Dealing with Terror

[IllusiveOwl]

When we encounter a truly foreign entity during our summonings, experience something that defies our short list of what is possible, or have moments where new sensory organs wake up to give us a completely different reading of what's going on around us... how do we cope?

New things are scary, different things are scary, it's how we're wired. What tactics do you all use to face terror in the moment? I'm not talking about fear or anxiety, but the kind of terror that - if you don't face it - you pull out and stop what you're doing immediately.

I'm able to cope to an extent, but when things get too weird for too long the fear that I've broken my mind snakes in, nostalgia for how simple and safe the world I knew was drains me, and I just wind up in bummer-ville until the medicine wears off.

After quests I reflect on my notes and they're very lucid. I recall everything like regular memories and get frustrated with myself that I didn't push farther or maintain my focus strongly enough.

Any practical tips and tricks? I have a massive pile of books to read already on top of college courses so please don't throw more at me unless they're gold

 

[Yazata]

If you are in your circle you should have confidence in it, and if something gives you the chills then stay in it until you've calmed down before repeating / reinforcing the banishing (for example).

In the past when I smoked (more) and had to get up in the night for a ritual I'd often have heightened anxiety with scenes from horror movies in my mind just waiting at the other side of the door. You have to then go on start your ritual and know / trust that these very old methods have worked for many others before you.

These things of course are easier done in your home than in a moldy tomb.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Your circle

The trouble is when questing, all standard senses like vision, hearing, and feeling are all muted, you can't comprehend your circle any longer because there aren't any thoughts to do so with, it's like stepping into an entirely different body with different senses, mechanics, etc, all brainpower is directed to moving and experiencing, there isnt any energy left to think. You leave behind home in every sense of the word, you stir inside the egg of all you know and break out of it's darkness.

I'm taking about facing the terror of that transition, how to cope and keep equanimity in everything changing and being new other than your awareness, like a waking dream.

 

[Romolo]

Depending on your practice, you can work on a banishing formula or even gesture. From Jack Grayle’s Hekataeon:

“Sharply strike the back of one hand upon the palm of the other. This sound and gesture, accompanied by the cry of KRATAIS, immediately banishes from sacred working space all unwelcome and interfering spirits, much in the same manner as does the sorcerer's traditional cry of Este Bebeloi!”

Striking the palm like this is a gesture with a very long tradition. Spirits recognize this slap. It is like the whip to the animal, or the snapping scissor to the plant. On these moments it is very important to be “awe-inspiring”.

 

[stalkinghyena]

I'm taking about facing the terror of that transition, how to cope and keep equanimity in everything changing and being new other than your awareness, like a waking dream.

Well you have to embrace it. I mean in a phenomenological sense - if you can maintain a mental position of detached observation. In its most extreme sense as I have experienced it in various phases is that it's like riding the waves on a sea without any navigation too other than primal Will (not the be confused with my Ego's sense of will)). Plus there is an element of adventure in what I like to call "Piscean amnesia". It starts with the confusion of "who am I?" and "what am I?" followed by encounters with demonic Bardo state figures of accusations of form and function which are ultimately illusory and whose nature is to serve as sign posts of the Abyss beyond which lies pure and undefiled consciousness.

As to coping: IMO, I think it is essential at some point to realize one's essential indestructibility incessantly - not in terms of body or even ego, but in the sense that one is a ray of light, or nous. All techniques can draw true empowerment from there.

I am reminded of the concept of "tenebrae activae", or "the horror of everyday objects", one of these objects being change itself. I laughed when I first came across that term in Grant, who got it from someone else. It led to reflect on my first experience of Cosmic Horror in my adolescent years, a very disturbing and disrupting experience to say the least. In fact, it changed my course in life. Basically I found myself facing the phenomenon that our world is made up of interlacing omens of terrific meaning, all brooding under our ignorance, but I could see and read them. But the monstrous demiurge which was the author of those signs captured me in its wicked thrall and presented me with its pure hatred and vile madenss, intent on devouring my soul and tormenting it in every conceivable way. In a nutshell, it was like being trapped at the cackling end of that Metallica song Master of Puppets for about two hours, though I would liken the experience to Kreator's song Terror Zone in terms of lyrical details:

A darkness as cold as ice surrounds me in this place
I probe a veiled phobia, all my own
Creatures crawl out from my weirdest, wildest dreams
They are flesh, not fantasy, they drag me inside the Terror Zone

An approximation, anyway. I can say something else pulled me out of it, but that relationship would not be established until many years later.

Now, I could say "rationally" that it just was the mundane culmination of all sorts of pubescent anxieties that fused into a drug induced panic attack fueled by occult dabbling and extreme music - but the realization of the Void that underlies all things apparent, and the churning tendency towards menacing significance was enough to open a more philosophical venue past being a spiritual poser and becoming more of a true magical headbanger.

 

[JGVDRG]

In my experience, fleeing or turning to higher powers have never worked. No God or enlightened master projection has ever helped me in spiritually critical situations. If a real mean, out of space...demonic, maybe? I don't know. The nastiest astral beings that comes from your shadow? Actual external manifestations that are completely fucking alien to you, at the level of the biblically accurate angels, but instead of eyes and wings, they show ancient chtonic symbolism that could make you literally shit your pants? Vengeful spirits of the dead, also. Some real disturbing diabolical force shows up and starts manifesting very aggressively, trying to possess me, do serious harm and try to make me permanently insane, drag me to their doom, which has happened a lot with me, the only procedure that worked was to endure the manifestation until it gets stops. Then I realize that you have to be real ballsy, humanly arrogant, even. Any force in the universe has a notion the depth of the primate power that humanity holds. In the sense that they know what atrocities you can come up with as a human being. They know that, if you decide to be a real monkey human, you could cause greater pain to them. Of course that, until you say "That's enough, fuck this! Come and bounce on my lap, bitch.", you'll behave like prey and they will effectively fuck you up. Like a bully in school until you pull a knife and act edgy. Because they are playing with Maya, mocking and joking around, perversely. But you are in a body in the middle of the jungle, living under these limiting, awful rules. They would crap themselves just at the thought of having to incarnate here where you are. You just show them, even if it doesn't manifest in a personified way, that you are more badass than they are. Of course, you can't mix aggressiveness and hatred with their energy, don't dissolve into it because they will use it against you and then you are utterly fucked.