Welcome to Sanctuary of Alchemical Feasts!

Expanding consciousness through dreams...

Welcome to the Sanctuary of Alchemical Feasts. While my studies and work straddle between pure science, psychology, and spirituality, in the end all merge with the wisdom of dream consciousness, the inner voice that opens hidden portals helping us achieve successes and victories. With me you will discover ancient deities and walk among temples and tombs of ancient cultures soaking in the alchemy of rituals, seasonal as well as daily, involving ceremony, food, and drink.  You will bake with ingredients which include memories, make tea in a manner that elevates a simple grab-and-go beverage to a sacred moment.  I celebrate the mystery of being, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary.

I invite you to subscribe to get full access to all my posts which include discussions about expanded dream consciousness and ancient mystery traditions as well as culinary recipes for extraordinary feasting.  While I draw from my wide territory of interests, all are centered with dream, the connection with the inner voice that guides my journeys and keeps the fires burning for continued studies. My dreams are balanced by formal studies: a doctorate in biological sciences, and another in transpersonal psychology expanded with additional certificates in mind-body and herbal medicine crowned with my culinary pastry chef diploma. I teach, share stories and recipes, and act as guide to the inner territory of dream landscapes. Your support is essential for the success of the Sanctuary, helping to keep the stories going. I hope you will join me in this journey.

Life is a banquet, alchemical feasts spread before us every day of our lives waiting for us to grab hold of opportunities. Yet we must take notice in order to benefit. Our views may be compared to looking through the lens of a microscope. Upon first glance, the field is out of focus. Our view is limited to larger subjects. Increasing the enlargement, we slowly bring the smaller items into view.  Shifting to an electron microscope, a greater field comes into focus.  Slowly the invisible becomes visible, like magic. Like the alchemical feasts in our everyday lives, it takes an adjustment in our focus to attune, to take advantage of a moment, to see the transformation of ordinary into extraordinary. A camel may unexpectantly show up along our travels, yet taking the opportunity to pause makes a memory that survives long after our scheduled events evaporate into the ethers.

Expanding consciousness provides the attunement we need, widening the field of vision, helping us source hidden feasts, enriching, and awakening us to the magical unseen which while always present, is hidden beneath our poorly adjusted lens of perception.  

My mother was informed of my coming in dream, the perfect beginning for a dreamer, for dreamer I am, injecting the magic of dreams, altering of consciousness, into my experiences. My childhood as daughter of a dreamer provided the perfect place for me to apprentice dream walking, practice the art of lucid dreaming and shamanic journeying, long before I entered formal studies. (Stories I will share in future posts.) The alchemical feasts were always there calling to me. They are there for all of us.

Alchemical feasts enrich our lives, opening portals of magic and mystery. It is not the revealed that lights the fire of our passions, but the mysteries that lay waiting for us to explore. This passion moves us like zephyrs seeking new landscapes, sampling offerings, and listening to stories told before continuing the unending journey of exploration. The ground is the banquet, the cosmos the medium through which we flow, following the whispers that rise from the depths to guide and accompany us. We pause, ponder, and find ourselves in the alchemical kitchen of making, ready to accept what wishes to manifest. Sometimes we open tinctures and allow herbal allies to speak, enlightening us about issues of health and wellness. Other days we dip into flour and await the aroma of newborn yeast in a sour dough starter, talking to the budding life, tending it each day until it is ready to birth sacred bread for body and soul.  There are times we rise before dawn and after morning meditation we perform a tea ritual allowing the soul of the tea to communicate, tell stories, and offer poetry. The message is that the feast can rise at any moment, in any situation, unforeseen, opening moments of reflection and meditation.

Questions will always lead us forward, guiding us to pause and ponder while not lingering too long in one place where we may lose the wind to blow our sails forward. Like ancient pilgrims seeking initiation into the great mysteries, we embrace the journey and all that manifests along the way.   I wish to share my journey with you, expanding the horizons where treasures await.

True joy is in the journey, sampling all that lies along the way.  Abundant blessings on all our journeys together!

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Janet Piedilato is a dream analyst, author, teacher, shamanic guide to sacred pilgrimage, divination practice, ancestral mystery ritual, and culinary celebration. Information on Janet and her publications may be found on

https://www.janetpiedilato.net/