Norse Goddess Magic (5 page)

INDUCING A STATE OF RELAXATION

The first step in a trance, therefore, is to focus the attention
on one's breathing and inner sensations and away from one's external
surroundings, and to achieve a state of relaxation. Sit or lie in a comfortable
position so that you are not cramped or uncomfortable in any way. Wear clothing
that will not restrict or bind you, especially in the area around the
midsection. Since doing a tranceworking tends to make you cold, you should wear
warm clothing and perhaps lie on or cover up with blankets or quilts. If you are
a purist who uses only ritual garb, then by all means consecrate yourself some
ritual socks and sweaters, but cover up with something. If you have any physical
problems, like a knee that needs propping up with a pillow, do whatever you need
to achieve freedom from physical discomfort and distraction.

As you rest in your comfortable position, close your eyes and breathe deeply
in a regular rhythm, but avoid holding your breath, either in or out, for any
length of time. Just let yourself breathe naturally and easily. Next relax your
body. Empty yourself of tension and distracting thoughts and think of sleep,
drowsiness, ease. Many people like to go through the entire body, relaxing it
part by part, starting at either the feet or the head, a practice known as
progressive relaxation. This can be effective if you're very tense, but it is
also very time-consuming and so boring that it can put you to sleep before you
begin your trance. I used to use this method, as I have a tendency to be very
tense physically. I also had a hard time achieving a trance state and felt that
I could use all the help I could get. However, I found that this method took so
much time and effort that I often didn't have enough energy to do much trancing
afterward. I would recommend that you try progressive relaxation as you are
beginning to experiment with tranceworking to get an idea of the kind of state
you are trying to achieve and to give your body an opportunity to learn how to
relax. Then, if you later feel the process takes away from your trance, you can
pare it down to a brief relaxation exercise.

FOCUSING YOUR ATTENTION

Once you are relaxed, your next step is to begin to restrict and
guide your attention. There are many ways to do this; your best bet is to sample
them all and choose the ones that are most effective and comfortable for you.
What they all have in common is that they restrict your thoughts and senses to
the point where your conscious mind gets so bored that it finally turns off and
gives your inner thoughts the opportunity to manifest themselves. In a nutshell,
boredom induces trance. In fact, the time-honored practice of daydreaming when
bored out of one's senses is actually a type of trance.

The traditional movie hypnotist, with his evil eye or swinging watch,
exemplifies a fairly standard practice: eye fixation. Staring at one single
object for a long enough period of time has the effect of inducing a trance
state; however, this doesn't require a magic ruby ring or amulet—any object will
do, especially bright ones. Some examples include a human eye (when someone else
is guiding your trance or hypnosis), a picture on the wall, a flower, a candle
flame, any bright object like a piece of jewelry or a watch, a bowl of water or
dark liquid, a crystal, a flashlight, a mirror, the tip of someone's finger or
the tip of a fountain pen, a symbol painted on a card (like a tarot card, a
rune, or a kabbalistic symbol), or even cracks on the ceiling.

Another popular method is that of inducing eyestrain by rolling the eyes or
looking upward. Apparently, turning the gaze upward as if looking at an object
about forty-five degrees above the head is supposed to be effective in inducing
trance. I have a magician friend who swears by it, but I could never get it to
work and found it uncomfortable, distracting, and annoying. In this, as in all
aspects of tranceworking, you should be guided by your own personal choice and
what works best for you.

This stage of trance is where drumming, chanting, rhythmic dancing, or
incense fit in. These serve the same purpose for the ears, nose, and body as
gazing at a single object does for the eyes: you listen to a single repetitive
pattern over and over, or make the same movement again and again, or fill your
nostrils with a single smell, until your mind gets tired and bored and shuts off
your inner dialogue. In fact, lying perfectly still with your eyes closed while
you breathe rhythmically not only helps to relax you, it also serves the double
purpose of restricting your sensory input.

Once you begin to enter a state of mild trance, which will feel no more
mysterious than lying in bed and getting drowsy before sleep, you can conjure
various imagery to increase your relaxation and further turn your attention
inward. Since nothing amusing is going on outside anymore, the mind decides it
might as well entertain itself. Again, there are many, many images and methods,
and you can pick and choose among them. For some people, only a few relaxation
exercises and images will send them right out; for others, like me, it takes a
repeated layering of images and techniques to achieve a trance state.
Fortunately, there are so many different methods that you can surely find enough
to eventually enable you to enter a trance.

Some of the more common images include counting backward (even medical
anesthetists use this) or reciting the alphabet; repeating a simple phrase, such
as “deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper” or the ever-popular “You are getting
sleepy . . . very sleepy . . .”; imagining yourself walking down a set of stairs
(or, for the more technologically minded, riding down an escalator or elevator),
perhaps while also counting backward; imagining yourself floating on water, or
up in the air, or down through the air; imagining yourself riding a bike or a
horse; imagining a succession of colors, usually starting at one end of the
spectrum—say, red—and ending at the other, with violet; and visualizing any
other images of moving either up or down.

DEEPENING YOUR TRANCE

As you deepen your trance, you can combine these images with more
imaginative and individualized visions taken from your personal life or
religious mythology: rippling water; rain on a windowpane; a sunset; waving
grass; a rainbow; a favorite place, real or imagined; or mythological places or
scenes. You can eventually create a whole special imaginary place where you can
go each time you enter trance before venturing out into the other worlds, a
place that comforts and appeals to you and one that can grow and develop each
time you do trance or meditation work. This place should be one in which you can
be alone and one that makes you feel good and positive, where you feel safe to
be totally receptive and responsive. Having a safe and happy place inside you
can be useful on other occasions, such as taking a brief meditative rest in your
special spot during the breaks between college entrance exams or on a plane; I
assure you it can be more restful and reinvigorating than a nap or a quick
martini.

Some of the feelings and sensations you might experience when entering a
trance state include a sense of deep relaxation, peace, and increased
receptivity. You may have a sense of limpness, stiffness, numbness, cramps, or
tingling in your arms and legs. Some people feel great bodily heaviness, while
others have the sensation of lightness or floating. You generally will
experience a sense of detachment, feeling out of touch with an environment that
seems very distant and disinclined to make any effort to do anything whatsoever
except lie there and experience this trance state.

I'll pause a moment here to point out some other aspects of the
trance state. You might have already noticed from reading the above descriptions
that a person entering trance or hypnosis is extremely vulnerable and receptive.
As the outer world recedes and diminishes in importance, the inner world expands
and becomes more influential. If you are doing a guided meditation with a
hypnotist or a trance leader, her words and images will occupy a much more
prominent place in your inner world than they would if you were fully conscious.
In the hands of a responsible and trustworthy therapist or magical colleague,
this can be very helpful and beneficial; her images can help you better
understand your inner world or more successfully journey to the other realms you
seek. However, if the person guiding your meditation is clumsy, unethical, or
neurotic, her images can unduly influence and disturb you. Keep in mind that if,
while you were in a trance, someone told you to go out and shoot someone, you
certainly would not go right off and do that. But you are very open to
suggestion while in a trance state, and you can pick up the germ of an idea from
someone that can trouble you for a long time to come if that image is a negative
or disturbing one.

The point of all this is to be careful with whom you do guided meditations.
Many times at festivals, psychic fairs, or other such events, a complete
stranger will offer to do guided meditations for other people. While most of
these people are very responsible, you don't necessarily know what they're going
to say while you're in a trance. I participated in at least one such guided
meditation (the purpose of which was to encounter some aspect of the goddess)
where the leader began injecting bits of her own political philosophy once the
trance was under way—things that had nothing whatsoever to do with the matter
at hand. I don't even think this leader was deliberately doing this, but the
effect was very disturbing. That was one time I felt it was to my advantage that
I was difficult to put into a trance, since I wasn't fully “under” when these
asides started cropping up.

Therefore, I would recommend being a bit cautious about throwing yourself
open to just anyone. Try to talk to the person leading the trance to see what
she is like, or perhaps talk to others who have done a trance-working with that
leader before. If you are dealing with someone you already know and trust,
that's fine. Also, if you use any of those taped guided meditations, I would
advise first listening to the whole thing while you're fully conscious,
preferably while you're walking around a room or doing something equally
trance-inhibiting, to make sure that you want to experience it while in a
receptive state.

EMERGING FROM THE TRANCE STATE

Whatever steps you use to induce the trance, you should repeat
each one in reverse order when you're ready to come out of it: walk up the
stairs if you initially walked down them, count forward instead of backward,
float back up if you floated down. Be sure that you complete the return journey
and don't just sit up or drift into sleep, as the former will tend to shock your
system a bit while the latter can lead to eventual confusion between the worlds
that you visit in trance and your own physical, mundane world. The return, while
it should mirror the departure, can be much faster and more cursory, because,
contrary to the fears of some, it's usually extremely easy to come out of
trance; the hard part is getting into one in the first place. The very last
thing you should do is experience the sensation of yourself being once more in
your physical body, lying or sitting there on the floor or bed and breathing
rhythmically. Then you can open your eyes and sit up. You should generally feel
relaxed and refreshed, often filled with a sense of great well-being. If nothing
else in the trance worked, the mere fact that your conscious mind was shut off
for a while is usually an extremely refreshing experience.

You will also want to end your ritual and leave your sacred space. You should
do this as quickly as possible so that you can record the results of your
tranceworking while they're still fresh in your mind. Also, it's best to get out
of the ritual space and into the mundane world as soon as possible to ensure
that you are fully awake and alert. If you used incense or drumming or some
other aid, you should stop it soon after you sit up from the trance to help you
come fully awake. It's also a good idea to make a toast and libation to
whichever deities or beings you were visiting, thanking them for any gifts or
advice, or at the least for the opportunity to get to see something of them. A
sample closing might go like this:

• Make a toast or libation to any beings or deities you encountered.
  
• Stand and sprinkle a little bit of the libation in the direction of the
  North, using either your fingers, a wand, or a small tree twig (evergreen is
  traditional in Norse ritual and magic), saying, “Hail to the North!”
  
• Repeat the above process in the East, South, and West. End up facing north
  again, and sprinkle your altar, too, for good measure. Drink or pour out the
  rest of the libation.
  
• Repeat the chant
  Woden—Wili—We
  three times.
  
• Repeat the chant
  Ansuz—Laguz—Uruz,
  and blow out the candle.
  

Once your ritual is over, immediately write down what you
remember about your trance experience. Trances, like dreams, must be written
down as soon as possible or you will forget most of what happened. Do not stop
and do anything else if you can at all avoid it, or that very rich and detailed
experience you just had will soon fade to a few vague images. You may want to
jot down a rough sketch of what happened, including the more significant and
impressive images you saw while you were trancing, then wait and flesh it out
more fully later on. But write something, or you'll forget—I promise you.

When you're done writing down your experience, get right up and turn on some
lights. Put on the television or some music—loud, attention-getting stuff, none
of this soothing mood music. Walk around, dance, talk with other people if there
are any there, or telephone a friend. Many people feel cold and hungry when they
come out of trance. Eating and drinking not only satisfies your physical need,
it is an excellent way of coming out of trance. Eating nice, rich, solid things
is best: meat is very good, if you eat it, and also chocolate or any nice type
of stew or soup. I personally find that a shot of liquor works very well in
bringing me to full wakefulness, but if you can't or won't drink alcohol, this
is certainly not necessary. The main thing you want to accomplish is to redirect
your attention from the inner to the outer world.