Turning to the sacred healer

When no other remedy was available, the peoples of the Greco-Roman world turned to Asklepios (Roman Aesculapius) "the kindest of gods to humans" and his divine family. We are looking here at a benign cult of healing through dream incubation that flourished fror more than a thousand years,from as far east as modern Ankara to as far west as the British Isles.

     The practice of Asklepian healing begins as a quest. You go on a pilgrimage, when you have failed to find other remedies for what ails you. You travel to a holistic center. You are cleansed and purified. You pray. You are shown images of the gods, and evidence of what happened before”. You see hundreds, maybe thousands of votive offerings and inscriptions depicting healings that have taken place. This stirs up the psyche, fires the imagination, primes you for a big experience in the sacred night. The temple helpers will ask you about your dreams, looking for a dream of invitation, noting when the caliber of your dreams indicates that you are not ready for the big experience. If you cannot produce a dream of invitation,you may not be admitted to the inner sanctum, to the abaton ("forbidden place") where you will seek a direct encounter with the sacred guide and healer.
    Contact with animals and animal spirits is a vital part of this tradition. The snake is a primary healing ally of Asklepios. There were snake pits in the Asklepian sanctuaries, and seekers of big dreams often had to brave up to serpents (non-venomous, but still scary for many) slithering over them in the night. In the testimonies, healing was often delivered by the experience of a snake licking or biting or coiling round an afflicted part of the body.

     You will meet dogs in the temple, and may be licked by a dog in a healing vision. A dog, a second Asklepian animal ally, is the guide of souls and guardian of passage to the Underworld in many traditions, the friendliest of animals to man, and a primary “bridge to nature” in many lives, ancient and contemporary.

     We can speak with some confidence about what went on the in the Asklepian temples because of the immense body of "testimonies" from grateful patients that survive. We have a convenient and fairly exhaustive collection of these thanks to the work of Emma and Ludwig Edelstein in the 1940s. The second edition  is available in a single-volume edition from the Johns Hopkins Press.
     We have the words of invocations sung for the sacred healer. My favorite is rendered in English as

Healer of all, come blessed one

     We know that the moment of sacred encounter in the incubation chambers typically came about not in a sleep dream but in the liminal state of hypnagogia, between sleep and awake.There is no more gripping account of the experience of meeting the healing god in the twilight state than in Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales:  “I seemed almost to touch him. Halfway between sleep and waking, I perceived that he was there in person; one was between sleep and waking. I wanted to open one’s eyes but I was anxious that he might leave. I listened and heard things, sometimes as in a dream, sometimes as in waking vision. My hair stood on end, and I wept tears of joy, and the weight of knowledge was no burden…Only if you have been through it can you know and understand.”

Remote healing and shared dreaming

One of the most fascinating cases of Asklepian healing that I have found in the testimonies is that of a young Spartan woman named Arata and her devoted mother, who made the long and often dangerous journey to the temple of Epidaurus to seek healing for her daughter.
    Arata, we are told, was υδρωπ, "dropsical". Today, we might say that she had an edema, a serious swelling due to the build-up of fluids in the cavities of the body. When ordinary medicine could do nothing for her, the mother embarked on her journey. She must have undergone the customary cleansing and ritual purification, and made simple offerings to the sacred powers of the sanctuary, including honey cakes for the serpents of Asklepios.
    She would have been assisted by the therapeuts - the helpers of the healing god - to incubate a dream of invitation and to clarify her request to the god, for the benefit of her beloved daughter. She would have been shown testimonies of those who had been healed before, and images of the gods, building a mental climate of positive expectation. Eventually she was ushered into the abaton, the inner precinct of the temple, where she would have been encouraged to lie down on an animal skin and await the coming of the healing god in the sacred night.

    In the night, "She slept in the temple and saw the following dream: it seemed to her that the god cut off her daughter’s head and hung up her body in such a way that her neck hung down." We can picture how a butcher might hang an animal carcass on a meat hook.  Out of the neck came a huge quantity of fluid matter. Then the mother took down her daughter’s body and fitted the head back on the neck. 

    After she had seen this dream, she went home and found her daughter fully recovered, in good health and excellent spirits. Her daughter reported she had the same dream. 
     In this wild and primal experience, glimpsed through a few lines of an inscription chiseled on stone, we see the lineaments of a healing practice that reaches beyond ordinary medicine and beyond time and place. A sacred power appears to the dreamer, in response to a heart-felt prayer. Let us notice that the experience unfolding is possibly best understood as a lucid dream playing in the liminal space between sleep and awake.[1]
    The god of this dream is a ruthless surgeon, but his cutting is true and precise. Something that was wrong in the body of a person at a distance is drained and healed during this operation., Not only is the effect transferred to Arata, hundreds of miles away, but Arata sees the whole thing, as if she were with her mother and the god in the sacred space.
    We have here remarkable evidence of the reality and efficacy of remote healing and shared dreaming. We have confirmation that direct engagement with the sacred is the ultimate healing resource. We have a reminder that even the most terrifying image - if it is authentic and truly belongs to us - can open a way to healing and transformation, if we are willing to stay with it and work with it.

What can we learn from this tradition for our own lives, in the time of pandemic? We can take courage from the knowledge that help from greater powers is always available. We can build a temple of healing in our own imaginations.  In my online courses, I often lead group journeys to a Temple of Dream Healing. We can practice dream incubation in our homes, and grow the practice of asking for help from greater powers nicely.

   Aelius Aristides, a famous orator who walked very close to the gods of healing, addressed Asklepios like this:  “You in your kindness and love of man, relieve me of my disease and grant me the health that is required for the body to serve the purposes of the soul.” Now that is a creative way to invite the benign intervention of a god of healing!

    From the viewpoint of a god, or angel, a human who asks for help to serve “the purposes of the soul” must be rather more interesting than one who is just ringing the changes on “Gimme” (as in: “heal my liver” or “cure my baldness” – something people actually wished for at Epidaurus). However, Aelius Aristides, as a gentleman of late antiquity, could not resist slipping in a further wish: “And grant me a life lived with ease.”
     Then we have the Homeric Hymn to Asklepios:

Great to humanity, soother of cruel suffering…
You are welcomed, Master. By this song I beseech you.

1. The testimony of Arata's mother is printed in Emma J. Edelstein and Ludwig Edelstein, Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies (second edition, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998) as #423.21.

Graphic: modern statue of Asklepios in RM collection

Healer of all, come blessed one

Dream incubation has been a preferred way of seeking life direction in most human cultures as far back as we can trace. If you believe that, in seeking dream guidance, you are approaching a sacred source, then you will probably use some form of prayer or ritual as you seek help from that power. 

     In the Greek Magical Papyri we read this invocation:

Sender of true oracles
while I sleep send me your unerring skill
to read what is and and will be.

     If we have a big request, it is important to ask nicely. Aelius Aristides, an ancient Greek orator who walked very close to his god – Asklepios, the patron of dream healing – used to phrase his requests as follows: “Lord, I ask for the guidance (or health, or resources) my body requires to serve the purposes of the soul.” A human who asks that way might hope to engage the support of a power behind the scenes.    

     The journey to a special place – the shrine of a saint, the tomb of an ancestor, a sacred mountain, an ancient tree – has often been part of a full-dress dream incubation. 

     But in our hurried everyday lives, we can make all of this simple. Are you in need of healing, life direction or a solution to a problem? Are you willing to turn to a source beyond the obvious ones? Then approach the night as a place of possible encounter with a power that can answer your questions and help to heal your life. 
     In the Active Dreaming circles I lead, we often invoke the sacred guide and healer by singing these words:

Healer of all, come blessed one

     This is a version of an ancient invocation used in the temples of Asklepios, the god of dream healing. But no personal name is mentioned. So in offering you these words I am not inviting you to sign up for an ancient religion (whether or not that might be a good idea) but to turn towards deeper sources of healing and counsel than are available in ordinary life. You can speak or sing these words in the privacy of your own space, on your way to dreaming.

     You may find it helpful to do something to make your sleeping area more of a sacred place; for example, by foregoing sugar and alcohol for a few hours before sleep, by lighting a candle, and/or by using a special fragrance or placing a little mugwort sachet under your pillow.

     Now you want to set your intention for the night. Make it as simple and clear as possible, and avoid composing a laundry-list of needs and wishes. You can make your request large and spacious:

I ask for guidance on my life path

I open myself to my creative source

I ask for healing

Or you can make it quite specific:

I would like guidance on my job interview.

I ask for healing for my friend in hospital.

I would like to see what will happen during my trip.

I want to prep for the exam.
Should I date the guy I met yesterday?

You will want to be ready to catch whatever your dreams give you whenever you wake. This may involve lingering in the half-dream state after you surface from deeper sleep; this in-between state is one in which important messages often come through.

     If you remember only a small piece from a dream, but your feelings are strong and your sense of direction is clear, you are in luck. Sometimes it is easier to read a plain answer from a short, uncomplicated dream vignette than from a rambling epic, and the energy that comes with a dream is often more important than the specific information it contains.

     If you can’t initially see any connection between the dream your record and the intention that preceded it, be patient and learn to use some detective skills. It’s possible that your dream producers decided to give you something they think you should see rather than what you asked for. All the same, it is always worth playing the game of trying to find a link between the dream and the intention.

     For example, I once sought dream guidance on a personal health issue. In my dream, I was racing a car at high speed up through one of those multi-tiered indoor parking lots, slowing to a stop at a fancy penthouse restaurant where a famous publisher was waiting to host me for lunch. I woke feeling marvelous. The dream might seem to have little or no obvious connection with my intention, but I could see a health advisory in my wild ride up through the vertical parking lot, and an Rx in my meeting with the publisher, since for me creative writing that results in publication has always been healing.
    Here is my account of a bigger personal experience, which came when I set the intention of opening myself to a source of sacred healing during the night.

A night of Asklepian dream healing

I set the clear and simple intention: “I wish to be healed.” I add a second statement: “I ask for the health of body and mind required to serve my spiritual purpose.”

-I stretch out of the bed. Immediately, I see an enormous serpent. It is gray-blue, and could be twenty feet long. I see the dark slits of its pupils, quite close to me, in a head larger than my own. I do not feel fear, but there is a strong sense of the uncanny, the presence of a transpersonal other. I feel this is the Asklepian serpent, a power mastered for healing. The form of the god appears less distinctly, like a living statue. Also the form of a large dog with tall pointy ears.

-     I resolve to let the snake enter my energy field and do anything required for healing. I begin to experience movements of the serpent energy through my chakras, starting at the root center and moving upwards. There are moments of gentle physical pressure or constriction as it passes through some of my energy centers – of slight pressure in the heart, of a little constriction at the throat. The movement ceases to flow smoothly at the vision center, where I had been experiencing pressure and blurring. An experimental probe, not pushing too hard.
     The movement loops down and back, returning to try again. I invoke Light as well, and feel the presence and blessing of a being of Light I know well. I feel a process of healing has been initiated, and will be played out over time, if I allow it to be.

-    All of this has been enacted in the liminal state of wake-dream the French used to call dorveille, which is where much of the work of Asklepian healing (I believe) took place, Now I let myself drift towards sleep, hoping for the gift of further healing in the dreamspace. That gift came in the form of an amazing and energizing sleep dream that connected my personal healing to new creative endeavors, writing new books and bringing them to the world.

-

However, you don’t want to ask for big messages, let alone big favors, every night. That becomes wearisome to everyone engaged, and can end by trivializing and cheapening the process. On the other hand, I see no objection to putting a simple request like the following one to the dream oracle fairly frequently:

Show me what I need to see 

If you try that, be ready for some shocks! Our dream producers see our needs and issues from a different angle than we do.

-

Please see chapter 4 of my book The Secret History of Dreaming for a full account of Asklepian dream incubation.

Dream incubation

Dream incubation has been a preferred way of seeking life direction in most human cultures as far back as we can trace. If you believe that, in seeking dream guidance, you are approaching a sacred source, then you will probably use some form of prayer or ritual as you seek help from that power. 

     In the Greek Magical Papyri (XVIIIb) we read this invocation:

Sender of true oracles
while I sleep send me your unerring skill
to read what is and and will be.

     If we have a big request, it is important to ask nicely. Aelius Aristides, an ancient Greek orator who walked very close to his god – Asklepios, the patron of dream healing – used to phrase his requests as follows: “Lord, I ask for the guidance (or health, or resources) my body requires to serve the purposes of the soul.” A human who asks that way might hope to engage the support of a power behind the scenes.

     The journey to a special place – the shrine of a saint, the tomb of an ancestor, a sacred mountain, an ancient tree – has often been part of a full-dress dream incubation. 

     But in our hurried everyday lives, we can make all of this simple. Are you in need of life direction or a solution to a problem? Are you willing to turn to a source beyond the obvious ones? Then approach the night as a place of possible encounter with a power that can answer your questions and help to heal your life. If you are a person of faith, you may start by praying for guidance of healing.

     You may find it helpful to do something to make your sleeping area more of a sacred place; for example, by foregoing sugar and alcohol for a few hours before sleep, by lighting a candle, and/or by using a special fragrance or placing a little mugwort sachet under your pillow.

     Now you want to set your intention for the night. Make it as simple and clear as possible, and avoid composing a laundry-list of needs and wishes. You can make your request large and spacious:

I ask for guidance on my life path

I open myself to my creative source

I ask for healing

Or you can make it quite specific:

I would like guidance on my job interview.

I ask for healing for my friend in hospital.

I would like to see what will happen during my trip.

I want to prep for the exam.
Should I date the guy I met yesterday?

You will want to be ready to catch whatever your dreams give you whenever you wake. This may involve lingering in the half-dream state after you surface from deeper sleep; this in-between state is one in which important messages often come through.

     If you remember only a small piece from a dream, but your feelings are strong and your sense of direction is clear, you are in luck. Sometimes it is easier to read a plain answer from a short, uncomplicated dream vignette than from a rambling epic, and the energy that comes with a dream is often more important than the specific information it contains.

     If you can’t initially see any connection between the dream your record and the intention that preceded it, be patient and learn to use some detective skills. It’s possible that your dream producers decided to give you something they think you should see rather than what you asked for. All the same, it is always worth playing the game of trying to find a link between the dream and the intention.     

     You don’t want to ask for big messages, let alone big favors, every night. That becomes wearisome to everyone engaged, and can end by trivializing and cheapening the process. On the other had, I see no objection to putting a simple request like the following one to the dream oracle fairly frequently:

Show me what I need to see 

If you try that, be ready for some shocks! Our dream producers see our needs and issues from a different angle than we do.

Return of Asklepios: reclaiming ancient arts of dream healing

He is the archetype of the wounded healer. He is both human and divine, the son of Apollo by a mortal woman. He is deeply connected to the realm of the animal spirits. His familiars are the snake, the dog and the cock. The name of his mother, Coronis, suggests a link to the family of crows and ravens.  He is mentored by Chiron, the centaur.
    His symbol is a long staff, shoulder high, with a snake wrapped around it. We see this everywhere today, on the sides of ambulances, on the doors of hospitals, as medical letterhead. Our doctors still take the oath that ancient physicians dedicated to him, and his divine family, though the god-names have been removed. Western medicine begins in his precinct, though it no longer honors his name and often omits the essentials of his way.
    His name is Asklepios, Latinized as Aesculapius by the Romans when they floated his statue up the Tiber to make him at home in Italy. I had the pleasure of talking about him today on my “Way of the Dreamer” radio show with Dr. Edward Tick, a gifted and compassionate therapist who has labored for many years to revive the way of Asklepian dream healing. As Ed Tick noted, the  name Asklepios evokes “a tradition of holistic healing that was prized in the ancient world for two thousand years, a tradition in which dreams are regarded as epiphanies through which communication is opened between humans and divine powers.”.
    Pilgrims journeyed to more than three hundred temples of Asklepios around the Mediterranean and (according to recent archaeology) as far west as Britain. The helpers of Asklepios – the original therapeuts, or therapists – and his followers looked to dreams for diagnosis, prescription and an invitation for direct contact with the sacred guide and healer. The pilgrims traveled in hopes of a big dream that would be a “showing forth” of the god or one of his family and might, in itself, deliver healing from complaints that human remedies could not cure.
    Ed Tick evokes Asklepios and his way with passion and eloquence, scholarship and deep familiarity with the ancient sites. He is the author of an excellent book on the Asklepian tradition, The Practice of Dream Healing and of two important and profoundly moving books inspired by his work to heal wounded warriors and bring them home, War and the Soul and Warrior's Return.
     In our conversation, Ed recalled how the Asklepian tradition was suppressed by the Christian authorities and disappeared or went underground after the fifth century, to revive, under extraordinary circumstances, in the aftermath of World War II. A world catastrophe of that order, Tick suggested, calls forth tremendous archetypal powers. The return of the god was heralded by a curious incident involving a company of British troops bivouacked at Epidauros, the site of the most famous Asklepian temple in the Hellenic world, at the end of the war. As Ed tells it, soldiers came one by one to their commanding officer to request that the unit should be moved to another camp site. Why? They told their captain the place was haunted. They had all seen the same “ghost” – a bearded man carrying a long staff with a snake wrapped around it.
    Asklepios entered modern psychology in the same period through the dream of a patient of Jung’s student and colleague C.A. Meier. She gave Meier a one-line dream report. She heard the words, “The best thing he ever created was Epidauros.” Meier did not recognize the Greek place name, but he embarked on a search that eventually led him to write an important work on the ancient practice of dream incubation and dream healing. As Tick tells it, there was an Asklepian touch in the play of synchronicity between Jung and Meier. When Jung was reflecting on who would  do most to continue his work as they walked and talked together by the lake, a snake rose from the water and slithered between Meier’s legs, which the ancients would certainly have taken as a numen, a nod of approval from greater powers.
    A key principle in Asklepian practice, as Ed presents it, is that “you do not ask the gods for help until you have run out of human options.” Another, quite foreign to modern medicine, at least in the United States, is that “you do not put the patient under financial pressure.” This mode of healing is open to everyone who is ready to make the journey to the temple and to dream with the god. “Fees are paid only after healing, and in proportion to a person’s resources. A slave may give an apple, an emperor may pay for a new temple or theater.”
    The practice of Asklepian healing begins as a quest. You go on a pilgrimage, when you have failed to find other remedies for what ails you. You travel to a holistic center. You pray. You are shown images of the gods, and evidence of what happened before”. You see hundreds, maybe thousands of votive offerings and inscriptions depicting healings that have taken place. This stirs up the psyche, fires the imagination, primes you for a big experience in the sacred night. The temple helpers will ask you about your dreams, looking for a dream of invitation, noting when the caliber of your dreams indicates that you are not ready for the big experience.
    Quoting the ancient documents, Ed recounts the case of a rich man who was denied entry to the abaton – the place of encounter with the god in the sacred night – because his dreams suggested that his character was so defective that he was unready and unworthy. He was told he must dedicate himself to the care of the sick and the poor, even of lepers, for a year before he could return to try again.
    Pilgrims hoped for night visitations from figures resembling the statues and paintings they had been shown – from Asklepios, or one of his three daughters, or one of his animal familiars. “Collective images will help produce archetypal dreams,” Ed observes. A visitation of this kind could deliver full healing in a single night. The ancient testimonies include the account of a soldier who came to the temple with an arrow embedded in his body that could not be extracted by surgery. In his night vision, Asklepios himself deftly removed the arrow. In the morning, the soldier was fully healed, the arrow extracted.
    Such experiences must be honored. Dreams require action. As Ed Tick puts it, “once you have the dream you have to bring it into the world.” This sometimes meant taking actions that would seem crazy to most people and certainly most doctors. We discussed the case of Aelius Aristides, a famous orator who turned to Asklepios many times for guidance and healing. When he was in the grip of a raging fever, he was ordered by the god in a dream to obtain a horse and ride to an icy river and plunge in – which he proceeded to do.
     Contact with animals and animal spirits is a vital part of this tradition. The snake is a primary healing ally of Asklepios. There were snake pits in the Asklepian sanctuaries, and seekers of big dreams often had to brave up to serpents (non-venomous, but still scary for many) slithering over them in the night. In the testimonies, healing was often delivered by the experience of a snake licking or biting or coiling round an afflicted part of the body. Ed talked about how he experimented with a modern reenactment of this by inviting a woman snake dancer to bring some of her serpents to one of his retreats. He was fascinated by how the snakes behaved differently with different persons, sometimes as if they understood where someone was experiencing a problem. The same snake would coil on the head of one person, and wrap around the belly of someone with intestinal complaints.
    The dog, the second Asklepian animal ally, is the guide of souls and guardian of passage to the Underworld in many traditions, the friendliest of animals to man, and a primary “bridge to nature” in many lives, ancient and contemporary. As we discussed the dog of Asklepios, my mind flew to an experience I had when I attended a workshop with Ed in the Bahamas when we were co-presenters at a conference there last January.
     Ed had described how the philosopher Proclus received relief for his gout after he invoked Asklepios. When he was sitting with his leg up, swathed in bandages, a sparrow landed on his foot and proceeded to strip away the bandages. His gout was gone. I was keenly interested, since I suffer from occasional flare-ups of gout, and my left foot was feeling very sore that day.
     Ed gave us a short meditation – to go to a place in the body where we felt aches or pains, and ask any of the divine figures mentioned in the Asklepios story (including his animal triad of snake, dog and cock) for healing. I went to my aching left foot. I tried to visualize Proclus’ sparrow. Instead, a beloved black dog who shared my life and often appears in my dreams, leaped on me, licking my toes, rubbing joyfully against my body, licking my face. This was all but physical. I saw again the great craters made by that big dog’s paws as we walked on a Sag Harbor beach in winter. My heart swelled to bursting with love. Dogs love you no matter what, and they may be healing gods in disguise.
    The rooster, or cock, is the third Asklepian animal familiar, the animal of sacrifice – and also the liminal creature that heralds the transition from night to day, from sleep to waking. The famous last words of Socrates after he drained the hemlock were, “Crito, we owe a cock to Asklepios”, reminding us that the most famous voice of Greek philosophy was also deeply immersed in the Asklepian way.
     We need this practice today, in our lives and our world. Ed and I discussed how to apply the key elements of Asklepian practice, both at special places and healing centers, in small groups and in our individual lives. Ed gently insisted that gentleness is a primary requirement. Though the derivation of the name "Asklepios" is disputed, Robert Graves suggested that it means "unceasingly gentle."
    I proposed that a vital principle from the Asklepian way to be applied in our lives today is that help from greater powers is always available, and that we want to remember to ask nicely. I quoted Aelius Aristides, the ancient orator who asked for healing by speaking to his god along the following lines: “I ask for the measure for the measure of health my body requires to serve the purposes of the soul.”
    Ed reciprocated by reciting for us lines from the Homeric Hymn to Asklepios:

Great to humanity, soother of cruel suffering…
You are welcomed, Master. By this song I beseech you.

-

My conversation with Ed Tick on my radio show can be downloaded from the Way of the Dreamer archive. Ed's website is Soldier's Heart.

I highly recommend the following books by Edward Tick Ph.D.: The Practice of Dream Healing, War and the Soul and Warrior's Return: Restoring the Soul After War