Understanding Visionary Astral Travelling.
When anthropologists first encountered the shamans of Siberia and the medicine men of the Americas, they realised they were just catching a glimpse of humanity's long standing traditions of spirituality. At the core of most shamanic systems is the vision quest- a form of astral travel in which the initiate explores the landscape of the psychic world.
The term Vision Quest is usually associated with native Americans, for whom the mystical beings they encounter often take the form of animals that act as spirit guides. such quests are features of many cultures, however, and are practised extensively by psychics today.
You don't have to be a shaman to experience a vision quest. Astral projection and travel is basically the same thing- a journey through a different plane of existence in which you may see places and meet beings that symbolise your own psychic landscape. In this way, getting in touch with your astral body and travelling the astral plane are ways of expanding your consciousness to achieve spiritual and psychic growth. According to the psychologist Carl Jung, psychic exploration aims to integrate our conscious and our unconscious. In Jungian terms, astral travel is a tool for achieving this as is true of the vision quests of native America and Siberia.
Some symbols of astral travel....
Male or female characters- your masculine or feminine sides.
Roads or paths- connections netween things that are not evident to your conscious self.
A Hostile character- Your shadow- the negative or unwanted elements of your psyche.
The ocean/sea- The unknown and possibly the limits of your psyche.
Doorways or crossroads- Decisions you have to make.
Stairs up or down- may represent pathways to different levels of your psyche.
Contacting the Spirit world- invocations and oracles.
In ancient times, deities were often consulted by their worshippers on important matters, whether personal or political, through oracles.
Oracles existed in almost all ancient cultures. These sacred individuals, generally women, would be possessed by a deity and then utter words of wisdom and prophecy from the deity to the people. Some oracles would go into a trance spontaneously, while others had the god or goddess invoked into them.
Invocation was the process of calling a deity into a person who acted as a vessel. In modern Paganism, invocation is generally seen as the calling of a deity to come and be present in the sacred space set up by the person or people performing a ceremony. The term 'drawing down' is used in Wicca for the process of calling the goddess or god into the body of a priestess or priest in order to deliver the words of divine wisdom.
Invocation was a practise that was used throughout the ancient world including Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. Offerings would be made to the deities before they were invoked. These ranged from offerings of incense and aromatic oils to their statues, to the sacrificing of animals, all designed to ensure the favour of the god or goddess and a favourable response to the questions asked. In the Old Testament of the Bible, reference is repeatedly made to seers, who could communicate with God and speak his words, and also the the Oracle within the temple, the holy shrine within which people wre able to to ask their questions of God.
The art of Invocation
Invocation can be performed by a single person who asks a deity or angel to be present in their sacred space and to bring them blessings. this is often done for the purpose of divination, to provide more inspiration and insight into the situation about which you are trying to learn.
1. Purification bath
Add a few drops of any aromatherapy oil that you find uplifting and stimulating, such as frankincense or sandlewood.
2. Sacred Circle
Cast a circle to perfom the divination in. Starting on the eastern side, walk around the room clockwise with a joss stick in your right hand seeing a sphere of blue flame surrounding the space you are in.
3. Meditation
Meditate for a few minutes on the symbols and qualities of the deity you are going to call. It is a good idea to read about the deity beforehand and learn all you can about them as this will make it easier to focus on your deity.
4. Invoke the deity
This is usually done by stading in front of your altar and reciting an invocation or prayer. As you speak hold your arms up so they make a 'v' shape. This is the time honoured pose to adopt for invocations.
5. Asking for Aid
Mediate again, feeling the presence of the deity or angel you have invoked. Ask for their aid in seeing clearly and perform your divination, using the tarot, or scrying in a crystal, or whatever method suits you.
6. Say Goodbye
Thank the deity and bid him/her farewell, saying something like "O great and beautiful (name), thank you for joining me and blessing me with your aid, I bid you hail and farewell". Then walk in a complete circle anticlockwise from the east of the room around the circle you created, all the while visualising the blue flames gradually disappearing.
Famous Ancient Oracles
The most famous oracle of all is probably the Oracle at Delphi. At the foot of Mount Parnassos in Greece, this temple was set up in the 6th century BC and remained in service for more than 1000 years. A priestess called the Pythia sat on a golden tripod over a fissure in the earth, where she was surrounded by fumes and went into a trance. Her utterings were then interpreted by the priests of Apollo, who ran the temple. Another famous oracle was the Cumaen Sibyl in ancient Rome, who sat in a cave and wrote her answers on oak leaves for people to interpret. Legend has it that, as Rome was being founded, she offered the King 9 books telling the future of the world, but when he said the price was too high she began to burn them 1 by 1. Finally when only 3 were left he gave in and bought them for the original price, but because Rome didn't know it's full future it eventually collapsed.
Understanding Deja Vu
Deja vu is French for 'already seen' and describes the feeling you have that you have experienced a place, conversation or event before, even though you're almost certain that you can't have done so. There is more to Deja vu than the mild frustration of not being able to place a name or a face (restricted paramnesia)- the central part of the deja vu experience is that it feels weird. It's not clear who first coined the phrase but 1 of the 1st to identify the phenomenon was French psychologist Pierre Janet who viewed it as a symptom of obsessional behaviour.
You can have Deja vu about practically any event or situation, but the most commonly reported 1 is the 'strange by familiar town' experience when you visit a place for the first time but feel that you knew where you what you were going to see before you saw it. Other common deja vu provoking events are marriages, job interviews and funerals.
How do you know you've experienced Deja Vu? The feeling of familiarity is accompanied by the sense that the experience is somehow weird or unsettling. You may also experience a strange feeling of dislocation as if you are no longer part of flowing time. Rationally you know that you can't accurately predict the future, but on a psychic level you feel that you are in tune with a higher power and possess the ability to see events that haven't happened yet.
Paranormal reasons for Deja Vu include Precognition, Past Lives or Telepathy. Psychological explainations include psychoanalytic or neurological problems and emotional overspill.
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