Some Speculations on the Pharmacognosy of European Oneirogens

Pharmacognosy: Study about the physical, chemical, biochemical, and biological implications of natural substances for medicinal purposes.

“Like vervain, mugwort is associated with the festival of Midsummer in a number of areas from China to Europe. But if vervain is the daytime herb of Midsummer, mugwort is the night side—a Midsummer Night’s dream herb.”

– Harold Roth [1]

Article published in the Mandragora Digital Bulletin #1

Midsummer is the name that most Europeans, principally in the various Anglo-Saxon, germanic and Scandinavian traditions, associate with the summer solstice festival. A celebration of fertility and the life-giving power of the sun, with dances and bonfires lighting up a charmed night able to bring other worlds —be it the land of the fairy folk, the dead or dreams— closer to ours, as in Shakespeare’s immortal play.

As day length peaked in the northern hemisphere and plants had their fill of sunlight, many were included in Midsummer celebrations and rituals, to obtain protection from ill and malevolent spirits, as embellishment, for inebriation, or for all of the above. And at this turning point of the year, folks also looked for insight and divination. Flowers and herbs gathered for this purpose were often brought along to the bedroom by maidens hoping to dream about their future husband, or by anyone searching for prophecy: St John’s Wort, Mistletoe, Rose, Yarrow and even grass and clovers. But among them, one stands out — Mugwort, called Mother of Herbs, one of the elders of indigenous European herbal lore.

Charged with scent in Midsummer and starting to bloom (particularly in northern latitudes, with a higher accumulated sunlight hours count), mugwort was hung over doorways and woven in girdles and crowns, worn to gain protection and clarity of vision. She was added to beer for her pungent, bitter flavour. She was brewed in infusion, or her fresh sprigs placed under the pillow, as she was believed to bring special, magical or prophetic dreams. And while the use of other Midsummer herbs as oneirogens [2] may have been dismissed and labelled by modern scholars as superstition, mugwort undoubtedly works. Still today, both in and outside of ritual and traditional contexts, mugwort is taken as a tea or tincture, incorporated into oils and ointments and applied to the skin, and used to stuff small pillows or dolls that, kept close by during sleep, often have a surprising effect on the vividness, intensity and significance of dreams. This cannot be dismissed, even if, unlike other medicinal properties of the herb corroborated by scientific studies (antiparasitic, digestive, antispasmodic, analgesic…), her oneirogenic virtues are not easy to explain.

In Europe, the name mugwort refers principally to Artemisia vulgaris, but it’s also been used elsewhere for other species of the Artemisia genus. Many Artemisia species have a long history of folk medicinal applications in other continents as well, and several species are appreciated for their effect in dreams. In the Antofagasta region in Chile, one of the traditional uses of Artemisia copa arises from her “ability to induce sleep and vivid dream experiences” [3]. In California, the Chumash healers may have spent millennia using “dream sage”, as they call sagebrush, Artemisia douglasiana:

“To induce dreams, place the stems and leaves under a pillow and sleep on the pillow. The fragrance helps with dreaming. (…) This is a traditional use of A. douglasiana especially in very ill or aged people who cannot dream. Dreaming is considered an essential part of life and healing.” [4]

A recent compendium of Native American medicinal plant uses [5] registers around a dozen different plant species reported for their effect on dreams. Three of them (A. ludoviciana, A. douglasiana and A. vulgaris) are Artemisia species, the only genus represented multiple times.

And common mugwort, growing abundantly here in Europe and elsewhere, is explored by many more oneironauts than you might suspect. Some do even employ mugwort pillows —and quite successfully— which begs the question of how a pillow full of dry herbs can cause vivid dreams. From the perspective of pharmacognosy, how does mugwort work as an oneirogen? The usual assumption is that there must be a compound in the herb responsible for the effects. And indeed, some speculations quickly suggest that thujone, a psychoactive terpenoid found within the Artemisia (among other plants), must surely be this compound —if only because it’s there and we heard about it. But can thujone really cause, single-handedly, the kind of vivid dreams precipitated by mugwort? And if it cannot, what other compound could be the cause?

Allow me to speculate about possible answers. And for that, first we should pay a quick visit to the neuroscience of dreams.

The neurophysiological portion of dreaming

Dreaming is fascinatingly complex, both in its phenomenology and its physiological correspondences. Here I’m only giving a list of facts, according to our recent understanding, that can help to describe how, in terms of active compounds, mugwort may bring her singular effect to dreams. This could also allow us to look into other plants more closely, and explore their oneirogenic properties. Let us consider the following:

1. When we sleep, we cycle between two different states: REM sleep, and non-REM (NREM) sleep. NREM is the deep, restful stage of sleep. It rules the first half of the night, until it starts to alternate with multiple, progressively longer REM episodes. REM has been called a “paradoxical” state because we are asleep, yet going through high brain activation similar to wakefulness. The simple structure that unfolds through a full sleep cycle (see graph below) can give us, as we will see, useful clues for timing considerations when exploring oneirogens.

2. Even though they have been popularly associated to REM sleep, dreams actually happen during both REM and NREM stages, albeit either brings qualitatively different experiences. NREM dreams tend to be more thought-like and less story-like, more relaxed and related to everyday interactions, and more difficult to remember in the morning. REM dreams are longer, more visual and narrative —that is, usually featuring conflict. They are also stranger, frequently evoking distant memories, and are the kind we recall more easily after waking up and thus tend to examine and discuss.

3. A solid, long-enough deep rest (NREM) cycle is important for REM stages to develop. Poor sleep quality and few hours of sleep hinder REM, and thus negatively affect REM dreams and their recall. Conversely, proper and sufficient NREM sleep will facilitate REM states. Both states seem to mutually inhibit one another; REM will take the stage, as it were, once NREM has finished its performance, alllowing REM to step in. And REM seems eager to enter the scene. As you may have experienced, an accumulated deficit of REM sleep (caused by poor rest, pathologies or use of substances that suppress it) will, once the impediment disappears, often produce a stream of intense, abundant dream relief that night. They call this phenomenon “REM rebound”.

4. Although the role of diverse neurotransmitters in sleep and dreaming is very complex, for the sake of our speculations we can narrow the number down to three: dopamine, serotonin and acetylcholine. Dopamine activity, or what we refer to as dopaminergic system activation, is correlated to dream states, both in NREM and REM sleep stages. In other words, an increase of dopamine activity in the brain will facilitate dreaming [6]. On the other hand, serotonin and acetylcholine set the pace in the cycle of NREM/REM sleep states. During NREM sleep there’s high activity in the serotonergic system (where serotonin is the messenger), and low activity in the cholinergic system (where acetylcholine works). During REM sleep the opposite happens, low serotonergic but high cholinergic activity.

5. When we dream, if this cholinergic activation is high enough we tend to experience the more complex type of REM dreams and, significantly, a higher awareness of the whole dream experience. This involves more capacity to remember it in detail, and it may lead to being aware of the dream state as it happens —what we call lucid dreaming. Not by coincidence, acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter related to memory and learning. We know that lucid dreamers, those able to maintain a high degree of awareness during dreams, are especially high dream recallers [7] and this is a remarkable piece of information.

So any substances —be it single compounds or a whole plant— that a) facilitate a solid, well-greased succession of NREM/REM sleep stages and b) promote cerebral activation, are likely to have oneirogenic properties. This may include substances that make serotonin more available during the first part of the night (improving rest quality, and thus facilitating REM onset) and, more decisively, substances that increase dopaminergic activation (facilitating dreaming) and/or cholinergic activation during REM sleep, by making acetylcholine more available at that time (improving dream awareness and recall).

And to make a neurotransmitter more available, we have two straightforward options: we can assist our body to produce more of it, by taking precursors of the neurotransmitter, or we can prevent its breakdown, by temporarily inhibiting the enzymes that regularly break it. For the latter, interesting compounds would be reversible MAO inhibitors [8] for serotonin and dopamine, and reversible Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors [9] for acetylcholine. Either will delay the breakdown of the corresponding neurotransmitter, hence allowing it to accumulate in our body.

And indeed, some of the traditionally most known (and effective) compounds used by oneironauts to help attain vivid dreams and lucid dreaming are alkaloids that efficiently inhibit AChE enzymes, thus increasing cholinergic activation. They were first isolated, as it happens, from plants: galantamine, found in the root bulb of certain daffodils and snowdrops, and huperzine A, isolated from Huperzia serrata, a type of clubmoss found in Asia.

Let’s then make our question more specific: is there in mugwort any compound with MAO or AChE inhibition capabilities?

The chemical portion of Mugwort’s spirit

Before this visit to neurotransmitters, we mentioned how thujone, a terpene found in Artemisia among many other plants, has been sometimes suggested as the responsible compound for the oneirogenic effects in mugwort. But we know thujone acts as an antagonist (blocker) in GABA receptors and some serotonin receptors, causing sleeplessness and spasmodic effects [10], which for reasons stated above doesn’t quite fit an oneirogenic compound. Thujone may have a role in other psychoactive effects brought by mugwort; some cultures have even used Artemisia species as cannabis substitutes, due to their mild intoxicating properties when smoked. But mugwort’s oneirogenic effects must be related to something else.

Typical dream experience reports with mugwort evoke the quintessential REM dream:

“…dreams unusually vivid and immersive (…) More than once I’ve awakened after a night of mugwort dreams feeling both rested and exhausted, as though I had lived a lifetime in a night.” [11]

Interestingly, different methods of administration also seem to impact dreams in different ways:

“I find body oiling with infused mugwort oil is gentler than sleeping with a bunch of it in my bed, because whilst vivid, with body oiling my dreams don’t become sagas that could fill pages and pages the next morning like they do when mugwort is right there under my head!” [12]

Artemisia vulgaris happens to be, like other members of the genus, a chemical powerhouse. Many compounds of different kinds have been isolated from her leaves and flowers, but it is difficult to indicate a distinct phytochemical profile because both abundance and variability are a constant in the species. Depending on the geographical origin and circumstances of harvest, multiple studies have described vastly different compositions. Between 100 and 150 (!) different compounds have been consistently found in the essential oil alone according to multiple sources, all concentrations of these varying between virtually zero and nearly 50% of the oil, depending on the place and time the mugwort was harvested. [13,14]

Besides the volatile terpenes found in the essential oil, usually obtained by steam distillation, mugwort is rich in other families of non-volatile plant derived compounds, like flavonoids, coumarins, phenolic acids and (I advise you to remember this name if you are interested in plant oneirogens) sesquiterpene lactones, among others. And we know that at least some compounds in these families certainly possess the sort of properties able to extend, amplify or plainly illuminate dreams.

Multiple flavonoids isolated from an alcoholic extract of mugwort have been found to be good inhibitors of the monoamine oxidase (MAO) enzyme. A remarkable case is apigenin, with a potency “comparable to that of clinically used MAO inhibitor such as clorgyline.”[15] At least one other of the flavonoids available in the plant, quercetin, not only shows moderate MAO inhibition properties, but also “signiﬁcant inhibitory activity of 76.2% against AChE”[16].

Coumarins have shown ability to inhibit AChE in multiple studies, and at least one of the coumarins found in variable concentrations in Artemisia vulgaris [17], scopoletin, has both significant MAO inhibition properties and AChE inhibition properties [18].

Multiple terpenoids, the kind of volatile compound present with outstanding diversity in mugwort’s essential oil, have been found to also have significant AChE inhibition properties by biomedical research. Some recent studies in Artemisia provide interesting and specific results: “the oil of A. annua showed the best inhibitory activity compared to the known ChE inhibitors galantamine and huperzine A. Essential oil isolated from A. vulgaris and A. abrotanum also showed significant inhibitory activity, especially on AChE.”[19]

And to mention last but not least, sesquiterpene lactones are a family of compounds particularly prevalent in the Asteraceae [20], and notably in the Artemisia genus, intensely researched over the last fifty years for their multiple medicinal properties. One known example is artemisinin, the base for modern treatments against malaria and useful against many other pathogen diseases. Multiple sesquiterpene lactones “have been shown to modulate cholinergic transmission by inhibiting AChE. (…) [some of them] inhibited AChE more than galantamine used as a reference compound.”[21] Besides artemisinin [22], more than twenty different sesquiterpene lactones have been isolated in A. vulgaris so far, most still barely researched. New compounds in the group will undoubtedly be found in the future.

This was just a glance at several groups of phytochemicals in A. vulgaris, each group with its own physicochemical properties. Now we can bring up again how, in agreement with many reports, different ways to administer mugwort may have a qualitatively different impact in the oneironaut’s physiology. They can modulate dream experiences differently, especially if timing is also considered. Each method has its own pros and cons.

Easy to prepare, a tea, brewed and drunk before sleep, will deliver a variety of compounds. However, some of them (all sorts of terpenes, for instance) are poorly water soluble, and others (like sesquiterpene lactones) can additionally be easily destroyed by heat, so their contribution might be partially wasted in a tea. Also, if you consider the duration of your digestive process and for how long the different compounds will stay active in your body before being metabolized, chances are that by the end of the night, when the longest REM sleep stages happen, some of the magic has already fizzled out.

An alcoholic tincture (or, if you prefer an alternative, made using food grade DMSO [23]) will carry similar timing considerations if taken before sleep, but it will be much more efficient extracting all the active compounds from mugwort. Terpenes and sesquiterpene lactones will be properly dissolved, and the yield of some interesting coumarins, such as scopoletin, will be more than double using ethanol compared to water extractions [24].

Infusing a vegetable oil with the fresh or dry herb, and applying it to well vascularized skin (for instance palms, soles, face and neck) should efficiently deliver most of the actives as well. This method, although it takes more work, also allows you to experiment with different types of carrier oils and different absorption rates. It can even be pleasant to wake up to an alarm in the middle of your sleep cycle, reach out for an oil or ointment jar on your bed table, apply it, and buckle up for the incoming REM show as you drift back to sleep.

Finally, for those who don’t like the idea of briefly waking up at ungodly hours, but want to experience mugwort right as REM dreams happen, that’s where herb pillows and bundles shine. Not all active compounds are volatile, but breathing in those that are when your cholinergic activity is peaking could shine enough light on dreams to fill several pages in your dreams journal.

Concluding non-speculations

I don’t think we need to speculate anymore in order to answer the question now: is there a compound responsible for the impact mugwort has in dreams? No; there’s many. During her life cycle, mugwort hosts a transforming plethora of compounds, and numerous among them have the ability to modulate our neurophysiology that grants them the label of oneirogens. The complex synergy that unfolds when we take a full extract of mugwort (let’s just call this “take the plant”) can intensify and illuminate our dreams in a variety of ways that does justice to the complexity in dreaming.

“Dreaming is considered an essential part of life and healing”, think the Chumash in California while they bring Artemisia to the pillow of elderly folks who cannot dream. Once again, we may be just catching up with indigenous knowledge, as we realise that plants that are potentially interesting to enhance dream work can also be powerful allies to prevent and treat cognitive decline. Some of our studies found that “lower REM sleep percentage and longer REM sleep latency [25] were both associated with a higher risk of incident dementia” [26]. Other indigenous traditions might think about cognitive decline as losing contact with your spirit. I prefer to paraphrase William Blake and suggest that, in mugwort, that called Chemistry is a portion of Spirit discerned by the five senses. The spirit of a common plant, sometimes invasive, the kind that is often called a weed. But it’s been called “Mother Herb” for much longer.

And if you are still thinking in terms of compounds, which admittedly I do, some of the compounds with high oneirogenic potential mentioned above can also be found, maybe even in higher amounts, in other common herbs growing in Europe and the Mediterranean. Some are common enough to grow even in garden centers, like chamomile and rosemary. If I may recommend one especially, lemon balm has a particularly sexy oneirogenic flair. I bet that if you prepare a good tincture using fresh herbs like these, and you drink it before going to sleep (or, if you feel adventurous, in the middle of the night thanks to a strategically timed alarm call) you may be surprised. Perhaps if you dare to grow your own, harvest the flowering tops around summer solstice, and pair the tincture with a fresh bundle of herbs under your pillow, you will experience a true Midsummer Night’s Dream.

HARM REDUCTION NOTE: Another traditional use of mugwort is as a menstrual cycle regulator, emmenagogue and reportedly uterotonic; strong doses could potentially facilitate miscarriage, so mugwort use is discouraged in pregnancy. If you plan to explore mugwort as an oneirogen, regardless of your circumstances, please do further research.

References

Header image: Titania, Queen of the Fairies, laying asleep. Illustration by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) for William Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

1. Harold Roth, The Witching Herbs.(Newburyport, USA: Red Wheel/Weiser, 2017), p.142

2. From the Greek ὄνειρος (dream) and the root -γενής (producer of): substance or stimulus that produces or enhances dreams.

3. Carlos Aldunate, Juan Armesto, Victoria Castro, Carolina Villagran. “Estudio Etnobotánico en una Comunidad Precordillerana de Antofagasta: Toconce”. Boletín Museo Nacional de Historial Natural, Vol. 38 (1981): p183-223

4. James D. Adams Jr., Cecilia Garcia. “The Advantages of Traditional Chumash Healing”. ECAM 2005;2(1)19–23. doi:10.1093/ecam/neh072

5. Daniel E. Moerman, Native American Medicinal Plants – An Ethnobotanical Dictionary. (Portland, USA: Timber Press, 2009)

6. Mark Solms. “Dreaming and REM sleep are controlled by different brain mechanisms”. Behav Brain Sci. 2000 Dec;23(6):843-50; discussion 904-1121. doi: 10.1017/s0140525x00003988

7. Patrick McNamara, The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023), p. 177

8. Monoamine oxidases (MAO) are a family of enzymes that break by oxidation certain molecules in our body, for instance the monoamine neurotransmitters, principally serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. Reversible MAO Inhibitors are compounds that disable temporarily these enzymes, and have multiple medical applications.

9. Reversible Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors are molecules that temporarily disable the enzymes that break down acetylcholine by hydrolysis, thereby increasing acetylcholine levels and duration.

10. The whole mugwort herb, however, has been widely reported to be antispasmodic instead. GABA antagonists similar to thujone are used to induce epilepsy models, and to promote wakefulness in the treatment of sleep related conditions like narcolepsy.

11. Christine Baumgarthuber, “What Dreams May Come (Musings on Mugwort)” in https://theausteritykitchen.substack.com

12. Casey Conroy, “The Magic & Medicine of Mugwort” in https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/

13. Morteza Alizadeh, Mohammad Aghaei, Mohammad Saadatian, Iman sharifian. “Chemical Composition of Essential Oil of Artemisia vulgaris from West Azerbaijan, Iran”. JEAFChe, 11 (5), 2012. [493-496]

14. Ickovski et Al. “Variations in the composition of essential oils of selected Artemisia species as a function of soil type”. J. Serb. Chem. Soc. 86 (12) 1259–1269 (2021) JSCS–5496

15. Sang-Jun Lee, Ha-Yull Chung, In-Kyung Lee, Seung-Uk Oh and Ick-Dong Yoo. “Phenolics with Inhibitory Activity on Mouse Brain MAO from Whole Parts of Artemisia vulgaris”. Food Sci. Biotechnol. Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 179~182 (2000)

16. Khan et Al. “Flavonoids as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors: Current therapeutic standing and future prospects”. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy 101 (2018) 860–870

17. Derek V. Banthorpe, Geoffrey D. Brown. “Two unexpected coumarin derivatives from tissue cultures of Compositae species”. Phytochemistry, Vol. 28, No. 11, pp. 3003-3007, 1989

18. A. Hornick et Al., Neuroscience 197 (2011) 280–292

19. Olivera Politeo, Ivana Cajic, Anja Simic, Mirko Ruscic, Mejra Bektasevic. “Comparative Study of Chemical Composition and Cholinesterase Inhibition Potential of Essential Oils Isolated from Artemisia Plants from Croatia”. Dept. Biochemistry, Univ. Split (2023) doi: 10.20944/preprints202309.2130.v1

20. Asteraceae (previously Compositae) is the botanical family where the Artemisia genus is included.

21. Luciana Maria Polcaro, Antonietta Cerulli, Milena Masullo, Sonia Piacente. “Phytochemical Investigation of Chamaemelum nobile L. and Evaluation of Acetylcholinesterase and Tyrosinase Inhibitory Activity”. Plants 2025, 14, 595. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants14040595

22. Artemisinin is in itself a very efficient AChE inhibitor, and so are its derivatives. Some of the common side effects of malaria pills are vivid and unusual dreams.

23. DMSO, Dimethyl Sulfoxide, is a polar aprotic solvent with low toxicity often used to deliver drugs orally or topically.

24. A. Zarrelli et Al. “Optimisation of artemisinin and scopoletin extraction from Artemisia annua (…)” Phytochemical Analysis. 2019;1–8. DOI: 10.1002/pca.2853

25. REM latency is the measure of the time it takes for the first REM sleep stage to appear.

26. Pase et al. “Sleep architecture and the risk of incident dementia in the community”. Neurology Vol. 89 (12) 1244-1250 (2017)

Some Speculations on the Pharmacognosy of European Oneirogens

The neurophysiological portion of dreaming

The chemical portion of Mugwort’s spirit

Concluding non-speculations

Most Viewed

Stay updated on our journey:

Find Us Here: