Uncategorized | The Blog of Baphomet

I’ve been exploring shaking recently. The kind of trance state that often goes by names such as the Seiðr (seething*) or simply as ‘shaking’ within the Christian tradition (hence The Quakers et al). There are a couple of good books on the market which explore this approach, Jan Fries Seidways and Shaking Medicine by Bradford Keeney (which comes with a nice CD of sounds to shake to).

[*Ed’s note: I have been asked to point out that despite recent use by some individuals equating the similar sounding words ‘seiðr’ and ‘seeth’, they are in fact from very different etymological origins, and historically unrelated. Further information about more plausible etymologies of this word can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiðr. Seiðr covers a wide range of complex magickal techniques, and should not be taken as equivalent to the technique of entering trance by shaking. We apologise for any confusion! NW]

As I’ve already mentioned shaking trance turns up in many spiritual traditions, and there are many techniques you can use to get into that state. But as with most things in magick (especially in the DIY-punk-inspired style of chaos magick) no guidebook is as good as your own experience. Playing with this state I’ve discovered that, unsurprisingly, if I spend some time stretching (using yoga, tai-chi and other non-stylised movement) getting into the shaking trance is easier than if I plunge straight in. Sometimes a rattle helps, so there is a neat ouroborous feedback loop feedback from one’s own movements through sound and vibration (even if you’re shaking to pre-recorded sound) and back into movement.

Different shakes can arise. Sometimes they start at the periphery of the body, but for me the deepest and most powerful ones start at the root – the dan tien, the muscles of the core. As with much martial arts practice the idea of allowing movement to arise from the belly, the spot we quite literally grow from (attached to our mothers via the umbilical cord) makes movement of the arms and legs deeper and stronger than if the limbs are used in isolation.

shaking can open up many spiritual powers

Shaking can open up many mysterious spiritual powers

The shake can go through phases. Faster or slower, moving the body around in the space or keeping it fairly static and merely vibrating; shivering on the spot. The rule is, feel into it and go with it.

So what’s the point? There are many different uses of shaking trance. There are the physical and psychological healing benefits. By shaking ourselves we unblock channels of lymph, energy, blood and mentation. We stir the blood and stimulate the organism with global sensation. Vibrations pass though the organs as well as along the arms and legs. We feel good.

Then there are the more clearly esoteric uses. Shaking trance can be used as a state to build energy or gnosis for acts of results magick, casting sigils and all that. But for my money one of the most interesting features of it is the oracular or inspirational use of shaking.

Like some aspects of Seiðr there is a sense in which this trance can be regarded as passive. The practitioner is carried away by the vibrations of the bodymind; spontaneous glossolalia, song and even prophecy may arise. They may be a sense of the body changing into other animal or mythic forms, emotions well up, dislodged from the depth of the mind, floating up to awareness. So although the technique is one we deliberately employ there is very much a sense that the practice unfolds through the practitioner rather than originates from him or her. We create the conditions for kundalini to strike up the sushumna; light the touch paper and our occult organism does the rest. We shake out obsolete patterns and dance into the Mystery.

Try it for yourself!

As someone who has spent over 30 years exploring the variety of religious answers devised by humanity’s attempt to make sense of life on our planet, it got me thinking about the “Why Odin?” question. What is it about his mythological heroism that I find so compelling? Why with my own pointy-hatted chaos magickal ways do I keeping coming back to his story as an exemplar of how to manage my own existential dilemmas?

Some critics of the neo-pagan revival typify its worldview as a naive pantheism where the preoccupation with the cycle of Nature prevents us from appreciation of the evolutionary goal of transcendence (Cf. the work of Ken Wilber for more on this). In reality heathen myths are not some distant utopian vision or romantic aspiration to “be at one with nature”, rather they seem to mirror the joy and struggle of our own human experience. The stories that fill both the Eddas and Sagas represent a complex interlacing of history and pre-history as an expression of an ever shifting, ever evolving world. While we may take pleasure in the making of toasts and the wearing of skins, I personally feel that the ancestors would have a good belly laugh at attempts to recapture some imagined “golden-age”!

When we examine Heathen cosmology, unsurprisingly it seeks to mirror the experience of the people of the North as they lived their lives. In the beginning was the primal void (Ginnungagap) and from it emerged the primary polarity of Fire and Ice. From the dynamic tension between these poles came melt-water and from this emerged the primal giant Ymir. Creation is not a peaceable realm, but one that is forever caught up in a cycle of war and temporary resolution. These tensions are personified by the giants, other elemental beings and the gods themselves both Aesir and Vanir.

Queue dramatic music…

The mythological struggle between Aesir and Vanir (as described in Voluspa and elsewhere) seem to reflect at a macrocosmic level the human project of seeking to awaken consciousness within our bodies and the biosphere. This balancing of immanent and transcendent is also reflected in Odin’s own journey. His need to learn magic from Freya highlights the essential journey into the natural so as to comprehend his life and magic, but this is not enough. He must go deeper and seek Runa – the mysteries of Kosmos – via his ordeal on the world tree:

I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded by a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows
from where its roots run.

No bread did they give me or drink from a horn,
Downwards I peered;
I took up the runes, screaming I took them,
Then I fell back from there.

Havamal 138-139

The dimensions of gnosis that he attains are both deep and transcendent (ah the limits of spatial metaphors!). The mysteries arise from the dark roots of the unconscious (both collective and individual) and they point us towards the reality that the northern Gnostic must awaken within the realm of Midgard. Whichever version of the futhark that we work with, they represent the worldview of the ancestors both in relation to their core values and day-to-day concerns. Like the “Sly Man” of the Gurdjieff Work, for those of us seeking to emulate the path of the All-Father, our awakening needs to integrate and balance the needs of body, mind and emotions. It needs to be here and now rather than in some imagined nirvana/Valhalla!

In contrast to the Gnostic explorers of the classical period, the Northern Gnostic seeks the way of awakening within the natural world rather than away from it. This is a path of integration typified by the hermetic axiom of “as above so below, as below so above”. We need to wake up from the sleep that culture and routine can lull us into, but our awakening is also a realization of connection and relationship rather than lofty isolation. This is not an easy journey to make; we need to work hard to uncover these often over-grown pathways. Awakening to Runa often brings a greater sense of being out of step with the mainstream – Odin took up the Runes of realization screaming and roaring. As we seek to dive deep into new realms of understanding, we need to understand their true cost: that they can only be accessed when we give up what we think we know to gain true insight – “sacrificing self to self”. Here we find ourselves contending with the insights of C.G. Jung and other trans-personal psychological approaches where the ego is not abolished but rather is transformed via expansion and extension to incorporate the dark roots of the unconscious (Hel) and the bright potentialities of what we might become (Asgard).

In the Zen Hearth of Odin the Wanderer this awakening within the turning of the year is the focus of our work. Via the use of Zen sitting practice, Runic Galdar and core shamanic trance technologies (i.e. drumming) we seek the wisdom of the old ways so that we might live more fully today. I’ll conclude with the statement of intent that we are currently using at our monthly blots:

We come seeking gnosis
And the wisdom to apply it.
We come seeking the Old Ways
That we might truly live now
And become the future.

We come seeking the three realms
And the three treasures
Sky, Earth and Sea
Aesir, Vanir and the Ancestors.
We seek the World Tree as the realm of practice:

Our Minds, our Bodies, our Lives.
We seek to take up the Runes
Fragments of mystery
As we see sense and nonsense
On the road we travel.

We give thanks to the heroes of practice
We give thanks for the complex Web of Truth
We give thanks to those who sit like mountains together.