«Higía responds.

I am a hygia, goddess of health and healing.

Not long ago they revered me, people danced, dreamed and prayed in my name with a passionate devotion.

And now? Yesterday my sister called me. «Eh, have you learned what they say about you? Well, look at this link.»

Mmm … hygiene. Sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene standards. A list of rules in my name. Do this, that and the other. Do not do this, neither that, nor the other. Hygiene: antiseptic, cleaning, control, sterilization, disinfection. They have baptized damn sleep hygiene rules with my name that seem to work on top, because sixty million people in the United States cannot sleep.

Let me remind you who I am really. I am a hygia, goddess of health and healing. For centuries I lived with my twin sister Panacea in the temples of our father, Asclepio, god of medicine. People were traveling for weeks to our mystical rites to dance, pray and sleep between priestesses and snakes. They came looking for advice, miracles and transformations, to wake up with the morning rebirth, wanting to face life with a vigor and a vision renewed. Our temples await you every night. You can enter any time.

Let’s go back further back, before Asclepio’s era. I am a liver, the left chest. My twin sister Panacea is her right chest. We are the Rea breasts, the great mother of all beings. When we wandered through the Islands of the Sea of ​​the Earth, the thick forests and the vast plains, we manage fluid vivifier, healer, germinator, nutritional and revitalizing.

Asleep with us and Renaced in eternal relationship with all creatures. Sleep with us in the temple of the chest, the mountain, the ocean, the belly. Enjoy the chaotic, intense, powerful dream of the body and earth. It is not a scheduled or sterilized dream. You will not find it in any laboratory. It may simply be the dream that craves your restlessness. «

Text: Read Bayles
Translation: Carlota Franco

Image: Sleeping Goddesss of Malta de Toby Evans