How to become a medium

Focus
A medium has a different focus than that of a psychic. While the psychic focuses on the events and relationships of person for which a reading is being given, the medium focuses not only on the person, but on the spirit energies surrounding that person also. The medium needs to be a psychic and a medium at the same time. An analogy would be that the psychic would be on channel 4 and the medium on channel 6. The action is the same, it’s just a different program that they are tuning into.

Practice
The student should practice psychic development at the same time as learning to become a medium and can follow the instructions given on the pages for Psychic power. Particular attention should be given to learning and practicing meditation on a regular basis. This is the key to getting into the frame of mind where the other senses are temporarily put to rest allowing the sixth sense to be in a heightened state of awareness. It is from this heightened state that information, symbols and knowledge comes through from the other side of the veil. The “veil” is a common term used to describe the thin barrier that exists between the spirit world and ours. Tuning or focusing into the right channel becomes easier with one’s ability to meditate and the rest is practice.

Sincerity
Another critical factor is your desire to communicate with the realm of spirit for a serious and purposeful reason. If you want to speak to spirit because you have nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon or you just want to entertain your friends, forget it! You are guaranteed to get zero. However, if you are sincere and dedicated toward developing a connection and are patient to work it through, even though progress seems to be scant at times, then you will succeed.

Expand your awareness
The next thing you need to do is to develop your awareness about the spirit world and how it has already been in contact with you through your dreams, or while you were awake. You can learn a lot from near death returnees and from those reported cases where the deceased come to comfort the dying. Finding your spirit guides enables you to understand the sense of someone behind the scenes helping. And there is the séance, the place of learning and practice where you gain valuable experience. Follow these links and make yourself better prepared to develop your connection.

Focus on spirits
It is from the knowledge of how those that exist in the spiritual realm interact with you that will in itself give you a large boost in developing toward mediumship. Follow the format outlined in the section on Psychic Ability listed below. Once you have practiced and are proficient with that you can begin to focus on the spirit energy around people. Mediumship is developing your psychic sixth sense and then putting the focus on deceased spirits and getting lots of practice.

Psychic Self Defense

Psychic Self Defence^[credits]

by Jordsvin

 

This article is a companion to my article “Wards 101″, which was published in the February `96 edition of Rainbow Wind Magazine. “Wards 101″ is concise, reasonably well-written, and contains all the information you need to ward yourself and your home and to consecrate and maintain a household guardian.

I felt the need to further comment on psychic self-defense after the following recent incident: some good friends of mine who are new to Paganism decided not to become the students of a Pagan teacher after finding out that he had a horrendous reputation in the Community as a lecher (dirty old, or not-so-old man) and sexual predator. He was quite upset about this, and continued to telephone them. They contacted me reporting “bad, creepy feelings”, weird dreams, and similar symptoms, and openly wondered if they were under psychic attack! Considering the character of the individual in question, that was a distinct possibility. In any case, I helped them ward their home and set up a household guardian, showed them how to build up the natural psychic protection in their own auras. So they wouldn’t forget, I sent them a copy of “Wards 101″!

The Elk (Elhaz, Algiz) rune works very well in warding and psychic self-defense. It looks like an upside-down Peace Symbol without the circle! A charged amulet with this rune (best painted red) can work wonders for your personal barriers and peace of mind. For extra OOMPH! the rune Thurisaz (Thorn) works too, but be careful–see my “Rune-of-the-Month Club” article on that particular rune. A safer, but highly effective alternative is to add visualized “mirrors” facing away from your living space to your wards. Set them to return any negative sendings to their maker.

Try to stay away from places with negative psychic atmospheres as much as possible. These include family and bankruptcy courts, mental hospitals, sleazy bars, criminal hangouts, and any other places where great human suffering occurs. When you must be in such places, keep your barriers up. By the way, according to my friend Thorr Sheil, when such places are abandoned or converted to other uses, the negative charge decays gradually in a “half-life” pattern, just like radioactive elements! Avoid negative people, too! Why bother to ward your home if you are going to invite Mr. or Ms. Naughty Spellbook Commando over to your place for dinner? The wards won’t work – you invited those nasty people in!

Try to keep your home reasonably clean and neat. Physical dirt can attract psychic garbage. Psychic goop often collects in the same places as “dustbunnies”! Rosemary and/or Hawthorn dispel negativity. Put them in corners and under furniture. Replace them after every vacuuming.

Your own attitude has a lot to do with your psychic self-defense and well-being. If you think you’re hexed, you are! If some Spellbook Commandos (you know the type; they think they are great magicians but pretty much operate out of what they read in cheap spellbooks) say they are going to hex you, or have hexed you, laugh in their faces. Laughter is a great hex-breaker! So is grasping an iron object.

The aforementioned Thorr Sheil (PO Box 080437, Staten Island, NY 10308-0005 USA) has a number of very nice psychic self defense spells. Here are just a couple, slightly modified by my own experience:

1. Jernstang: take a large iron or steel nail or a railroad spike. Hold it and fill it with blue light. Invoke Thor and ask that justice be done. Tell who you are angry at and why. When charged, pound it into the ground near the miscreant’s home or place of business. WARNING: be sure you are in the right, or you’ll get some nasty backfire!

2. Blowback: to “fix” malicious gossippers. On a windy night, mix flour, salt and pepper in your left hand. Think of the problem and call on Thor for help. Open the window or back door and say three times: “Against ill winds and ill words, Thor protect me!” Then blow the mixture into the wind. The troublemakers will soon be revealed for what they are and get a dose of their own medicine.

A good way to clean your own person psychically is to brew some nice rosemary tea and bathe in it.  Drinking a bit wouldn’t hurt either if you are not pregnant.  For keeping your home astrally pleasant, clean it first and then strew rosemary in corners, around doors, and under furniture.  Then smudge with your favorite purification herbs.  Rosemary does fine here too.  So does vervain, or a smudge stick.

As you can see, common sense and responsible living form the basis for psychic self-defense. Magick to supplement this is not difficult. The Universe maintains a balance. Psychic attacks are among the hardest sort of magick to do, and the easiest to deflect. This should come as no surprise. If psychic attacks were easy, we’d probably not be here – all our ancestors would have all been hexed to death centuries ago! Most people who know enough magick to effectively launch a strong psychic attack know better than to do so except for the gravest of reasons – like someone murdering one of your friends or relatives but getting off on a technicality. Responsible magicians don’t launch a psychic attack on someone for letting their dog “poop” in their yards or other such trivialities. In such a case, it makes a lot more sense to just call the police or the Health Department, and maybe try warding your yard in such a way that the dog won’t want to cross your property line!

The Astral Form In Motion

Many people have motion problems in their first few projections. Simply getting across a room in the right direction, can be a major accomplishment. This lack of control is simply because they are unfamiliar with astral form. It is like being in zero gravity. You have to learn to move all over again. When you project in real time, you are just a point of consciousness with a poorly constructed etheric shell surrounding it. Motion is provided by thought – not muscles.

Astral Momentum

There is a type of momentum in astral form that causes most of the problems. This causes you to continue moving for a while, after you decide to stop. This may take you through a wall or a ceiling etc. This impetus is caused by the thought you used to cause the motion. If it is too strong, or too prolonged for the action, you will move too quickly or too far. Only practice teaches you how to get about with any degree of accuracy and grace.

It really is quite a comical process, learning astral motion. I remember learning to move about my hometown, in my youth. I would start by trying to navigate through my house; usually ending up stuck in the roof, for a while. Then I would run down the road, trying to build up speed and take off like a plane. I would get airborne for a while, but could never quite clear the roof tops of the surrounding houses. I would often float unintentionally into strange houses, blundering about like a drunk in zero G. I seemed to be endlessly apologizing to all these strangers in passing, as I floated in and out of their houses.

How to Move

To move about in astral form, simply – DO IT. Do not think about what you are doing: JUST DO IT. Be aware that motion is provided by your mind. You have to will yourself into motion, to change direction, and to stop. This is the best advice I can give you on this. It really has to be learned by doing. Have fun.

When you have learned basic motion, do not try anything too ambitious for a while. Stick close to the surface and learn to get around your local area first. Practice varying your speed until you gain some control over it.

Learning To Fly

Learn to fly the same way as you learned to move, by using your mind. At first you may find something very much like gravity affecting you. You may get yourself into the air only to find yourself slowly arcing back to earth again. If you persevere you’ll find yourself moving in a series of short flight hops. This is caused partly by habit and partly by the basic motion problem in general. You sink back to earth when your motion causing mental action falters. This causes your flight impetus to stop and the gravity habit then pulls you down.

You may find yourself, as I did, trying to fly by running down the road and leaping into the air. This is not necessary. Focus your will into floating up into the air. Then use your will to provide motion, same as with basic motion. There is NO gravity affecting you in astral form. Convince yourself of this and you will be flying in no time.

Speed

The three speeds as defined by, S. Muldoon, and commonly accepted, are a basic guide only. These are:

1. Walking speed.
2. Motor car speed.
3. Instantaneous travel.

I think these three speeds were a sign of the time’s back then. These would have been the only types of speed known to most people. Today, movies, computer games and air travel have thoroughly prepared our minds to accept much higher speeds.

With practice and good mental control, you CAN vary your speed to your purpose, from walking speed to supersonic speed. This is a big problem for the beginner though, the control of direction and speed. It has a lot to do with how stable the projection is and how experienced you are at applying your will to motion.

Instantaneous Travel

It is generally accepted that if you can visualize a destination you can project yourself there instantly, at the speed of thought. * I have found this to be highly unreliable * I find this instantaneous method usually projects you straight into a subjective location created by the visualization of your target. You may appear to be at your destination but you will usually find many discrepancies between the real location and where you are.

Instantaneous travel is very like VRP. By using your visualization powers to travel with, you will not actually travel. You will create a subjective copy of a destination and enter it.

Long Distance Travel

I have found it more reliable to follow the surface for short to medium distance projection of up to a few hundred miles. Even this can be difficult, as it is easy to fall into the Alice effect while traveling. All you have to do is break concentration once and you will slip into a dream pool. Strict mental control must be maintained at all times when traveling in real time.

It is not really practical to follow the surface for a long distance. For example, a country on the other side of the world from you is 12000 miles away. You would need to travel at about 64 times the speed of sound to reach there in 15 minutes. At this speed in the atmosphere, everything blurs and clouds and surface features cause disorientation and a corresponding reality shift. Any real time objective aspect of the projection will then be lost.

Note: New projectors can normally hold themselves in real time for only a few minutes. Therefore, any long distance travel is limited by the real time part of a projection.

To travel long distance you need to study geography. You have to be able to recognize continents, oceans, countries, states and cities. You also need to study a map of your target area and note any landmarks. To project there, after this is memorized, you must go into orbit and re-enter over your target. As you approach the earth you must adjust your approach and aim for the geological features and landmarks around your destination.

Orbiting the Earth

To enter orbit is a little more difficult than it sounds. Getting up there is easy, you just go straight up, but stopping when you get high enough is difficult. Most people, myself included, tend to blast themselves straight out of the solar system, sometimes right out of the galaxy. To avoid this, it is important to control your speed during the ascent.

It is easier to project to the moon first, as a way of entering orbit. This gives you a large visual target you can project to in moments. Once there, it is a simple matter to head back to Earth, enter orbit, and circle until you are above your target. In space, away from the atmosphere, there are no problems with speed induced blurring.

How Far Can You Go?

There are * NO * limits to distance, destination or speed. You can travel to the most distant galaxy. The speed of thought is infinite. It is like folding space and moving without moving. If you can see something, you can be there…. as quick as that. In comparison, the speed of light is that of a snail. I often go out into deep space, where the galaxies are just tiny smudges in the distance, to think and meditate. That is easy, but the trick is getting back for a conscious re-entry. Unless you have a good knowledge of astronomy, which I do not, this is difficult. Following the silver cord, if you can see one, is not practical at that kind of speed, though it will give you a basic direction to go in.

To return from a long distance projection, tune into your body and become aware of it. Then try moving part of your physical body, i.e., a finger or toe. This will return you to your body, and end the projection with full memories of the OOBE.

FUTURE WIND

There is a strange phenomenon you will come across, from time to time, while you are projecting. I call this “Future Wind.”

You will be OOBE’ing somewhere, minding your own business, when all of a sudden you will feel an irresistible force. You will feel yourself being moved against your will, usually backwards, by this force. You can fight it for a while but it will grow steadily stronger until you are blown away, over the rooftops, up into the sky and….into the future.

Then, after a while, you will come down in a different place…. and time. Often it will be somewhere mundane, maybe a domestic setting of some sort. You will be released there and left to wander about… confused. You may even meet people you do not know, yet, and they will be just as confused as you are.

This may be an actual scene out of your future life; it may be a symbolic vision, or a mixture of both. You may be an invisible spectator to this scene, or you may merge with your future self, and see out of your future eyes for a while.

This can also be a scene of an important future event. It could be a disaster, natural or otherwise, or something unusual or exciting on the world scene. These types of events usually have a lot of energy surrounding them, and this may be part of the reason for the vision. The only explanations I can give for this are:

1. The intervention of your higher self: For some reason it decides that now is the time to show you something from your future.
2. Clairvoyant interference: Your Brow chakra has become active and has tuned into a future setting. Your point of consciousness is caught up by this vision and projected into the vision.
3. A combination of both of the above – this is the most logical.

Symbolic Visions

There is another aspect of this wind that is very similar to the above but the vision you experience is symbolic, or has a symbolic aspect, rather than an actual future event or scene.

Note: I would like to warn you about the symbolic aspect of visions. If you don’t understand the nature of symbolism it can cause great harm to your life. This warning applies to all clairvoyant visions in general, whether experienced in astral form or not.

For example: You are taken, by a future wind, to a scene in which you see yourself winning a lot of money. You are sitting at a table checking your lottery ticket with the results. You see the prize money is $18 million. You check your numbers, or ticket, and find you have the winning ticket. You feel all the excitement, the surge of adrenaline, dreams of wealth come flooding into you and your heart races with excitement.

After this vision, you start buying lots of tickets. You also start to make decisions that affect your life with a “When the money comes through” type of attitude. This can cause irreparable damage to your life! You lose your drive; your initiative; your ambition; i.e., you stop trying. This imparts a “Cargo Cult” type of belief system on you, a belief that everything will be given to you – with all the negative aspects this primitive belief system has.

This can cause you to mark time in your life, instead of living it to the full. What you may have missed, from the symbolism of the above vision is:The amount of money may be unusual for that lottery draw. $18 million is an odd amount of money and may be a rare event. This is what I call a SIGNPOST – a date stamp of a future event. This means that when your local lottery has a prize of the above amount, something important is going to happen in your life or in the world around you.

If you know how symbolism works, during the vision you would have been able to pick up more information about this coming event. The setting, the symbols, the connections to you, the action and the sequence of events in it, are all-important aspects of its meaning. Misunderstanding a vision can ruin your life. Only experience and the intelligent application of logic can teach you how to interpret a symbolic vision. Until you have this experience, it is best to treat any sort of vision with caution.  Some possible reasons for a symbolic vision are:

1. Your higher self is giving you a warning or guidance.
2. You are being given proof there is a future, a destiny, a meaning, and a purpose to your life.
3. The signpost of this vision may mark a good or bad event in your life.
4. You may actually win the lottery. Personally, I would always make sure I had a ticket in the draw, just in case, but I would not depend on it.

Future Wind Example

I left my body and was moving about my home, getting my sea legs. Suddenly, a force moved me across the room. I tried to fight it but it grew stronger until I was blown out of the house and up into the night sky. A short time later I was brought down again, outside my home. I was just left standing there in the middle of the road. In front of me stood a refrigerator. It was just sitting there in the road with its door open. I examined it and could tell it was not working. Behind it was a massive red brick wall, 40 feet high and twice as wide. There are no REAL brick walls in this street. Then I noticed my wife was standing beside me. I turned and said hello to her. She just said goodbye, very coldly, then turned and walked away. Perplexed, I watched her walk away. Oddly, instead of walking to our home, she walked away from it and off into the distance.

Being experienced with the symbolism and nature of visions I knew what this foretold, the end of my marriage. I could not understand it, as we were only recently married and very happy together.

To decipher a symbolic vision it is necessary to analyze it and break it down into its parts. The six significant aspects of this vision are:

1. The sign post… (the date stamp of the event) * The refrigerator that did not work.
2. The connections… (something, or someone, in the vision that connects the events to me). * A) My wife. B) . It was outside my home. C) . I was there as me.
3. The symbol… (the basic nature of the coming event) * The large brick wall. This symbolizes a barrier or an end to something. This was the only actual symbol in the vision, but other parts of it were by nature or action – symbolic.
4. The symbolic action… (this signifies the meaning of the vision) * My wife’s cold goodbye.
5. The symbolic modifiers… (these modify the symbol or, in this case, the symbolic action in the vision). a) My wife departed in a direction away from our home. b) She walked away until she disappeared from view.
6. The sequence of events. a) The broken fridge b) The large brick wall. c) My wife’s actions.

OR: When I saw the broken fridge (sign post) I saw the brick wall (symbol) and my wife (connection) said goodbye and left (symbolic action) in a direction away from our home, until she disappeared (symbolic modifiers)

The timing and sequence of a vision is important to unraveling its meaning. It is important to break a symbolic vision into its 5 basic parts and to note this in your journal, while it is still fresh in your mind.

Note: There may be more than one modifier to each part of a vision.

Hindsight

A year after I had the above vision, we moved to another town. The day we moved, we had to borrow a refrigerator from a relative. Ours had broken down and was in for repairs. The borrowed fridge did not work either. After ours was repaired, this other fridge sat on our porch for two and a half years, waiting to be collected. I remembered the vision clearly, and knew this fridge was the date stamp of an upcoming event. I also knew what the event was, but honestly could not see it happening. One day, though, they came and collected this fridge. A week later my marriage ended. Suddenly, permanently, and for no foreseeable reason.

Looking at it in hindsight, it is crystal clear what the vision meant. It was as simple as it was accurate. Most symbolic visions are this simple. Be very careful not to read too much into the vision otherwise the true message in the vision will be obscured. Always break a vision down into its parts.

Ask of each part:

1. “What is it in itself?”
2. “What does it do?”
3. “What is its simplest, most basic, symbolic meaning Write these answers down and then apply common sense and logic to them. This will give you insight into the true meaning of the vision.

MIRRORS

Mirrors, historically, are magical devices used as doorways to other worlds. There are also numerous superstitions and old wives tales concerning their effect on the recently departed. After a person had died, all mirrors in their home were covered. This was so they could not see their lack of a reflection and is shocked. Another reason for this was to prevent them from being accidentally trapped in a mirror.

There is some logic to this if you look at the mechanics of projection. Death, in the early stages, is very much like a powerful real time projection. The biggest difference being the lack of a living body to return to.

Spirits are normally held close to the physical dimension, in real time, for a week or so after death. This is until the supply of etheric matter that binds the spirit to its physical body runs out.

During this time it is normal for the spirit to wander among relatives and loved ones, saying goodbye and coming to terms with their new state of existence. This goodbye process, eases the psychological trauma of death, and helps prepare the spirit for the next stage of existence.

What can happen with mirrors, is this: A new spirit can inadvertently enter a mirror. If this happens, they enter a mirror world in the same way a projector enters a picture through VRP. Once in a mirror world they usually do not know where they are, or how to get out of it, and can be stuck there for the duration of their real time stay. This will not interfere with the journey of the soul. It will just cause confusion for a few days until it enters the next stage of existence. This can though, make their last days near the physical world very confusing and interfere in the natural goodbye process.

This, I believe, is where the old superstitions came from. Therefore, in the light of my understanding of projection and the death process, I think the covering of mirrors after a death is a VERY good idea, for the benefit of the deceased. This is best done for two weeks, to be sure.

A Better Goodbye

It is possible to communicate with a recently departed spirit during its real time, post death wandering. Leaving a letter, uncovered, for the spirit to read can do this. They can also hear you, so talking to them is also effective. I think a good practice would be to have goodbye letters, from all the people that loved the deceased, stuck to the wall in the spirit’s old room. Leave the letters open, with all pages clearly in view, to make reading easier.

Astral Projection Exercises

When To Do The Exercises
Even though the exercises, in themselves, are not all used during the projection sequence, they still need to be done regularly in order to develop the necessary skills and energy levels for conscious projection. I suggest the relaxation, concentration and mental calming exercises are done daily. Use your imaginary HANDS with these exercises. The energy, chakra work and other exercises should be done at least once a week to be effective. If you wish to do them more often, fine, just don’t tire yourself out too much.

Your Projection Sequence
It is difficult to give one, universal projection sequence as everybody has different levels of skill and natural ability. For this reason I give a more flexible sequence and I suggest you tailor a projection method to fit your own needs and level of skill. Keep in mind the old saying, “What works, works!” Play around with your sequence until you find what is right for you, what is easiest and most effective.
First, here is the full sequence for advanced real time projection.

Full Sequence
Do relaxation exercises thoroughly.
Clear your mind through breath awareness.
*Enter trance using mental falling method.
*Raise energy and open all chakras.
Pull yourself out with the imaginary rope.
Note:

Steps 3* and 4* can be swapped to suit, i.e., do the energy work before, or after, entering trance. Energy and chakra work is more effective done in trance, but some people have trouble getting into that state. Doing the energy work first will usually help bring about the trance state.
If you still have trouble getting into trance, use the ROPE climbing method at step 3* instead of the mental falling exercise, until you are in trance. Then stop the ROPE climbing and do the energy work before continuing with the projection, i.e., using the ROPE at step 3* will help force your body into the trance state.
How To Use ROPE
This is a complete projection method in itself, if you have good powers of concentration. I suggest beginners concentrate solely on this method until they have more experience. This projection method will give you a normal Astral projection. The duration of this projection, in real time, will depend on the level of chakra development and energy flow you have attained.

Do the relaxation exercise thoroughly, until you are completely settled. This should only take a few minutes, don’t overdo it.
Reach out with your imaginary HANDS and pull yourself, hand over hand, up the strong, invisible, imaginary ROPE hanging above you. Try and imagine the feel of a strong, thick, coarse rope in your HANDS.
Don’t try and visualize this ROPE! I want you to imagine you are reaching out and climbing this ROPE in the pitch dark, so you can’t see it at all, you just know where it is and can imagine the feel of it. Visualization wastes valuable mental energy that can be better put to use exerting direct pressure on your astral body. You will feel a slight dizzy sensation inside you as you do this, specifically in your upper torso. Exerting dynamic pressure on the astral body causes this. The dizzy sensation comes from the astral body loosening. This feeling of vertigo will intensify the more you pull on the rope.

Very Important Note:

This dizzy feeling and any feelings of pressure or vertigo, etc, caused by your mental action of pulling on the ROPE MUST be carefully noted by you. Learn the EXACT mental action you are doing to cause this vertigo. You will have to train your mental climbing action to cause this feeling. So, the first few times you try this ROPE method concentrate on finding the right mental action to do this. Once you learn what it is you are doing to cause this, and can recreate it at will, you are really starting to get somewhere.
IGNORE *ALL* SENSATION YOU FEEL DURING PROJECTION or it will distract you, break your concentration, and ruin your chances for projection. Concentrate on the single act of climbing your ROPE to the TOTAL exclusion of everything else. Put everything you have into this one action, but don’t tense up, it must be all-mental.
Keep climbing, hand over hand, ever upward, and you will feel the heavy sensation come over you. The pressure you are exerting on your astral body will force you into the trance state. Ignore this when it happens and concentrate on what you are doing.
Keep climbing and you will feel your chakras open in response to the pressure, don’t stop.
Next you will feel the vibrations start, your whole body will seem to be vibrating and you will feel paralyzed. Concentrate, single minded, on climbing your rope, and don’t stop.
Next you will feel yourself coming free of your body. You will buzz slightly as you pull yourself out of your body. You will exit your body in the direction of your imaginary ROPE and will be hovering above your body. You’re free at last! Note: a) Do *NOT* allow yourself to break concentration when the vibrations start. They are a natural EFFECT caused by energy coursing through all the hundreds of major and minor chakras in your body. If you do find yourself being distracted by this, spend more time and effort doing the concentration exercises until you overcome this problem.
If you have not mastered using your imaginary HANDS for relaxation, raising energy and chakra work, you may have difficulty using them for climbing the ROPE. This does not mean you have to be able to open your chakras successfully to project using this method, you don’t, and it just helps if you can.
This method is very direct. It shortens the time needed to project dramatically! Once you start pulling in earnest on your ROPE you WILL enter trance, your chakras WILL open, the vibrations WILL start and you WILL project, very quickly! The speed of this method may frighten you, the first time you try it. Everything will seem to happen TOO fast. You will get used to this, though, and will appreciate having plenty of mental energy to use during your projection.

If your powers of concentration are good, you have a better chance of getting out with this method than any other, even if you haven’t mastered deep relaxation and trance skills. What is needed, apart from the ability to concentrate, is the ability to carry out strong mental actions, without any corresponding muscular action, i.e.; you have to be able to separate mental and physical actions.

If you have trouble with any part of the ROPE method, analyze it, find the problem area, then go back and concentrate on the related training exercises until you overcome the problem.

A ROPE Variation
Note: One good variation for the simple ROPE technique is to do the full sequence of exercises and energy, chakra work first, but separate from, the actual projection. Do the full sequence, but `don’t’ close your chakras. Get up and have a break, make yourself comfortable, have a drink etc. Then return to your bed /chair fresh, spend a couple of minutes relaxing and go straight to your ROPE. This will increase the amount of chakra energy available during the projection.

The Mechanics OF How ROPE Works
ROPE is the most dynamic projection method to date and can override the need to do just about anything else, once it is learned. Let me explain a little more of the mechanics of what actually happens when you use ROPE, by breaking it down: Clearing The Mind: The mental act of climbing the ROPE fully occupies and clears the mind. Brain Wave Activity: Clearing the mind and exerting, one pointed, dynamic pressure on the astral body forces the reduction of brain wave activity. Deep Relaxation: Reducing brain wave activity forces the body into a deep level of relaxation. Trance State: Exerting dynamic pressure on the astral body, while the physical body is deeply relaxed, and brain wave activity is at a low level, FORCES the mind and body into the trance state. The Chakras: Exerting dynamic pressure on the astral body, while in trance, FORCES the energy body to expand and the chakras to open. Vibrations: Exerting dynamic pressure on the astral body while the energy body is in its expanded state and the chakras are open causes energy to flow through the 300 odd chakras in the body and causes the vibrational state. Separation: Exerting dynamic pressure on the astral body while the energy body is in its expanded, vibrational state forces the astral body to separate from the physical.
Note: If you exert enough pressure on the astral body, during the final phase of the projection sequence, the exit, it will override the projection reflex completely. This forces a manual separation of the physical / astral bodies.

This means: Instead of involuntarily buzzing out of your body via the projection reflex, at the climax of the projection, and ending standing at the foot of your bed etc, you will exit your body in the direction you are pulling on the ROPE.

How Long Does It All Take
The whole projection process can be done in less than fifteen minutes; I can do it in less than five minutes. The speed of the method allows you to use ALL your available energy in one burst. If you don’t get out in the first fifteen minutes I doubt if you will during that attempt. IF this is the case, either get up or have a break and come back to it later, or get some sleep.

Using the ROPE method, literally, amazed me with its ease and simplicity the first time I used it. It shortened my usual projection time (20-30 minutes, from a cold start) to about 5 minutes, for a normal astral projection. I still, though, use the full sequence when I do a real time projection.

My analysis of the mechanics of this process comes from using the ROPE method myself and carefully observing what was happening to my body during the separation.

A Treatise on Astral Projection

by Robert Bruce

 

There are certain aspects of the astral dimension and the projection process that are very complicated. Much of it is misunderstood and it can all be very confusing at times. This series of articles attempts to shed a little light on the subject, and hopefully, explain what it’s all about. The theories and conclusions in this Treatise are largely drawn from my own projection experience. It is the goal of this Treatise to develop greater understanding and new, simpler and more effective techniques for projection. The ideas, theories and techniques discussed here are constantly under development and are subject to modification and change as new discoveries and insights come to light.

What is the Astral Dimension?

The astral is the closest dimension to the physical. It overlays and permeates the world like a huge mind net, catching and holding all thought. Its contents are created by the collective consciousness of the world mind. It contains all the thoughts, memories, fantasies, and dreams of every living thing in the world. In it, the laws of sympathetic attraction, or like attracts like, causes this ocean of mind stuff to strata and settle into layers or pools. These pools of thought are more commonly called astral planes, astral worlds, astral sub planes or astral realms.

The astral dimension is composed of astral matter and is aptly described as mind stuff. It is extremely sensitive to thought and can be molded into any shape or form. These creations can be so perfect as to be indistinguishable from reality.

The best way to explain this, mind stuff is to draw a comparison between astral matter and unexposed, high-speed photographic film. When this film is exposed to light, focused by the camera lens, a perfect image of reality is instantly burnt into the film by the chemical reaction of the film to light. When astral matter is exposed to thought, focused by the lens of the mind, a perfect image of reality is instantly formed out of astral mind stuff by the reaction of astral matter to thought. The complexity and durability of any creation in the astral dimension depends largely on the strength of the mind doing the creating.

Dreams

This is how the subconscious mind creates dreams: By tuning into the astral dimension during sleep, it can create any scenario it wishes. This is the subconscious mind’s way of solving problems and of communicating with the conscious mind. It creates a series of complex thought form scenarios and projects them into the mind stuff of the astral dimension, where they become solid. The conscious mind then lives through and experiences these created scenarios in the Dream State. In a way it’s like a movie projector (subconscious mind) projecting onto a movie screen (astral dimension).

Thought Forms

Any new object in the real world is assimilated into the astral dimension over a period of time. A thought form representation of it first grows in the lowest part of the astral, close to the physical dimension, becoming more and more permanent as time goes on. As with all thought forms, the more attention paid to it the quicker it grows.

The higher up in the astral dimension, or the further away from the physical, the less thought forms, of the physical world, as we know it, are found. Physical things have to soak in to it for a very long time before they take shape, and are found, in the higher astral.

Have you ever tried to move around a strange house in the dark? You bump into everything, right. But as you become familiar with it though, a mental picture of your surroundings forms in your mind, and you can find your way around it better. The longer you spend in this house the stronger this mental picture becomes. This is similar to how things are assimilated and grown, as thought forms, in other dimensions.

The generation of thought forms in the astral also works in the reverse. If a physical object has been around for a very long time, it will have grown a lasting thought form impression in the astral. After the object is destroyed or removed, its thought form still endures. You may, for example, in the astral, find furniture in your house you don’t have, jumbled up with your own. This is caused by the decaying thought forms of old stuff, belonging to previous tenant’s etc, still being there, years after the originals have gone.

Old thought forms do not follow their physical counterpart around when they are moved. New ones begin to grow in the astral wherever it is while the old ones slowly decay. The longer a thing is in one place, the stronger the thought form will become in that place. This also applies to buildings, structures and geological features. You may project into a park and find a house, bridge, stream; hill etc that you know is definitely not there. These may have existed in times past. The higher up in the astral you go, the older the thought forms are or the further back in geological time you appear to be.

The rate of growth of a thought form depends largely on the amount of attention paid to it. For example, a famous painting; loved, viewed and highly thought of by millions, will have a much stronger thought form than that of a common painting that hangs in someone’s bedroom and is only viewed by a few. The number of thought forms you find in the astral also depends on how close you are to the physical dimension. If you are very close, as in a real time projection or OOBE, very few thought forms, if any, will be found. In a real time OOBE you are not quite in the astral dimension but are existing as an astral form in the buffer zone between the astral and the physical dimensions.

Astral Vision

In the physical body we have 220 degrees of vision, i.e. we can only see in front of us, but not behind, above and below at the same time. In the Astral body we have MORE than 360 degrees of vision and can see on all sides at once. This is Spherical vision. During projection, habit forces us to focus our attention in one direction only, where we feel the forward part of our vision is. The view behind, above, below, left and right is still there and seen all at once, but the brain can not assimilate it, all at once. This goes against the brains lifelong habit of frontal vision. Spherical vision is like being one huge multi-faceted eye that can see in all directions, up, down, left, right, front, back, but all at once! In the astral body you do not have any physical organs, i.e., eyes. You are a non-physical point of consciousness floating in space. You are also unaffected by gravity and other laws of physics. In this state there are no ups or downs, backs or fronts, left or rights. It is only lifelong habit that tries to force this perspective on you during projection.

It is important to understand spherical vision, if you are to operate competently in the astral. This is especially so when you project, in real time, close to the physical dimension. Spherical vision will often cause you to think you are in a mirror image dimension, or a reversed copy of reality. This means your house, for example, will appear to be reversed, back to front. This is caused by you losing your original natural viewpoint during projection.

At some point during the projection you have become disoriented and taken a different viewpoint from normal, i.e., you have rotated or turned upside down or inside without thinking. This reverses your natural left right, up down viewpoint. This tricks the subconscious mind into reversing the place you are in so your conscious mind can function properly.

As you don’t have a physical body in the astral, if you want to look behind yourself you don’t have to turn around, or move at all. You just change your viewpoint to the rear. This, when done without moving, causes the mirror image effect, in a way its like looking in a mirror to see behind. The diagram below illustrates this reversal of viewpoint without turning, note left and right do not change:

                   Right | Right
(A) <<<<<<< ------------ |---------->>>>>>>> (B)
                    Left | Left

That is, if viewpoint (A) becomes viewpoint (B) without turning, then Left and Right are not reversed. This causes the subconscious mind to use its creative power to correct the view by reversing it, or parts of it. This is easier and causes fewer problems for the conscious mind than if it had to try and accept a reversal of left and right.

A similar effect can be had by lying down and looking above your head, or standing on your head and trying to pick the left and right sides of things. This causes a slight confusion in your sense of left and right, i.e.; you have to consciously calculate which are left and right from your reversed position. This slight confusion is all that is needed to trick the subconscious mind into creating something easier to accept.

Your brain is unable to assimilate this reversal and thus gives you a new perspective according to what it feels is left and right at the time. Once you consciously notice this anomaly it is too late to reverse it. The brain cannot accept a conscious change of left and right. If you understand spherical vision though, and happen to get reversed sometime during a projection, it than thinking you are wasting your time in some strange mirror dimension, i.e., if you had plans to do something in the astral you still can. All you have to do is, take your left right coordinates from the building or structure around you, and ignore your own sense of left and right completely.

Everything you see while you are in the astral dimension is directly perceived by the mind. It is a simple matter for the subconscious mind to twist or reverse, all, or even parts of, your conscious perception of reality during a projection. Note: This reversal of viewpoint can happen many times during any one real time projection.

Creative Visualization Power

The subconscious mind has VASTLY greater powers of visualization than the conscious mind. It is like comparing a super computer to a child’s calculator. In the astral dimension, during any conscious projection or lucid dream, where the conscious mind is aware, this difference can cause great confusion. The subconscious mind simmers beneath the surface during any projection. All that creative power is just bursting to get out, to create, and it will do just that any chance it gets. This difference in creative power, combined with the lifelong habit of normal frontal vision, is the cause of the “Alice In Wonderland Effect.” Let me explain….

Take these together:

• The incredible creative power of the subconscious mind.
• The weak creative powers of the conscious mind.
• The sensitivity of astral matters to thought.
• Spherical vision.
• Left, right sense reversals.

And you have a recipe for total confusion. The Alice In Wonderland Effect

You project your astral body and look around your room. Everything appears normal, but suddenly, you notice the door is on the wrong wall? While looking around, you have seen this door with your rear vision, confusing your natural left, right, brain perspective. The brain can’t assimilate this because your frontal perspective, and the position of the furniture, pictures, windows etc, are normal; but the view behind you is reversed. This tricks the subconscious mind into creating a door where it thinks it should be. When you look at this door, it appears real, even though you know it is in the wrong place. Once it has been created, it will not be un-created, as that would be unacceptable to your conscious mind. i.e. solid doors don’t normally have a habit of vanishing before your eyes.

When you turn to where the door really should be, you will, usually, find the door there as normal. Now you may have two, or more, doors where there should only be one. If you go through the real door, you will find the rest of the house, as it should be, hopefully. But, if you go through a false door, the mind knows it’s false and won’t accept it opening to a normal part of your house that it knows can’t possibly be there. So, if you open this door you will find something else. It is usually a corridor or passage, you don’t have, and leading off into other parts of the house you don’t have either.

From then on, if you go through this door, you are in Wonderland, where everything is possible, just not very plausible. What you are doing, in effect, is entering the astral dimension via uncontrolled creation, through this door you don’t have, but now do. Once the subconscious mind starts creating like this it continues to do so at a geometric rate. It has to, for the conscious mind to assimilate the abnormal situation it is in. At some stage, in this creative maelstrom, the subconscious mind loses it completely and starts tuning in to other parts of the astral. At this point of the projection, all semblance of reality is lost and you fade into the astral dimension proper.

There are many ways this “Alice” effect can happen during a projection; the above example is just one variation. It has been noted by many projectors that at sometime during a projection they seem to lose control of it. Objects appear, disappear, and generally everything gets a little strange. This is caused, basically, by the subconscious mind’s vast creative ability being triggered. It starts making and unmaking things, and tuning into other areas of the astral and generally making everything difficult for the poor projector.

To avoid the above problem: Concentrate on what you are doing while you are projecting and don’t let your mind wander. The vision reversal problem can be minimized if you concentrate on your forward vision during projection, i.e your vision and don’t allow it to flit from one view to another. The astral is not a good place to relax if you have serious plans.

The vast creative power of the subconscious can, however, be utilized. It is an extremely valuable tool if you know how to use it. I will outline ways to do this, in the third part of this series, under the heading: “Virtual Reality Projection” where I will outline how to custom creates your own personal astral realm.

Melting Hands

When you project the astral body close to the physical world you do not have a body as such. But, the mind cannot accept this and so provides a thought form one made out of etheric matter. If you try and look at your body, say your hands, you will find they start to melt very quickly. They look pale and odd, and in a couple of seconds your fingers start to melt away like ice under a blowtorch. They shorten into pale stumps, then the rest of your hand and arm starts to melt away too.

This melting effect only seems to happen when you deliberately try and observe a body part or consciously create something. Deliberately observing an astral body part like this, uses the conscious mind, which, having poor creative powers, can’t hold complex shapes together for very long and it is this that causes the melting effect. If you happen to notice parts of your body, in passing, during projection this melting effect will not be seen.

Created Thought Form Objects

You can use your conscious mind to create objects while projecting. The duration of these, thought form, created objects depends on the strength of your creative visualization ability. It also depends on how much time and effort you put in to a creation.

This same melting phenomena happens with any conscious creation done in the astral dimension. If you create for example, a sword, it will appear in your hand just as you imagine it, briefly, and then melt away just like the hand did. If you concentrate on it you can hold it in shape, but as soon as your concentration wavers so does the creation. This is similar to any other visualization you do in the real world. It is difficult, and you have to concentrate to hold the visualization in your minds eye. Once your concentration wavers, so does the visualized image. This illustrates the vast difference between the creative powers of the conscious and the subconscious mind.

To make a lasting thought form object you have to trick the subconscious mind into creating it for you. I will deal with this subject, in greater depth, later in the series.

How does Projection Happen?

During sleep, the energy body, also known as the etheric body or vitality sheath is put on charge. It expands and opens in order to accumulate and store energy. The energy body can, normally, only do this in its expanded state during sleep. Once expanded, the chakras trickle power, in the form of etheric matter, into the energy body. During this recharging process the astral body separates and tunes into the astral dimension where it can create and experience dreams. If this separation is done consciously, or if you become aware after it, you can take some control over it. It then becomes an OOBE, astral projection or lucid dream.

The main differences between an OOBE, astral projection and a lucid dream are:

The OOBE

The OOBE (out of body experience) is a real time projection close to the physical world. This often occurs as part of a near death experience. This is where a person is knocked out of their body as a result of some kind of severe trauma, i.e. car accident, surgery, heart attack, child birth etc. OOBE’ers are aware of things happening in the real world, in real time; such as conversations and events centered around, or near to, their physical body. In many cases, these events and conversations are accurately reported by the person after they have returned to their body.

Note: The OOBE is slightly different from astral projection or lucid dreaming because of its real time, objective aspect. This is caused by the astral body containing a large amount of etheric matter, which holds it close to the physical world.

There are two main causes of real time OOBE: A person’s body is near death, or thinks it is, which causes a large amount of etheric matter to be channeled into the astral body in preparation for the death process.

The person has active chakras, which are doing a similar thing, i.e. channeling etheric matter into the astral body. Having active chakras can be a natural ability, or it can be developed by training. Note: You can project consciously, and have a real time OOBE if enough etheric matter is generated by the chakras. In an OOBE, reality is perceived as objective (real) and time is normal (real time).

Technically, when you project into the physical world in real time as in an OOBE, it is really into the boundary area of the buffer zone, between the physical and astral dimensions. If the astral body contains enough etheric matter it can exist only slightly out of phase from reality. This means the projection is in real time and so close to the physical dimension as to be indistinguishable from it.

Note: I have checked this many times, by projecting, in real time, during the day and scouting my local area for road works, accidents, incidents etc, then verifying the accuracy of my findings afterwards. There are strong natural barriers to conscious, real time projection, the OOBE, in the physical world. The amount of etheric matter generated and channeled to the astral body, is one of them. It limits the duration of any real time projection to the degree of chakra development and control.

The Astral Projection

This is where the astral body is projected into the astral dimension, where things are quite different from the real world. Time is distorted and extended, i.e., an hour in the astral can be like a few minutes in the physical dimension, depending on what part of the astral you are in. Reality is fluid and changeable.

The Lucid Dream

This is where a person becomes fully aware that they are dreaming during a dream. They either take some kind of conscious control over the course of events, or they convert the experience into an astral projection.

Astral Projection or Lucid Dream?

Many astral projectors black out before making a conscious exit from their body and return to awareness in the astral dimension. You become aware after the actual separation from the physical body and are usually already in the astral dimension. If you miss the conscious exit from your body you are technically having a lucid dream, not an astral projection, as you have become aware after separation. All three types of projection are closely related, i.e., they all involve the astral body separating from the physical and experiencing a reality separate from the physical body.

Triggering Astral Projection

Astral Projection (AP’) is an automatic reflex, built in to your body and mind. To trigger it, while fully conscious, there are three major requirements.

1. The ability to relax your body 100% and stay awake.
2. You have to be able to shift your consciousness point outside of your body.
3. You need enough mental and psychic energy to maintain control over the projection and not slip into the Dream State. Together, these will trigger the automatic projection reflex for a full powered AP’. There are a few minor conditions but these can be varied to suit your experience and surroundings.

Relaxation: You must `master’ a full body relaxation exercise. If you know one already it can be adapted to suit. Sit in a `chair’ and relax. Starting with the feet, tense them and relax them. Continue this with calves, thighs, hips, stomach, chest, arms, neck and face. Go over this a few times until you feel completely relaxed. Breathe deeply and slowly throughout this and try to become `aware’ of the breath entering and leaving your body.

Mental hands: Imagine you have a pair of `mental hands’. Stroke yourself with these `hands’ in an upward motion from your feet and up your legs, over and over again. Try and `feel’ them relaxing and soothing you. Continue this up through the center of your torso, paying particular attention to the chakras. The mental hand technique will also get you used to shifting your point of consciousness to different parts of your body. Try and put as much of yourself as you can into these mental hands.

Energy raising: As you pull upwards through your legs with your mental hands, imagine you are gripping the energy that flows there and pull it up through you. This is the natural path of the psychic/life energy that flows through you. With practice you will actually `feel’ this energy tingling and surging through you. It will literally `charge’ you up like a battery.

Chakras: These are situated at:

1. the base of the spine (between the anus and the genitals)
2. The spleen (slightly below the belly button)
3. The solar plexus (1 hand-span above the belly button)
4. The heart (center of the chest)
5. The throat
6. Forehead
7. Crown (full top of your head).

They are best imagined as roughly the size of your hand.

Chakra stimulation: Chakras are centers for the transformation of energy. Each chakra transforms the raw life energy of the planet into a different type. As you pull this energy up through you with your mental hands, stop at each chakra and imagine your mental hands opening it. Pull the energy up through it to the next one and so on. Repeat this a few times, you may not feel anything at first but with practice you will feel a fluttering or pulsing under your skin.

Stop Check: Keep checking your muscles for any tensioning throughout these exercises and re-relaxes as needed. A common problem is the automatic tensing of muscles as you pull energy up through you. Remember that this is all mental, the body must stay dormant and relaxed throughout this.

Point shift: To shift your point of consciousness, imagine you are a foot or two out in front of yourself. NOT a figure in front of you but YOU are in front of your physical body. Keep in mind your physical body being behind you. This is tricky but you will get used to it quickly. Don’t tense or strain any muscles during this, your body will try to obey you `physically’, don’t let it.

Mental state: Your surface mind will be fully occupied by these exercises so no mental exercise is needed up to this point. When you feel so relaxed your body begins to feel `heavy’ you are entering a light trance. Cease the other exercises and use breath awareness to stop your mind wandering.

Breathe awareness: `Feel’ your breath coming in and `feel’ it going out. With the inhale, `pull’ energy up from the base chakra to your heart chakra with your mental hands.

Note: If you feel any vibration start in your body at this point, and don’t want to project yet, move your head slightly, and gently sway your body into normal alertness.

These exercises should be carried out daily. Some of them can be done anywhere and anytime you have a few minutes to spare. You will, in time, condition your body to respond quickly and easily. With practice you will be able to attain a state of `total relaxation’ in just a few minutes. This training will reduce the amount of effort needed, and the fatigue produced, when you attempt a fully conscious AP.

To trigger the projection of the Astral body, while fully conscious, there are four major requirements:

1. Relaxing your body 100% while staying awake.
2. Concentrating 100% on what you are doing.
3. Having enough energy available.
4. Pressuring the astral body to separate.

Together, these four things will trigger an OOBE.

Below are exercises that will teach how to relax the body, concentrate, clear the mind, raise energy, stimulate the chakras and enter the Trance State.

CALMING THE MIND

Relaxation

You must learn and master a full body relaxation exercise. If you know one already it can be adapted to suit. Here is a very simple one:

Sit or lie down, and relax. Starting with the feet, tense and relax them. Continue this with calves, thighs, hips, stomach, chest, arms, neck and face until your whole body is deeply relaxed. Go over this a few times, making sure your muscles stay relaxed.

Note: Deep physical relaxation is the key to bringing on the trance state, i.e., deep relaxation CAUSES the trance state. Once you are in the Trance State, projection on the astral body is relatively easy.

Contemplation

When you begin meditation, you will be plagued with thoughts from your surface mind, which acts like a huge Memo pad. It carries messages, reminders, pressing thoughts, problems to solve unresolved issues etc. It is constantly busy, it NEVER rests, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, one after the other, all clamoring for attention.

Before you attempt to clear your mind, with the breath awareness exercise below, it is wise to deal with these surface thoughts by the act of contemplating them. Sit comfortably, do the relaxation exercise and think, nothing more, just think. Search out the strongest thoughts in your mind and examine them, try to resolve and understand them. Note the word: THINKING. Contemplation does not involve clearing the mind, or visualization. It requires you to THINK, deeply and thoroughly, about something, to gain a deeper understanding of its nature and how it relates to you, an insight.

Breath Awareness Meditation

This is a simple form of meditation. It will clear your mind and focus your awareness.

Sit or lie down, close your eyes, do the relaxation exercise and clear your mind. Breathe deeply and slowly and focus on the breath entering and leaving your body. Feel it coming in and feel it going out. Focus your whole attention on your lungs and the breathing process. This simple action is enough to occupy your surface mind. Firmly push intruding thoughts away, as they begin, before they can gather strength and distract you.

Breath awareness occupies the surface mind and allows you to think on a much deeper level.

Surface Thoughts

Sounds are very distracting, they generate surface thoughts. A car horn will generate: “Who’s that, what’s happening?” A door opening will generate: “Who’s coming in or going out?” The surface mind is always very curious about what is happening around you. It wants to know all, and it wants to inform you of every little thing going on around you. It will pressure you to open your eyes, get up and go find out what’s happening.

Don’t allow this to happen. USE these annoying, attention getting thoughts as a training aide. By learning to quash and ignore them, your powers of concentration will grow. Stop these annoying little thoughts as they begin, before they can take root and grow into something stronger.

For example: “Who’s that, what’s happening?” becomes: “Who’s th…………”

“Who’s coming in, or going out?” becomes: “Who’s co…………”

With practice the start of these distracting thoughts will get shorter and shorter until you get: “Wh….?……..?……….” and ” W…?………………. ” And finally: “…….?……..?………………………?……………….”

Many people say they can’t clear their mind as they are too easily distracted by all the small noises that surround them, in normal day to day activity. DON’T use music or other sounds to blanket these out, USE them for training. It’s like weight lifting, if you train with feather dusters your strength will not increase. You need to master this, the hard way, if you want to give your mind real muscle.

Slowly but surely you will master the ability to clear your mind. Once accomplished, you will have gained a valuable mental tool. You will be able to concentrate 100% of your attention, on one task, to the TOTAL exclusion of everything else. I sometimes meditate, in the Trance State, successfully, in a noisy, crowded room with little children crawling all over me. NOTHING breaks my concentration.

CONCENTRATION

You must be able to concentrate and focus completely on what you are doing. Lack of concentration is the single, biggest cause of projection failure. It affects every aspect of projection, from the relaxation exercise, to the Trance State and actual projection.

To test your ability to concentrate: Sit and relax. Close your eyes and clear your mind of ALL thought. Breathe slowly and deeply and count each breath, at the end of each exhale. Hold it totally BLANK, apart from the counting, for as long as you can. See how long you can hold it like this. Be honest with yourself, every time a thought intrudes start counting from the beginning again.

You are doing well if can do this for longer than ten breaths. Ten breaths is, however, not long enough. Don’t worry though, this can be improved on with the exercises below.

Concentration Exercise (1)

After image retention: Relax, calm your mind, and look at a candle or a light bulb. Place this light in front of you, a couple of feet away, and stare fixedly at it for a minute or two. Close your eyes and concentrate on the after image this will generate behind your closed eyelids. Try and keep sight of it for as long as possible. Use breath awareness to keep the mind clear, while you are doing this. Try and make the after image grow, instead of fading away.

Concentration Exercise (2)

One point stare: Pick a spot on a wall and gaze at it. Don’t focus on it, just gaze at it gently. Clear your mind of ALL thoughts and forcibly hold it blank. Concentrate HARD, on breath awareness while you are doing this. When you feel a thought beginning, push it away, don’t let it finish! Hold this for as long as you can. Do this several times a day or more if you can.

Concentration Exercise (3)

Energy breathing: Sit and relax. Close your eyes and clear your mind. Do the breath awareness exercise and imagine the air you are breathing IN is brightly colored energy of your favorite color. Imagine the air you are breathing OUT is a murky gray, full of toxic waste. This is a purification exercise. It stimulates your chakras into absorbing energy on the inhale and getting rid of negative energy on the exhale.

Note: Try your best not to tense up while you are doing these concentration exercises, it is ALL mental. In the beginning, it may feel as if you have to tense your mind into a tight ball to stop it thinking, but in time you will find the opposite to be true. When you get used to it, clearing the mind is VERY relaxing.

The Trance State

When you have attained a deep level of relaxation and mental calmness, you will feel your body begin to get very, very heavy. This heaviness is the main symptom of your brain waves changing from the Beta to the Alpha level as you enter a trance. The Trance State is caused by deep physical and mental relaxation. There is nothing weird or supernatural about it. It simply means your body has entered the Sleep State while your conscious mind is fully awake.

How to Enter A Trance

Do the relaxation exercise and calm your mind through breath awareness. Imagine you are climbing down a ladder in the dark. Don’t visualize a ladder; just imagine you can feel yourself doing it. On the exhale, feel yourself climbing a step or two down the ladder with your imaginary Hands (outlined below). On the inhale, feel yourself holding still on the ladder. What is needed is a mental falling effect inside your mind. This changes the level of brain wave activity from the awake level (Beta) to the asleep level (Alpha) or the deep sleep level (Theta). Once your level of brain wave activity reaches Alpha you will enter a trance. Keep doing this for as long as it takes. The time it takes to enter trance will vary, depending on your experience with deep relaxation and mental calmness. Note: Once you get the heavy feeling, stop the mental falling exercise.

If you don’t like the ladder, imagine you are in a lift, feel yourself falling on the exhale and holding on the inhale. Or, Imagine you are a feather, feel yourself floating down on the exhale and holding still on the inhale. As I stated above, you need a mental falling effect to lower your level of brain wave activity. This mental falling effect, when combined with deep relaxation and mental calmness, will cause you to enter the Trance State. Feel free to use any scenario you are familiar with to bring about this going deeper feeling.

A trance feels like: Everything gets quieter and you feel like you are in a much bigger place. There is a very slight humming feeling in your body. Everything feels different. It feels a bit like putting a cardboard box over your head in the dark, you can feel the atmosphere change. It’s like everything goes fuzzy or slightly blurred. Any sharp noises, while in trance, feel like a physical blow to the Solar Plexus.

Deep Trance

The level of trance you achieve depends greatly on your relaxation, concentration skills and will power. To enter a deeper trance, i.e., Theta level and beyond, you has to concentrate much more and for much longer, on the mental falling sensation aided by breath awareness. The first level of trance, i.e., when you get very heavy, is quite deep enough for projection. I strongly advise against forcing yourself deeper than a light trance, until you have plenty of experience with the Trance State. How can you tell if you are entering a deep trance?

There are four very noticeable symptoms:

1. An uncomfortable feeling of cold that doesn’t make you shiver, coupled with a steady loss of body heat.
2. Mentally, you will feel very odd and everything will feel extremely slooooow. Your thought processes will slow down as if you had been given a strong pain killing injection.
3. You will feel disassociated from your body, i.e.; a strong floating sensation and everything will seem far away.
4. Total physical Paralysis.

Note: These four things, ALL TOGETHER, signify you are entering a deep trance. Do not mistake the mild floating sensation you sometimes get with light trance, i.e., as you astral body comes loose. Or the slight loss of body heat from sitting still for a long time and the mild paralysis, i.e., the heaviness, for a deep trance. The sensation of deep trance is quite uncomfortable and unmistakable for what it is.

It is very difficult to get into the deep Trance State, as you need highly developed relaxation, concentration and trance state skills plus lots and lots of will power and mental energy. You will not accidentally fall into it.

If you are worried you are going too deep, remember this: You CAN pull yourself out of it at any time. Concentrate ALL your will on moving your fingers or toes. Once you can move a finger or toe, flex your hands, move your arms, shake your head, i.e., reanimate your body; and get up and walk around for a few minutes. Falling into a deep trance should not be a problem with these exercises.

I have seen many people in meditation groups etc, enter a light trance and not be able to pull themselves out of it, i.e.; they float away with the Faeries. Usually some kind person will talk them out of it or massage their wrists etc to get them to come back to reality. This is unnecessary and is the result of lop-sided training, i.e., no concentration or will power training. The person only THINKS they cannot come back and therefore does not try very hard. It is also a good way of getting attention from the group.

Note: Your mind is extremely powerful and has vast untapped resources. It can do ANYTHING, no limits, if it is trained, conditioned and properly motivated.

Energy Body Expansion

At some point after entering the Trance State, you will feel a mild paralysis come over you. This will soon be accompanied by a deepening vibration and a buzzing feeling all over. You may also feel like you are huge and swollen. The paralysis, vibrations and the huge feeling are symptoms of the energy body expanding and the astral body loosening. This is part of the normal sleep process. The energy body expands and opens in order to accumulate and store energy. During this, the astral body drifts free, slightly out phase with the physical body.

Trance Familiarity

Many people blow their projection simply because they are not used to the trance state. They think it is a briefly opened window into the Astral dimension. This is simply NOT true. If you stay mentally and physically calm when you enter the Trance State, you can maintain it for hours. I regularly spend several hours at a time in the Trance State. If, when you enter trance, you think: “Yes! I’ve done it! I’m in a trance! Gotta hurry and get out quick…before it stops!” You’ll blow it for sure! The trance will be ended by the simple act of getting over excited, i.e., breaking relaxation and mental calmness.

It’s a good idea to spend time in the Trance State, just getting used to it, before you try and project. Just relax, stay calm, focus on breath awareness, and hold the trance. It won’t end until you want it to. Get used to how it feels. When you are comfortable doing this, do the energy raising and chakra stimulation exercises, below, in trance.

Note:

1. You do not HAVE to be in a trance to learn energy and chakra work, it just works better in trance
2. Trance practice can be done lying down, but is best done in a comfortable armchair.

Your astral body will be loose in the Trance State, so try lifting your astral arms and legs out, one at a time. Use your HANDS to do this, as shown in the next section. Focus and FEEL your awareness in an arm and slowly lift it free of your body. You may feel a slight tickling or localized dizziness inside your arm or leg, as you do this. Lift your astral arm up and look at it, with your eyes closed, but DOESN’T move a muscle. In this state you should be able to see it through your closed eyelids, but don’t worry if you can’t, this will come later.

Lifting your astral arms free is good practice for projection. Later, you will use these astral arms to pull your astral body free of the physical.

Tactile Imaging

Tactile imaging is a perception or FEELING of localized bodily awareness. Your hands are very closely linked to your bodily awareness. They are intimately aware of every part of your body. Imaginary HANDS, outlined below, is only extension of this (hand to body) awareness. When you are asked to feel your awareness, in any part of your body, PRETEND your hands, your real hands, are going to touch that area of your body. Then use the awareness this generates in that area to imagine your imaginary HANDS are there.

Keep your eyes closed and hold your hands out a foot or so in front of your face. Concentrate, FEEL where they are and try and SEE them through the blackness behind your closed eyes. Cross your wrists, slowly move them about, turn your hands over, open and close your fingers. Look hard, concentrate, as if you were trying to see in the dark, and you will see a faint moving shadow in your mind eye, where your hands and arms are.

Close your eyes and touch the tip of your nose with the index finger of your right hand. You’ll find you can accurately put that finger on any part of your body with your eyes closed. Try it; put your hand, your real hand, on different parts of your body like this. You know exactly where your hands are at all times, you can sense and feel where they are. If you observe what is happening in your mind, while you are doing this, you will notice you become aware of the part of your body you are going to touch the instant you make the decision to touch it.

Go over your whole body like this, getting used to the sensation of awareness it generates in different areas of your body.

What is happening is this: Part of your mind is shifting into, and HIGHLIGHTING, the area you are going to touch, in order to guide your hand to the exact spot. Your mind shifts part of its awareness to this spot and acts like a homing beacon for your hand. The ability to shift your awareness into different parts of your body like this is VITAL to energy work and this projection method.

Note: You do not have to actually visualize these HANDS, i.e., and see or imagine you can see them. It is ALL tactile, NOT visual. You just have to be able to pretend to FEEL them doing something, like you are rehearsing some simple action in your mind. I originally developed this technique for blind people. Blind people cannot visualize AT ALL, if they have been blind since birth, but they do have a very keen sense of bodily awareness. The majority of sighted people also have great trouble with visualization of any kind, and all projection techniques depend heavily on visualization. This being the case, I developed a projection technique that does NOT depend on visualization to exert pressure on the astral body to separate. It turned out to be so much easier, and more successful, than the other visualization based techniques, that I discarded them in favor of this simple tactile method.

Note: Blind people are not blind in astral form. The astral body does not have any organs as such; it is a point of consciousness only. The astral body you are aware of while projecting is provided courtesy of the subconscious minds creative ability

A key ingredient to the new projection techniques is an invisible, imaginary ROPE hanging from your ceiling. This ROPE will be used to exert dynamic pressure at a single point on your astral body to force its separation from the physical.

The ROPE technique is similar, but more direct and hence more effective than other more passive and indirect methods, such as reaching out and pulling vibrations into you, or visualizing yourself in front of yourself. The idea of pulling vibrations into you is vaguely illogical, if you understand the mechanics of projection.

The vibrations are an effect and NOT a cause of projection. When enough pressure is exerted on the astral body to loosen it sufficiently, the energy body expands and energy flows through the chakra system to be stored in the energy body. This flow of energy through the hundreds of chakras and their connecting web, or meridians, CAUSES these vibrations. This normally happens, unnoticed, during sleep.

PUTTING THE PRESSURE ON

The more passive, indirect methods of projection do exert some pressure on the astral body to separate, but over a wide area. They still shift the point of consciousness out of the body, albeit obtusely. Any mental action that exteriorizes the point of consciousness will exert some pressure on the astral body.

The action of pulling yourself hand over hand up a rope is a strong, one pointed, natural action that is easy to imagine yourself doing. The ROPE technique concentrates ALL your mental resources into one strong, DYNAMIC action, which exerts a high level of pressure directly on a single point of the astral body.

There are many other, more subtle, ways that exert pressure on the astral body as well. Many of these are unsuspected for what they are. Most meditation exercises, for example, exert PASSIVE pressure on the astral body. You may imagine you are going down in a lift, falling, climbing down a ladder, or just floating downwards. Whatever the technique, it is designed to reduce brain activity. Any self induced, inward falling sensation places passive pressure on the astral body, which will cause brain activity to lower and bring on the trance state where a deeper level of the mind is revealed.

The action of inward falling obtusely shifts the consciousness out of the body, exerting passive pressure on the astral body over a wide area, but in the reverse to that needed for projection, i.e., general downwards pressure. This, in a way, is like trying to get your astral body to FALL out of your physical body on its own, i.e., your point of consciousness tries to FALL, downwards, out of the physical body.

What most people do to project is to either exert forward, passive pressure on the astral body, by visualizing themselves floating out of themselves, and HOPE, they can make it happen, i.e., trigger the projection reflex. Or, they try a more direct method, such as visualizing themselves out of their body, which is very, very, difficult. Lets face it, 99% of people can’t visualize for peanuts and the act of mentally visualizing yourself OUT of your body, AND shifting your consciousness INTO this visualization is almost impossible for most people. The other popular method is to try to pull vibrations into you. This method is slightly more effective than most as it exerts some pressure at a single point, but it is still an indirect mental action and, therefore, obtuse.

All the above, and the general lack of information about the mechanics of projection, i.e., HOW it happens, accounts for the extremely high failure rate amongst people learning to project.

Holding passive pressure, over a wide area, on the astral body, for long enough; WILL activate the projection reflex, eventually. But this can take a long time and can be mentally exhausting. I have developed, through recent research, a better, faster and more dynamic method of projection that is very effective. I call this technique simply ROPE. It is not that using an imaginary rope for projection is such a new idea, it’s not, but the understanding of the mechanics of it and the application of this knowledge to ROPE is.

If you fully understand how a thing works, you can use that thing more efficiently and, therefore, get better results.

The new ROPE method overcomes the general misdirection of mental resources and the chronic waste of mental energy caused by the usual lengthy procedures needed for projection. ROPE shortens the time needed to cause a projection and optimizes the use of available energy.

One of the most important ingredients for a successful projection is to be properly motivated. Without this motivation you will not have enough mental energy to succeed and will either fall asleep or forget the projection afterwards. It is, therefore, important to keep preparation time as short as possible so it is not such a daunting and mentally exhausting task.

One thing a new projector has in abundance is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is pure mental energy. ROPE, plus the understanding of HOW it works, harnesses and makes better use of this energy resource and vastly improves the success rate.

Getting The Feel Of Rope

Pin a length of ribbon, string or rope to the ceiling above you. Have it hanging within arms reach so you can easily reach up and touch it. Reach out and touch it frequently, until you are used to where it is in your mind. This ribbon is only a tactile aide. By being able to reach out and touch the ribbon, you used to the spatial coordinates of where the invisible, imaginary ROPE is. This grows both in your mind and hence as a thought forms, making it easier to imagine yourself reaching out and climbing the ROPE with your imaginary HANDS.

Note: You do NOT have to actually visualize, or see, the ROPE at any time, just know where it is supposed to be. This method uses NO visualization at all.

Reaching out and pulling on this invisible, imaginary ROPE with your imaginary HANDS shifts the bodily awareness induced point of consciousness, out of the body, with a strong natural action that puts direct pressure on one point of the astral body.

Active Chakra

One important point, if you happen to have more activity in your Brow Chakra, rather than in your Heart Chakra, which is sometimes the case. Move the position of your imaginary ROPE so your arms would be at a 45-degree angle above your head. If you use the visual aide, ribbon, move this so it is hanging down over your head, rather than over your chest.

Changing the angle of the ROPE shifts the point of pressure you are exerting on your astral body to the most active chakra area and gives better results. In any case, position the angle of the ROPE at the most natural and easy to imagine attitude for you. It is important that the angle and position of the imaginary ROPE feels natural. Experiment with this angle until it feels right for you.

ARE YOU READY TO PROJECT?

All the exercises in the previous parts of this series ARE necessary training for projection. They are; however, not all needed, in themselves, for the projection process. If you do all the relaxation, mental calming, mental falling, chakra opening and energy raising exercises during the actual projection, you can use up your supply of mental energy. This can cause mental exhaustion and you may find yourself short of energy and willpower for the all-important exit.

All the exercises should be done separately from the projection itself. They are training and development exercises designed to improve control over body and mind and to increase the flow of energy through the chakras. This is like working out in a gym as a part of football training. You don’t actually use these exercises to play football; they just improve your fitness and strength so you are able to play football effectively.

Do the training exercises separately UNLESS you are trying for an advanced, real time projection. It is, then, still necessary to go through the full procedure, and activate all the chakras, prior to the actual projection.

The whole point of learning to project is to get your astral body to separate from the physical while fully conscious. The earlier you get a fully conscious projection the better. Otherwise, you may eventually give it all up as just too difficult. Therefore, I strongly suggest all beginners’ concentrate on the simplest, most effective way of getting a conscious projection. Once you have some projection experiences under your belt you can try for some of the more advanced, and hence, more difficult, types of projection.

By doing the training exercises you have learned to relax your body, to clear your mind and to concentrate. You have begun to develop (MBA) (mobile bodily awareness) and how to use MBA, i.e., using your imaginary HANDS to perform certain tasks both inside and outside of your body. You have also begun to awaken and develop your chakras so your energy flow is stronger and you have, hopefully, spent time getting used to being in trance. These skills have prepared your body and mind for projection.

Astral Projection

As we distinguish between body, mind and soul, we must equally distinguish between physical, mental, and spiritual. In this way we can see our bodies, our minds, and our souls as the states in which we exist in each of the respective planes of existence. The body is our physical form, the mind is our mental form, and the soul is our spiritual form.  However, we should not think of the physical, mental and spiritual planes as discreet states, rather we should think of them as bands along a continuous scale of infinite divisions (planes).

The intermediary states, astral and ethereal, are most easily explained in relation to their neighbour states.  The astral shares properties of the physical and the mental, and the ethereal shares properties of the mental and the spiritual.  However, as should already be clear, these are not discreet states, and so any given thing may exist at any point, or between any points, on the scale.  An ‘ordinary’ object exists only in the physical plane (or more accurately, the physical band of planes), a thought-form exists in the mental plane, and depending on the nature of the thought-form, its existence may also reach partially into the astral or ethereal planes, a person exists across the entire spectrum, and so on.  Everything has its place on the scale, existing within a range of planes.

This suggests that it is possible that ghosts, demons, or other controversial entities do exist, occupying planes that are not normally used by people.  Imagine that you are driving on a colossal roadway (marked into an infinite number of lanes) and that you can only see straight ahead of you.  Imagine what you must pass without ever realising.  Let us imagine a thought-form existing within a particular narrow band of planes in the mental band of planes.  It is a malicious thought-form, a demon. It is entirely impossible for a person to encounter it physically, since it does not exist on the physical plane.  It may only be encountered within the narrow band of mental planes within which it exists.  A person may only encounter this demon, therefore, as a thought, and it will appear to the person just as any other thought in their mind would appear.  Although it will be a malicious thought, there may be nothing to clearly identify it as a foreign body within the mind, something that the mind has picked up, rather like a radio scanner, scanning specific frequencies (planes).  The person will never realise that they have encountered a demon, and they will not be aware of its effect upon them, which may be permanent, although it is unlikely to be significant.  We may encounter such loose thoughts every day, and each one may influence our thoughts. This would explain inspiration, both positive and negative, the ‘voices’ heard by schizophrenics and other ‘mentally ill’ people.  This also has implications for the way we understand the mind and the nature and process of thought, and the way we monitor and evaluate our own thoughts.

This theory of a continuous scale of planes of existence has one very significant implication.  Physical dimensions (height, width, and depth) apply in the physical plane but not in the spiritual plane – where everything exists in one point with no spatial dimensions.  The mental plane has spatial dimensions in its lower band (near the astral) but not in its higher band (near the ethereal). This means that at different levels of thought, different spatial rules apply.  At the lower levels, thoughts are restricted within the mind of the thinker, but at the higher levels, thoughts exist regardless of spatial dimensions, and may therefore be shared by any number of minds that are on the same plane, and therefore on the same mental frequency. This would explain telepathic abilities and contribute to an explanation of the psychological phenomenon known as ‘contagion’, where a crowd of people all reach the same mental state.  This also has profound implications for the way we understand the mind and the nature and process of thought.

How to have a séance.

How to have a séance.

There are three important factors that must be considered when conducting a séance. They are; the purpose, the quality of the sitters and the location. Each of these must be provided for to increase the expectation for a reasonably successful outcome.

The conducting medium:
The medium should be one that has already presided over a séance before and is familiar with the importance of insuring that the basic requirements mentioned above are met. The séance may be conducted by a non-experienced person, however, the success of the outcome may be affected because of a lack of attunement. In either case, it is up to the conducting medium to assure that the conditions outlined below are met.

Purpose:
The purpose for the séance should be established prior to the meeting. Is it to contact someone’s deceased relative or friend, find spirit guides, or to conjure apparitions? Whatever the purpose it must be the only purpose for all the sitters and this must be the only thought in everyone’s mind. There cannot be divided purposes in the circle once it begins because it will weaken if not destroy the singleness of psychic energy needed in the séance. It is up to the conducting medium to query each sitter, and to make them aware of the importance of a single mind among them all. All thoughts of personal affairs, the day’s events or any other distracting thoughts must be put aside because these also interfere with maintaining a single energy.

The sitters:
Desire to be there is the primary qualification for a sitter. Without this there is a loss in the expectation that gives the séance that special feeling. If you have to drag someone into the circle, you’re doing the wrong thing. Here are the types of people you want in the circle:

1. Someone that really wants to be there, who is serious and not frivolous or silly and giddy. Positive and uplifting people that will add their energy.
2. A family member that wants to make contact with a deceased loved one. (In the case of seeking such contact) They must not be grasping and groping for the connection, but rather, subjective and patient for whatever comes. Grasping and desperate persons sometimes block the energy, so they must put their feelings in check and be neutral.
3. Persons that are empathetic and can inject love into the séance. Love is the vibration of communication in the spirit world. Its presence enables communication to take place.

Avoid these people:

1. The skeptical and cynical person will act like a sinker. Just one will drain the entire circle of its energy and the result will fulfill the skeptic’s expectations. Even if it is a family member, do not allow this person to be a part of it.
2. A fear filled person has almost the same effect as the skeptic, because fear is one of the great negatives that have a counter effect to the positive love vibration. Their fear may be self generated or the result of religious superstition, nevertheless, avoid this one also.
3. Anyone full of hate or envy against anyone in the circle or outside of it, will have the same deleterious effect as the previous two.

Location:
There are two best choices. The first is to hold it in a neutral location free from outside disturbances, noises, and interference, preferably one that has been previously used for such a purpose. Next is to hold it in a place that has a symbolic connection to the purpose. For example, hold it in the home of a deceased person you’re trying to establish contact with, because there will be objects and artifacts that still have their owner’s imprint within them. Incidentally, these personal artifacts can also be brought to a neutral meeting place.

The gathering for the séance.
Wait until everyone is present and then sit around and make small talk for about twenty minutes to give everyone time to settle down and get accustomed to the setting. Then you will be able to begin.

The séance format:

1. Everyone should be sitting around in a circle, either around a table or with straight back chairs. They should be close enough to hold hands, but not touching knees. The lights should be dim or have candles. You need just enough light to see everyone’s face. Do not conduct the meeting in total darkness, its not necessary.
2. Play some soft meditative music in the background for at least ten minutes. Then its time for the conducting medium to remind all present that the love vibration carries communication and to invoke it now. Then the purpose is said aloud to everyone. In the case of seeking spirit guides, remind everyone to remember any feelings, visions and thoughts they receive in the session so they can be shared with all present. For the case of conjuring apparitions, they are given the same injunction because most apparitions will be visions they receive when their eyes are closed, not when they are open. When the séance is to invoke a deceased person’s spirit, the same rules apply, except that they are told to send the love vibration to the spirit sought and hold the person in loving remembrance.
3. They should be encouraged not to accept any message or information that has silliness or frivolity associated with it. They should firmly reject it and continue waiting for something more substantial.
4. Allow 20 to 30 minutes for everyone to stay in this loving remembrance state and then softly request them to return their attention to the circle and open their eyes when ready.
5. After a few minutes they should all be alert and ready to talk. Start anywhere in the circle and encourage everyone to share their experience. What you are looking for are profound information that has evidence of a connection within it. Look for duplicate messages, visions or feelings which are confirmations of a connection with the spirit.
6. A recording can be made of the message part of the séance for future reference.

Don’t expect a voice to emanate from the corner of the room or from within an object. That only happens in the movies. Remember that those in spirit must try just as hard as we do in order to communicate. They are not specialists, just who they were when they were here in their physical bodies. These séances sometimes require repeat sessions to get sufficient details to piece together a coherent picture. Patience is required.

For conjuring an apparition, you have look for the number of similarities in the information of the sitters. Many times there will be a number of people who get the same message or vision or feeling during the session. These are confirmations of a single spirit’s influence during the séance.

Scrying

An Overview of Different Types of Scrying
by Muadhnait

Scrying is a method of divination. It consists of gazing into a crystal, a mirror or some water for example, anything shiny really, in order to enter altered mind states…A good cliché that best describes scrying is the gypsy fortune-teller and her large crystal ball. :^) There are different scrying tools, like crystal, water, ink, oil, even fire.

Scrying works on the principles of the Ganzfeld effect. If you have ever had to stare at a blank wall until you began to feel dizzy, to hallucinate and see patterns, then you know what the Ganzfeld state is!

The degree of success with gazing depends on one’s ability to concentrate. The effort taken in this enterprise will eventually pay off, do not give up if you don’t “see” anything the first time you attempt to scry!

USING A CRYSTAL BALL
There is no specific method to know which crystal ball suits you, it will “call to you” when you see it. Once you decide on one, choose a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. The lights should be dim, it’s preferable that you only lit a couple of candles only, placed low and behind you. Remember to sit in a comfortable chair, you should be perfectly relaxed. Take a deep breath, clear your mind from any thoughts, and gaze intensely into the crystal. This might cause you to blink or bring tears to your eyes, so try to relax them, closing them about half way. Now is the perfect time to link your third eye to the crystal: visualize a ray of light coming from between your eyes and entering the crystal.

Now watch for the clouding of the crystal that will come from a small light. The clouds will develop and then clear until you begin to see precise patterns and pictures. Do not try to interpret those visions immediately, you will see a whole sequence that will lead you to the answer of your question. Don’t waste your time writing everything down, it’s best to use a tape recorder because sometimes the flow of pictures is too fast.

Remember, stay relaxed and try not to confuse real symbols with what you want to see, i.e. psychologically induced patterns.

SHELL SCRYING
I find this modern scrying method quite odd and frankly hard to believe. Perhaps you might want to try it. I’m sure you’re familiar with the sounds of a shell when you place it over your ear. It sounds like the ocean, but it’s in fact your blood flowing through the vessels in your ear.

If you listen to this sound until you’re in some sort of trance state, you might be able to pick up fragments of conversation. At first you might only make out a few words, but in time you will come to understand “conversations” that predict the future.

SMOKE SCRYINGM
Now that method is a bit more believable. Smoke scrying is best done while relaxing in front of a fire. Do not follow the smoke up but rather allow the smoke to form patterns within your gaze. You will see visions of future events. The Native Americans practice a special type of smoke scrying. It’s called a sweat lodge; water is poured over hot rocks in a tent to create steam. Then people sit naked around the rocks to inhale the steam. The combination of temperature, humidity and elevated levels of carbon dioxide produce a state in which visions can arise. Needless to say, this method is dangerous.

WATER SCRYING
This is a very ancient scrying method. The Celts used it quite often. What you need is a large, deep bowl made from glass, brass or silver. You must set your base on (preferably) a tripod made of laurel boughs for best results. Fill the bowl with clean, fresh water from a stream. The water may be stored in a vessel and used again. The important thing is not to collect the water during the day, but rather during the night, and preferably on a full moon. This is done because of the close connection between water, the moon and the Goddess. You should also have a wand. Use either a branch from a bay or hazel tree, or laurel. The end of the wand should be covered in dry tree sap or resin. Dip the end of the wand into the water until it becomes wet. Wet the borders of the bowl. Gently drawing the rim of the wand around the bowl it will cause it to resonate. The resonating bowl will cause circular ripples to form in the basin. It is up to you t interpret the visions.

MIRROR SCRYING
Mirror scrying is quite common, and it is an evolved form of water scrying. The early mirrors were made of polished copper or silver, brass, tin foil or mercury behind glass. John Dee used a black mirror of obsidian.

Because mirrors are linked to the moon, they should be backed with silver. The size of your scrying mirror doesn’t matter, but the shape does, so use either a round or an oval mirror.

Most seers prefer using a black mirror. Simply take out the glass and paint it black. When you put it back in the frame make sure the glass part is to the front. When using the black mirror for scrying you do not want to see your reflection. Thus you should leave the mirror on a table and look at it from an angle. Look into the depths of the mirror as though you were looking into a bowl of water. At first it may appear grey than colors will come and go. With time and practice you will be able to see images. The visions may even exist outside the mirror, either surrounding it or surrounding the scryer.

CLOUD SCRYING
Now that is an original scrying method! And it’s interesting to note that the most famous example is of Christian origin. I’m sure you’ve all read about the Roman Emperor Constantine, who had a Christian mother. I remember watching a film called: “Constantine and the Cross.” In 312 A.D., when that emperor was marching against the army of Maxentius in Rome, he and his men saw a shining cross of light amid the clouds. The cross bore the Greek words: “By this you shall conquer.” Later that night, Christ appeared to Constantine in his dreams holding a cross and asking him to have a military standard shaped like a cross. Thanks to this standard, the emperor’s army won the battle. From that day on, several battles have been witnessed in the clouds. Symbols of both political and religious significance have been seen in the clouds. The Druids were renowned for using that scrying method. Cloud scrying is essentially done on days when cloud conditions are good. Having too few or too many clouds is no good for scrying. The best is when the clouds are thick. Find a nice location to lie down and relax. Try not to focus on one cloud but rather allow the clouds to drift across your view. Visions will come naturally to you. Personally, I think people who look up at the sky and see “only clouds” without guessing what the shapes might symbolize have no imagination whatsoever. :^)

EGYPTIAN DREAM SCRYING
Egyptian dream scrying can be traced back thousands of years. In preparing to use this scrying method you must not speak to anyone on the evening you plan to scry. Also, refrain from having sex and consuming alcohol and eating. Take a long purifying bath, then anoint your temples with olive oil. Prepare an oil lamp that bears no inscription on it. It can be of any color except red. Red is the color of the evil God Set. Write on a small strip of white linen with ink mixed with myrrh the name of your dream God/dess and the purpose of the dream scrying. Twist the linen strip and insert it into the oil of the lamp. Place the lamp on a table beside your bed. Using the ink draw the image of the dream God/dess upon your left palm. You must decide which God or Goddess you wish to use. Thoth was well used with the Egyptians. Light your lamp. Kneel before it. Concentrating on the image on your left hand recite the following invocation:

“(Thoth) I invoke, blessed power of dreams divine, Angel of future fates, swift wings are thine, Great source of oracles to human kind, When stealing soft, and whispering to the mind, Through sleep’s sweet silence and the gloom of night, Thy power awake the sight, To silent souls the will of heaven relates, And silently reveals their future fates.”

Concentrate on the question you wish to know the answer to. Around your left hand wrap a piece of black linen. The cloth is known as the “black” of Isis. Blow out the flame of the lamp. Now you can go to sleep. Have a tape recorder beside your bed so that when you awaken you may record your dreams while still fresh in your mind. You will find that the dream will come to you in a voice that is clear and powerful rather than in dream images. Sometimes the message is sent in cryptic/symbolic form.

OIL SCRYING
Oil scrying is yet another ancient method of divination. It can be traced back to the Babylonians. One of their techniques was called the “Princess of the Thumb”. A scryer anointed the forehead and thumbnail of a subject. The shiny nail acted as a magic mirror in which the scryer saw spirits. Another version was called the “Princess of the Hand”. Oil was mixed with black soot to make a paste that was then smeared upon the hand. The scryer then used the hand to see future events. A third type of oil scrying was called the “Princess of the Cup”. Sesame seed oil was used to coat the inside of a cup that was rested on its side. The cup was used to capture and magnify the light of a candle that was fixed on its inner rim. From the Babylonians, oil scrying found its way to the Egyptians and Hebrews. The latter used four kinds of water mixed with oil. If you wish to use that method effectively: if you call upon the heavenly Gods then use rainwater; if you invoke the terrestrial Gods then use sea water; if you invoke the Osiris or Serapis use river water; and if you call upon the souls of the dead then use spring water.

Playing Card Tarot

A Quick Guide to Reading Ordinary Playing Cards
by Cheryl Lynne Bradley

Divining from regular playing cards is an old practice and I am sure many of us know at least one fortune-telling game done with this tool. Reading regular cards is called cartomancy or metasymbology. Playing cards have been called “The Devil’s Picture Book” and have a few superstitions associated with them. Miners and fishermen viewed it as bad luck to have a deck with them while working or on a voyage. Thieves will rarely steal a deck as they have a belief that this will turn luck against them . Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades – King David; Clubs – Alexander the Great; Hearts -Charlemagne; and Diamonds – Julius Caesar.
Other omens and superstitions about playing cards involve their use in gambling. It is generally believed that you will never get a good hand if you are dealt the four of clubs. “The Dead Man’s Hand”, Aces over eights, that Wild Bill Hickock was holding when he was killed, is considered very unlucky. The nine of diamonds is sometimes referred to as “The Curse of Scotland” as it was used to give instructions for the beginning of the Glencoe Massacre in 1692. On a cheerier note, we have to remember the old saying “unlucky at cards, lucky in love.”

Gong Hee Fot Choy, “Greeting of Riches,” is a divination system utilizing regular playing cards which Margarete Ward, a mystic and world traveler, introduced in her 1935 book. It draws heavily on Chinese and Eastern mysticism for its wisdom. This system uses a board, a book and 32 cards. Jokers, 2′s, 3′s, 4′s, 5′s and 6′s were discarded and only 7′s through to the Ace were utilized. The board and book are divided into 32 houses. Each card has a different meaning depending upon which house it lands, and are detailed in the book. There are 1,024 combinations. The Houses are Compasses, Marriage, Happiness, Enjoyment, Messages, Relatives, Health, Money, Seasons, Friends, Gifts, Moons, Sun, Luck, Wishes, Success, Surprises, Popularity, Abode, Journey, Papers, Vocation, Letters, Trouble, Disappointments, Death, Undertaking, Achievement, Inheritance, Callers, Gratitude and Inquiries. The hearts represent love and friendship; anything of a personal nature. The diamonds represent fortune and riches; papers of any kind. The clubs represent luck wisdom and business. The spades represent the unpleasant things of life.

Tarot reading layouts readily adapt over to regular card reading as do divinatory meanings. Hearts equate to Cups, Diamonds to Coins, Spades to Swords and Clubs to Wands. To proceed with a reading, shuffle and cut in your usual method, and deal out the layout of your choice or try the following reading.

Relationship Potential Reading
A fun reading to ascertain the future of potential suitors involves separating the Kings or the Queens from the deck. You then proceed to lay these Trump cards out side by side in this order: Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds and Spades. Assign a name of someone you are involved with or interested in to each card, you can choose Unknown for one of them. Shuffle the cards and ask a question. ie: Who do I have the best chance of having a successful relationship?; Who will I marry?; Who will I date next?; Who will call me first?.
Deal out the remaining cards face up, laying them out one at a time on or below one of the Trumps, proceeding across all four and returning to the beginning if required. Your question is answered when you deal a matching suit on one of the Kings or Queens. Ask another question and start laying down cards from the beginning of the row again, stopping again when a suit matches a trump. After all of the cards have been dealt, pick up each stack and count the number of cards of each suit. Hearts denote love, clubs indicate level of happiness, diamonds predict money and spades augur sex. The more you have of one suit indicates the predominant influence or potential asset of that relationship. Look up the meanings of the cards on the reference chart for a deeper enhancement.

Hearts (Cups):
Ace: love, friendship, the home and distinct happiness
King: fair haired man, affectionate, generous, impetuous, honest man, hasty in decisions, not to be relied upon for advice
Queen: fair haired woman, trustworthy, faithful loving woman, gentle & pleasing
Jack: fair haired young person, good friend, a close (or long lost) friend
10: good fortune, happiness, good news, happiness in family
9: the ‘wish card’, dreams and desires will come true
8: invitations, but also partings, parties or celebrations
7: someone is unreliable, broken promises by friends
6: unexpected good fortune, generosity, imposed upon by untrustworthy people
5: jealousy, inability to make a decision
4: changes, travel or postponements, marriage delayed, bachelor or spinster
3: be cautious an impulsive decision threatens good ones
2: success by careful thought, friendship

Spades (Swords):
Ace: conflicts, a difficult love affair, misfortune, bad news, tidings of death
King: dark haired man, ambitious, usually successful, his ambition overrides everything else
Queen: dark haired woman, seductive or unscrupulous, treachery, betrayal, malice, widow
Jack: dark haired young man, well meaning but lazy person, hindrance in all work
10: worry, grief, imprisonment, negation of all good
9: bad luck, can mean delays or quarrels, all kinds of unhappiness in all things
8: disappointments and opposition, be cautious, friends might turn out to be rivals
7: a warning against loss of friendship, quarrels with friends, bad things
6: an improvement in the person’s life, use perseverance to make your plans work
5: anxiety, setbacks, interferences, success in business, harmony in partners
4: jealousy, business troubles, sickness, minor misfortunes delay project
3: partings due to faithlessness, lourney, bad things in love or marriage
2: scandal, gossip, danger of deceit, change, removal, loss of home, division

Diamonds (Coins):
Ace: money, a ring, important message, or a valuable gift
King: fair haired man, stubborn and powerful, vengeful, dangerous when crossed.
Queen: fair haired woman, flirt, sophisticated, witty, interferes in other’s affairs
Jack: a relative, someone not really reliable, selfish or jealous, bad news
10: journey, changes usually bringing wealth, money as objective, maybe not result
9: opportunities and surprises, usually financial, taste for adventure, travel, changes
8: late marriage or new relationship, unexpected money, a journey
7: a gift, lies, rumours, unlucky gambler, criticism
6: a reconciliation, warning against a second marriage, early marriage; early end.
5: successful meetings, especially business, unexpected news; may be business success
4: an inheritance, changes for the better, unhappiness from bad friends, betrayal
3: legal or domestic battles, quarrels, domestic disagreements
2: a great love affair increases in importance, opposed by friends

Clubs (Wands):
Ace: harmony, property, achievements, love, peace of mind, professional success
King: dark haired man, honest, open, generous and faithful
Queen: dark haired woman, strong, helpful, attractive, nice woman, inclined to be temperamental
Jack: a reliable friend, sincere but impatient
10: unexpected money, good luck or a gift, unexpected good fortune with bad loss
9: a new romance, disputes with friends, bad quarrels
8: opposition, chance of recklessness, someone will use money not his own
7: prosperity, chance of romantic interference, good fortune, beware of opposite sex
6: business success, profitable business in partnership
5: help from a friend or spouse, marriage with a wealthy woman
4: bad change of fortune, failure of project due to friends
3: good marriage or partnership, long engagement, and then a fast wedding
2: disappointment and opposition from friends or associates

In Closing…
Have a little fun with this, it is a very enjoyable method of divination and accessible to everyone. Someone who has trouble managing the size of the Tarot cards in shuffling and dealing or if you have problems with your hands, might find these easier to work with.

Sources
Dictionary of Omens and Superstitions
by Phillippa Waring 1976
Souvenir Press Ltd.
ISBN 0 285 63396

Tarot

Tarot Reading Misunderstandings and Frequently Asked Questions by Lyn Shea

Six Questions I Get Asked Most
Fate or Free Will

The question of whether a card in the future position is absolutely ‘gospel’ is a matter which often baffles until experience is gelled with feeling. Because a card denotes a certain influence or event does not always mean that influence cannot be altered. Even as we talk about the future we begin to conceptualise it in a freer way and thus it may be modified or changed or even overthrown by the stronger ideas and thoughts of individual mind. In short the future is not carved in tablets of stone.

‘Death’ and ‘Devil’ Cards
The bogeys of the pack often put the fear of God into the person having the reading. These arcanum should be treated with the utmost care, opened up for discussion and never just taken at face value. Death gives the greatest opportunity for change, demands it in fact, and all life is change. ‘The Devil’ concerns the immediate negatives that the enquirer is unwilling to face or that someone closely connected is unwilling to face. Often death may appear after a demise, or the Devil may appear when there is ill-health or chicanery, but in terms of the future they are the darker side of life with which we constantly have to deal and not simply the villains of the piece.

Reversed Cards

A lot of people are perplexed by the fact that some cards when selected appear upside down, or reversed, and whether this should be taken into account.
In actual fact, it is down to the individual understanding of the reader. Some tarot readers will ‘read’ a lot into reversed meanings and some will not. I personally do not. The tarot cards themselves are very much a focal point for the clairvoyant skills or the perceptions of whoever is reading them.

Block Definitions

Defining tarot card meanings is again at the discretion of the reader. A card falling in one spread in one position does not necessarily mean the same in another spread. The card meanings have to be integrated in an overall sense. Hence, the king of cups on one query will not always convey the same meaning to the reader in the next spread. The reader’s ability to take in information over and above that of the main wisdom of the card is not only prerequisite but fundamental to the correct use of tarot. Otherwise, a stereotyped and contrived version of life and events will ensue and be more hindrance than help.
Less is More!

People often wonder whether the more tarot cards are actually spread the more information is forthcoming. Some readers may spread a lot of cards in order to fill in blanks if it’s a complex or difficult subject, but mostly this is not the case. If you are learning the tarot try to avoid spreading too many cards, you will confuse yourself, certainly until more experienced. The brunt of the information on a good tarot reader is ‘impactful’ within the opening minutes and the added information tends to layer itself on what is already on the table. Unless the person being read for is blocked or afraid, in which case the reader may make the fight for access easier for themself by adding more cards

Card Layout or Design

There are many sorts of spreads and layouts and again its down to the individual likes and dislikes of whoever is reading. Some people don’t need tarot at all and use ordinary playing cards. (Its a test of how your psychic abilities are developing if you can use an ordinary deck, but don’t worry if you can’t.) But if you are too busy worrying about your layout or spread design it may actually impede your right hand brain (intuitive faculty) so use the layout you are comfortable with. Simple layouts are best if you’re learning: three cards laid horizontally and then perhaps three cards on top when the reading is unfolding. If you’re receiving a reading, don’t even give it consideration. Leave it to the reader – you don’t go to the dentist and watch every single instrument he uses

A great website for general kinds of Tarot spreads – http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/spreads/