It’s pretty hard for me to write posts that are reader Q&A these days since most of my answers to the questions are printed in my books and most readers have read the bulk of my books. So everyone knows my opinion on this stuff.
With regard to possession, suffice to say that I view possession as being something that happens “against a person’s will” whereas channeling is where the magus/medium is a willing participant to the spirit speaking or doing things through them. Yes, mincing semantics but nothing annoys me more than people running amock tauting, “I’m possessed! I’m possessed!” Not to mention I once met a guy who actually thought he was “possessed” by a squirrel. But we won’t go there. That’s another tale for another time perhaps. Everyone else here chose possession as their topic to discuss so I’ll discuss the astral and dream work.
First, let me say that if you’re a magician of any sort, Dream Work and Astral Work both have their place, but they should never be a sole method for all magick. I personally think the magician loses a great deal when they do everything astrally. I also think this is why some magicians are ineffective. Sure – there are exceptions and I have met that rare one or two astral magicians who do have some flack to herald magickal success from astral and dream-work exclusively. But otherwise I think astral and dream-work has a primary purpose and that purpose is communication with spirits (of all types).
Now for exclusively *spiritual* Demonolaters – go ahead and do all the astral and dream work you can. When it comes to devotion and prayer you really don’t absolutely need a physical temple. But as a magician, things are a little different.
For some people astral and dream-work is the only way they’re able to practice ascension or communicate with the Daemonic. I prefer it when I’m looking for very specific instruction on how to do something, or I would like to have an extended conversation with a Divine Intelligence. This way I get full visual input as well as verbal input. But alas – I’ve learned to communicate without astral and dream-work, too. I think it took me just as much practice to learn how to effectively dream-walk and astral travel (they’re different) as it did to learn to trust my intuition and speak with the Daemonic while being wide-awake and completely in control of my faculties.
Think of Dream Work as lucid dreaming with a goal and think of astral travel as being able to put yourself into an awake, but meditative state to where you actually disconnect from your body and are able to travel anywhere in this world or other planes of existence/realms. It’s similar, but not quite the same thing. That’s my two cents.
Good piece here.. Whats the first step to be taken as a beginner in things of astral.
Meditation is the first and foremost key to developing MOST magickal skills and astral work is no exception. First you have to learn how to put yourself in a deep state of meditation where you have enough control that you can disconnect from your body and guide yourself to your goal. Creative visualization is a very important skill here. When I first began meditating in my teens, I started out with a lot of guided meditation (which will help develop creative visualization skills), and then I moved to insight meditation, and I even did a lot of relaxing meditations. The more time you spend alone with yourself and looking into yourself via meditation, the more connected your mind-body-spirit becomes; the more connected you become to your physical and astral bodies and your own energy. You’ll be able to feel energy surges, imbalances, and different states of consciousness more readily. It also means that you have to be able to tolerate yourself and silence for long periods of time. It’s not as easy as it sounds for some folks, but for others it’s very natural. This does mean that learning meditative techniques will come more readily for some than for others. Having a regular practice will go a long way to helping you reach any astral goals you may have. 🙂