Hedge Witch: A Guide to Solitary Witchcraft - Rae Beth 2014

Letter 24
Part Two

Ladywell

Hillsbury

27th April 1988

Dear Tessa,

Now I have given you the basic instructions. There are many other ways of going into trance beside the one I have described to you. There are also many styles of approach and many other astral places to go. But they are all undertaken along the same lines. Remember this process and you can be free in all Inner Realms. First, invoke protection and then find yourself in a peaceful place, for example in the woodland clearing. Go through a purification of the five elements, say, if you feel the need for one. Centre yourself and affirm who you are, the nature of your spirit and your connectedness with all life. Then summon your familiar and explain to it why you have come into trance. What you need may be guidance or healing or self-affirmation or to work magic, by banishing or invocation. Talk about it in some detail. If you have a complex problem then describe it fully. Do not try to find solutions. Simply ask your guide to take you to whomsoever can most help. This may be to the Goddess as Maid, Mother or Crone, or to the Lord of Day or Lord of Night; or it may be to a Guardian Spirit or else to some archetypal being with whom you have previously never met. (Always check the genuineness of your familiar, and of any Deity or other being.)

On certain questions, your familiar may give help directly. Sometimes, you may not need to ask the familiar to whom you should turn. Perhaps it is a waning Moon and you are anxious about the development of your knowledge and understanding in realms of magic. You will know therefore that the Crone can be of help.

Having explained your problem, let yourself be guided subsequently in trance. You may be offered a healing or transforming potion. You may be asked to bathe in some pool or river, or to wear or take off certain items of clothing, or jewellery. This will be because of their psychic resonance, their affinity with ways of being. For example, the wearing of a brown robe may commit you to practical earth-oriented activities, or to some work with animals. A crown may mean that you are being offered some kind of success in life. But be sure that you know the price. Whatever you are given, be sure that you know the true meaning.

You may also be shown guiding visions; or asked to make some choice; or directed to change something manifest, something about your life. Any kind of thing may happen.

When your problem is resolved (and if it is not, then you should go on asking questions until it is), give thanks for the help, and then retrace your steps. Go back through all the places that you visited on your way in.

Thank your familiar and the Guardian Spirits. Seal your aura, by drawing around you the blue light edged with gold.

With this process, you can go into trance at any time and for any reason. No question is too trivial to ask. If something is bothering you, then it is important. Nor is any question too large and metaphysical. Once you know this then you may, like many beginners before you, become quite addicted to trance. This does not matter, as in time you will just naturally ease up. While it is going on, you must be careful that you don’t deplete your own etheric energy. Trance can do this. Restore it with good food, physical exercise and a contact with nature (gardening or country walks or else, in warm weather, just lying on the ground). If you don’t do this, then you may start to feel ’unearthed’ and floaty. Also, you will be easily tired and may be more vulnerable to infections.

Eventually, you will know just when trance is called for, and when it isn’t. Then it will find its right place in your life. There is no need to worry unduly about depletion. Etheric energy is seriously affected only if you undertake prolonged trance day after day for weeks. And only then if you don’t attend to the basic requirements of good health. Physical exercise is especially vital, as it counterbalances the physical stillness of trance. You may not feel like it, but if you are run down, exercise.

Go wherever you want to in trance. Be an explorer. These paths that I have brought you along are not meant to entrap you in fixed astral routines. They are meant to provide you with a safe base and known trackways, and to bring to you the skills that will enable you to find your own ways.

You have said that you find it hard to remember the order of events in a long trance. Try memorizing key points before you go in. For the trance about the Goddess, these might be:

Invoke protection. Go to the woodland clearing.

Call familiar (as usual).

Cave, passage, lower cave, sea.

Maid — purity (integrity and freedom)

Mother — love

Crone — wisdom

Return to woodland clearing. Thank familiar.

Return to blue sphere. Thank Guardian Spirits.

Seal aura (as usual).

If you still can’t remember at the time, you can do three separate trances, one each to Maid, Mother and Crone. But above all, I would say if you forget what was ’supposed’ to come next, don’t worry. Ask your familiar what he or she would like you to do next. Then go with that. Too much anxiety about ’getting it right’ will prevent an easy flow of trance imagery. Besides, you can’t get it wrong. Whatever happens, as in dreams, will be right for you. Just remember to invoke the Guardian Spirits for protection and to challenge or check out any being that you meet, and also any food, drink, clothing or other item that you may be offered. You need remember no more than that. If you can remember a long trance sequence — fine. If not, then that is all right too. Let me know if this helps.

Here are some ideas for trance.

1. Finding life’s purpose. (Asking the question, ’What am I here to learn, to do or to become in this incarnation?’)

2. Improving health. (Seeking guidance, undergoing transformations, visualizing sound health.)

3. Psychic cleansing and rebalancing. (You may have been close to the aura of some person or place which you could best describe as corrupt.)

4. Invoking for love.

5. Healing others.

6. Discovering your true essence (that Self that transcends circumstance and carries over from life to life).

7. Understanding the larger cycles of all life.

8. Communing with nature, feeling at one with life, with all creation.

9. Psychic healing of the environment.

(The banishing of problems. Visualizing ecological harmony between humankind and all nature. Visualizing ways and means — soft technology, low consumption, organic agriculture, etc. The placing of all within the hands of Goddess and God. Invocations for their assistance in healing of Earth. Visualizing the many routes to fulfilment for all the different kinds of people in the new ecologically harmonious world. Music and medicine, art and sport, magic and love, craftwork and poetry. Diving and caving and the climbing of mountains. Scientific research for the sake of further understanding, and not for the exploitation of nature. Education for education’s sake, and so on. A world where adventure and fulfilment are possible for all, in non-exploitative ways.) This last example is a big one, and best done when you have had some experience.

Here is an example of a simple trance that is a kind of spell. It is a healing trance and may be done at any time, for anyone.

Follow the usual method to induce trance. Cast your blue sphere, invoke protection, find yourself in the woodland clearing and then call your familiar. Explain that—(your friend, partner, child or whoever it is) has need of a healing. Ask to be taken to the Goddess’s spring, her healing waters that flow constantly.

Your familiar will lead you to the cave, and then down the passageway to the inner landscape. There, you will be taken a long way inland, to a spring that is by a small hill. There are trees around the spring and they are in full leaf. The sound of running water soothes and refreshes you. This is a tranquil place. You can hear birdsong and wind in the trees. The spring feeds a small pool and then a clear stream.

These waters are renewed, always. For thousands of years, rain has fallen on this land and then seeped through soil and the layers of rock, collecting underground before returning as this sacred spring. The whole process takes thousands of years, and the cycle never fails, the spring never dries up. It is constantly renewed, as you desire now that your friend’s health shall be renewed, by the power of the Goddess and her healing waters.

Ask the Goddess for a message, for some guidance about your friend’s health. What does he or she need? You may hear something in the murmuring of water, or else see some guiding vision in the small pool. It may relate to a necessary change in your friend’s lifestyle, exercise pattern, diet or medication. And if the illness is a mild one, you may later suggest that your friend follows this prescription. If, however, the illness is serious, and your friend is currently being treated by a therapist or doctor, then the suggestion you bring back from trance should always be referred to him or her, for confirmation. There is no need, after all, to say that it came from a trance. Your friend can, for example, simply ask the doctor, ’What if I drank more liquid? Or took vitamin B12? Or tried comfrey ointment?’

Now ask your familiar to bring a chalice. He or she will then disappear, to return almost instantly with what you have asked for. (Check your familiar and the offered chalice. It is at moments like this that the true contact can be lost.) Fill the chalice with spring water. Then thank the Goddess for any guidance. Take the full chalice back up through the cave, passage and upper cave and into your clearing.

Now, visualize your friend. You will see him or her. They will be standing in your clearing, when you have called upon them to come. Ask if he or she will accept healing. Remember that if you are sufficiently deep in trance, you will be able to perceive, by way of this visualization, the real state of your friend’s mind, and his or her real feelings. Your imagination is the medium by which this and any other information is conveyed from your unconscious mind or deep soul, which knows everything, into your conscious mind.

If there is any fated reason why healing is not possible, then send your friend upon his or her way with love. You cannot help them. Sprinkle the healing waters in your clearing, giving them instead to the Earth. Then talk with your familiar about your feelings. (Sadness? Regret? Frustration?) Ask its advice about how to deal with these feelings. You are not likely to receive a sophisticated answer, but that does not mean that the advice will not be worth taking!

In most cases, your friend will accept healing gladly. Point your athame at the chalice. Ask that your friend be shown the true nature of this water. It will then glow brilliantly with light. Give the chalice to your friend, saying, These are the sacred healing waters of renewal, not my gift but that of the Goddess, from whom they came. As you drink, may you be restored, and may your health be renewed.

When your friend has finished drinking, bid him or her farewell. Ask your familiar if anything outstanding then remains to be done. If not, ask it to put back the chalice, and bid farewell, with thanks. Return to your blue sphere, thank the Guardian Spirits, and so return to your usual consciousness. Slowly stand up.

Later on, whenever you see your friend, you may pass on any information about diet, lifestyle or whatever it was that you may have received in trance.

Blessed be,

Rae