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Post by potia on Oct 23, 2009 8:40:54 GMT -1
Hi Annua
I'd be very interested in hearing more please on or off forum which ever you feel is best. I'm not currently experimenting but thinking of experimenting with use of trance for both divinatory purposes and direct communication with other beings. I'm trying to gather information on possible methods of doing so with a reasonable amount of safety.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2009 4:26:39 GMT -1
Hi Potia, not a problem, I'd be happy to share anything you think could be of use to you. Would you like to hear more about core-shamanism or about the ways I've adapted it or both? I'll drop you a line as it might be a bit lengthy for the forum.
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Post by Adam on Oct 24, 2009 9:34:26 GMT -1
I would be interested in hearing more too, specifically how you adapted the core-shaman techniques rather than the Harner stuff itself... I was interested in recreating as much of the Awenyddion phenomenon as possible, but I think that is a lost cause, so any other aspect of the use of divinatory trance that may have a useful modern context if of interest to me
Now I just have to find a bunch of folk local enough to be interested enough in getting together regularly to work with it :-)
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Post by potia on Oct 24, 2009 10:39:09 GMT -1
Hi Potia, not a problem, I'd be happy to share anything you think could be of use to you. Would you like to hear more about core-shamanism or about the ways I've adapted it or both? I'll drop you a line as it might be a bit lengthy for the forum. Both please. It's not an area I've looked into before. Thanks
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2009 19:17:19 GMT -1
Hi Potia, Apologies for being off board for a while and missed your questions, I've been stupid-busy with work stuff. If I read this correctly the seer journeys into Helheim but no-one else descends even to the gates? Also this is not a rite where the seer is possessed in any way? Yes, as we usually do it, only the Seer goes through the gates into Helheim - we do the visualisation sotto voce so only they can hear it properly. It's not really a possession in the true sense, but the seer becomes 'The Seer', which now has a fairly strong egregore associated with it. It's a deeply altered state, but distinct from, for example, being ridden by one of the Loa, or standard Spiritualist stuff. May I ask how the seer usually feels after the session? Do they usually find it hard to come back or easy? Does the guide have a monitoring role as well i.e. can they bring things to a close more swiftly if they feel something is not going so well? They usually feel pretty good - buzzy and energised. We get the whole group to call their name with lots of clapping and stamping. Then food/drink and a formal grounding. Are you willing to say if the seer is usually the same person or does the position vary quite a lot within the group? Nope, we chop and change as appropriate - let everyone have a go and see what new flavour they can bring. Final question Have your group ever experimented with doing something of this nature in a different cosmology or do you stick with the heathen one? Thanks Only the few experiments with the Awenyddion, which we intend to expand on in due time - watch this space!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2009 19:25:51 GMT -1
We are also interested in following up the concept of Awenyddion (from Gerald of Wales), since the description sounds very similar to some of the concepts we think of as being associated with seidr (ecstatic trance states, shaking, etc.). Does anyone have any experience of this? We have experimented with it a few times, with some very interesting results, but it still requires some work, so any thoughts or comments would be appreciated. This is a topic of some interest to me also and something that I have done some experimentation with. My background in trance induction (as far as training goes) is linked with the methods taught at Michael Harner's 'Foundation for Shamanic Studies', something I looked into to better control and direct certain spontaneous experiences I had. Core Shamanism seems to me to provide a good underlying training to then apply to trying to reconstruct more culturally specific practices such as seidr and those of the awenydd. Unlike the Awenyddion in Gerald's account I certainly don't fall into a trance immediately upon being consulted, but I have a method I use which involves speaking (sometimes partially incomprehensibly) during a trance in answer to a question which is inspired by the account. Although with the limited information available I may be doing things differently than these people did in the past innovations inspired by such traditional accounts certainly seem more valuable to me than doing nothing with them at all. I'd be interested to talk further with anyone else trying to do this sort of thing. Hi Annua - there's two people in our group who are experienced with Core Shamanism, and we've used aspects of it in some of our other magickal work, but not specifically with the Seidr/Awenyddion. I'd certainly be very interested in hearing more about your experiences.
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Post by potia on Oct 27, 2009 14:02:14 GMT -1
Hi tyfach,
Many thanks for all your information. It's very interesting.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 29, 2009 1:54:41 GMT -1
Sorry I'm taking so long to answer this, we are having some moving turmoil at our house at the moment, but as soon as we settle I will be all over this discussion like a fat kid on a cup-cake; trust me. I am excited to find people to talk to about this side of things.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2009 8:17:47 GMT -1
Okay, I'm back. Right, well in terms of adapting the core shamanic techniques I suppose the most important parts that I take into the methods I've developed are the centrality of helper spirits and sometimes the drumming. I don't really need the drum though for the trance induction in the oracular seership method I use, I mainly use the drum to call my spirits at the begining because that's how I'm used to calling them. They are the conduits through which anything that comes to me comes to me. So I will start by making offerings to them (milk and honey) and drumming as one might expect in core shamanism. When I feel them around me I start to breath deeply and hard to 'breath them in'. Then the rest will depend whether I'm working for someone else or myself of the particular reason. If I'm trying to give oracular information for someone else it is best if I can have them there and I prefer to sit up back to back with them. Once I'm there and I've called the spirits and am ready to proceed I will ask the person to say aloud their concern or question and I put some honey on my tongue. I started doing this to ritualise the concept recorded about how the Awenyddion calling was known to them and I found that it started to function not just as an offering to my sprits through me, but as an invitation for them to 'speak through my mouth' and seemed to become a cue to go into trance. (One which has humorously enough led to me avoiding the lone consumption of honey on mundane occasions) After this I see the bottom half of my torso, base of spine, hips etc as being a cauldron and draw life-heat from the earth to heat the cauldron (I prefer to work outside if I can, my best sessions have been under some thorn trees here). Once I can feel that the cauldron is 'boiling' and the power is rising up to my head and I feel hot all the way to my forehead I will call out loudly, making an inarticulate sound. I do this on purpose, (or at least at first I did, now I feel the urge to when that heat builds up in my head) even though for the awenyddion this may not have been on purpose. But I find it has an effect of 'freeing up' my speaking out loud what i see rising from the cauldron. All that remains is to cast my mind down, as though dropping my mind down into the abyss and allowing the words to bubble up. The hardest part is letting go rather than seeing the visions themselves. That is why crying out like that tends to loosen up the controls we put on what we say and fearing we will speak nonsense. It helps to have someone there other than the person you are working for to record of course because I don't often remember much of what I say. Often I think I've said something totally stupid that makes sense to the person themselves but to no one else. I also use similiar methods for composing inspired poetry for particular things. Particularly I will pull out a 'song' for a new baby by sitting in a similar way with the pregnant mother. If I can't be with the woman I will light a fire as a sort of gateway and stare into the embers and picture the mother there. In this case sometimes I can write down my own words sometimes I get someone to scribe for me. Although what I do with this has evolved a bit away from anything recognisably 'core shamanic' I doubt I'd be able to go into a trance like this without that training. To me that's what core shamanism is really good for, a kind of frame work to try and reconstruct mostly lost or dying cultural forms. From an academic stand-point the practices of the Awenyddion are certainly a lost cause, but I like to believe if we can get ourselves into a similar altered state as they might have been in and try and use the little bits of what we do know as a kind of key or cue the ancestors may be able to guide us the rest of the way.
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Post by potia on Oct 31, 2009 11:24:23 GMT -1
This is fascinating thanks How do you feel after doing this and how do you ground? Is it something that leaves you feeling energised in some ways or tired out? Do you feel that when you are speaking it is you, your helper spirits or a combination? You mention sitting and seeing your lower torso as a cauldron. Do you sit in a cross legged posture on the ground then?
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Post by Adam on Oct 31, 2009 12:57:53 GMT -1
Annua, thank you for that description... what strikes me first is that it is clearly an evolved technique, one which you have changed and adapted as seems fit over time and practice. The other thing that struck me was, what a dolt I am... I had interpreted the milk and honey "as if"... as if it were a simile... never occurred to me to physically use milk and honey. doh!... clearly over time develops a powerful anchor (I can relate to the honey thing... when I first got into NLP and trancework I was working on my own smoking, and I anchored to the presence of cigarettes to a state of deep trance relaxation... I had to be very careful about walking into newsagents until I corrected it ;D)
I'm tempted to overcome my innate dislike of the appropriation of the word shamanism and check out Harner for the trance techniques at least
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2009 19:58:07 GMT -1
You're both welcome. Um, well it depends on the circumstance but usually I feel a mixture of a sort of shakiness and enhanced clarity, stronger sensory awareness etc. I suppose the closest thing to grounding that I do is drumming again to calm the spirits and offering to them. The power they've brought to the situation is mainly spent through the actual utterance, it seems to me. Sometimes I'm really hungry afterwards as if I've done a big work out. I do do this sitting up cross legged, though that is something that takes a bit of time to feel comfortable with most people will want to lie very still and relaxed when first going into trance.
Is it me or my spirits speaking? Mmm.... that's a tough one. I go to say 'me' but the me that is at that point is a bit of a more loosely defined entity than the every day me. I guess I would say it is me that is speaking but they are the bridge that lets me see anything to speak about, and I'm not my everyday me. But at that time my power animal certainly seems like part of me.... I hope that answers something however vaguely!
"I'm tempted to overcome my innate dislike of the appropriation of the word shamanism"
haha! Yes 'shamanism' has been attached to some pretty dodgy stuff particularly in the realms of 'Celtic Shamanism.' But as a short-hand way to describe a sort of near universal similarity in techniques of ecstasy it works well enough. But to me that stage of 'finding the sameness' is just stage one and if we go to far with it is leads to a cultural white-wash. There may be innatedly human spiritual behaviour that can be seen echoing between cultures as diverse as Siberia and Aboriginal Australia but every Australian tribe would have it's own word for it's 'clever men' with it's own unique elements of symbol and ritual. I think once we've used the word to make the point that we have that similarity we should go back to respecting the individual terms and forms.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2009 4:30:42 GMT -1
. what strikes me first is that it is clearly an evolved technique, one which you have changed and adapted as seems fit over time and practice. This is true I should add, pretty much evolved between me and one other person, so I am quite excited to see how it puts the jump on the evolutionary process to be putting heads together with more people and sharing outcomes.
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Post by redraven on Nov 2, 2009 18:19:33 GMT -1
Hello Annua, I am interested to know if the whole interaction is mainly visually guided or if in the action of connecting with your spiritual helpers, the other senses come into use also. The whole aspect of visualizations is a matter that I am coming to understand to be one that is misunderstood, the use of the word appears to me to placing an emphasis that is misleading. That is to say, it suggests that the experience to be one that should be mainly visual, as our modern society is at this moment in time, and my own experiences and suspicions suggest to me that this is leading to a misunderstanding of the conditions of the experience. When I have been fortunate enough to have a visual experience, I have discovered that the worst thing I can do is to divert my whole attention to what materializes in my mind's eye. It is as if by focussing my whole attention, the delicate image cannot stabilize, and frustratingly, it disappears like fog in a breeze. So, are your interactions one of a mainly visual experience?
RR
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2009 21:08:01 GMT -1
My interactions come in all different forms. I wouldn't say, like with the cauldron, that I 'visualise' it at all (though I use this term because it's commonly recognised) just that I turn my attention towards it's presence and begin to direct power toward activating it. That activation is felt rather than seen, in heat and buzzing sensations and brought about as much by the way I use controlled breathing as by 'seeing' something. So yes I think you're right that there is too much visual emphasis. I mean the orginal information on the Awenyddion describes the calling being made evident in some cases by a taste! Which is a form of communication we are less accustomed to. In what I class as a 'vision', once again a misleading word, I do see things rising up out of the cauldron sometimes, or as though on a screen behind my eyes. But more often than not this is just the begining. The stronger part of the trance involves the words coming up pre-formed as though they bubble up without the need for interpretation, which I suppose could be compared to 'hearing.' Definately, seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, feature in my interactions. Even when I'm seeing I'm always taking information in in a combination of ways.
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Post by Heron on Nov 6, 2009 15:43:30 GMT -1
It strikes me that this account that I came across from Cormac's Glossary when looking at poetic inspiration a while back might be of interest here:
Imbas forosna (‘manifestation that enlightens’)
The poet chews a piece of the red flesh of a pig, or a dog, or a cat, and puts it then on a flagstone by the door and chants an incantation over it and offers it to idol gods, and it calls to him and leaves them not on the morrow, and then chants over his two palms, and calls again idol gods to him, [asking] that his sleep may not be disturbed. Then he puts his two palms on his two cheeks and sleeps. And men are watching him that he may not turn over and no-one may disturb him. Then is revealed to him that for which he was engaged [to find out] till the end of a nómad (three days and nights) …. and therefore it is called Imm-bas (a palm – bas – on this side and on that around his head).
Patrick banished that and also the Tenm láida (‘illumination of song’), and declared that no-one who shall do that shall belong to heaven or earth, for it is a denial of baptism.
Cormac’s Glossary Laud 610 (translation by Whitley Stokes)
p 9 of pamphlet ‘On the Bodleian Fragment’ Philological Society (1891-92)
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Post by megli on Nov 6, 2009 23:53:31 GMT -1
Imbas forosna
encircling knowledge/vision that enlightens
im (welsh ym-) 'around, about'
-as here = fios, 'knowledge' or 'fis' (with long -i-) 'vision' (borrowing from latin visio)
[f- disappears in Irish compound words much as g- does in Welsh]
for:osna: 'which illuminates' 'which casts light' 'which enlightens'
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Post by Heron on Nov 7, 2009 15:29:33 GMT -1
Imbas forosna encircling knowledge/vision that enlightensim (welsh ym-) 'around, about' -as here = fios, 'knowledge' or 'fis' (with long -i-) 'vision' (borrowing from latin visio) [f- disappears in Irish compound words much as g- does in Welsh] for:osna: 'which illuminates' 'which casts light' 'which enlightens' All of which is, indeed, enlightening. Diolch!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2010 11:25:24 GMT -1
Firstly, apologies for coming to this three months late!
The seidr rite we use (that tyfach has been describing) has been put together using information from the Hrafnar website, and the Galina Lindquist book about the Scandinavian group Yggdrasil who were working with a similar set of rites at around the same time as Hrafnar started. Both groups were aware of and had worked with Michael Harner style 'core shamanism' and this is evident in their rites, which means that many of Harner's theories and practises will also be evident in our rite, albeit worked slightly differently.
The Seer will not (usually) be possessed, certainly, this is not the aim. The idea is that they undertake an astral journey to Helheim in order to talk to those that have assembled there (ancestors, wights, deities) which gives them access to the opinions of and the information those entities possess. They are channelling this information, but through being either shown images, or through conversation with these entities. Not through physically channelling them. Part of the Seer during this journey stays within the working space, which allows the continuation of language and communication with the room. Whether the fetch/ fylgia goes to Helheim or whether the Seer goes to Helheim and the fetch/ fylgia stays to communicate I am not sure. Certainly, a part of the Seer's being (or soul) is present in the working space and a part of the Seer's being (or soul) is in the underworld.
In regards to using other mythologies, within this particular rite, we stick to the Norse. This is because the High Seat and the Staff, and the spirit attracting songs, all echo the information found in the Greenland Saga. We have experimented with removing the journey to Helheim (since this is something that the Greenland Saga does not include, and is something that the group Yggdrasil did not always complete during their oracular rites). What we found is that the information we were getting was a little blurry and that a lot of the energy seemed to be landvettir or nature type spirits, or recently dead (ie the last 50 years) ancestors. Certainly, there recently dead and landvettir speaking from Helheim, but it seems that the blurriness and the 'playing' aspect is removed through taking the journey to the underworld.
We have been looking at other ways to use 'the other' for oracular prophesy and these include working in other traditions, such as the Welsh, or Scottish, and also looking at the mediumship and spiritualist traditions that exist today, which perhaps is the closest thing that survives today to Thorbjorn's practise in the Greenland Saga.
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