human form, the
law of duality, that there arethe polarities, and having the
polarities is really abouthelping us to understand where
center is, is really abouthelping us to understand where
(35:51):
center is.
You know, and there was onetime in my life that I was going
through, you know, divorce andjust difficult times, and I felt
the polarities, I felt theduality within my own system,
within my own life, within myown heart, within my own life,
within my own heart, within myown head, and I began to go.
(36:12):
I am the point at which twoopposites cross.
I am the point at which twoopposites cross what you're
saying, the intersection betweenthe dualistic, whether it's
science versus, you know, theEast versus West or all of that,
(36:34):
the intersection is where thebeauty is and taking the ride on
the whole, you know, rollercoaster that it is.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (36:44):
Right, yeah, because, like you said a
lot of times, we don't know whatelse there is unless we have
the perspective.
Granddaughter Crow (36:52):
So, how.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (36:53):
You know.
People are always like oh, whyis there despair?
You know, why is theresuffering?
Why is there grief?
You know people Well, becausemaybe we wouldn't know what
bliss and joy and union were ifwe didn't understand the other
side of things.
Yep, you know.
(37:14):
So, yeah, I mean, in the lawsof hermetics they talk about
this and there's like thependulum mechanic where you know
that if you experience thispoint of amazing bliss, by the
laws of the universe things willswing over into the point of
despair, the equal and opposite.
(37:35):
You know the energy exchange thecycles that are natural and
inherent in everything whatkeeps going around and around.
But when you understand thatthe pendulum is going to keep
cycling, you can kind of stepoff and watch the despair and
understand it from the vantagepoint of bliss, until it swings
back over there again.
Then you can jump back in andengage.
(37:56):
It helps your own, your mageskills are like largely that of
emotional regulation.
Granddaughter Crow (38:05):
Yes, so I, based on that that's a really
good segue to like thinking whatyou just said in the scientific
mind and how it's alldownplayed in childhood.
Oh, that's just yourimagination, it's just a dream
and kind of coming into more ofwhat would be getting back to a
(38:28):
world that can dream.
And so, based on that and Iknow that you've got a lot of
thoughts I can see you just likegetting thoughts.
First question what is thedifference between how you, as
an occultist, understand dreamsversus how science lays out
(38:51):
dreams?
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (38:53):
This is why I wrote the book.
So because science and Westernpsychology tend to present us
with the idea of dreams as beingthe crap the brain does to
regulate itself after a day, andthey look at dreams, and even
some people who do a really goodjob looking at dreams present
(39:14):
it as everything inside of thedream relates only to you and
your mind and everything in thedream represents you or a part
of yourself.
I, as an occultist, do notbelieve this, because I have had
all these psychic experiencesthat have taken me in dreams and
(39:34):
other places outside of timeand outside of myself.
So I'm writing this book onlucid dreaming for the magically
minded person who believes thatwe can be having real spirit
experiences and contact withother beings in our dreams, who
has noticed that a lot of ourdreams are precognitive, meaning
(39:56):
that we are transcending time.
I have so much documentation inmy dream journal of
precognitive dreams.
This is my proof.
It'll happen exactly a lot oftimes.
Sometimes it's metaphorical orsometimes it's another form of
pre-rehearsal, but precognitivedreaming happens in a decent
percentage of dreams foreveryone.
(40:17):
You wouldn't know it unless youwere documenting and being very
diligent about that andcultivating good recall and all
of that stuff which my book canhelp you do.
That too, you know, and all ofthat stuff which my book can
help you do that too.
I have stuff in there for that.
But when we are going ahead intime, that shows us that our
conscious awareness is notstaying just tethered to the
(40:38):
body in the here and now.
It is trans-temporal.
And all these people I knowloads of people who have had
spirits, beloved spirits of thedead, the ancestors come and
tell them things that theycouldn't have known, that saved
their lives, you know, or thathealed them, which they couldn't
have done without, like theseare real spirit contacts.
It's not just you making stuffup in your mind.
(41:00):
So I believe that dreams aretranspersonal.
I just led a huge workshop atMystic South last weekend down
in Atlanta, having a group ofabout 75 people do active dream
work together, and then I hadthem write their impressions of
their dreams on an index cardand hand them all into me and
everyone asked divinationquestions of their own in their
(41:22):
own notebooks, not sharing.
And then I shuffled all thecards and handed them back out
and do you know what happened?
The dreams that everyone hadlegit directly answered the
divination questions of whoeverrandomly got that card.
Because our dreams are sotranspersonal and so
interconnective, like that is athought responsive place where
(41:46):
all of our intelligences can goand intersect and learn from
each other, why are we notmaking use of this alchemical
classroom, this spirituallyevolutionary place that we all
have access to as our magicalbirthright, as conscious beings?
We all have it.
Yeah, you know.
Anyone who says they're notdreaming they're just not
(42:07):
remembering that we're dreaming.
We are all dreaming everysecond, that we're sleeping, not
just in REM sleep either, allthe time, I mean there's so much
we can do.
Granddaughter Crow (42:20):
Yeah, I love that Because the concept
that I think kind of almostdelineates or explains that, the
delineation between you know,the you know having my own
dreams, and I've heard thescience scientists say, oh, your
brain is pooping out everythingyou know or whatever.
You know all that and I'm likefine with that, that's fine If
(42:43):
my brain needs to do that.
But the beauty is is that andI'm just going to go here the
word psyche.
A lot of times we understandthe word psyche to be an
individual phenomenon.
When I have seen and experiencedthe word psyche as a collective
(43:07):
exchange without words, whetherit's telepathy or in the
experience that you just talkedabout, it's an interactive,
external, and the best way Iexplain this is like I don't
hold a psyche inside of me asmuch as only I am like a fish
(43:30):
swimming in a pool of water andthat water being the psyche.
So that's kind of the different, the leap between oh, I dreamt
that because I saw an orange ona commercial to wait a second, I
actually need some vitamin Cbecause da, da, da, da, da and
(43:52):
putting a little bit morethought and extracting the
interpretation and meaningaround it instead of sloughing
it off, and I believe that magicis happening all the time.
But if we don't see it, wedon't see it.
But when we do occultiststudying, we began to recognize
what is always there.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (44:13):
I know that was a mouthful, so yeah,
you're so right, we're reallyjust going deeper, you know, and
that doesn't mean that we don'thave dreams that have symbolic
and emotional significance to us.
We absolutely can.
And it doesn't mean that youwon't have dreams that pertain
to the stuff you were thinkingabout in waking.
(44:33):
You know, if you watch, ifyou're going to binge 10
episodes of the Walking Deadbefore you go, if you're going
to binge 10 episodes of theWalking Dead before you go to
sleep, you're going to have somezombie apocalypse dreams.
Okay, and that that doesn'tmean your dreams are only based
on what you're thinking about.
It just means that dreams are athought responsive environment,
so the things that you'rethinking about can lead you down
(44:53):
those paths of experience.
But then your consciousnessreally gets to experience the
zombie apocalypse firsthandthrough your dreams, because all
of your dreams are realexperiences that you're having.
Actually, you know your mind isgetting to experience all these
things that we don'tnecessarily get here to help us
learn and understand more.
(45:14):
So, yeah, it is reallyinteresting to think about that.
I think it's important,especially for those who already
have either like an earth-basedspiritual practice or other
enchanted worldview typepractices where you are seeking
that which lies beyond the nakedeye, that which connects you to
(45:36):
something greater, but maybenot in a structured religious
way.
The dream time is the, maybethe best way to explore this,
because it is so universal.
It does not have to adhere todogma.
You know dogma, you know it isthe.
(46:01):
It's the best place to exploreconsciousness that there is,
because you get to do anythingthat you could fathom here, but
without the limitations of thephysical world.
So it is like raw intelligence,you know it is like being a raw
, intelligent, supernaturalspirit that can move around and
do whatever you want, becauseyou know your dream body can't
get hurt so you can do all theexperiments.
And to look at dreaming as anencapsulated thing that is just
(46:26):
within this bony cranium, it'sreally really kind of, you know,
ripping us off, really kind ofyou know, ripping us off.
Granddaughter Crow (46:38):
Yeah, I agree.
And another beautiful pointthat you make in your work and
in your book is, well, that Ithat I extracted from it is it
doesn't matter necessarily whatmagical path, you don't have to
say I'm an occultist, I'm awitch, I'm a shaman, so I can
(46:58):
work with this book.
You can be whomever and workwith this skill set that maybe
we have forgotten called dreamtime, with dreamscapes and dream
abilities that we weren'tencouraged to do.
(47:18):
And now, if given thepermission, I'm like, oh, you
mean I have permission, becausesometimes I'm in a dream and I'm
like, oh, this is the part whenI run and that never works out.
Maybe I'll try flying this time.
I mean, I do that kind of stuffall the time and then I'm like
(47:39):
think up and I start flying, youknow, and so I play a lot in my
dreams.
But the beauty is that thiswork that you're doing will
enhance any spiritual path andany relationship with the divine
as it reveals itself to thatindividual.
And also, it sounds like youcan do healing.
(48:02):
You can do.
I mean I was almost like wait,this is ketamine therapy, you
know.
I mean this is, like, you know,trauma resolution, like there's
, it's endless, whatever you cando so much, so much.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (48:15):
You can do direct healing, shadow work,
ancestral healing, time travel.
You name really poised to takeoff with some of this material
(48:41):
quite easily.
Like I think you know, it won'ttake a lot for you to be.
You're like one hair below,being lucid more often, I
believe.
The second thing is that youwere alluding to yeah, actually
anyone who is looking to expandtheir footprint in the dream
(49:02):
realms and do more with it willbenefit from this.
You don't have to be a witch.
I give enough basics thatanyone can engage the material.
I do have a lot of stuff inthere for the witches and the
occultists.
The last whole part of the bookis about what is some of the
magic you can do at your altar.
You know, or like in yourwaking life that feeds this
(49:24):
cycle.
So waking magic to helppredispose you to becoming lucid
, so that you can do more magicin lucidity, so that you become
a better magician, so that youcan.
So it's a virtuous cycle and itreally does fuel, fuel itself
like that, if you take thisattitude.
Granddaughter Crow (50:02):
You said quote we need to come back to
being a dreaming society again,end quote.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (50:09):
What does that mean?
Well, you know my mentor inactive dreaming.
That is Robert Moss.
So I did years of in-person,24-7 retreats with him and he is
a teacher of shamanic dreaming.
He calls it the Robert MossSchool of Active Dreaming,
because active meaning thatwe're not only dreaming when
(50:30):
we're sleeping, dreaming rightnow.
We need to wake the up to thiswaking dream that we are in if
we're really going to engage itand be present and do our best.
And so his mission that I'vebeen hearing, you know, year
(50:50):
after year after year of manyyears of training as one of his
dream facilitators is that wedesperately need to return to
becoming a dreaming societyagain, because in doing this we
find the threads that connect usall, not those that divide.
We find that this is, it's aconnective, unifying place.
(51:12):
You know, the dream realms arethat which connects everything.
It's that which connects us tothe greater intelligences of the
universe and which alert us tothe realities of this dream in a
deeper way.
So that is.
He taught me that goal and thatmotto, but I'm trying to do my
(51:32):
best to spread it because I dobelieve deep within the marrow
of my bones that it isincredibly important and that it
only happens one at a time, butthat we need to.
We need this domino effect.
We need to go back to being adreaming society once again, I
(51:53):
love that, I absolutely lovethat.
Granddaughter Crow (51:56):
I I could, I could just sit here and think
about what that would actuallylook like.
I think that it would look likewe would get less surprised, or
maybe we would.
We would just be like, oh okay,yep, there it is, you know.
(52:19):
And being able to not onlyactivate that scientific, left,
logical aspect of our mind, ourconsciousness, that is so
upholden in the Western societyat this point, and to be able to
also have that creativity thatyou know beauty, the dreaming,
(52:42):
the music, all of that and kindof balance it all out, so that
the expression it's almost likewe forgot half of our
intelligence.
You know, and if not more Ican't, you know, there's no
scale, but we forgot a, a veryhuge part of our intelligence
and so we can only get so far.
(53:03):
We need to be able to activatethe other part of us that is
given to us and move forwardyeah, we really do.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (53:14):
we really do.
We really do, I mean, and it'sit's super important.
You know Robert talks about all.
He has studied and researchedthis his whole life and has
written numerous books ondreaming that have inspired me
to do the work I'm doing now.
But he talks about indigenouscultures where the tradition was
(53:37):
to wake up each morning andnothing happens before.
Everyone shared dreams and thenthose dreams would be used to
understand what was happening inthe community at that time or
to make decisions.
That would be for the best goodof everyone.
And I believe that if we canreturn more towards being a
(54:00):
dreaming society, that we drawforth more of the juice of
empathy, of humanity, ofconnectivity and things that
truly lead us in aheart-centered way, because we
understand who we are connectedto much more.
Also, understanding and being adreaming society means having a
better relationship with death,and that fear is something that
(54:24):
burdens our society because wehave a very unhealthy
relationship with it.
That which happens in the night, in magic, is equated to death,
and that which happens in theday is equated to life light and
dark, night and day, life anddeath the cycles that all relate
to each other in parallel.
So bringing forth the magic ofdreams into day-to-day life is
(54:48):
to bring the understanding ofdeath and the cycles of
interconnectivity of us all tothe forefront.
Granddaughter Crow (54:55):
Well said, well said my newfound soul
sister, nikki.
I love you.
Nikki Wardwell Sl (55:02):
Granddaughter Crow.
I really really do.
I feel like our energies arereally like flowing on the same
current.
Granddaughter Crow (55:10):
Yeah, they absolutely are, and you guys
pick up are and you guys pick up, follow, follow Nikki.
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (55:23):
What is your handle on Instagram?
Yeah, it's Nikki WardwellSleeth, all over the place.
So I'm Nikki Wardwell Sleeth onyou know, just like it's, just
like it is right here Two Ks onInstagram, on same on facebook
and same with my website, whichis just nicki wardwell sleethcom
.
So there's links to the socialmedia there and, you know, to
(55:44):
the books there and stuff.
But, uh, yeah, I welcome, youknow, uh, people who want to
follow me, to have more contacts, to share dream material with
and ask questions.
Uh, for, you know, as well asfor bringing in the spirits, you
know, of our ancestors and thedeities and our higher selves,
(56:07):
um, more directly into ourday-to-day lives.
Um, I'm here for it we're herefor it.
Granddaughter Crow (56:14):
We're here for it.
Is there any?
Is there anything else that wedidn't cover or that you feel
inspired to say to the, to thelisteners and to the viewers?
Nikki Wardwell Sleath (56:26):
no, I just want to say thank you to
you, granddaughter crow, forhaving such a great show and for
being inspired to bring thiskind of material to people,
because we really, really needit.
So I would just say that I wisheveryone bright and inspiring
dreams, and especially in this,our shared waking dream.
Granddaughter Crow (56:47):
Well said, well said, well said Well.
Thank you guys for payingattention to yet another episode
of Belief being and Beyond.
I am your host, GranddaughterCrow.
Like, subscribe, share withthose that you're like.
I bet Aunt Sally would likethis.
I bet whoever you think isgoing to most benefit from this
(57:10):
information, and if you'relistening to this on a podcast,
you can text the show commentbelow.
And anyway, I love you guys, Ilove you, I love you, I love you
and we will see you on theflippity flip.
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