Magickal Trance: How do YOU enter it, and how do you know youre there?

[FireBorn]

We talk a lot about tools, systems, and book knowledge in the occult in general, robes, candles, runes, grimoires. Thats fine, but lets set that aside.

The heart of actual practice is trance. If you cant enter magical trance, youre just dressing the part. But its almost never talked about directly.

So lets talk about it.

How do you personally enter magical trance?
How do you know you’re in it?
What does it feel like for you in the moment?​

I’m not asking for theory. Not book summaries. Im asking for lived experience. Step by step, for you.

This is the mystery that keeps most practitioners from touching the current at all. Let\s strip away the gear talk and get real: how do you do it?

I will add my experience with it later, I want to hear from you guys. This has potential to help newer practitioners get over the hump and have fuller experiences.

 

[Yazata]

Mostly with my eyes, when my sight gets "locked" on something (because I want to or because they simply do) it's like my entire brain is. Literally feels like it's in a canal or alley.

 

[FireBorn]

Couple things before I blast off into this:

1. I am neurodivergent (ADHD) In magick this is 100% a superpower. Non-linear thinking is absolute rocket fuel for magickal trance (not much else in life though lol).
2. I also have Aphantasia. I cannot visualize like most people (no LBRP for me). I know what a blue Corvette looks like for example, I have seen one before. I know what my front yard looks like, but I cannot visualize a blue corvette in my front yard.

I mention those two aspects because they are critical in my context here. It would be dishonest to me to just dive in from my perspective and leave you all scratching your heads, me walking away thinking I'm amazing. This is absolutely not the case. Spiritual integrity is everything to me here.

I am only aiming to be helpful here as magickal trance is the actual point. Without it, we are just sitting in our rooms looking ridiculous in robes pretending (although I would look rather dashing in a robe thank you very much! lmao)

What the hell is magickal trance anyway? To me, magickal trance is a liminal state, not awake, not asleep. In between. Disassociation is a feature here. The trance state is where the spirits (angels, demons, deities, etc.) can commune with us. We can hear them, see them, travel to where they are and experience lessons.

How I get into magickal trance: Mediation was critical for me. Since I cannot visualize like everyone else, I struggled badly for years. I thought you had to 'see' shit when you meditate, this is simply not the case. I feel. I feel my energy in my heart chakra, then move it up to my throat, then 3rd eye, then crown. I focus on heart again, then down to solar, then sacral, then root. Then heart again, up to 3rd eye, then blast off.

Everyone's chakra system is different. I know what you're thinking, no, its not set in stone. I dont care what books say or what forums say. I am proof. My fire, my forge is my heart chakra. So here is my exact thought process that I use:

Heart - Forge, my fire.
Throat - So I can speak truth and speak to spirits
3rd Eye - So I can see spirits
Crown - So I can commune with spirit
Heart - Focus as it is the main hub of my fire.
Solar Plexus - My will/action
Sacral - My passion/desire
Root - Grounding so I dont fracture. Stay grounded enough to remain sovereign regardless of experience.
Beck to heart
Up to 3rd Eye.

Feel free to do it however works for YOU. Doesn't matter what others do, do what works for YOU.

I know I am in magickal trance because I feel a drop into it, sometimes a slip. Other times its like I see through my eyelids. Shapes, or a screen and I scroll into it. (remember, I cant visualize. So if I see shapes, I know its not from me).

The trick for me is to recognize I'm in, and not reach for control. Its oh so tempting to get excited, reach for control, etc. I resist it at all costs. I let the spirits come as they choose to come (No pre-framed lens). I call Lilith for example, go into trance and sit quietly and wait for her to speak first. Then I can commune with her or just listen. Asteroth likes to give downloads, no talking, just receiving. I wait until it 'feels' like its over, then come out. When I use the word 'feel' I mean intuit.

'Intuit' refers to 3rd eye. Yes, that needs to be open and balanced and you have to be able to put energy into it. (This is so hard to convey in writing!) I did a Substack audio recording on this topic, wasn't sure if it was cool to put a link to it here or not, so I defaulted to not without asking first. Its not a for sale thing, just a space I used to ramble this out for someone I was helping at the time.

Can a Neurotypical (normal person) do this in the way I do it? Yes, but not as easily. There are aspects everyone can use here though. Meditation is still key. Energy movement into at least your 3rd eye is critical. Willingness to absolutely let go is also critical. If you are afraid to let go fully, stick to drawing sigils or something. This takes courage and willingness, and yeah its a big deal.

Dont give up! This is the core of magick and it sucks it isn't talked about more. Without trance, all the books and correspondences are just head-knowledge. The real current doesn’t care about aesthetic, only whether you can enter trance and hold it. Hell, even I can do it and I'm not special at all.

This isn't about me, this is about the new seeker who is struggling, about to give up because no one stepped up to talk about the hard shit.
How do YOU get into trance?

 

[IllusiveOwl]

I guess my own "neuro-divergence" (Chronic Stress Induced Brain Damage) can be counted as a "superpower" when it comes to Trance as well, fate had given me a natural talent for de-person-alizing, and in a sense that's a good way to explain my experience with Trance, the act of unzipping the person and stepping out as a divine spark. I agree wholeheartedly that this ability is a core component of magic, though there is a lot that can be accomplished without it. I would label Trance as being more of "a must" with Shamanism than outright magic, there are some magicians that can get some good work done without ever doing a lick of introspection.

I fiddled around a lot with different methods of attaining Trance, I experimented with dance, sensory-deprivation, extreme exhaustion/pain/drug use, chanting and singing, hemisync, but hands down the most dependable method of achieving it is meditation, I don't even need any bells & whistles now, just a cleared space & mind. It helps that I've been practicing meditation for several years before I entered into magical practice.

Now my process consists of setting up the ritual space, cleansing it, then sitting on my mediation pillow with my eyes closed. I cleanse my mind to 'sober it up' from the casual automatic state of mind that we usually live day-to-day in. Once I'm focused, it's just a matter of ceasing to react to sensations and thoughts as a willful act of disconnection to become a "choiceless awareness" that is primordial, unchanging, and transcendent of the body. It's as this primordial awareness that my Will is done. It's difficult to describe this state, but you know you are in it, it's a lucid and very tangible state with a body and being of it's own.

 

[tranmut3]

I'd recommend you check out Aidan Wachter's 6 ways. there are a couple of very simple methods there that are quite effective.

 

[FireBorn]

I'd recommend you check out Aidan Wachter's 6 ways. there are a couple of very simple methods there that are quite effective.

Real talk, I keep seeing this guy's name (Aidan Wachter) all over the place. Normally I’m not big on using someone else’s lens in occult work. I’m pretty feral in my approach. But... your reply pinged something.

Instead of getting annoyed, I stopped and asked myself why it bothered me to see another person's framework suggested here. I looked in the mirror, got honest, and said: screw it. I downloaded the book (shoutout to WF for having it available) and dove in.

I hit that book my usual way, scanned through the first 7–8 chapters, sniffing for meat and resonance. Then I backed up and started actually reading. And… yeah, you got me. It’s solid. Not totally my style (I’m not as into the performative side as Aidan is), but I can’t ignore this: I was already doing most of what he’s doing, at least structurally.

I didn’t even know what animism really was until today. Still wrestling with it, still questioning, still seeing if there’s more I can use, but it’s been worth it.

So yeah. Thank you! (Let’s not get carried away and expect this kind of graciousness from me all the time though. lol)

 

[tranmut3]

Real talk, I keep seeing this guy's name (Aidan Wachter) all over the place. Normally I’m not big on using someone else’s lens in occult work. I’m pretty feral in my approach. But... your reply pinged something.

Instead of getting annoyed, I stopped and asked myself why it bothered me to see another person's framework suggested here. I looked in the mirror, got honest, and said: screw it. I downloaded the book (shoutout to WF for having it available) and dove in.

I hit that book my usual way, scanned through the first 7–8 chapters, sniffing for meat and resonance. Then I backed up and started actually reading. And… yeah, you got me. It’s solid. Not totally my style (I’m not as into the performative side as Aidan is), but I can’t ignore this: I was already doing most of what he’s doing, at least structurally.

I didn’t even know what animism really was until today. Still wrestling with it, still questioning, still seeing if there’s more I can use, but it’s been worth it.

So yeah. Thank you! (Let’s not get carried away and expect this kind of graciousness from me all the time though. lol)

I got AW's 1st book, thinking it was probably pop nonsense.. then i got the 2nd book, and now i've ordered Changeling.
His material is simple but quite effective.

 

[pigtools]

If you cant enter magical trance, youre just dressing the part.

is this true? must you enter a trance state for ur magik to be effective? I thought the power lied in the belief you put into the spell and the faith you have that it will work.

 

[FireBorn]

is this true? must you enter a trance state for ur magik to be effective? I thought the power lied in the belief you put into the spell and the faith you have that it will work.

I should have been more clear with my words. I was speaking more about ritual for spirit contact. I think that makes it clearer and provides a better context in general, or at least the context I was leaning on when I made that point.

Great catch!!

 

[pigtools]

I should have been more clear with my words. I was speaking more about ritual for spirit contact. I think that makes it clearer and provides a better context in general, or at least the context I was leaning on when I made that point.

Great catch!!

thanks for the clarification, I'm new to magik and I'm likewise looking for info on the practice of "spirit contact" as you say. I'm basically at square 0 lol so I appreciate the info on the "hands-on" parts

Post automatically merged: Aug 24, 2025

I have a friend who would put his TV to static and blindfold himself, sensory deprivation could be a promising aid, I may try this method but I'm a little scared if I'm honest lol

 

[Lurker]

I don't really try to put myself in a trance, just in a meditative state. When I do find myself in a trance state, I take it as a sign that something has shown up and is communicating. That could have meant the egregore back when I was practicing in the Ogdoadic current, or a spirit or spirits now that I practice a more individual, grimoiric approach.

I know when I'm in it when my eyes close and everything is suddenly deeper and darker and begins more still than the meditative state. There is either silence or communication in one form or another, depending on context. But like a never-ending cosmic joke I'm playing on myself, at first it feels like I'm falling asleep. I tell myself 'No, don't fall asleep during a ritual!' But then I realize I'm not asleep, I'm in that deep, dark altered state we call 'trance' and contact is happening. But I always seem to fall for the joke.

Also, I can observe the trance state without breaking it. On the other hand, observing a quiet meditative state usually breaks it, at least for me.

If you have spirits who act as day-to-day guides, then you don't need trance. You will just hear them in your head.

If you work in a tradition that begins by banishing with a pentagram ritual of some kind, then a meditative state should be sufficient. Pentagram rituals light you up on the Astral plane for spirit contact, and that was my experience with Ogdoadic magic. I only fell into trance when dealing with the egregore, and the individual spirit contacts I had where much easier to hear and see (UPG-wise) than since I struck out on my own.

@FireBorn Where you been, man?

 

[MorganBlack]

Sweet topic.

William W. Hewitt's self-hypnosis routine was super useful early in my evocation career.

I used a script from one of Hewitt's books. I modified it for spirit evocation based some suggestions gleaned from Black and Hyatt's 'Pact with the Devil'. It was shockingly effective.

FYI: This was after a few years with the standard 1980's to 1990' esoteric curriculum of Chaos magic, Kraig's 'Modern Magick', and studying modern lodge magic.

Baseline confession: I'm also a neurotypical (a category neuroscientists agree does not exist ) but also a professional concept artist and art director. Imagination is my jam.

In my opinion, when working in an animistic context, self-hypnosis is less about activating your Jedi mind powers than quieting your overly chatty left hemisphere, and getting more into your right hemisphere. Once contact is made you can dispense with the much of the rituals, tools and trance work.

Continental psychologists were always ahead of us Yanks, and said our primary experience of the world is right-hemispheric in nature.

Some German psychologists I read called this 'The Umvelt'.

If you want to feel thiswitch in your brain, listen to music without thinking about it. Listening to music is right-hemispheric. Unless one the listener is a music composer, who will start ruminating

For highly suggestive reading and viewing I highly recommend British psychiatrist and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist's work (See: 'The Master and His Emissary', and 'The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World')

His YouTube channel

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We need more study but self -hynosis mayb help by using bettter words to get past the limiting effects of words.

It is too early to say, but with the recent generational rise of widespread right-hemisphere brain damage in the form of autism and other conditions , this type of skill may be more required than ever to help those with hyper-categorizing brains get past the hypnotizing effects of mateerialist-encoded langauge.

 

[Fr. Maximagus]

Im pretty sure I’ve been going into trance randomly since i was a kid! lol I would always just zone out staring at something and just kind of “blink out” of conscious awareness is the only way i can describe it. Sometimes I think it’s been a few seconds and i realize it’s been 20 minutes. Other times its flipped. Time gets really wonky but I have always come out of these trances with some kind of “download”. Never any spirit contact or communication tho that Im aware. Tho a few times I remember as a kid seeing shadow men at my dads house but its possible those were only dreams.

I’m still really new to magick and conjuring but so far my first attempt went very well. I couldn’t see the spirit but I felt a powerful & peaceful presence and what I asked the spirit for happened within days! So it seems I successfully made contact, now I would like to hone my etheric perception so I can actually see or speak to them.

Any suggestions to developing these skills & abilities I am all ears!

 

[Lucien6493]

Every wizard from Merlin to Mickey Mouse seems to be pre-occupied with either breaking enchantments or with falling into them and I think there might be a reason for that. Consider the trance of consensus reality as maintained by the waking dream cast over us by the senses. So you could as well ask the question backwards. I liken trance to the art of surfing. In other words, I want to find the sweet spot, so I don't reach for the crest of the wave and never start at the bottom because if you are at the crest when the wave breaks you will keep going until your head plows through the wall of someone's living room half a mile in from shore, and you won't be taking your robes with you, never mind your bathing suit. At the bottom...you will know that for sure because it will leave you feeling wired, ungrounded, scattered, a bit nauseous maybe, but that part of you through whose eyes you are looking and who is deeply invested in the conviction that magick is for fools will have you larping like a world-class poser. He or she is desperate to break free of their bondage to 3-D in proportion to how rooted they are in it. On the other hand, that agency that binds the senses can loose them. Let it stand watch over your intent. In other words, by the time you have set the stage; made all of the preparations, drawn the sigils, gathered your tools, or whatever, you are already there. No need to churn the ocean to make waves.

That said, spirit contact, at least for me, is by far the easiest way into the deeper reaches of my inner world, or into yours, if that is what I'm aiming for. I mean, where else would anyone go? The worlds contiguous with the one which we call home are all accessed through a body which has no inherent problem going into trance in the first place. Which brings me to the last point, which is that trance states can be extremely subtle, variable, and highly sensitive to initial conditions, so as you go in and out of different trances you are teaching yourself to taste, touch, see, smell and feel their qualities, their nuances, their gradations and richness, and the ways in which they weave through the various trance of your self-in-the-world. And for all that no two trances are ever the same, and neither are you. Personally, I love working with tutelary/goetic spirits because they are so incredibly magnetic. Making contact feels like falling into a gravity well while moving forward at great speed and all I do is draw the sigil or download it to my desktop, call the spirits name, or chant its enn, and gaze into its energetic geometry. They (the daemons) can take you into ecstasy, bliss, gnosis, or effortlessly send you into the flow of a multi-sensory trip through the twilight zone in surround sound and technicolor. So can yoga, pathworking, the middle-pillar exercise, the angel Metatron, dancing, breath-work, plant allies and so on...unless you want a quick fix, in which case you had a momentary loss of control if it works at all, or, you blew it going in (and out) of a state faster than you can pick up on having gone anywhere at all because, like surfing, like sex. Technique belongs to this world. Focus on that and it will keep you there. Live the theorems non-conceptually instead. Through the heart then. Cheers.

 

[Fr. Maximagus]

Every wizard from Merlin to Mickey Mouse seems to be pre-occupied with either breaking enchantments or with falling into them and I think there might be a reason for that. Consider the trance of consensus reality as maintained by the waking dream cast over us by the senses. So you could as well ask the question backwards. I liken trance to the art of surfing. In other words, I want to find the sweet spot, so I don't reach for the crest of the wave and never start at the bottom because if you are at the crest when the wave breaks you will keep going until your head plows through the wall of someone's living room half a mile in from shore, and you won't be taking your robes with you, never mind your bathing suit. At the bottom...you will know that for sure because it will leave you feeling wired, ungrounded, scattered, a bit nauseous maybe, but that part of you through whose eyes you are looking and who is deeply invested in the conviction that magick is for fools will have you larping like a world-class poser. He or she is desperate to break free of their bondage to 3-D in proportion to how rooted they are in it. On the other hand, that agency that binds the senses can loose them. Let it stand watch over your intent. In other words, by the time you have set the stage; made all of the preparations, drawn the sigils, gathered your tools, or whatever, you are already there. No need to churn the ocean to make waves.

That said, spirit contact, at least for me, is by far the easiest way into the deeper reaches of my inner world, or into yours, if that is what I'm aiming for. I mean, where else would anyone go? The worlds contiguous with the one which we call home are all accessed through a body which has no inherent problem going into trance in the first place. Which brings me to the last point, which is that trance states can be extremely subtle, variable, and highly sensitive to initial conditions, so as you go in and out of different trances you are teaching yourself to taste, touch, see, smell and feel their qualities, their nuances, their gradations and richness, and the ways in which they weave through the various trance of your self-in-the-world. And for all that no two trances are ever the same, and neither are you. Personally, I love working with tutelary/goetic spirits because they are so incredibly magnetic. Making contact feels like falling into a gravity well while moving forward at great speed and all I do is draw the sigil or download it to my desktop, call the spirits name, or chant its enn, and gaze into its energetic geometry. They (the daemons) can take you into ecstasy, bliss, gnosis, or effortlessly send you into the flow of a multi-sensory trip through the twilight zone in surround sound and technicolor. So can yoga, pathworking, the middle-pillar exercise, the angel Metatron, dancing, breath-work, plant allies and so on...unless you want a quick fix, in which case you had a momentary loss of control if it works at all, or, you blew it going in (and out) of a state faster than you can pick up on having gone anywhere at all because, like surfing, like sex. Technique belongs to this world. Focus on that and it will keep you there. Live the theorems non-conceptually instead. Through the heart then. Cheers.

Man well said. I just started with goetic spirits and I know exactly what you mean. Nothing about them feels evil at all. Sitri’s presence is the most peaceful and tranquil thing I’ve ever felt lol

 

[StarOfSitra]

I think this guide I made might interest you — it fits really well with the question you asked in your post.

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