Wicca for Beginners (8 page)

Next, raise your shields. Do not tell each other what images you are using. Pump a fair amount of energy into your shield. Project your energy outward, as if you were protecting yourself, but remember not to project it at your partner like you are attacking. Tell your partner to move his or her hands forward slowly again and tell you when he or she feels your shield. Have him or her describe how it feels. Is it different than your natural shield, or similar? Can he or she guess what image you’re using just by feeling the shield? Then switch and try to feel your partner’s shield. Try to guess what he or she is visualizing. Ground when you are finished.

Remember to Practice!

I know I’ve said this already, but it bears repeating: Practice, practice, practice your visualization, grounding, and shielding. When you do these exercises, you are training your mind and preparing it for ritual and magical work, among other things. Burn these skills into your brain so that you’re able to do them anywhere, at any time, and even on autopilot. You’ll need them to explore trance, meditation, and pathworking, three of a Wiccan’s most powerful and versatile practices.

4

Trance, Meditation, and Pathworking

Wiccans use trance, meditation,
and pathworking to train their minds and work with the subconscious to harness their mental powers. There are many reasons a Wiccan might want to use each technique or all three together, including mental exercise, grounding, communicating with the gods, magic, dream work, shamanic journeying, creating an astral temple, healing, and just plain relaxation. We’ll talk a little more about some of these later in the chapter.

Both meditation and pathworking involve entering a light trance state and then using visualization to set an image in your mind. The primary difference between the two, for the purposes of this book (you will find different definitions elsewhere), is that when you are doing a pathworking, your visualization usually involves a guided mental journey to a particular place for a particular purpose. A meditation can be much more freeform, and there may or may not be a “journey” involved.

The first step to doing a meditation or pathworking is to relax and allow yourself to enter a light trance state. But first, you need to know how to “trance.”

Trance

A trance is a gentle altered state, somewhere between being fully awake and asleep. When you are hypnotized, you are in a type of trance. You are usually in a light trance when you daydream. We talk about “zoning out” in front of the television, and this, too, is a form of trance. During a trance, the conscious mind doesn’t quite leave—although sometimes it feels that way—but it’s occupied elsewhere, and the subconscious has freer reign.

Trance techniques make energy work easier because they allow you to bypass the logical, skeptical, “Mr. Spock” conscious mind and get access to the subconscious more easily. As I discussed in chapter 3, energy follows thought, and imprinting images on the subconscious begins to make the images a reality. So if you can use a trance state to lower the barriers to your subconscious and “convince” it that your goal is already reality, you’re more likely to have success with your magic or whatever goal you are trying to achieve through trance work.

So, short of having someone swing a pocket watch in front of your face and say, “You are getting sleepy,” how do you achieve a trance state? Just as with grounding, there are as many ways to enter a trance as there are people who want to do it. First of all, however, you’ll need to set the stage.

When you are just beginning with trance work, the environment you choose to work in is important. As with the work you did in chapter 3, you’ll want to find a quiet place where you can practice without interruption. It’s especially important with trance work that you also feel safe in whatever place you choose. You’re not in danger when you go into a trance, but you are more vulnerable to ambient energies because the conscious mind—which would normally trigger you to tune out unwanted energy, sounds, or other distractions—is on a little vacation when you trance. Speaking of distractions, if you have pets, make sure that they are shut out of the room you are working in. Many animals love energy work, and they can be pests (lovable pests, but still . . .) when you’re trying to do trance work or magic. Whenever my husband sees massage clients at our house and forgets to lock her out, my old lady cat lies next to the client and touches him or her with her paws. She seems to love the vibe they give off when they’re in a trance state.

Pick a place to do trance work in that is not only safe, but comfortable. Pull the blinds or curtains, and work in dim light. You pull the curtains and dim the lights when you’re going to sleep, which is like a deeper trance state, so this helps to trigger your mind that the conscious part of it is checking out for a while. Working by candlelight is good because it’s dark enough to be trance inducing but light enough to remind most people not to nod off. If you use a candle, make sure, however, that it is in a very safe place in a stable candle holder in case you do fall asleep.

You may want to play some music in the background during your trance work. Some people find that this helps them slip into trance more easily, while others find it distracting. The good thing about music is that it can reduce noises from outside the room, such as sounds from traffic or other people in the house, to just one noise by drowning them out. Then in turn you can tune out the music (it’s easier to ignore one noise than it is to ignore several) or listen to it, as you choose. This works especially well with headphones. If you want to try using music, choosing something repetitive is often helpful because after it has heard a few bars of the music, the brain becomes accustomed to it and won’t be stimulated by the introduction of new sounds or melody changes. We have a tape of some Tibetan monks chanting “Om” that we use as background sound. It’s terribly boring to listen to by itself, but the repetitive sound is great for inducing trance. It’s also good to choose instrumental music so your conscious brain doesn’t interrupt your trance by trying to follow the lyrics.

Once you’ve got the room set up, sit comfortably, ground, and raise your shield. With your conscious “security guard” mind sipping mojitos on the beach, it’s best to turn on the alarm system, just in case. Again, you are not shielding because you need to worry about attracting negative energy, but because you want to keep out distracting energies and sounds. You can adjust your shield to filter out noise as well as energy. It’s your shield, after all; it’s as real as you make it, and you can “program” it to do whatever you need it to do.

Next, close your eyes or allow them to focus softly (let your eyes relax and your vision go blurry), and take several deep breaths. Feel your body relax with each breath. Then, when you are grounded and relaxed, try one of the following trance-inducing techniques. Before you start, however, if you’re worried that you’re going to “trance out” so far that you will have trouble coming back, there are two simple things you can do. Set an alarm clock to go off after a certain period of time (5–10 minutes for your first attempt; 15–20 if you’re pretty good at trancing). You can also ask someone to knock on the door at a specific time. The noise of the clock or the knock should startle you out of the trance. It’s not likely that you’ll “go somewhere” and not be able to come back, but if you’re afraid it might happen, your fear can interfere with your trance session.

Here is a short list of trance inducers. Bear in mind that this is another situation where the technique that works best for you will be the one that you make up, so use these ideas as a springboard to finding your own methods.

A Few Basic Ways to Induce Trance

do square breathing.
Breath exercises are great for energy and trance. To do square breathing, breathe in slowly for four counts, hold the breath for four counts, exhale for four counts, hold for four counts, and keep going. The counts should be very slow. The combination of breathing and counting will help you enter a light altered state.

light a candle.
Allow your eyes to soft-focus, then gaze at the flickering flame. You can do the same if you’re sitting around a campfire or in front of a fireplace, but make sure you’re safe first. It never, ever hurts to have a fire extinguisher around when you are doing anything with candles or flame.

bowl of water.
Gaze at the surface of water in a bowl or at the flame of a candle reflected in the water.

the notebook.
Close your eyes and visualize a notebook with lined paper. In your mind, write on one line of the paper, “I am in a trance.” Visualize forming each letter of the sentence. Keep writing the sentence on subsequent lines.

the maze.
Close your eyes and imagine that you are in a maze of winding corridors. Like Theseus in the story about the minotaur, you’ve got one end of a golden string in your hand. The string winds through the passages to the center. Follow the string to the center. When you get there, you will be fully in trance.

the staircase.
Imagine climbing up or down a spiral staircase, each loop bringing you deeper into trance.

burn mugwort incense.
This works in two ways. First, mugwort has some compound in it that seems to induce trance. It’s not like smoking marijuana or taking a drug. It’s subtle (and legal). It’s good for magical work because it will help you trance, but you’ll still have control. You can also use soft focus with the smoke to induce trance.

the crystal.
Find a chunk of crystal with many points or a rock with lots of random markings. Soft-focus, and gaze at the points or markings. You can also gaze at the reflection of candlelight off the facets.

trickling water.
If you have a tabletop fountain, soft-focus, then watch the bubbling water. Note that the sound of running water makes some people suddenly have to go to the bathroom, which isn’t terribly helpful when you’re trying to trance.

swirling water.
Visualize water swirling down a drain, or go run some water and watch the real thing. See the bathroom caveat from the trickling-water idea.

watch the fish.
Allow your eyes to soft-focus, and gaze at an aquarium of fish. Yes, this sounds funny, but it really works! There is a reason that many Asians keep fish tanks in their homes—fish tanks have great energy (chi) and they’re very relaxing. The day my husband and I moved, we and the group of friends who helped us were so tired that we sat in the living room and zoned out in front of the fish tank for several minutes before any of us realized that we’d fallen into some sort of fish-and-fatigue-induced hypnotic thrall.

the spiral.
Draw a spiral on a piece of paper, and trace the spiral with your finger. Watch the tip of your finger as it goes around and around. This is best done in candlelight. I have a flat clay spiral with fingertip-sized grooves in it just for this purpose. Note that some people who are first beginning have trouble trancing and doing something physical—like moving their fingers—at the same time, so it might be best to start with one of the other ideas.

A Few More Advanced Ways to Induce Trance

These are “more advanced” because they require movement, training, or both.

drumming.
Beating a drum slowly induces trance because it is repetitive and it generates a wonderful, relaxing vibration. Don’t drum quickly, because that raises energy instead of inducing trance. The idea is to imagine that your heart rate is slowing down with the speed of the drumming.

trance dance.
If you’ve ever been to a pagan or Wiccan event, you’ve probably seen people drumming and dancing around a fire. Dancing is one of the most fun ways to enter an altered state. You can do it alone, in the middle of a crowded club, or with your friends under the moonlight. Spinning—kind of like the Sufi “whirling dervishes” do—will put you in trance pretty quickly too, but be careful, please. It’s easy to lose your balance and whack into the furniture (if you do this inside) or the fire (if you do it outside). If you’re interested in trance dance, check out Gabrielle Roth’s book
Sweat Your Prayers
.

tai chi and chi gung.
If you have studied tai chi and/or chi gung, you know that these practices are meant to induce a light trance, among other things. My husband and I believe that they are so beneficial to learning about body, energy, and trance work that we require all of our students to learn a little of one or the other.

Turning Off the “Mind Chatter”

Concentration is central to good visualization, trance work, and magic. As I’m sure you discovered when you tried some of the trance exercises, sometimes it’s hard to concentrate because your conscious mind is chattering away in the background—making a grocery list, reliving an argument with your ex, wondering what to pack for a trip—nattering on about whatever distracting thing it can obsess itself with at the time. Several of the trance-inducing techniques I just listed can help quiet the chattering mind, especially square breathing, listening to music with headphones, and the notebook, because they engage the brain enough that you can forget about the outside world, but not so much that you can’t relax and trance. Here are a few additional things you can do before trance work or meditation to help turn off the chattering mind. There are many, many techniques for this, so if one of these doesn’t work, try something new. You’ll find the right one for you.