The Hissing of the Serpent

The Hissing of the Serpent:

The Voice of the Master which Transforms

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“Trance” is the experience of Extra-Sensory Reality.

We can be certain that the range of our standard human senses do not expose us to reality in full, but to reality as we humans need to see it, in such a manner that we react properly for our own survival. This is Sensory Reality. Our senses tell us of potentially dangerous situations, predators, sounds that are important, tastes and textures that can reveal danger or comfort. Our senses reveal to us what we need to know to interact with the world in such a manner that our comfort and survival is provided for.

This “primacy of sensory reality” which absorbs our minds most of our lives is our heritage from the Animal Kingdom. The gift of the All Father or Cunning Father to mankind was the Spirit of “Wod” or Inspiration; this gift was the awarenss of the Immortal Spirit that interacts without and within us, and awareness of the Sorcerous Fire; the Fire of the Gods.

This strange and weird power, which is the seat of our own divine imaginations, our imaginal ability, exists for one purpose only: it is a doorway into an experience of reality which is fully divine, or should I say, an experience that is Whole or Full. The Witch Fire, the divine element of consciousness in mankind which is a gateway to consciousness of the infinite, is there that we, too, may be like the True Beings, the Spirits, or Undying Ones.

The True Beings, Spirits that have been called “Gods” are Gods because they have a wholeness of Awareness and a wholeness of Consciousness. There is nothing that they do not see or experience. The same cannot be said of humans, most of the time, if ever. But when the Trance comes, and opens into a strong experience of Extra-Sensory Reality, you find yourself on the threshold of your own mortality; this is why Trance and Death are similar. The True and Full Trance is The Immortal Hour, the Hour of the Gods. It is the Doorway to a world that is entirely not ours, and yet, a world that cannot be said to be “apart” from oursfor Reality is ONE, WHOLE, and UNDIVIDED. What is different is perception- and even perception is part of the whole.

In this manner, we can say that the Divine World of the Undying Ones is not the same as the human world, and yet, it is not different; we can say that our worlds are not one, and yet, they are not two. This is a subtle point that must be understood.

The Trance does not begin strong, but it grows strong as your divine, imaginal capacity or invisible Fire is fanned higher and higher, inside your essential being. This is why effort or practise is necessary. A day will come when the Trance will destroy you, as a fire destroys anything. But the destruction will be only of the “You” that was based on your memories and experience of mortal, sensory reality, and it will be the birth of a new “You” that freely partakes in the Wholeness of things; a “you” that will now be able to experience Reality with the “Strong” senses or the Eyes of Cunning, the Eyes of a Witch.

You will “look” upon the faces of the Unseen Ones, and know them as your true companions. Indeed, even now, they are far more involved in us than we mortals could ever be of them, by virtue of their great mastery of what we call “The Trance”.

The Trance does not exist apart from sensory reality or the body, and yet, what makes it possible is not limited to sensory reality or the body. We are dealing with a mystery of the Spirit, of a dark and wondrous immortal fire that was bestowed on mankind by beings that are beyond our mortal understanding, in “ancient times”, or within the mythical dimension of our existence.

After the bestowing of the Fire, we were no longer merely mortal things, but immortals in fugue, seeds of the Gods waiting to break forth.

The metaphysical pain of our human existence is only the deepest, most buried divine reality in us which knows full well that it is no slave to death or limitation, and yet, it is forces to deal with fear and limitation- again, a side-effect of our animal heritage, and the Hard Fate of our mortality- the blessing and curse of beings that are no longer merely mortal and yet not fully immortal, straddling the strange space between these things.

What strange times these are, and strange beings we are. The Trance introduces us to ‘the secret history’ of what we really are, what has been forgotten, and what awaits us. We are Capax Dei, “Capable of Gods”- capable of being far more than we ever dreamed, for even most of our dreams are mere mortal fantasies. The Flame itself has some mysterious relationship to the area behind your navel. If you want to fan it brighter, it is to the Mystery of the Inconstant Air that you must go, just like wind fans flames the higher, or the Bellows makes the Fire in the furnace higher. Your body is the furnace in which an infinitely wise Spiritual being is forged, a Spiritual Birth- never mistake this or forget it.

When the Mystery Night comes, a Divine Being will be born- but who will it be? This is the Beatific Vision, the culmination of Fate. The identity of the Horn Child or the Divine Child is the central mystery of the Awakening, and the name of this being the Name of Destiny. But that is for another time to puzzle out. I will return now to the basics of this technique.

The area behind your navel is a secret key. Something begins to happen when you affect it with you breath. This simple technique begins all growth towards changing the subtle body into a vehicle of Trance. Ten is the number- you take ten easy but deep breaths, and as you do so, you imagine in your head that balloon is filling behind your navel. It gets pretty big, so you should effortlessly allow your stomach to expand out, and then, when you let your breath come rushing out, let it out slowly but generously, and allow the wind escaping to make a hissing noise through your teeth. This is an important detail.

This is the Hissing of the Cunning Serpent, the Old Cunning One. This high pitched hiss affects deep layers of the brain and mind, and yes, I am asking you to take my word for this. Give it a chance; if you do as I ask, you will start to change. This is the sound of the hiss, the sound of the piper, the sound of Silence, the supreme password of the mysteries. The stars themselves make this sound as they cut through the void of space.

As the breath comes out into the hiss, you must think of nothing else but the out breath. All of the world should vanish, leaving only your breath.

Sit with your back straight and your neck straight to do this. Ten breaths, doing as I said each time. In, inflate the balloon, out with the long steady hiss, and all you should fix your mind on is the out-breath and the sound of the hiss. Don’t force your mind to do this; gently direct your mind to the out breath feeling and sound. If stray thoughts arise, you gently come back silently to your breath. As the breath completes it’s exit, you think “one”. Then you start the next breath, and at the completion of the “in-inflate balloon-out-hiss” process, you think “two”. You do this till you reach ten.

Only the sensations of breathing, the feeling of breath, the sound of the hiss, and the number should exist for you. Close your eyes if you need to. If any other single mental image or thing intrudes, you just come back to your breath.

This is not hard to do; just remember to go gentle-don’t force. Don’t be fast or hard. Be steady, not too lazy and not too hard, just somewhere in the middle, with a steady temper to you.

This is the basic “meditation” in which the powercenter of the body is enlivened, and the Cunning Serpent’s hiss rises in your consciousness. There is no trance work (or really, any other work) that does not begin with this seemingly simple exercise. The point of this exercise is to relax and center you, but also to rouse the Serpent, awaken the deep mind, and empower you.

You should do this exercise daily, and usually more than once a day; after all, any few minutes in your life can be set aside for ten slow, steady breaths and a little of the Serpent’s tongue. What you must remember is that each time you complete a set of ten of these, you have become a different being; you have changed a bit, transformed on a deep level, become more capable of moving closer to that arousal of power and awareness that will eventually break through the misty wall that separates the slumbering world of mortals from the eldritch world of the Deathless. Neither the inconstant Air nor the hiss of the Deathless Serpent can leave even a single thing totally as it was before.

Do not be fooled by the simple appearance of this technique; it is a foundational technique. I suggest that you always do it before you go to sleep, but when you lie down at night.

As an aside, if before you go to sleep, and after you reach breath ten, allow yourself to “let go” of yourself and relax into bodily and mental stillness- as though you were a corpse- you will start to notice a change in your dreams. This is an “entry point” into the advanced technique of “Incubation” or Dream divination.

Now, before we can continue, I have to discuss how important the element of “Understanding” is. It is fine to begin the ascent into internal transformation, using the “foundational technique” above, and others I will discuss; but without understanding, none of this is useful. All of the trance techniques in the world, and all the capabilities in the world will mean nothing without understanding what they are. To have these techniques and the experiences they bring without understanding is the same as having a heap of very expensive building materials. A heap of building materials is not a house, and without understanding how they work together, they never will be.

You have to understand that Reality is One, Whole, and Undivided. Human minds chop it into a billion pieces, abstract parts of it away from the Wholeness of Nature, and label those various “parts” as different “things”- but it is still one. Your mind takes an oak tree and THINKS of the oak as a thing different from Nature, but the tree, like your own body or mind, or any other thing you label as “something” is still inseparable from the wholeness.

Please do not ever forget this; You are not “in” the world; you are a world. You are only different from the Body of Nature insofar as you perceive yourself as such. It just so happens, however, that as an individual being, you will always perceive yourself in that manner, in any world or condition you may come to inhabit. It is precisely that mode of perception- that you are “apart” from all things that you perceive- that defines you as a mortal being, or as a spirit, or what have you.

Many people think that the point of “spirituality” is to lose the self in absorption with the Great All-ness of Reality; to become absorbed into the “one with all” state. But such a thing is absurd. You do not ever cease to exist as a being with perception- what ceases is your absolute sense of separation from Nature. You can be both aware of yourself as a ‘thing’ apart from nature, while simultaneously being totally aware and conscious of your oneness with all.

That is the secret. A being that has BOTH of these modes of awareness at the same time is no longer really a mortal. A mortal is precisely the sort of being that has pretty much 100% of their everyday awareness cast only in terms of separation and differentiation from the World “around them”. They have no ability to also realize their great one-ness, their intimate and natural connection with Nature. Of course, that oneness always exists; it is the true condition of all things, no matter how unconscious of it we may be.

But to have both modes of perception makes a person both a mortal AND an immortal; because the immortals have a wholeness of awareness that takes in All That Is. They are aware of All. They are totally aware of the mortal and the immortal, the limited and the unlimited, the finite and the infinite, simultaneously. By “existing” in both modes, a being actually (paradoxically) becomes both AND neither! This is the symbolism of the Veiled One’s face- half light and half dark, half living and half dead; she unites both “Halves” of reality in one great Being. The symbolism of the Dark Master and the Lord of Light, being two faces or aspects of one being, is the same.

They become a “third new thing” which is beyond all and nothing, beyond absorption and individuality, and yet, still capable of enjoying both of these perspectives. This is the deathless state, the condition of the Hidden Company, or the Grand Array. These are the “Master Men” or the “True Beings” of Lore. The path to this awareness begins with the technique I discussed above. Humble beginnings, a simple soil for a seed of reality: a simply soil like so many soils that produce crops in abundance all over the earth. Never scoff at simplicity or simple beginnings.

Site last updated: November 2, 2005