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I'm going to sidestep the slavery issue, since everyone else is addressing it so well, and concentrate on my own experience in this area. I think it's important to realise that a lot of people, especially in the west, find the notion of giving over the body to something else frankly terrifying. If you conceive of the body as the fundamental location of your identity, having that given over to something else is always going to be a little worrying. The anxiety of having something else wearing your face is an old one, and I think it bubbles to the surface here. But I would also claim that it's one of the most fundamentally rewarding magical experiences, and has served to deepen the relationship with my patron immeasurably.
It's important to have a fairly solid understanding of your own identity while doing possession work, which is not to say that the work won't have profound transformative aspects, but I think it's telling that - in the tradition I trained in - this work comes after extensive self & image work. With some time having passed between that training and today, I think that tradition has some problems with the way in which it fails to differentiate clearly between aspecting, shadowing, inspiration and full possession, but I think that work is correctly placed in the curriculum of clergy training.
An anecdote to illustrate the problems that arise. The group I belonged to for a while had as part of its practice the giving of oracles from a priestess (always the same priestess) possessed by a god. I will testify that on more than one occasion I am sure the possession was genuine, and I benefitted greatly from the experience. However, over a long period it became more and more apparent that said priestess much less frequently genuinely possessed and handing out her own advice in the guise of the god's. I withdrew from the group after a particularly nasty attempt to sabotage my private life through such a 'possession' and noting the unconscious conspiracy of silence that was in operation in a number of members. I left, but not before blotting my copybook enormously by saying these things out loud.
But that leaves the question of how to distinguish between genuine and faked possessions. I'm afraid I have to appeal primarily to the the mystery of presence - yes, it's hard to trust purely to intuition, but I know when my goddess is present, at least. But just like the African diasporic traditions, western magic has also had a tradition of testing the divine presence:
I wish, therefore, here to point out to you the signs by which those who are rightly possessed by the Gods may be known. For they either subject the whole of their life, as a vehicle or instrument to the inspiring Gods; or they exchange the human for the divine life ; or they energize with their own proper life about divinity. But they neither energize according to sense, nor are in such a vigilant state as those who have their senses excited from sleep (for neither do they apprehend future events) ; nor are they moved as those are who energize according to impulse. Nor, again, are they conscious of the state they are in, neither as they were before, nor in any (122) other way ; nor, in short, do they convert to themselves their own intelligence, or exert any knowledge which is peculiarly their own.
The greatest indication, however, of the truth of this is the following. Many, through divine inspiration, are not burned when fire is introduced to them, the inspiring influence preventing the fire from touching them. ?any, also, though burned, do not apprehend that they are so, because they do not then live an animal life. And some, indeed, though transfixed with spits, do not perceive it ; but others that are struck on the shoulders with axes, and others that have their arms cut with knives, are by no means conscious of what is done to them. Their energies, likewise, are not at all human. For inaccessible places become accessible to those that are divinely inspired ; they are thrown into fire, and pass through fire, and over rivers, like the priest in Castabalis, without being injured. But from these things it is demonstrated, that those who energize enthusiastically are not conscious of the state they are in, and that they neither live a human nor an animal life, according to sense or impulse, but that they exchange this for a certain more divine life, by which they are inspired and perfectly possessed.
[Iamblichus, Theurgia, III, iv]
(Some sloppy translation of complex Greek in the original, but it is Taylor's translation from the C18th so it is what it is.)
Lots of good stuff in the above (as there is in the Theurgia more generally) but I want to take out the key fact that Iamblichus, as a practicing Theurgist, clearly believed that possession should have verifiable qualities and should not be beyond testing. I think western magicians occasionally need more of that courage and a little less willingness to indulge sloppy amateur dramatics in the place of actual possession. How to establish those tests is another matter, but I've found that respectfully but clearly asking the god how we can know it is genuinely him or her will tend to establish a clear protocol. Anecdotal evidence, again: my patron is Hekate, and I work with her in her white, red and black aspects, but of late my work has been predominantly with her red aspect. When I am in full possession by her, she wll frequently place my hands over candle flames for a prolonged perod of time. The only burn marks I have ever had from this practice have been superficial at best, and it's a pretty accurate test. But this test can be less dramatic, even to the point of being simply verbal.
I should point out at that this possession is hardly a regular thing, and doesn't happen at every group meeting, but tends to occur in spates. There's a clear difference between this and the sensation I have at the end of devotional work, which is often of a clear presence, even sometimes to the point of having a very clear effect on my behaviour. As Iamblichus suggests, one of the effects of possession is, I think, that one's individual life takes on more clearly the traits of the god one is horsing.
Two further quick things - I concur with the idea that total amnesia is bandied about as being the marker of 'true' possession, and that there's a cultural imperative to forget the possible content of those experiences. Yet in my personal practice, I tend to find that any recollection I have of the period of possession is at best fragmentary and shot through with a variety of other images. My way of thinking about this is that the body itself remembers whatever it goes through, and processing the phenomenal power and strangeness of possession may take the form of amnesia or a disjointed, hallucinogenic imagefest. In fact, looking at my experiences, they tend to progress from amnesia to some *sort* of recollection (though it may bear very little semblance to what anyone else in the room experienced) the more work I do with Her.
Second, it's interesting that possession work has been so neglected in western magic, even in the practice of evocation, where one might assume it has some application. While I think this in part due to some heavy cultural prejudices to do with control, it also highlights that this sort of work tends to require a community in which to operate. The increasing prevalence of this work gives some insight into how the model of the magician as solipsistic inquirer into the mysteries is increasingly being contextualised by an awareness that the magician has a role in the community, and perhaps also the dissolution of the divide between magician and priest that seems to be taking place in the pagan and neopagan movements.
It's mildly irritating to me that I've managed to take up this much space and yet not captured what I think the essence of possession is, which might always escape such discursive media as this anyway, because it's such a very incarnate and bodily thing. Deren calls it 'the white darkness', and that encapsulates the ecstasy and terror of it (which is new every time)... the experience for me is closer to white-out than black-out. Knowing the what the pressure at the back of the head means, and feeling a different tongue start to stir in the mouth, before every sensation in every part of the body becomes absolute and infinite - even knowing what these things mean, having felt them before, there is a certain terror to them. Then there is the feeling afterwards, the novelty of flesh, the marvellous extension of the body, a feeling of emptiness or tiredness combined with blessing: --
After Possession
She stands between the bird and the silent crowd
with her vulture epaulettes and voodoo hairstyle,
with thick veined hands as stiff as cold clay
that touch each other, unbelievingly,
and the closed smile of the survivor's perfect
knowledge, total recall. Like a stopped cyclone.
(... and yet I feel I've barely touched on the subject.) |
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