Shamanic Journeys, Integration, and yes Hands On Chaos Magic

 

After the Solar work I was feeling quite, well, arrogant, and was talking to some order members who were at my house. This was not a official temple meeting, I generally right now am refusing to have secret meetings anymore for a host of reasons. It was more impromptu. One of the people at the meeting at gone to a Shamanic Training Weekend and was mild complaining that they didn't get a lot of the weekend. His words “Relax, Banish, Center, Make shit up”. He stated also that he could not get an ally in the first vision to the underworld which made a lot of the other stuff pointless.

 

I said, remember, this is after a solar working ( see tons of confidence), they suck at hypnosis. Proceeded to bust out my Native American Drum, and lead everyone there on a 15 minute Journey to the underworld. Everyone was greenly amazed at how awesome the journey was and they had all told me to make CD's of the jounrey. They also learned something else, yes I do know a little bit about shamanism from a neo-pagan, neo-Spiritualist perspective. I make no bones and no illusions that what I have seen in New Age festivals, in books and in general with in person combinations is not authentic shamanism. If a Native American practitioner would be so kind as to educate me, I would gladly and repectfully listen.

 

First, we did the journey to a generalized underworld. Each person got an ally ( remember they had just gone to a weekend intensive and didn't get a ally after buku dollars, and effort). Andrieh Ritual Time 15 minutes. But then one person switched the discussion to basically well that they made the ally up. Again, sure maybe they did, but the important thing in the journeying is to assume you didn't. Or more correctly assume that the spirit you contact in the journey is absolutely real. This is an assumed believe, aka it is a choice, that makes the system actually work.

 

The general points of a journey are as follows: Again I am only summarizing what I have seen that I know is not authentic so if you are Native American, please do forgive my indulgence.

 

1. Banish ( of some sort) and Center

2. Breathing relaxation session ( approximate breathing time deep breathing 5 minutes)

3. Start light drumming at a quick rate mimicking a decent speed heart beat.

4. Link the speed of the drumming and volume of drumming to speed and intensity of breathing using direct suggestion ( aka tell the people the speed and intensity of the drumming is the speed and intensity of their breathing), and then proceed to add suggestions to relax, going deeper.

5. I use the double landscape technique. Start in a forest. Using Techniques from Hands on Chaos Magic, and NLP, make sure they feel as many senses as they can in the forest. The critical points for me, is the physical feeling of earth that is moist under foot.

6. Have them wander around the forest feeling, seeing and smelling the forest, and vibrancy of life all around them

7. Have them wander around a bit feeling the dirt especially, the moisture. Have them come to a tree larger then the rest with huge roots they could climb into.

8. Have them climb into the roots which leads down ward into a small tunnel. At this point the drumming should be very slow and soft.

9. The tunnel should get smaller and smaller, till they are forced to leave all their clothes and all their belongings in the tunnel. Have them wiggle through the tunnel and see a light at the ened of the tunnel that looks different in a otherworldly way, but is comforting.

10. Have them emerge into a separate space, that is an forest that seems otherworldly, the participants will fill in the blanks here as to what otherworldly means.

    NOTE: this technically is is even too de script but it seems to work. Some animals and allies might not actually live in a forest. I made this up within five minutes, although if I make a cd-rom meditation for this, I will make it more general.

11. Once they emerge in the new forest, have them wander around for a bit

12. Have their ally wander around the edge of the horizon, they should feel, see, and hear the ally come closer and closer. Step by step. It is critical to not suggest what that ally is, let that come to the person. Give them an opportunity to receive a sigil and a mantra name for the ally.

13. Once they have the ally, give them an opportunity to work with the ally on a project or something they need help in the physical world and have them offer the ally something in exchange.

14. Remind them the ally will come back with them in the physical world and as the drumming increases in speed and volume. That their heart rate and breathing will return to normal.

15. Have them imagine getting pulled back through the tunnel and back as their ally follows them.

16. Increase the speed and volume of the drumming, and when it is at full speed to where you started, have them slowly open their eyes knowing their ally is there with you.

 

Hints from the Forthcoming book, HypnoEnergerics, to make these journeys more powerful.

1. Use sensory information to add to the trance. AKA put extra but related vague queues for people to feel, see, hear, smell, and possibly taste. The more you can get people to generate those stimuli, usually the more intense their vision will be.

2. Force them to change and connect their breathing ( aka slowing it down, and controlling it)

3. Force the people to get into a comfortable position

4. Use liberal hypnotic deepeners to get them down into a deeper trance state.

 

Now, after the journey we had a long discussion on what to actually DO with the ally. First, you have realize that you should assume the ally is in fact a ally from the spiritual realm is real. In my humble opinion, this helps go a long way as far as what to do with this. Most of the suggestions from here are more in depth spilled out in Hands On Chaos Magic and the exact details and things you have to practice to get the techniques working better, are in Hands On Chaos Magic.

 

In the conversation, the one person had a snake ally. The snake had extremely mercurial qualities. At first, he was trying to make Crowley's Liber 777 correspondences. I told them, this generally only works well if you have internalized a lot of the correspondences ahead of time and are working with a Kabbalistic centric paradigm. If the correspondences are internalized, even a shamanic journey will spit out information in that format ( but this isn't needed as I will point out). Shamanic journeys are not usually kabbalistic based. However, the journey itself provides a fair amount of contextual information to actually develop rituals to empower the connection and strength of the ally in the physical world.

 

1) The encounter provides a host of contextual cues for evocation. What the ally looked, sounded, and felt like. A sigil and a mantra name, if received, how the ally moved, and its general demeanor, its size.

 

In the snake example, the snake was very mercurial and could change size, and he described it as black, but hard to get a focus on as far its spots seemed to move. When snakes are in motion there you go, thats actually how they look. Now the surrounded forest he was in through the meditation, was not so mercurial and changing, meaning the mercurial changeable nature was a quality of ally itself. The other person drew a panther which definitely had set size and name.

 

This is more then sufficient information, to perform an evocation using the techniques of Hands On Chaos Magic.

 

2. At this point, its very possible to build on the evocational structure ( again In Hands On Chaos Magic), by using the contextual cues to build an altar. A snake skin from a snake that was black and had spots would be a great addition to an altar for that ally to have a focus spot to build on the relationship. The other person had a black panther. Some sort of black panther image would be a good start and a dedicated spot to work with the ally. As I was leading the pathworking, I again got hosed... no additional ally for me :(. From here both a snake and a panther themselves have contextual queues themselves. You could ask well what would a snake like, or what would a panther like and provide some of that ( as you are capable) on the altar. A necklace would be a great talismonic link to the ally if you could get one.

 

3. Now you have an altar build, and done a fair amount of work to build resonance with the ally, you could start having more indepth conversations with the ally regarding what it could help you with. Not all allies in this sense are good at helping you with all things. Its perfectly acceptable from my perspective if you cannot clearly understand the ally in the vision quests to evoke the ally, and ask questions about its strengths through divinations while in trance state ( again See Hands on Chaos Magic). Generally speaking, you'll probably have a good reasonable idea of this after a couple encounters or after the altar is built and you have a focus point. Most people have some sense of this after one journey. If you are approaching this from a chaos meta paradigmatic way, use the contextual queues you have from the vision to derive meaning. If you have a well integrated paradigm, many times the visions and journeys will correspond to symbol sets within that framework ( and thus you can look up the meaning, particularly if you are doing this within a standard neo-shamanic way).

 

4. Journeying is generally easier at first if you have CD-ROM to guild you until you have internalized the structure of the journey. The people who did the group work for this want me to produce one for this kind of stuff. Maybe I will.

    

5. Once you can have conversations, either through gnoetic means, or through divination means, you can start testing the ally ( this is not always a part of New-Age thinking on this topic ). That means, if you start working with the ally, and the ally says this and this is a strength, you should be able to ask the ally for assistance in that area and see results. Approach this with respect however, and offer the ally something in exchange ( or ask what it would want in exchange for its assistance). This always, always always, gets better results. Its a friend, not your personal slave. Work a different paradigm for personal slaves. The idea here is that after you have build resonance up, have worked out a consistent frame work for a journey, or have worked out a good evocational ritual ( again See Hands On Chaos Magic) using the contextual ideas and information from your journey, and are treating the ally with respect, you should be able to see results within the stated areas of strengths quickly if you are going into a deep trance state each time you do. Again, for most people this means at least 30 minutes of ritual work. If you don't see results, do some self-analysis to see if you are working against yourself ( again See Hands On Chaos Magic), and if that comes up as mostly ok, you may have to do an additional journey to find a different ally, since something about the original piece called forward something that was either more trickster-like and unfriendly to you ( which is ok), or it just didn't work. Personally, if you do the other steps, I have never seen it go like that, after investing some time in it even with a trickster spirit * who can teach you a lot*. Just remember to banish often, and demand seeing results. If you need to do go back to the start, take down your altar and destroy any pieces you have in that altar, and formally release or bind the spirit ( if its causing problems). Again, never seen it go that way, but it could. Ask for results, track them, and then move forward.

6. After you have established a track record of results with the ally in one area, ask it if it can help in other areas as well. Sometimes, the ally will just pop up and say it can help in a situation. Take it at its words and try it out. Record these additional results.

7. Eventually, you'll get to the point that working with the ally ( if you are doing the respect, and exchange), does not require a formal journey or a formal evocation but this should always be backed up by a fair amount of evidence and understanding of where the familiar can help and how. Again, you get that by testing communications and divinations through real world results and transformations.

 

Again, while the pieces are put together in a slightly different way. Hands On Chaos Magic form me,  or from 

 

 

 

 

  has all the underlying metaphysical and training exercises to fill in this recipe with techniques to do everything I am talking about in this blog. It just takes a little extra work after the intial journey and you should see some great results from your ally.

 

Enjoy.