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Training for Trancework

(Pictured: A working trance altar with resin incense, flowers, chocolate, salt & herbs, and a plate for monetary offerings.)

Basic Trancework -Just trance for the sake of trance. Celebration. Experimentation. Fun. Labor.

In the beginning, your efforts should be focused on just getting into and out of an altered state safely and reliably. You can do that by giving yourself permission to go all in. Embrace the magic floppy time without hesitation or second guessing yourself. Make peace with things as they are. If your hair is messy, just let that concern go. If your mind is too loud to release from your body, disconnect from your worries. Whatever holds you back from totally relaxing into yourself, put it aside temporarily.

In my opinion, the best way to do these things is to just play around with it. When starting out with any new thing, there should be a childhood phase. It may grow to be a serious thing later but in the beginning, you get to be childlike and just explore what is possible and what you like. Whatever brings you a sense of peace and joy. That will give you a strong foundation to build upon later.

On a practical level, that will mean putting on some music or playing with live musicians and engaging in simple repetitive (dance) movements that disrupt the body's equilibrium. Rocking side to side or front to back, whirling, rolling movements that ripple from the spine through the limbs. It is okay to flop on the group. Trance dancing is dance but it is more to be felt than seen so it doesn't have to look dignified in any way. Just enjoy yourself and let your mind go.

If you are developing trancework as a musician (musician's trance is definitely a thing) then at this stage you will want to practice your music until you feel confident with it and then condition yourself to relax more and more as you go. Committing a song to memory will really help, that way you don't have to stay focused. Your muscle memory will carry you through but only if you have trained your body to do it while fully awake first.

Catalyst Trancework -Trancework that utilizes a fuel source to propel you deeper into an altered state. This can be a heavy emotion like love, rage, or grief, OR a substance like alcohol that can melt away barriers between the active wakeful mind and the loose uninhibited mind. It can also just be a power object that you introduce whenever you trance that will send you over the other side.

Once you have the basics down and you can get in and out of a trance without much difficulty, you will want to shift to a different goal. At this stage, you will want to build up your hypnotic conditioning to reduce your reaction time and encourage muscle memory over active waking-mind reactions. This is where trancework starts getting formal. If you want to engage with Med style trancework then you will wear white when you trance. Every time. This conditions your mind to only trance when you are wearing white and it helps to keep you out of an altered state when you don't want to be in one.

At this stage you can use colors, symbols, and scents to create the hypnotic suggestion that now is the time to trance as well as what kind of trance you want to engage in. Use different incense, scented oils, and perfumes to trigger different muscle memory states. Use each scent consistently and for no other purpose to keep those associations strong. They will build over time.

You can also paint symbols on your body that have deeper occult meanings for you personally or culturally. I use mud, henna, and wood ash to create designs on my body for this. They can be for protection, for magic, for enhancement, for whatever you need. Just use them consistently and for no other purpose than this.

This is a good stage to start developing group trancework as well. Through repetitive chain or circle dances with others. Just like with the musician's trance training described above, you will want to learn and perfect the dances you want to use while fully awake and then begin conditioning yourself to relax while doing them in a trance. This places the burden of movement on your muscle memory rather than your active wakeful mind.

As a musician, you can start weaving more complicated rhythms and start developing your skills at improvisation. To do this as a singer, take one or two songs that you know really well and start amusing yourself by crafting new lyrics for them. Do it often in a wakeful state. The goal of this is to condition the mind to be able to improvise lyrics in an altered state. This is used in traditional Mediterranean mediumship where the ability to spontaneously compose verse from the perspective of the dead provides proof of state. With an instrument you will probably end up going down a folkloric numerical rabbit hole. Where each number has a spiritual significance and you start anchoring the music you make to those numerical associations.

Ecstatic Trance -Spiritwork. Any trancework that involves spirits other than your own but not gods. This can be a form of automatic mediumship, or some form of possession. The Cult of the Winds and some of the trancework relating to both the Mountain Mothers & Dionysos fit this description.

There are so many angles to developing the knowledge and skills for this type of trancework. If you are a Bride then you would initiate into a living tradition or a reconstructed one with people that you trust. To develop skills as a Bride, you will want to practice extremely strict compartmentalization and reinforcement of your hypnotic triggers. The exact parameters of what you would do here depends on what spirit you are a Bride to.

If you are a musician then you will spend a lot of time memorizing threads (spirit chants) and rhythms. There can be dozens to hundreds of threads depending on which spirit cult you are involved with. You will also devote some energy to strict compartmentalization of your hypnotic triggers, which are also cult specific.

If you are training as a monitor (someone who watches over the entranced), you will spend a lot of time in the trenches watching the body language of the entranced and learning to read the signs to interpret what is going on. And, of course, you will spend time learning how to troubleshoot various scenarios where your skills will be tested.

If you are training to be a lead musician then buckle up because you will have to learn all of it and then some. To be a lead musician is to intimately and skillfully be able to perform every role used in trancework. You will also want to start acquiring gear that your trance group will need to host a ritual. (I'll make a separate post on what kind of materials you will want to have on hand for that.)

Euphoric or Enthusiastic Trance -Bridalwork, which is ecstatic trance with gods instead of spirits. This will also be cult specific. Some euphoric traditions just focus on becoming closer to divinity for no other purpose than it is holy and desirable. Others use music as a diagnostic process to see if a person has run afoul of a god. And still others utilize euphoric trance to drive away lesser spirits who are making problems for mortals.

This is the most formal type of trancework there is. That formality is there as a safety feature and to facilitate the creation of proof of state. The more strict you are with this type of trancework, the farther you will go with it. It takes a lot of faith. You have to know what you are doing with absolute certitude and commit to it fully. The more reverence you put into it in your waking life, the deeper your connection while entranced.

Unfortunately those three different ritual goal styles listed in the description have radically different needs so I cannot help too much in a general sense. The major thing that connects them is that formality though. So focus on that, cultivate strong relationships with divinity by doing things the way you are supposed to do them when you are supposed to do them. And this will build over time and repetition.

A Final Note Taking your sweet time is very important. Rushing to an imagined destination or an end goal will create a weak foundation. I recommend spending at least a year of active weekly development on your skills for each stage before actively moving on to the next. You can build your skills in each type of trance up all at the same time but it will still take years. The longer you keep at it and more consistently you do it the more you will be able to do with it. This is a lifelong pursuit.

Hope this helps! Good luck.

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VOD from that time the bitch who runs this blog made Drinkable Spells with @cryptotheism and @madmonksandmaenads

ooooo you wanna follow my youtube and twitch so bad oooo

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SPEEDRUN GUIDE TO THE METAPHYSICS AND MAGICAL THEORY OF JOHN DEE:

This Dee section is beguiling me. Comprehending it is one thing, figuring out how to explain it to a novice is another, so I'm gonna do my best here, and see how I'm doing.

ENOCHIAN MAGIC HAS THREE PILLARS, THEY ARE:

Heptarchic Magic

The Watchtowers

The Thirty Aethyrs

HEPTARCHIC MAGIC Is Dee's take on the Solomonic/Medieval-Grimoire School of thought. It pulls many structural elements from the Solomonic school of thought, as well as proto-spiritualist elements like Scrying. However, it differentiates itself by focusing on conversing with angels rather than demons. The heptarchic mage wishes to understand the sublunary world, and assist in the divine plan.

THE WATCHTOWERS are how the angels administer the sublunary world, and the angels that administer the sublunary world. They are the method by which knowledge of the sublunary world is passed to the magician, and what demarcates the Sublunary world in terms of comprehension. That which is beyond the watchtowers is the realm of mysticism alone.

THE THIRTY AETHYRS are the frontier beyond and between the Watchtowers. They are Dee's take on the Merkhava/Hekhalot/Gnosticate mysticism of late antiquity. They are differentiated by being primarily mystical in nature, focusing on the experiences of the magician rather than the potential boons granted. They are gateways to understanding of the celestial plane (in the Agrippa sense).

The mortar holding all these bricks together is Enochian, Dee's conception of the primordial language of divinity, which can be quickly but incompletely be summarized as the source code of the universe. Enochian's importance is that it facilitates communication with the angels, which itself is the foundation of the entire system.

Here's my patreon with all my research notes if you wanna read more

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One of my favorite bits from Dee's metaphysics is that each successive rank of angels is equally incomprehensible to the rank they're commanded by.

Human: "So what are the archangels like?"

Angel: "Iunno I just do shit lmao."

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I love the theological implications of all this. Do you think if they were interested in it they could've gotten a saint to serve as a translator between the inhuman divine and the imperfect human? Or like, the Big J himself seeing as He specifically lived as a human for a while and understands the material world?

The way angels work in Dee's metaphysics are fascinatingly modular and recursive. A Watchtower is a cohesive being made up of dozens of lesser being, which themselves are made of dozens of lesser beings. The trumpeters are the Watchtowers as beings, but they are also beings that hold office within the watchtowers as an organizational structure, and beings that live in the watchtowers as a place.

It's kinda like if each individual organ system in your body had a semi-autonamous form of intelligence. Like your cardiovascular system in of itself can't understand what it's like to be a full human, but you can understand what it's like to be a cardiovascular system. You are also, however, aware that you are an organ system in some larger body whose qualia you cannot understand.

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Requested by @mitkitty​

I had to google these guys, but uh, I think I might have fucked something up.

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Magic Eraser

Capitalism really has people asking "where can I buy sage for cleansing?" instead of "what else can I use for cleansing that is easier to find?"

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What kind of idiot makes a dragon you can't fuck?

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theory aside I believe it is important that your witchcraft be, first and foremost, Cool As Fuck. it needs to slap. if you don't have something that you're like "yeah this is just plain awesome" what are you doing. live a little

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Overheard at the Occult Store.

“Black ONLY means evil work. Like cursing!” “Okay, but so why does the book say ‘For banishing Negativity’?” “Look, I’ve been a wiccan for two years. I’m practically a high priestess, just … I know what I’m talking about.”

You know nothing, John Snow.

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Thoughts on Odin

STRANGEST COMBINATION OF WISE INTELLIGENT WARRIOR KING AND DIRTY OLD BASTARD I HAVE EVER MET

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Are you able to perceive spirits? If so, in what way(s)? Not visually, but I can kinda “hear” them the same as any other thought in my head. Not auditory hallucinations, more just like a thought that feels alien.

Do you perceive different types of spirits differently? Honestly with the limited way I can experience them to begin with not particularly. Different spirits have different voices but that’s about it.

What types of spirits have you worked/communicated with? Mostly the gods that I worship, dragons, and orcs. When I was more ambitious at the start I tried doing something with the fae but I haven’t made regular contact with them.

How do you communicate with spirits? It’s kinda like pinging them in my head and then we strike up a conversation from there. If I’m trying to be particularly formal or am trying to work with them on something I’ll make offerings at the start.

If you use divination, what are your preferred methods and why? I’ve used tarot a few times because it’s accessible and I have books to help me interpret when I need to. I’ve tried runes but I use those more for sigils now, and I’ve also tried to use black mirror scrying but either my mirror is too small or I cannot focus on it for long enough for anything noteworthy to happen.

How did you first get into spirit work? I wanted to experiment with something new after failing to have much luck with the practice that I was focused on for so long. I thought dragons were rad so I made an offering and went from there.

How long have you been a spirit worker? Only about a year and a half.

Is there anything you’ve learned that’s made communication easier? I learned pretty early on that it helps to actually have a set goal in mind rather than just aimlessly trying to make contact for the sake of contact.

What’s something you think beginning spirit workers should know? Everyone experiences things differently, and “visualization” isn’t the be all end all considering plenty of people cannot do it whatsoever.

Any mistakes you see people making? Common misconceptions? I try to maintain a solitary practice.

Have you been through an initiation process, and if so, what can you tell us about it? I haven’t but honestly it sounds like an interesting thing to construct and I’ve been getting progressively more interested in ritual magic recently.

How do you define “familiar spirits”? Honestly it could be a couple different things. It could be something summoned, constructed, or encountered, but usually serves as something like a companion and an aide in my understanding.

Thoughts on working with familiar spirits vs. other guides/teachers/allies? It probably has to do with the level of autonomy that the spirit is expected to have outside of its interactions with you, and how willing the spirit is to be called upon. Familiars are probably the easiest in that regard but you could easily diversify what you’re able to accomplish by branching out into other relationships.

Do you differentiate between ghosts and other spirits of the dead? If so, how? Imo a square is a rhombus in the same way a ghost is a spirit of the dead. There are so many different categories that those entities can derive into.

Do you have a different approach for dealing with ghosts? If so, what is it? I don’t try to interact with the dead, there’s no reliable way to discern that you are actually dealing with the person you think it is. The closest I have come so far is having passing interactions with Hela.

Any regrets or things you’d do differently looking back at your career as a spirit worker? For the longest time I was hitting my head against a brick wall trying to figure out astral projection, but when I shifted my focus to spirit work I had infinitely more success immediately. My biggest regret was that I was so caught up in my own head that I didn’t conceive of changing course for years.

Anything else you’d like to share? Eeby Deeby

a little survey for spirit workers curious crow is curious

Are you able to perceive spirits? If so, in what way(s)?

Do you perceive different types of spirits differently?

What types of spirits have you worked/communicated with?

How do you communicate with spirits?

If you use divination, what are your preferred methods and why?

How did you first get into spirit work?

How long have you been a spirit worker?

Is there anything you've learned that's made communication easier?

What's something you think beginning spirit workers should know?

Any mistakes you see people making? Common misconceptions?

Have you been through an initiation process, and if so, what can you tell us about it?

How do you define "familiar spirits"?

Thoughts on working with familiar spirits vs. other guides/teachers/allies?

Do you differentiate between ghosts and other spirits of the dead? If so, how?

Do you have a different approach for dealing with ghosts? If so, what is it?

Any regrets or things you'd do differently looking back at your career as a spirit worker?

Anything else you'd like to share?

Feel free to answer as many or as few questions as you like, or let me know if there's other questions you'd like to see added. I feel like there's things I'm forgetting...

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A sigil for household protection and physical stability. We got a lot of storms, power outages, and downed trees over the summer, so better safe than sorry.

Like my work? Give me a tip! Ko-fi

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A sigil for those traveling by asphalt and exhaust, those roadtrippers and cross-country wanderers. For a steady engine and calm commute, keen eyes and no surprises.

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gotta say the best post-pornban tumblr development has got to be the rise of wizard blogs. we aint the biggest or shiniest social media out there but hey, what other platform has this many people earnestly doing wizard shit online