Skip to content
INFUSE
⊹ DREAM HERBS & SLEEP PLANTS ⊹

Reopen the Dream Gates.

Calea, the Ubulawu family, the African dream bean, blue lotus: dream herbs and sleep plants, marvelous and still little known. They reopen the gates with great simplicity, often in a single evening, or a few.

⊹ BEYOND THE GATES ⊹

The most untamable, the least swayable, the freest of territories.

A shared mystical land that we all explore, whatever our cultures, our religions, our beliefs.

Dreaming is the place where every creation begins, individual and collective.

To honor dreams is to honor the feminine, intuition, rest. It is finding the power in stopping.

That is why we chose to share these plants: to help each of us remember how much dreaming matters.

⊹ WHILE YOU SLEEP ⊹

You can transform your life, just… by sleeping.

When our dreams stay very everyday, caught in the social and the emotional, dream herbs can reveal a more mystical, deeper, more distant dimension of the soul.

They can help us reach the root: the heart of our souls, our hidden desires, our greatest dreams, our reasons for being, that "why am I here on Earth".

In our dreams, our fears, our doubts, our sorrows find a place to speak. Life speaks there first in whispers, and we learn to hear it before it needs to shout.

There we receive guidance and signs for everyday life. Many dreams start making sense and unfolding in our lives days, weeks, often months later.

They are wonderful guides and teachers.

⊹ THE PATHS OF THE NIGHT ⊹

Four families of guide plants

With them, the gates open, and can stay open for days, weeks, months, depending on the care we give our dreams and our sleep.

⊹ WHERE TO BEGIN ⊹

Flagship Treasures

The dream herbs our dreamers talk about most.

⊹ BY INTENTION ⊹

For…

Dream herbs are there whenever you wish, to reopen the gates or to work with an intention.

Dream Elixir
⊹ THE EARTH IS DREAMING YOU ⊹

Dream Elixir

A few simple drops to throw wide the door of our imaginations. Seven dream plants, from Mexican Calea to southern Africa's Uvuma, gathered in a single dropper.

DISCOVER THE ELIXIR →

Dream herbs, family by family

The plants of the night live here in four families.

  • Dream Masters — the Ubulawu family of southern Africa: among the Xhosa, roots whipped into a white foam, which diviners say “casts a white light on the dream” (Hirst, 2005).
  • Dream Herbs — Calea of the Chontal, the African dream bean, mugwort, Yauhtli, blue lotus: the plants that colour the dream.
  • Memory & Lucidity — to remember your dreams and dream clearly: Calea, guayusa, Brahmi, Aparajita.
  • Deep Sleep — wild poppy, lavender, noble chamomile, passionflower: the plants that open the night.

Sleep herbs and dream herbs

Sleep herbs help you fall asleep and sleep deeply; dream herbs work on the substance of the dream, its colour, its memory. The two meet: a full night leaves room for dreams.

Plant by plant, with the research and our dreamers’ own accounts: the guide to the best herbs for lucid dreaming.

⊹ FREQUENT QUESTIONS ⊹

The plants of the night, question by question

What is a dream herb?

A plant that a tradition uses for dreaming: to make the dream more vivid, to hold it on waking, to receive messages in it. They are also called oneirogenic plants. Calea of the Chontal, the ubulawu of the Xhosa and the guayusa of the Kichwa are the best documented.

What is ubulawu?

Among the Xhosa and other peoples of southern Africa, ubulawu names roots whipped in water until a white foam rises. The word is said to come from ukulawula, “to control”. For diviners, it makes dreams more vivid and easier to remember (Hirst, 2005). Our Ubulawu plants: Dream Masters.

Which plant should I start with?

Gently: a light mugwort tea, or blue lotus, in the evening. A complete ritual: the Ubulawu discovery pack, over 3 to 5 days. Seven dream plants together: the Dream Elixir.

Do dream herbs help you sleep?

Some do, like blue lotus, which our dreamers often drink before bed. Others wake you up: guayusa contains caffeine and is drunk in the morning. For sleep itself: the Deep Sleep family.

Are these plants legal?

They are sold freely in France. Each country has its own law: check yours before you order.

On waking…

Two other doors to other INFUSE territories.

⊹ READ IN THE FOREST ⊹

Essays around the oneiric threshold

Traditions, lineages, narratives — the Forest extends what the pages begin.

Dream plants
The best herbs for lucid dreaming — a field guide to the dream plants
Calea, ubulawu, Entada, blue lotus, mugwort, guayusa: thirteen dream herbs, their lineage, the research, our dreamers, how to take them.
17 minRead →
Dream plants
Active Imagination: Jung's Dialogue with the Unconscious
Jung's active imagination is a three-step method for dialoguing with the inner figures that arise from dreams. A practical guide, foundations, and cautions.
10 minRead →
Dream plants
Hopcke vs Aizenstat: two postures for holding a dream
Two postures for working with a dream: Hopcke's narrative posture (synchronicity and turning point) and Aizenstat's imaginal posture (Dream Tendi...
12 minRead →
Dream plants
The dream ritual: 7 plants and 1 practice
Seven plants. Seven lineages. Seven ways of keeping the night company. And a single practice that holds them together — the practice of invitation, of silence, and of the journal on waking. Calea, Mugwort, Silene, Blue Lotus, Sinicuichi, Wild Lettuce, Wild Poppy.
13 minRead →
Dream plants
The implicate order of the dream
If matter is a fold enfolded from a deeper order — as David Bohm holds — then the dream is not a flight out of the real. It is the moment when the order unfolds, briefly, in another grammar. Bohm, Seth, Bachelard: three lines of thought that never crossed paths in life, and that speak of the same thing.
12 minRead →
Dream plants
Verified blue lotus vs mass-market: how to recognise the real Nymphaea caerulea
Most 'blue lotus' sold online is in fact a different, far weaker water lily — not the true caerulea. The EU market sells Nymphaea alba on a massive scale — a white European water lily with no pharmacology — under the label of the pharaonic lotus. This article takes the confusion apart, compares the sourcing, and names what separates Tutankhamun's flower from the smartshop copy.
21 minRead →
All DREAM essays →