Self-hypnotism And Its Use In Ceremonial Styled Magick/trance Work Options

The Golden Dawn make a fuss about the use of Hypnotism due to their having to fend off charlatans in the form of illusionists and 'telepaths' perhaps in much the same way Harry Potter and stage magic derides western spiritual practice (ie: ''Magick'') today but its obvious that this has been a mistake and that its usefulness has been neglected. Poke Runyon hints at a slightly more underhanded purpose for dissuading people from its practice and suggests that a practitioner develop themselves in order to make use of it in both Golden Dawn styled magick as well as the older Ceremonic styled Goetic art.

Suppose in truth the Golden Dawn speaks out against the use of hypnotism but does not make mention of self-hypnotism specifically, the idea of having someone delve into your mind to plant suggestions is abhorrent to someone who intends to use that mind to forge and create their own realities and redefine themselves IMO. But its use on oneself has too much value to be put aside without a valid reason for doing so, sigil work for example is a form of self-hypnosis planting suggestions within the mind for them to react and effect reality and in the same way when understood it can be seen that ones own subjective reality is based on the same principle as in Feng Sui we are surrounded by a mesmerism both seen and unseen.

Anyway, does anyone here use self-hypnotism to engage in Ceremonial work or Trance work in general? How has it worked for you?

Peace
M

Have you tried marrying your practice with self-hypnotism with the use of sigils Green Lantern?

No. I do use brainwave entrainment to get myself into a trance from which I can then launch sigils; it's my primary method of working with sigils. The state of mind the entrainment takes me into is essentially the same as being hypnotized; it has the same characteristics such as a sleep-like drowsiness, relaxation, no awareness of my environment and eventually no awareness of myself. I have a small manual on something called autogenic training by KH Welz; it teaches how to get yourself into a state of deep relaxation using suggestions. Once you're in that state you should be able to launch a sigil, but I haven't tried it yet.

although I'm unsure of how P.Runyon is going about things in his working as he speaks about being active while in Trance?

I'm afraid I don't know either. I know that if you can get yourself into a trance state you can create something called an anchor. Let's say you get yourself into a deeply relaxed state and you make an unusual hand sign such as touching your left hand's wrist with your right hand's pinkie. Your unconscious mind will then remember the unusual sign with the state you're in. If you've then sufficiently anchored the state with that sign, you should be able to get yourself back into that state at any time by making the sign. Unfortunately, if you're in a ritual with eyes open, movements, words, you'll probably snap out of the state very quickly, and possibly ruin the anchor as well.

I remember seeing a Derren Brown show called the assassin, in which he hypnotized a guy to completely forget whatever he was experiencing whenever there was a polka dot style pattern in his visual field, and it worked. If at any point in his vision there was just a small cloth with the pattern on it, he would completely forget whatever he was experiencing. This suggests that you might be able to get into a trance state and stay in it by using an external symbol, but I don't know how to go about doing this so that it works reliably.

Do you practice GD style magic? I often go into a light trance automatically by practicing banishing rituals. (It's like a light sense of excitement with a hint of sexual arousal.) Try this: the next time you practice your rituals, be as aware as you can of how you feel, while holding the expectation that the rituals themselves should alter your state of consciousness. If any change occurs in how you feel while you practice, then you are in fact in a slightly altered state of consciousness.

If it's possible to go into strongly altered states of consciousness and practice rituals without the use of entheogens, I would love to hear about it.

This post has been edited by Green Lantern: Dec 25 2013, 01:55 AM