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Underground > Temple >

Automatic Writing

03:22 / 19.09.02

I've heard of people who can sit at a desk, with pen and paper, slip into a trance and write out whole pages. Channeling the thoughts of spirits, gods, and the dead. Unlocking subconscious information. And I was wondering if anyone here has experimented with this? What were your results? How would one go about doing this?

Can it be done on a computer? Trance Typing?

Do tell.

04:06 / 19.09.02

I've never used this technique for specifically magical purpose, but I have done it before.

I just start typing and see what appears. Plot, character just sort of materialise as you go along.

Try not to think before you type. Don't worry if it doesn't make sense. Try to 'see'/visualise as you write. And just don't stop.

12:05 / 19.09.02

The Fool wrote: Try to 'see'/visualise as you write.

That's it, at least for me also. When you get a picture of something simply focus in for more detail and resolution, then again and again, if nothing comes up then ask yourself about what color is that, what texture, what smell it has, what sound, and what silence, and then again. Sensory details, sensory details. You'll be in a fair trance by then.

If you get a voice, of a character, spirit or whatever, make it talk, and try to keep it on a definite distinctive timbre, tonality, and pacing of its own, so, again, listen carefully until you "recognise it" talking in your innards. The thing here with voices is to keep them recognisable, stable, so to speak, in regards to its qualities (again, timbre, tonality and pace).

By the way, I've never gone for it with magickal ends, but I used to write a lot. If you develop a character, it is essential that you can immediately evoke him through his legitimate "voice", so you won't be hearing things from your nanny but rather from the character itself, whomever, and whenever, he "is".

Another thing to explore is that when we read anything with different characters, ie: X-Men, we spontaneously assign each character a different voice of its own in our minds, although we would be hard pressed to admit it or even recognise it. So, while reading X-Men, go check the voice you have for Wolverine, Beast, Jean, whomever, and boost it in your mind until it deafens you. Images and attitudes of the character will of course storm through your mind. Its a good thing to do. This is precisely -I think- why some authors refer to "channel" the characters they write. I also take it that most of us here have read all of Grant Morrison's available interviews, so go check and you'll find you already have your own "Morrison's coloquial voice".

Let us know how it went Imp.

15:14 / 19.09.02

Tried this a while back when a friend brought a copy of "Surrealist Games" to a party. The writings were quite interesting once people got into it: very dream-like images and descriptions, snippets of dialogue, made-up words, "dictated" glossolalia. Someone wanted to have people read it into a DAT recorder so he could sample it later on (don't recall if anything was done with it).

impusivelad: might want to check out Andre Breton's "Surrealist Manifetoes" (he makes a point of describing the technique in great detail, apparently it was a favourite pastime of the Surrealists in the early years). Also, I think he and Phillipe Souphault (sp?) wrote a book together using this technique called "Magnetic Fields".

16:14 / 19.09.02

The Surrealists borrowed heavily from both early psychoanalysis and the Spiritualists. Very into randomness & association.

In my (limited) experience, writing is better than typing. It's less determinate, there's more flexibility of shape.

But that's just me.

17:41 / 19.09.02

I imagine you would have to be so comfortable with your typing skills that you could effectively touch type without having to even think about where your hands were. I type all day, and I still have to check now and then. Keyboards are not terribly natural interfaces, even when you're good at them. That can be a hamper to good trance, though it would depend on the person. Typing is also a lot faster than writing, so there are good and bad points to that as well.

21:27 / 19.09.02

The way I understand it, automatic writing was one of the techniques the spiritists used for contacting (later channeling) dead souls (later angels). The mediums (later channelers) got into a trance and started writing the words they were dictated.

It would be interesting to see a chaote adaptation of this ritual.

I like the idea of the keyboard

22:47 / 19.09.02

I'll check out the Surrealist Manifetoes.

How would I get into the trance while writing, though? Don't I have to be really relaxed? Or do I get into the trance first and then suddenly I pickup the pencil and start writing... like sleep walking?

01:23 / 20.09.02

I guess the second option is pretty much it. I remember I read somewhere sort of a start-up but didn't pay much attention -just the movie image of the lady with her eyeballs rolled up and scribling frenetically as someone changes the pages without her noticing makes me crack. A simple search should yield it. But I would suggest first you put the intention or evocation or whatever, and then you start moving your hand with the pencil across the page like a kid, sort of making arcs with your elbow somewhat fixed, liberate your wrist and let it play, and, by the way, make sure to have at least a thousand pages. At some point (four to six hours later if you are persistent) you will probably be in automtic mode so you will have no control and "something" wil take charge to address whatever you invoked, asked or intended.

Seriously, I think I read the clue was sort of allowing your hand and arm to go on auto-mode whie still controlling it at least to get it writing. Simple, but difficult. You asked anyway.