The Corpse Sleep

The Corpse Sleep

The Art of Lucid Visionary Experience in the Underworld

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The Corpse Sleep is the most direct and simple "lifting" or "fetch flight" operation that I am capable of performing or discussing for those interested in actualizing the Craft of the Wise and the Workings of Voorish Gnosis, the High-Road to the Body of the Supreme Mother and the Hierophantical Witch-God with Light Between His Horns, whose every sight, sound, and taste is called the "True Sabbat".

You will lie as one dead, dead to the world, falling away from the outer surfaces of the world that is called "empirical", "solid", and "material" by the half-wise, and you will walk the ghost-road deep into the Fetch, where the fluidity of the misty-border world will swallow you as it does every night when you dream- but if your will and attainment is strong enough, you will maintain your consciousness in the Fetch, and defeat death.

Know the three realms: The time and space-bound world of consensual reality, where seeming is taken for reality, the world of temporary pains and joys inhabited by fleshy "bodies" and the twin seemings of Birth and Death; The Fetch, or the inner world, where the fluidity of the mind-world is dominant, where dreams and visions are a river of forms and images, some terrifying, others alluring; and the great World of Utter Truth and Voidness, beyond both the World of Flesh and the Fetch-World, the great void-womb of the Veiled Mother Fate and the White King; the last and ultimate world cannot be entered, and yet, you are never apart from it; veiled in bodies and fetch-dreams, it is forever substantial and sustaining, the source and end of all, and to know its secret is to know the Great and Supreme Seal of Wisdom and Immortality.

In the Corpse Sleep Trance, you must learn to enter the Fetch without losing consciousness, taking the consciousness that is natural to the world of bodies into the inner world of unconsciousness and dreams and visions. You must learn to become conscious in the world of the dead- for if you do, you will gain everything, both in this life and at death. If you do not, you will gain nothing, both in this life, and at death.

On the Traditional Witch-Ring, the interplay of the Three Worlds is shown: South for the Body and the world of life, death, blood and fertility and percieved solidity of form; The Cold, Airy North for the Voor, the Ultimate Realm of Truth, the Deathless which is Death to the Half-wise, and the Supreme Mystery; The West that is between North and South, representing the waters and the Fetch, the Misty Border between what appears and what is real- the visionary west full of illusions and dreams and long phantasmagoric oneiros of wonder and fear, and the East, which looks across to the South/Body, the West/Fetch and the North/Ultimate Reality-Truth; the East is the Light, the Illumination of the Master who rules the middle way between Life (south) and Death (north) and who is approached directly by plunging through the Fetch that faces him (west)- He is the three-faced one, the Horned King of Life, the Dark Master of Death, but also the Illuminated "third" or Eastern transcendant face that sees beyond and above them both, is within and without them both, under and above them both- the paradoxical-immortal Master of the Old Rite. The confusion and illusions of the western misty reaches are only an "opposite" manifestation of the clarity and insight of the East; one becomes the other, perpetually.

Any witch of enough cunning can become the "Three Faced One"- by plunging through the eldritch and dreamlike reaches of the Fetch-world and maintaining consciousness the entire time; the Mystery will be revealed and the Third Light will shine in the Fire of Mantic Insight.

I. Trance

You must with patience and calm endeavor to enter into a clear openess, a trance in which you simultaneously sense your individual perceptions alongside your oneness with the clear space that all things occur within, and which is the mother of all things. You must find the condition, spoken of many times by this writer, wherein you sense your connection to all, your oneness in the clear, ventilating open-ness of the subtle, whole, and indestructible tapestry of reality, as well as your sense of self as though you were a being "apart" from it all.

No true liberation from the "body principle" is possible until you recognize your oneness with all, the deeper, clearer reality that is at your heart, and at the heart of all things. In that smooth, invisible, and deep reality, you feel the great expansive consciousness/awareness/clarity that is your true "body" and the body of all.

Some perform the Red Meal at this point, to bring forth a strong connection to the Familiar or the Puckril; you need the Fetch-beast to link you with the "Truth-Body" that is your ultimate reality; the Mysterious Fetch-Mate or Spiritual Double that forever dwells in the Truth of the Dark and Indescribably Full Voorish World or Void-World is the only companion that can avail you in this operation, and this Spiritual Double is your destiny, that being that is "you" and will be "you", when the Grand Seal is known fully. The Fetch Beast is the bridge to this Being, this Watcher, this Daimon, which is what you shall become (and timelessly, what you already have become) in the bliss of the Fullness of Truth and Wisdom.

2. Hoodwink'd

Lie down in a very comfortable place, with a stang to your right and a besom to your left, if you can. Tie or lay a black cloth over your eyes. Let your body go limp as though you were dead. You must surrender your body, while seeing nothing but impenetrable blackness. You must consider yourself as dead, and for no reason allow yourself to move at all. Imagine what it would be like if you had just died, and found yourself able to think and hear, and feel your limp body lying there, but unable to move or speak or see. Relax. You are bound by the helplessness of death; you have no choice but to relax and fall deeper into what will feel like the on-coming of sleep.

3. The Well of Dark Water

You must feel as though you are falling asleep. Just let go until you feel the seperation beginning to happen, the depth-feeling of sleep. When you realize it, do not let it take you fully- and yet, do not try to reverse it. Maintain awareness of what you are feeling. Then bring up a vision in your mind of a field ringed with trees, oaks and elders and thorns and hazels, with an old stone well in the center.

Hurry over to the well and look in- there is dark water glimmering from the light above. See the reflection of your head on the dark water below. Then leap inside and fall down into the water. Feel the impact and the sudden wetness, and see the dark stones all around you blur quickly as you fall.

You stop for a moment in the water, slowed by the plunge, then, you see bubbles rising past your face, and more outlines of stones through the water, dimly. Do not surface; you do not need to breathe under this water.

Start to sink. See the outlines of the stones moving upward as you go down, and see bubbles and specks of white in the water flying upwards past you, as you sink. Concentrate just on those sights, and "Feel" a sinking sensation. If you do this properly, it begins to "take over" and work on its own, and you begin to realy feel as though you are sinking deeper and deeper below the surface of the earth.

At this point, I always call upon my Familiar to help carry me down, to pull me faster and further down, ever downward, until the trance truly deepens into a dark resonant underworldly state. It may take a long time, or a seemingly long time; you must maintain the visualization without trying to alter it, or make it anything other than what it is- and don't try to hard. Just go with it. Let the oncoming of sleep and relaxtion creep up on you more, but never surrender to it and lose consciousness. You must always remain aware, no matter how far or deep you go.

4. Staying Conscious

By the time you are down the well a ways, it may turn into just a dark tunnel or cavern or just a dark sensation of sinking amid total blackness. You should, by this point, or soon after it, have not much awareness of your entranced body.

Never surrender to unconsciousness, for that is the doom of those who die fully. This is where the test begins- when you begin to feel yourself slipping away too far, call upon your Familiar to make you aware; bring yourself back to the awareness of yourself as experiencing this trance, deep below in the Fetch-World.

Be aware of the visions and feelings and sights and sounds that you may encounter. Do not slip into unconsciousness or mindlessly let yourself be pulled from vision to dream-sight to vision. It will begin to happen; visions from the deep fetch world or the underworld will begin to take you, to come into you and you into them- it will be like dreaming.

But you must realize that these are not dreams; these are visions that you induced through trance; and even though ALL visions are "dreams", you are here to remain conscious, not to lose consciousness or lose mindfulness of what is occuring. You must stay awake in the Fetch-World, not aware of your body, but totally aware of what is occuring at any moment. You are mastering sleep and unconsciousness in a conscious manner- using the natural process of the lowering of the consciousness at sleep, but still using it consciously. The outer world and the inner are coming together through your mind; above and below are merging; an "awake" mind is going into the place where minds only sleep and dream; a star is falling into the dark depths.

This is how vision and wisdom is brought into the world of the waking and the living by the Witch. You must master this technique. It is the technique of liberation, of mastery in the Fetch, of Lucid Visionary Attainment. A master of this technique will not be swept away by the unconsciousness of actual death. This technique can be used to reach the dead who still course in the Fetch, normally unconscious of what is occuring, and if you were to approach a dead person in this manner, from their perspective, they would think they were having a dream of you. You can use this technique to have the highest of divinations, directly recieving visions of the potentials of the future and the forms of the past.

You may fail a few times as you begin the journey to mastery of this technique- you may succumb to sleep or total unconsciousness. That is fine. Eventually, you must triumph if your will is strong and your Familiar is bonded with you powerfully enough.

Always return the way you came, or have your familiar lift you "Straight up" rapidly and at light-speed to your body, as you rise from this state.

Site last updated: November 2, 2005