A Finer Focus:
The Ascetic's Path

First the fasting - three days with only water to drink, until he feels clean and clear all the way through. Then the rest of the purifications, inside and out. Then, when he is entirely clean, he goes naked into the woods, with only the great mantle of black wool, lined with linen. He lays the cloak on a bed of soft pine needles and sits on it for a while, centering himself and sending out his senses, connecting with the wights of the place, preparing himself. He chants each of the nine long prayers to his patron deity, nine times each. Over and over. It is his discipline, and he welcomes it.

Then, as night falls, he lays down and wraps himself in the cloak. Head, eyes, body, all covered like a fetus going back to the womb. He will be here, under the cloak, all night and perhaps into the next day. Perhaps longer. A small bottle of water is his only companion; he will make its sips draw out slowly, so that he will not have to relieve himself for a long time. Eventually, in the dark and the closeness and the emptiness, the wights will speak to him and the answer will come.

The Ascetic's Path has three important points to it: discipline, purification, and paring down. It has been practiced by hermits and anchorites all over the world for as long as human beings have sought out the transcendent. Also called the Path of Silence, its purpose is not to work the soul up into a state of high vibration in order to blast it open, but to work it downwards into a place of utter stillness and silence, so that it may open gently and slowly.

It's a slow path, and probably the least likely to give any form of immediate gratification. In fact, it's the opposite of everything to do with immediate gratification. However, doing it with a martyred attitude is not going to get you the results that you want. As with all these paths, headspace counts for a lot. Going into it with a semiconscious mental rumble of "This is boring. When can I quit? When am I going to get to where I want to go so I can stop this?" is a sure route to self-sabotage. It's all right to acknowledge emotional and spiritual struggling, but your attitude should be one of being determined to engage in that struggle, not merely flailing passively and resentfully. If you absolutely cannot do an Ascetic's Path activity with a decent attitude, don't do it. Try something else instead.

On the other hand, if you begin an Ascetic's Path activity and you find it difficult , but you're not so sure that you want to give up just because of difficulty, ask the Gods and wights for help in deciding. They may have a better idea than you as to whether this will be useful. Some people do just give up too easily, and it may be good for you to stick it out. If you've been ordered to do one by a deity, you'd best do it even if you hate it. Your task will then be twofold: making it through the activity, and working on having a decent attitude about it while you're doing it.

The Ascetic's Path is one of coming to terms with limitations and restrictions. It's not about overcoming them, it's about using them as tools. Most people think of limitations and restrictions as entirely negative, but you can't focus on something fully without limiting your peripheral attention in some way. Some restrictions are good, like a rope anchor while mountain-climbing, or a safety helmet, or not living on chocolate fudge and soda for fourteen days in a row. In fact, spirit-workers throughout time have deliberately taken on restrictions and limitations in order to gain more power, or been ordered to take them on by the spirits that they work with. We call these taboos, and the further you go down this path, the more taboos you will gather. That's why I've put the chapter on shamanic taboos at the end of this segment of book.

I. Discipline

The first point is one that many modern folk have a hard time with, especially those on Pagan paths. Spiritual discipline is seen as something that other, more uptight, less hedonistic religions do - Catholic or Buddhist monks, for instance, or Hindu beggar-priests. It's not ecstatic like the Path of Sacred Plants or the Path of Rhythm, and it's not impressive like the Path of Ritual or the Ordeal Path. At the same time, it's daunting. As one teacher of spirit-workers points out elsewhere in the book, getting someone to do even one small devotional thing every single day is nearly impossible, especially in today's hyperactive sound-bite fast-food society. We are, as a culture, very poorly equipped for any work on this path. That's a good reason why we need it all the more. Remember that part of getting into an altered state has to do with doing things that are not part of your outside-world routine, things that jar you into a different state of being. For those who lead irregular lives, a disciplined routine for even a few minutes per day can create that non-everyday space.

Spiritual discipline has been likened to the soul-equivalent of developing body memory. As any martial artist knows, if you do the same movement over and over in a ritualized manner, eventually your body will pick up the memory of how to do it, and be able to replay it without conscious direction from your mind, thus freeing you up to do other things while the body runs on automatic. Similarly, the psychic acts of grounding and centering and other techniques, if done often enough, can create a psychic astral-body memory that will run on automatic while your mind is freed up to notice other things. Spiritual disciplines do this same thing for the soul. Eventually, after a time, your soul will learn to fall into a groove and reach a certain preliminary state of openness and clarity, triggered by the discipline.

Conversely, body memory - especially when done mindfully and accompanied by the proper moving of chi through the body - is a common and accessible route to spiritual discipline. Certain types of martial arts are good for this, especially meditative ones such as tai ch'i, or the ones with repetitive solo katas. Getting up and doing the same series of body-and-chi-moving exercises over and over can be a good tool for quieting the mind and creating spiritual silence. Other useful body-path vehicles might be yoga, repetitive physical labor, or running.

I get a lot of clarity from running. In my case, running very long distances is a good thing for me. I consciously run; I'm not just some idiot jogging. I'm purposeful and I'm scouting or I'm being an envoy, listening and looking around to see what's happening in the woods or with the animals, being aware of my breathing, not shirking from the negative emotions that are coming up. If I do ten or fifteen miles, I can pretty much push everything aside for that time. Fifty miles? It comes and gets you. You can't ignore, it, because you don't feel good all the way through a fifty-mile run. So when it comes and gets me, I continue to breathe, and do my various mind-tricks for it. If I really can't just ignore whatever it is that's bugging me at the time....if it's physical pain and discomfort, I'll say, "OK, I'll run for a thousand paces and then I'll see what it feels like." And then if it still feels bad, I'll take a ten-minute walk or something, and then I'll stop altogether if it really still feels that lousy, but generally it doesn't.

But in terms of personality crises - you kind of wear them down. After three hours or so of running, you've thought of all the obvious stuff to think about, and it's all gotten a bit boring. Now you're starting to think about things you've done; maybe they were worthy and maybe they weren't, and invariably your mind comes to rest on things you've done that weren't so worthy. But you can look at them from the point that you're running a fifty-mile run, and that's a very worthy thing to do. So it's an antidote to wallowing.

-Lydia Helasdottir

Other disciplines might be daily meditation, or devotions, or repetitive physical activity, or using repetitive breathing as a daily cleanse, or specific prayers that are done routinely at certain times every day, or during certain specific activities. If you want to do some kind of daily discipline and can't seem to remember to do it every day, lining it up with other things that you do every day can help that. Some people have lined up their daily prayers with the first meal of the day, or brushing their teeth or hair, or even taking daily medication.

One young woman I knew had a schedule so amazingly erratic that there seemed to be nothing that she could count on doing every day, including remembering to eat food until late in the afternoon. She felt that there was nothing that she could use as a trigger. I asked her if she had to go to the toilet every morning when she awoke to urinate; she responded, "Of course!" I suggested that she do her prayer every morning while on the toilet. At first she felt that this seemed somehow wrong or sacrilegious, but I pointed out that if this was the only guaranteed routine moment of privacy and stillness that she had every day, it was better to do her prayers on the can than not to do them at all.

Mental disciplines can also be used as a form of mindfulness. One example of this would be spending a period of time speaking only absolutely truthful things, or speaking only absolutely necessary things, or not using specific words that trigger patterns that aren't good for you. One person that I know spent a good deal of time not using the "I" pronoun, either referring to himself in third person or (more generally) mindfully restructuring sentences so as not to refer directly to himself. This was done as a way of hammering home the personally needful message of "It isn't all about you." The idea isn't that one is doing this for the heck of it, but that the restrictions are part of building a healthy spiritual structure that discourages all those things we use as excuses for not doing what we're supposed to do.

Purification is about removing blockages from the body, and cleansing both the body and the spirit. While there are many ways that one can do small amounts of physical and psychic purification - healing baths, herbal teas, energy work, etc. - the Ascetic's Path takes it further. Indian yogis, for example, have come up with some truly extreme levels of bodily cleansing, from cleaning out your sinuses with string to severe enemas. In the Northern Tradition, we don't necessarily go that far, although if you're drawn to that, do what thou wilt. On the other hand, techniques such as fasting, herbal detoxing, and ritual sweats are often used in this tradition.

Heat Purification

The northern-tradition ritual uses of the sauna (or banya, as it is called in Russia) are outlined at the end of the Path of Ritual section, so here we will only touch on the cleansing and purifying effects of using sauna as a solitary Ascetic's Path preparation. Sauna meditation is not only a strong physical detoxification, it also (ideally) has the added benefits of being done in a small, isolated, consecrated space with spirits already present and watching. If sweat-work is something that works for you, embrace the fire-etin path and go with it. Combining it with the Path of Breath and a personal ritual can be highly effective. This is the path of Muspellheim, and if you have spiritual questions about it that can't be answered by human beings, ask the dwellers in the Land of Fire.

The sauna can be a gentle purification, or it can cross over into the ordeal path, depending on how hot it is versus the heat tolerance of the individual utilizing it. Which way any particular worker leans will depend on what paths they work with; some like to push their limits as part of their purification, and some don't. Saunas have proven health benefits, including raising one's heart rate in the same way that exercise does, expanding blood vessels and improving circulation, relief from arthritis stiffness, calming respiratory problems, reducing tension, stimulating endorphins, and of course a good detoxing through the skin. (Remember not to lick the sweat off of your own or another's body during a sauna; it's loaded with your toxins and can make you nauseous. Shower off afterwards and get all that off of your skin.)

Because it's similar in many ways to inducing a fever, saunas can give your immune system a boost as well. Saunas have little effect of people with normal blood pressure, but they will temporarily lower high blood pressure. Those with naturally low blood pressure should be careful about high temperatures; calibrate your sauna tolerances slowly. The steam released from splashing water onto hot rocks also releases negative ions, as the positive ions are heavier and ground out on the rocks. This can cause a feeling of well-being and even euphoria - ever stood outside during or after a storm and breathed the air, and wondered why you were grinning like a fool? Sauna heat also increases the need for oxygen, so you breathe more deeply. Both changes in breathing and ion situation can create subtle changes of consciousness.

The tradition of going outside after a winter sauna naked and standing in the cold, or even rolling in the snow, has its own effects as well. One gets massive goose bumps, the heart continues to beat rapidly, and sometimes one can get psychedelic flashes bouncing across the retina from increased adrenal activity. A fast hot-cold transition stimulates the kidneys, causing a need to urinate. Going from hot to cold like that can be symbolically seen as stepping from Muspellheim to Niflheim, and can be ritually used in that way. In terms of ritual, the group sauna ritual later in this segment can be used solo as an opening to personal purification. However, the House of the Ancestors is usually a place where silence feels more appropriate, so don't plan loud, verbose rituals, unless you and the sauna spirits have discussed it and it feels right.

Remember to remove all of your metal jewelry when going into a sauna, especially the jewelry embedded in your flesh. It can heat to skin-burning temperature in the hot steam, and it's bad to be interrupted in the middle of a ritual purification in order to run outside screaming and stick your ear, nipple or other tender place into a snowbank. If you have piercings that shouldn't come out because they will close, replace them with heat-resistant organic materials such as bone or horn, perhaps even special ones made for the occasion that can be charged with intent. Stone and glass will heat up like metal, and unfortunately amber isn't a good idea either, as it is sensitive to high temperatures and can crack, melt, or break down, and fossilized mammoth ivory can sometimes do that as well. Organic piercings of bone or horn can be wonderful ritual things, partaking of the energy of the Dead and/or horned animal, but they should be put into well-healed piercings, not stuck into fresh ones, so if you've got a fresh hole, heal it up first before going into a sauna or else use plastic, lucite, or some other non-heating but sadly synthetic material. Glasses, too, may need to come off if they've got metal frames.

Water Purification

Moving from the technique of Muspellheim to the technique of Niflheim, we go from fire to water. Water is thought of as a gentler purifier than fire; this depends on how it is used. The simplest and most ancient water purification is bathing, generally a soak in a salt water bath, using about a cup of sea salt to the average tub of bathwater. Bathing regularly in the ocean is even better, but may not be possible for reasons of location or climate. Water purification is also associated with Aegir and his family, especially if you're using sea salt or the ocean itself. Herbs can also be used in the bath to produce certain magical effects; any nonpoisonous herb can be crumbled into the water, or made into a tea that is then poured in. Rather than making a giant list here of all the sorts of herbs one might use for specific things, it would be better to choose the herbs on the basis of their magical meanings or deity affiliations. For instance, one might suggest yarrow, rue, and elder for a purificatory bath prior to working with the Dead.

The areas of Niflheim that are water rather than ice include many lakes, but also the great Well of All Rivers, Hvergelmir the Boiling Cauldron. The purification technique associated with Hvergelmir is the enema, which goes back thousands of years all over the ancient world. Flushing out the bowels can be done as part of a ritual preparation of cleanliness; depending on how your body reacts to it, an enema can also verge over into the Ordeal Path, or even the Path of the Flesh. It is an intense physical experience, and the feeling of cleanliness afterwards is unmistakable.

It is also very humbling, and forces one to deal with the eliminative parts of the anatomy, which most people would rather pretend they didn't have. It forces one to be aware of the root-chakra powers of feces and rot and burial; it is important to remember that Niflheim and Hvergelmir are some of the haunts of Nidhogg, the Dragon who devours the corpses, the power of the Bottom of the Tree where compost is created that new life may grow. To deal ritually with one's colon and anus is to see the sacredness in the part of the cycle of life that includes death, rotting down, and letting go. It is about facing the depths rather than the heights, and learning that there is no shame or disgust in being a whole person who eats, shits, and partakes of the entirety of the natural world.

For a ritual enema, we strongly suggest either pure water only or water with the addition of some strained herbal tea made from very mild herbs, heated to just above body temperature. Don't add soap, alcohol, drugs, or any of the other things that people have put in for purposes of "cleanness" or intoxication. Yes, the lining of the rectum is more permeable than that of the stomach, and substances put in there are quicker to get through the mucous membranes and into the bloodstream...but that also means that it's much harder to calibrate the right dose. Also, those mucous membranes are much more prone to irritation, and chemically-induced colitis is no fun.

There are plenty of medical and nursing books on how to properly administer enemas, so there's little point in taking up space detailing it here. Counterindications for this method include being in the third trimester of pregnancy, having active and severe hemorrhoids, intestinal obstructions, and an actively bleeding colon. One of the problems with too-frequent enemas (and what's too frequent will depend on the individual in question) is depleting the friendly flora in the bowels, You might also want to follow up an enema by eating some form of acidophilus for the next few days, either in active-culture yogurt or in capsule form if you can't do dairy. Another piece of advice to remember is that this is not something to be approached with a macho attitude; several small doses are just as good as something large and painful. The point is purification, not warrior-ego, which has no place on the humbling Ascetic's Path.

Fasting

When people think of fasting, the first thing that they usually think of is simply ceasing to eat all food, existing only on water. Certainly that is something that many spirit-workers use, and we'll get to that in a moment, but first I want to make the point that fasting can simply mean refraining from doing any one of one's usual activities. It doesn't even have to be food; one could fast from any substance that comes in contact with one's body, or any particular activity. One example of this could be fasting from contact with polluted air, or overly-chemical cleaning agents.

In terms of food fasts, the place of beginning is fasting from specific foods for spiritual reasons. Many people already avoid certain foods for reasons of health, or allergies, or dissatisfaction with the way those foods are harvested. To fast from a specific food(s) for spiritual reasons is a mindfulness activity. One example is our Ancestor Fast. For this, we simply spend three days each season (usually the three days leading up to a solstice, equinox, or cross-quarter day, because they're convenient markers) abstaining from foods that our ancestors would not have had at that time of year. This sounds simple, but try abstaining from anything made from grain, beans or seeds for three days leading up to Lammas! It simply reminds you, by way of limitation, of your place in the Universe. (The full description of the Ancestor Fast is in Feast And Fast In A Pagan Worldview on the Asphodel website.)

Fasting for purification moves from simple mindfulness to actually having an effect on the body and mind. If you can't do a nothing-but-water fast due to health issues, you can still cut down to very simple foods for a few days. I'm hypoglycemic, and can't go without a certain amount of protein for more than about 12 hours, so my version of fasting is raw fruit and vegetables, and raw dairy for protein (I keep my own milk goats, so that's probably easier for me than for others). If I am fasting for more than a few days, I will add in soaked grains, but the idea is to put in just enough protein to maintain blood sugar and the rest lightweight foods. It goes without saying that any food eaten on a fast should be organic. In fact, one of the things that spirit-workers should fast from frequently (and possibly permanently, if you can manage it, which not everyone can) is chemical-laden foods. It really helps with signal clarity and sharpness; your extra "senses" will have less interference.

If you're trying a fast for the first time, you don't necessarily have to go all the way down to water-only. For inexperienced fasters with no blood-sugar disorders, it's probably best to go down to a juice fast, just drinking raw fruit and vegetable juices. For most people who are used to the average Western diet, that alone will be quite a shock to the system. Regardless of whether you're drinking water or juices for your fast, don't cut down on liquids. In fact, you should be drinking more liquid than usual, especially extra water. This will keep your kidneys going, which is imperative during any detoxification process. Keep the internal rivers flowing for your own safety.

Doing a nothing-but-water fast is what most people think of when they imagine fasting. The health benefits of water fasts have been documented in many places; it is a strong detoxification method that burns up waste elements in the body. Its mental effects are both short-term and long-term. The initial short-term effects are a side effect of low protein, including light-headedness and mental fuzziness that is the body's alarm system for lack of fuel. While this phase can be mistaken by some people for enlightenment, it's more a matter of low blood sugar. In a reasonably normal body, this will pass after a while, although a general feeling of lightheadedness may continue, including times of euphoria as the body attempts to release endorphins to deal with the discomfort associated with not eating.

Ideally, this phase of consciousness moves into another phase, where the body goes into "hunting mode". Senses become sharper, and the brain wants to focus strongly on specific things. (If your mind continues to be fuzzy, and you never move into this phase, that's a serious sign that fasting isn't for you.) While the atavistic purpose of this phase is to hunt food, it can be used for focusing on other things, including psychic work and spirit-work, religious devotion, meditating, writing, studying, crafting, or other focused activities. The emotions, on the other hand, may not be nearly as focused. Fasting can bring up all sorts of issues, and it's fairly classic for the presence of other people to seem irritating, and to be irritable towards them. There's a reason why ascetics of old went off into the wilderness in order to fast. It's an art best done in solitude, where there are no other people to break your focus or for you to snap at. It combines well with isolation, silence, low-stimulation environments, and repetitive discipline, the other ascetic-path tools.

Fasting, as a tool of consciousness, is associated with Vanaheim and the Vanir. This seems at odds with their rulership of food-growing and abundance, but few in the Nine Worlds know better about nourishment and the effect of food on the body than the Vanir, and that includes the effect of lack of food. If you have spiritual questions about fasting that cannot be answered by other humans, speak to the Vanir about them, especially Nerthus.

There are a few cautions when dealing with fasting. First, your body needs to be built up enough to be able to maintain a fast. Most modern people have a terrible diet, with enough serious holes in their nutrition that they may be subtly malnourished in certain ways. The best prelude to a fast is eating simple, healthy, nourishing, organic foods for a month beforehand to build up your nutrition. I'm not one to say that this or that food group is bad; every body and metabolism is different and there is no one diet that is best for everyone, but I'm personally in favor of food that is entirely made of food, meaning that it has not been processed into inertness. The ideal is to reduce the number of steps between harvesting the vegetable or animal product, and putting it into your mouth. Simple food, made from recognizable ingredients, is best in my opinion. Build up the nutrients in the body before depleting it.

Also, continual off-and-on fasting, just like dieting by the same method, can convince your still-living-in-the-Paleolithic body that there is a famine on, and decrease your metabolism drastically. The likelihood of this will vary depending on your natural genetic metabolism, your gender and hormone levels, your level of muscle mass, whether or not you have ever been pregnant, and how much serious exercise you are getting between fasts. If you notice your metabolism slowing, discontinue fasting and do a period of healthy eating and exercise instead. Some people just have slow metabolisms that are easily triggered into famine mode, and fasting should be used only occasionally and with care by these folks. Full fasting can also be contraindicated for people with blood-sugar disorders such as diabetes or hypoglycemia, or who have liver or kidney problems. It's also contraindicated for those with a propensity to gastric ulcers, or any condition where leaving the stomach empty can lead to internal corrosion. These folks should probably just try an extremely correct, extremely organic, partly or entirely raw version of the best diet for their health problems in lieu of fasting. If that's what they're doing anyway as a matter of course, well, there are plenty of other methods of consciousness-change listed in this book and others.

Another caution is for the medically managed, individuals who are taking daily medication of some sort for health problems. On a fast, medication (especially oral meds) may act differently, becoming stronger or weaker. It may cause gastric distress; your stomach may be able to handle getting nothing better than it can handle getting nothing but pharmaceutical chemicals. If your digestion shuts down temporarily, as it will for an extended fast that is more than two days, the medication may pass through you unabsorbed. This includes such things as oral contraceptives, antibiotics, etc. If you are on regular medication that you can't stop for a few days without serious side effects, see your doctor about getting it in injections rather than oral methods for the duration of your fast. Even if you can afford to be off of it for a few days during fasting, remember that the toxin-clearing effects of fasting can eliminate its residual effects entirely from your system, which means that after an extended fast you may need to start over as if you'd been off of it for a much longer time. This is something to keep in mind for people who take psychiatric medications, which must build up in the body in order to be fully effective. If the medication is habit-forming, you may end up dealing with those effects during your fast, which can be distracting.

I fast at least one month a year. Fasting is good for a lot of things. First, it's just good for your body, because your body's got two settings, like a self-cleaning oven - the "I'm cooking food" setting, and the self-cleaning setting. The self-cleaning part comes on after about two days of not being able to digest food. Your body then will scour everything that isn't needful, and use it as fuel. This makes you feel really cranky, because it's running your car on the dregs of the diesel to get the tank cleaned; it's running on dirty fuel, so it hunts up fat cells to use them. Some people have done very long periods of fasting; for example, people with cancer who have fasted on water for 90 days or more have found that their body has actually consumed their cancer, because the body recognizes that the cancer cells aren't actually something that it needs to survive and it eats them. There have been a number of studies that have been done on this....but when all else fails, why not try fasting for 90 or 120 days? There have been some quite miraculous cures from that.

But I don't do it like that. I'll fast on juice or something for two to three weeks. I like the MasterCleanse system, which is drinking fresh lemon juice with maple syrup and cayenne pepper to just give your body enough energy to keep doing everything. Then the last week is pure water. It's good for your body. Mentally and emotionally, food is such a comfort thing that it distracts us, so fasting gives you more time, because you're not spending any time cooking or preparing food or eating it or cleaning up after it. You have much fuller days, and the days seem to last a long, long time. So you come face to face with your karmic accounting; you can quite dispassionately look at your issues. When you're fasting your body seems to give signals that say, "We might be dying. This might be a starvation thing going on that won't stop until we're dead, so now would be a good time to get the accounts in order." So it tends to bring up those issues.

Mentally, the first couple of days are "Fucking hell, why am I doing this? I want to eat!" I have that for two days, and then from the third day on there's a great amount of clarity and it's very easy to meditate and travel and see things in a new light. You feel good about yourself, because you're purifying. I tend to incorporate the sauna and Epsom salt baths and salt-water flushes as well. You're detoxing, and it's just a good thing in general. I do it because I know that I'm a lazy coward, and if I can prove to myself by doing such disciplined things that I'm not one, then this helps me to do my job better. I definitely have to energy-feed a lot more when I'm fasting, and I'm a lot more interested in it. Everything gets very sharp, because when you're hungry you hunt better. When you're sated you don't hunt as well.

-Lydia Helasdottir

Fasting in the Northern Tradition
By Galina Krasskova

Years ago, when I was first easing into journey work, I was very drawn to the discipline of fasting. In fact, for a couple of years, fasting was one of the primary training practices that Odin (perhaps having realized my affinity for the practice) laid out for me. Part of this natural affinity may have stemmed from my earlier profession as a ballet dancer (a career I left when I was 22), where such discipline with food was essential. More likely, it was Odin's way of tempering me, and starting my feet down the road of the ordeal, something I only recently realized He began very early on in our relationship. It is my belief that because fasting opens a person up psychically, it enables the Gods to quicken the pace of Their teaching. It may have been for this reason alone that I was drawn (or pushed) toward it.

I seriously have a love/hate relationship with fasting. It is an incredibly useful technique. I've used it for cleansing both physically and spiritually, for shaking loose my hold on the physical body, as a form of extended utiseta, and for the sheer discipline alone. At the same time, emotionally, psychologically and of course physically, it can be grueling. In a culture of material abundance and spiritual dearth, food -- the most fundamental of nourishers -- carries an enormous amount of psychological and emotional weight. The extended absence of food has the ability to unleash an emotional torrent. The very process of being emptied brings with it an immense vulnerability. Emotional (and energy) wards, blocks and shields just crumble and the body's energy pathways are opened by virtue of the act of consciously stripping away. One's ability to physically defend oneself grows less and less the longer the body is denied physical nourishment. On every level, extended fasting is not only an exercise in spiritual discipline, but an exercise in utter and complete vulnerability as well. If one is doing an extended fast, after the fourth or fifth day all the senses become exquisitely heightened, particularly smell and touch. Something as simple as curling up in a blanket or pulling on a sweater becomes almost erotic. The constraints of Midgard slowly begin to lose their hold on the flesh and herein lies one of the dangers of this practice. The process of driving one's body to the breaking point can be remarkably addictive. It's important to remember that this is not the purpose of a fast. A very wise man recently told me that if you battle the flesh, sooner or later, the flesh will win. This is a painful truism that eventually is brought home to all of us warrior types, so I'll state it clearly: The purpose of fasting is not to break the body, but to break down the emotional and psychological fetters that we all too often place on ourselves.

Fasting is a process of opening on every level. It is to enter willingly into a state of utter vulnerability and to consciously commit to opening one's energy channels. Fasting is a particularly effective means of purification, as it works from the inside out. The major battle is with one's will and desires. It tempers the mind, because one must learn to ignore the mental harangue of the body for food. It tempers the body, because it provides a means of exploring hunger not only in the abstract but in an intensely physical, personal, minute way. It tempers the spirit because it causes opening of the energy channels and carries the fasting person into a state where one's internal energy is uniquely and exquisitely at the forefront of one's consciousness. It makes one intimately aware of the flow of one's energy and any existent blockages. It also highlights the myriad ways in which we utilize food over and above simple sustenance. And, sometimes, it can be a means whereby one's God demonstrates dominance, control and ownership.

Now, I suppose I should be clear about what I mean when I speak of fasting. The times that I have fasted in the past, it has been a complete fast: nothing but water or salt water has passed my lips for the duration of the fast. Not everyone should do that from the beginning. We each rely on food in different ways and in the beginning, fasting can be a very painful discipline. I always found it difficult to go out or interact with people (let alone work) during serious extended fasts. The entire process simply left me far too open and undefended. That's why I believe it is best to work up to long periods of fasting gradually. Initially, I began by fasting one day a month, a complete fast, allowing myself only water. Then I'd fast one day a week, then three consecutive days once a month and then finally I managed to do nine day fasts. It took me a good six months to work up to my first extended nine-day fast. I believe it's important to pace oneself and to accustom oneself and one's body to what is, after all, a very ascetic practice.

I found it very helpful to work up to the fast itself: three or four days prior to the fast, start limiting food intake. Cut down on sugars, processed foods and meat. Drink more water. Eat lightly: bread, soup, fruits, vegetables. Gradually decrease until the day you begin the total fast. Most importantly, when you break the fast, DO NOT break it by eating a full meal! (Trust me on this, you'll regret it). Rather, gradually work up to solid food again over a period of three or four days, starting with soup and bread. This way, the process of fasting is not a complete shock to the body's systems.

If one cannot fast completely due to medical reasons, modified fasting can also be beneficial. Restrict meals to one small meal a day. Cut out processed foods, sugars, meats—meat is particularly grounding, hence why it is often counter-inductive to the whole purpose of the fast. Or allow yourself milk during the fast. People with blood-sugar issues should consult their physicians before attempting a fast of any sort—or at least use common sense!

As spirit-workers, our bodies are our tools, the conduit through which we do the work that is required of us. It's important to keep one's tool in the best condition possible. We experience enough wear and tear in this line of work that if a bit of fasting can help rebalance and maintain one's energy channels, it is worth any temporary discomfort. As an aside, it certainly teaches one respect for food.

On a more personal note, I find it interesting now, that as Woden releases some of the hold he has on my sexuality (while not exactly demanding that I be celibate, He has demanded the choice of my lovers—which has amounted to celibacy for me), at the same time, He's beginning to demand greater physical discipline in other ways…ways that involve the self same tempering of the will. While I have not fasted in quite a while due to hypoglycemia, I suspect that it won't be too much longer before I'm required to do it again, even if only in modified form. In fact, He's already told me as much. It's something of a trade off: if I own my sexuality, He owns my will. And He seems to favor such physically trying disciplines; perhaps on the theory that if we can govern our desires, our hungers, the chaotic crying out of our undisciplined wills, we will prove to be better tools and open ourselves up to the acquisition of greater wisdom.

There aren't many references to fasting in the lore. Perhaps the only existent example is Odin's sacrifice on Yggdrasil, where He hung for nine nights and nine days in agony sans food or drink before seizing up the runes. But then Woden is all about testing one's strength, discipline, endurance, desires…on every level He is about sacrifice, ordeal and the challenge so perhaps it is not so strange that he would find a tool that so challenges body, mind and spirit to His liking.

The northern-tradition deities who are called upon for dealings with herbs are Iduna (for domestically-grown "crop" garden herbs), Gerda (for both herbs grown in the walled garden and those grown outside of it), Eir (for healing herbs), and Mengloth (ditto). For those looking into herbal detoxification, it would be wise to have some kind of relationship with, or a least do some serious propitiation of, at least two out of four of those ladies. One of the gardener goddesses and one of the healer goddesses is advised. Those who work more with the Aesir will likely prefer Iduna and Eir; those who are Rokkatru can work with Gerda and Mengloth. The Vanatru types can take their pick, although they may prefer Gerda as she is after all married to Frey.

Herbal detoxification is less short-term and drastic than fasting or heat purification; it requires taking the herbs for a long time and is less about immediate gratification. That means that it works better as part of a long-term spiritual discipline than a quick "I need to purify myself in less than three days for this upcoming ritual". While herbs can be taken during fasting, drink them in tea or in a tincture made of nutritive apple cider vinegar. Don't take gelatin capsules; they don't break down well in an empty stomach.

The first sort of detoxifying herbs are the sweating-promoters; in essence, they mimic the effects of the sauna on a very low level. They include cayenne, ginger, and peppermint. The second sort includes bloodstream detoxifiers, which vary depending on whether you're aiming at the liver, the kidneys, or the respiratory system. If you go researching modern herbal detox methods - on the Internet, for example - you'll find about a million combinations, most of them from sites claiming miracle cures and selling products. Instead of doing that, I'm going to list here some herbs that were actually grown by the ancient northern Europeans and that can be used for a gentle detoxification. Make them up into a tea or a vinegar tincture (there's no point in attempting to nourish the liver with an alcohol solution that irritates it) and drink it once or twice a day.

Northern-Tradition Detoxification Herbs

Milk Thistle - sacred to Sigyn, good liver support during times of physical extremity
Burdock - sacred to Farbauti, blood cleanser par excellence
Yellow Dock - stimulates bile, cleanses liver and bowels, detoxifies skin
Dandelion - sacred to Sunna, increases bile flow and detoxifies the liver
Mugwort - the first of the Nine Sacred Herbs, stimulates bile flow and detoxifies the liver
Nettles - another of the Sacred Nine, clears uric acid and other waste from the body
Cleavers - sacred to Gerda, cleanses the lymphatic system
Parsley - one of Odin's herbs, reduces free radicals and tones the kidneys
Marshmallow - sacred to Eir the Healer of Asgard, soothes mucous membranes
Slippery Elm - reminds us of Embla the first woman, also soothing to membranes
Mullein - Loki's plant, clears out the respiratory system, stimulates fluid production
Agrimony - Angrboda's herb, clears the urinary, respiratory tracts and helps diarrhea
Garlic - Thor's plant, blood cleanser and detoxifier
Juniper Berries - the classic recaning herb of the Siberians, beloved of the Dwarves of the Four Directions, clears acids from the system and cleanses the urinary tract

As with all things herbal that are being used for ritual or spiritual purposes, one should ideally have some kind of relationship with the actual plant spirits (see the chapter on the Path of Sacred Plants for more information on that) and have asked for their blessing when harvesting the herbs (if you did that yourself) and preparing the tea or tincture. Having the plant spirits as allies means that they can direct the energies of the plant matter in a more focused way than you can, and increase its ability to act. If you aren't a plant-shaman type, have another spirit-worker who does that sort of thing make up your tea or tincture, propitiate the spirits on your behalf, and bless it for you. Information on the medicinal uses of the old northern-tradition herbs will be in our next forthcoming book, The Northern-Tradition Herbal.

Another easy and quite ancient purification is to soak in a salt water bath, using about a cup of sea salt to the average tub of bathwater. Bathing regularly in the ocean is even better, but may not be possible for reasons of location or climate.

Paring down is about reducing distractions. That's why isolation and sensory deprivation are important techniques of this path. Our lives are inundated with thousands of bits of data and stimulation, all begging for our attention. Some of us may live in a constant state of multitasking in order to simply cope with it all. No matter how hard we try to work on getting into another state of mind, those outside things clamor for our meager focus and distract us. If getting into that other state is of absolute importance to your work, you may need to forcibly remove those distractions.

Isolation

Isolation is the first technique. Just being alone with no one to interact with for a period of days can be amazingly challenging for some people. To really do it right, one should remove all the modern faux interactions of television, radio, the phone...and yes, the Internet. To go one step further in terms of isolation from the minds of others, one could cut out all reading of written material and/or playing of music with lyrics. Yet another step might be a vow of silence for the duration, effectively removing one's own voice from the mix. Especially for those of us who are serious talkers, the impact of going for days without seeing or hearing words, or hearing a human voice - including our own - can create intense changes in consciousness.

Set and setting become crucial when it comes to using isolation as a technique. The idea is to cut down on stimulation, and that includes clutter, loud noise, lots of random objects, and other people. This means that such activities as cleaning, throwing out clutter, and giving away unused physical possessions can be a good soul-practice leading up to or during a period of isolation. It not only creates a lower-stimulation environment, it can also be turned into a ritual paring-down of parts of your life that are no longer needed.

Of course, using this technique may find you forced to be alone with your own thoughts, fears, anxieties, neuroses, and other things that you've been avoiding. It may be that you find it necessary to spend some time - days, even - plowing through that muck in order to get beyond it. It may also be that you need to utilize other techniques to push even that aside, especially if you have a job to do, but you can be guaranteed that when you get back, they will no longer be willing to sit quietly in the basement. The price for facing them while in a non-ordinary state and temporarily going beyond them is that they will be the first things to greet you at the gate when you get back. When you go into an isolated space for this sort of thing, remember that consequence before you leave and decide how you will handle it.

Most human beings have an absolute horror of isolation, being social animals. Much has been written about how forced isolation drives people mad, which it certainly can. On the other hand, I was struck by the words of a Western man who was in prison for years in a Third World country, and who told Western newcomers to that prison that it could be a torment, or it could be a monastic experience...it was all in how one approached it.

Sensory Deprivation

We depend on our senses day-to-day in a way that we generally only notice when they're muffled or cut off in some way. When this happens, our first reaction is usually annoyance - we're not getting the full spectrum of information that we're expecting - and then, if it doesn't resolve itself, we may progress to mild panic. To be cut off from information about our surroundings can make our survival-brain feel helpless, and we have to move past those feelings in order to cope with any kind of sensory deprivation. After a while, though, our bodies adjust. As anyone knows who's done the experiment of blindfolding one's self for a whole day or more, our other senses extend themselves to compensate. That's why sensory deprivation is used for psychic work; if you close off enough of the senses, the nonphysical ones may start to pick up the slack, and it's a way of forcing them to do that. While for some people this may simply recall the Star Wars scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi puts a blinding helmet over Luke Skywalker's head and tells him to "use the Force, Luke" to hit the ball with his light-saber, there is solid magical practice behind that concept.

Severe sensory deprivation techniques have included the so-called "witches' cradle" or "cat's cradle". This term refers modernly to a variety of techniques which either suspend a person in a frame or specially-built harness and subject them to pendulum-type movement, or fasten them securely to inversion devices that immobilize them in an inverted position. The former technique is the more popular of the two. Researcher Jean Houston is credited with inventing the "witches' cradle" in its modern form. The modern technique is named for a medieval torture method of binding suspected witches in a sack, suspending them from a gantry, and spinning the sack around until disorientation produced hallucinations and confessions. As far as we know, there are no references to this particular technique prior to the late medieval era, and then only as a torture technique. Using it as an altered-state method was developed in the explorative 1960s and 1970s, where the "witches' cradle" term was fancifully applied to it, and eventually that got the attention of modern witches.

The classic witches' cradle consists of mummifying the body tightly in cloth wrappings (or these days a full-body suit harness), stopping the ears and eyes, and suspending the person from a gantry to swing. After a time, unable to see or hear or touch anything, and unable to move or even find where one is in space, with the inner ear constantly disoriented from light swinging, the individual "goes within" and then goes out of themselves.

The low-tech traditional equivalent to this was the practice of "going under the cloak", for both Celts and Norse/Germanic peoples. As illustrated in the first section of this chapter, this was simply about wrapping one's self in a cloak and staying there, in the closeness and dark, until visions came. The most famous recorded incident of this practice was in the year 1000 in Iceland when Thorgeirr the Lawspeaker, a pagan elder, went under the cloak for a day and a night to ask as to whether the religiously divided Iceland should accept Christianity as its sole faith. When he emerged, he sadly told the waiting masses that the Christian conversion was the only way to avoid widespread war and slaughter over the entire Icelandic colony. (One also wonders if he sensed the drawing apart of the worlds, and the fading of the doors to the Tree, which had begun by then.)

Going under the cloak is a combination of the Path of Meditation and the Ascetic's Path, in that it can be used as an adjunct to utiseta. The most common places to go under the cloak were barrows, or burial mounds, where one could commune with the Dead, but it was also used to commune with the Gods and seek out knowledge of the future, as Thorgeirr's example shows.

Going Under The Cloak
by Lydia Helasdottir

Going under the cloak can be done for a short while or a long while, and it means basically that you literally get a blanket or a cloak and lie underneath it, and then depending on how extreme you want to make the thing, you put rocks on your chest, as the Druids used to do, to depress your breathing, and that alters your state. You can have your helpers cover you up with earth, all but just a small area on your face so you can still breathe, but you're going to be carbon-dioxide-stressed, because it isn't the same amount of oxygen, and it is stressful.

You want to have ground crew for this, so you can stay alive. They need to be able to very unobtrusively check on your physical well-being, to keep their energy to themselves, and be comfortable in the space. Warding is good if they can do it, but it's not always necessary. If you're going to go and do something like this you probably want to put up wards first anyway, however you see those things. The ground crew keeps checking that the blanket is still becoming moist from your breath. If you stay there for many hours, then you have to get used to the idea that you'll probably have to urinate, so you might want to dig a shallow grave or trench and lay there on a sheet and have it all covered over except for the breathing part of your face. You can be there for twenty hours if necessary. The Earth is quite a good insulator, and it's a weird experience.

Traditionally it's three whole days, but that's pretty severe and rarely done. You can do a whole long fast before that so you don't have any issue with solids, but you will urinate. You need water; if it's less than18 hours you can do without as long as you don't have any heart, kidney or bladder problems; you won't do irrevocable damage, but for more than that you need water. We modern people have soft bodies and we aren't used to hardship. So you would set up a little tube or a camelback that you could sip from without actually getting outside interference. But three days is excessive, for the most part. Overnight is more than enough for most people. We find that usually six hours is more than enough for most people, and you can certainly do without water for six hours.

The experience of having the earth on you is weird as well. The weight of it feels strange, and you also have the earth over the third eye part of your forehead. You get cramps and twitches, huge claustrophobia, panic attacks and weird sensations, even if you're not usually prone to it. You can't move, and you definitely get sore, and that's kind of part of the deal, detaching from that. Of course, spending three days under the earth is neither safe nor basic. But using a mummy bag for a few hours...even just spending the night sitting vigil in the woods is enough to creep most people out. And that's not a bad thing...getting a good fear on will put you into an altered state.

In contrast, float tanks are great, but that's very high comfort. When I do a float tank, I kind of feel like I'm cheating, because it's not hard at all. It's really nice. It's dark and weird and creepy and you can't distinguish the boundary of your body from the water. You can also make a modern witches' cradle or cat's cradle out of a good army surplus hammock and just tie it up, but I've found it rather time-inefficient.

We do a thing where we just stopper up the ears and the eyes and put a hood on and get in a mummy bag and be wrapped up with duct tape. If you have someone who is adequately knowledgeable about bondage, you can do it as being tied up. Make sure that there's plenty of room for circulation. Or use a big sack, a mailbag or spandex body bag, and a darkened room, and just lay there. The first hour, you'll feel silly. The second hour you'll feel silly and uncomfortable. The third hour you'll feel silly and uncomfortable and claustrophobic, but after that it starts getting interesting. It's a very labor-intensive way of doing things. But the key things are regulating and/or limiting the breath, sensory deprivation, and doing awareness exercises, and the length of time that it goes on.

Silence
by Jessica Maestas

At the end of October 2004, the Goddess Hela instructed me to set aside a week for some in-depth work with Her. I knew that this would be a departure from previous work I'd done with Her, and put off facing the inevitable preparations. When I couldn't avoid it any longer, I spoke with Her and She told me what was to be done. I would be observing a "sound fast" for a week, abstaining from any audio/visual media, computer time, phone conversations, and speaking to others, including any spirits, deities, and the cat. While on this fast, Hela told me to wear a special ring, keep a dark veil over my head, and to display the rune necklace I wear in honor of Her outside my clothing; I was uncomfortable wearing my necklace where others could see, but it struck me as appropriate since I was on Her duty roster for the week. She also gave me some rules regarding diet; I was to stick to the vegetarian diet I maintained, and keep my food choices simple. No Halloween treats for me.

Hela's primary instruction to me was "Rest." I'd been running at a spiritual full throttle and it was wearing me down so much that I wasn't sure how much I had left to give. I'd spent months confronting some of the worst and ugliest parts of myself, the stress of which put a huge strain on my relationship with other people and with my Gods. Hela was giving me a whole week to rest, to heal, and to prepare for whatever came next. Along with resting, a few other activities were given to me. Earlier, Hela had told me I'd be spinning so I purchased some dyed black wool for that purpose. Study, meditation and other simple devotional activities needed attention as well.

Since I didn't have the option of cloistering myself against the world, I did have to break my silence for short periods each day. At the time I was visiting my father to help him through a difficult space, so I had to run errands and spend time with him. I had also agreed to face paint at a local Witch's Ball that I couldn't back out of. Hela accepted these obligations and allowed me to have the time I needed to devote to them, so long as I didn't add to this schedule or allow other taboos to slip.

The night of October 26th began my week of silence. Of the 16 or so hours I was awake each day, around 14 of those were spent veiled and silent. The shift to a different state of awareness happened very quickly; I have a difficult time remembering any specifics about that time, except for the moments I spent with other people in routine activities and even those are a bit sketchy. The first thing that I noticed was that the veil (a translucent charcoal-blue item that had started life as a belly dance accessory) very cleanly shut off my natural energetic shields. The veil took the place of those shields, thus allowing my whole attention to turn inward, away from the constant bombardment that we face every day without even being aware. Not having those shields up was an odd and sometimes unnerving experience, but the veil created a small world for just myself where I felt safe and protected. It's hard to describe the combined feelings of vulnerability and safety I experienced; on one side was the knowledge that it was just a bit of cloth keeping me safe from free-floating energetic garbage, but it seemed like that danger belonged to a world very far away and no longer applied to me. When I needed to remove the veil for whatever reason, I carefully "brushed” away the astral junk that had collected on it so it could be folded and put away; my personal shields slowly started up again when the veil came off.

I spent hours spinning the black wool with no real purpose in mind. The activity, not the goal, was the important part. It was Frigga who taught me to spin, first in the Otherworld and then later when I made a drop spindle for myself. I came to appreciate and understand Her patience just a little through spinning, and it's an activity that continues to yield insight to myself, to my Gods, and to magical and spiritual principles. During this week I spun enough wool to yield a few dozen yards of two-ply yarn; eventually the insight came that I would create a veil for myself out of this yarn.

The silence factor was probably the hardest to confront. I'm not a wildly verbal person, but I longed to communicate with friends and to spend the mindless hours on the internet I was accustomed to. I thought to catch up on some reading, but by the second day of silence I found that the words on the page didn't really speak to me like they normally do, and I lost interest pretty quickly. I had intended to complete some writing projects I'd been working on a little at a time; several of them had a spiritual or devotional theme, so I thought that would be an acceptable way to use my time. However, I found that when I sat down to begin I had no words at all; my vocabulary had vanished, grammar skills were barely present, and the ability to construct a coherent sentence gone. I had moved so far out of normal awareness that I couldn't switch back and forth between silence and communication at will. Though I later found out that some of what I was working on wasn't what my Gods wanted me to be writing, I think it had perhaps less to do with any interference They might have thrown at me and more that my world had stopped being ordered by words and the linear thinking that encourages composition.

Like I said above, I don't remember a whole lot from this experience. I remember the face painting event I worked at, and the Disirblot I was invited to. I remember my frustrated attempts at reading and writing, and the errands I did for my dad. Other than that, there's little definition to that whole week. Most of our memories are built by association and by an ordered chain of events; a smell or sudden sensation calls back a single moment with perfect clarity, or causes us to say, "Remember when?” There's nothing like that to help me access this experience; it was apart from time. Days passed very slowly and, for the most part, my experiences existed as a nebulous everywhen. There was no transition from one point to another, no cause and effect, just a quiet peace that was neither happy nor sad. I stopped being defined as a woman, as a human being, or as anything specific at all.

My week ended one day early, or rather, the veiled-and-silent taboos ended. On the night of November 1st I took a bath to which I added some herbs; the herbs helped bring me back to life and I spent the night speaking with my Gods about the progress I had made. I woke up on November 2nd and was allowed to enter the world again. There's no way I can describe the vibrance I encountered, or how different everything appeared; everything was drenched in life and vitality, and I felt my own living force with an impact I'd never even noticed before. It was no small coincidence that my birthday is November 2nd; I got to celebrate the simple fact that I was alive by returning to life in a very real way.

It's my understanding now that I spent that period essentially dead. I wasn't taking part in the world; instead I found a comfortable spot between the worlds of the living and dead. My mind had stopped ordering the world by means that humans do on the most basic level, but my body kept me tied to this plane; I just slipped to a space removed from discerning thought and dwelled apart from anything that contributed to it.

Being veiled and keeping silent are very simple things, but quickly and subtly changed me at levels so deep that I was barely aware of them. The shift was radical even though I hardly even noticed how far I had gone until I was suddenly back; I felt like I had wandered a very long way and had been gone for a very long time. This observance was challenging, but took me to a very unique place that I've come to find power in. Hela greatly approved of me being veiled, and hinted that She'd keep me that way. Even without Her saying so, I knew that I'll be repeating this process again next October, and probably each October after that. It's a challenge, but I look forward to the peace that comes with it.

---

Silent Fasting
by Galina Krasskova

I think it fairly safe to say that as children many of us heard the maxim: "Silence is golden." Well, in magical practice it actually is. I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately. I live in NYC and at the best of times, silence is not an element this city generally has to offer. There is constant noise, even in the wee hours of the morning, even in one's own home with doors and windows closed to the outside world. The noise is part of the cityscape, born of the very structures that give it vitality and keep it alive. New York, like every city, has its own unique energy and even those energy flows hum with their own particular sounds and rhythms. Even the quietest, most remote place in a city landscape is fraught with ambient noise. It can be maddening.

What's more, American culture is not a quiet one. We are a people obsessed with noise. We have our mechanical gadgets that chirp and burp and hum. We indulge in ambient noise in elevators, restaurants, cafes. Conversations are loud and often continual. Cell phones are everywhere and the idea that consciously sought out silence might have extraordinary benefits is not one that I myself have seen discussed in either popular culture or media. Yet it does, and not just for the dedicated magical practitioner. Noise pollution leads to stress and stress leads to kinetic traps that block internal energy and vitality. Lack of vitality can make it almost impossible not only to effectively work magic, but simply to get through the day feeling well. Stress can lead to migraines, exhaustion, illness and pain, even depression.

So this article is about silence. This may seem like an odd topic for a magician or spirit worker to concern him or herself with, but before one can open to the flow of power, create charms and spells that truly work, before one can learn to hear the voices of their Gods, a point of stillness within must be reached. Esoteric systems the world over, most especially in the East, have held to this for centuries. The majority of meditation systems at some point address this fact. To find one's center, one must find inner stillness. That's pretty hard to do, especially for the first time, when one has no sense of the purity of solitude and silence.

Silence has its own sound, as paradoxical as that may seem. It has pattern, texture, rhythm and to some people, even color. While it is true that in certain forms of magic the voice becomes the conduit for power, that power has to come from someplace else and that other place is one of both silence and stillness. There are dozens of exercises designed to introduce this concept to neophytes. 99% of meditations are designed, at least at first, to help the student turn off the distractions, not only of the outside world, but also of his or her own "chattering monkey of the mind." For some, achieving this goal can be a terribly difficult endeavor.

After over ten years of teaching esoteric arts, I've come to realize that most people avoid complete silence. I don't just mean silence without, but silence within too. Of all the skills that I have attempted to teach students over the years, an appreciation of silence is the one that generally proves the most difficult to instill. Silence is a powerful teacher. The embrace of silence forces a person to confront all those inner thoughts, emotions, sensations, all the inner demons that we are customarily taught to hide, even from ourselves. There's nothing to use for distraction, nothing to use as a façade when confronted solely with silence.

In the beginning, silence can be a very difficult discipline. It's not only the fact that one's inner demons will emerge, but we must then fight the initial compulsion to do something about them, which in turn distracts from the lesson of silence. We're not used to simply sitting and being with our own inner selves. It's like sitting on a beach watching a huge wave approach: the instinct is to run away. The power of silence is like that of a well-honed knife. It cuts away illusion and brings clarity. This can be a frightening thing. Also, the flip side of the discipline of silence is the discipline of speaking rightly, wisely and well. It is very easy in this culture to squander our words.

I believe that if we learn how to better utilize the power of our voice, it might become easier to then utilize the power of silence. We're often so busy that we waste the power of our voice. We aren't mindful of the words we speak. It doesn't give us enough time to hear the wisdom of silence. There is a Hausa proverb: "Even silence speaks." It is only when we ourselves stop our incessant love affair with noise and endless chatter that we are able to hear its lessons. Learning to withstand and even embrace quietude leads to a greater awareness and appreciation of the power of our words: to weave, to harm, to heal, to manifest. This is a very powerful truism in magic. We're all taught, from very early on, that to name something is to bring it into being. That axiom doesn't only hold true in spell-casting, though. It holds true in every conversation we have, every word we speak whether or good or for ill, whether carelessly or in the full flower of mindfulness.

This is perhaps the reason that mystics the world over in many different religious traditions, have sought out extended periods of both silence and solitude to deepen their spirituality and their connection to the Gods. Perhaps they instinctively grasped that silence is an active discipline. One doesn't just sit like a vegetable when engaging in this discipline. It is a process of readying oneself for opening – to the Gods, to the flow of power, to greater knowledge of oneself.

So how to begin? Well, I'll start with a caveat. Two possibilities may occur when one is first learning to work with silence: either internal (or external) distractions come up almost immediately or the person falls asleep. A period of such resistance is perfectly natural and the student shouldn't feel too badly about it. Sometimes the latter response simply indicates that the person is carrying so much tension that when he or she begins to relax, the body's natural exhaustion (because carrying tension is work!) takes over and demands rest.

I think the best place to begin is to start listening to all the sounds that permeate your day. We are bombarded on a daily basis to an amazing degree by random noise. To approach silence and to understand this discipline, it is first necessary to understand what it is not. So begin by learning to listen. On your ride to work, consciously note each and every sound. Note their quality, the timbre, how they interact in the overall fabric of sound that is being produced. Note your physiological response to them and your emotional response if any.

Take a few moments during your day to simply sit and listen to everything that is going on around you. See how many individual sounds you can pick out of the aural jumble. When you listen to music, try to follow one instrument throughout. As simple as his may seem, by doing this regularly, you're developing your awareness of silence and you are attuning your senses to its flow.

Take this a step further, when you have a quiet moment. When you're going about your day and think to steal a few moments of quiet time, really listen to the sounds around you. You might be surprised at how noisy your quietest time really is! For instance, as I write this, I'm sitting in my computer alcove in my kitchen. The tv is off, no music is playing, my neighbors are asleep and to all intents and purposes, the house is quiet. But in reality it's not. If I think about it, I can hear the almost silent hum of my computer, the electronic hum of my refrigerator, my cat gently snoring half a room away, the far away sound of traffic, even the ticking of my kitchen clock. In city life, much of this is inevitable. Once you begin to become aware of your daily tonal palette, try wearing earplugs during those stolen quiet moments. While it may not block out all background noise, the difference can be staggering. People have been using sensory deprivation techniques in meditation to further their spirituality for centuries. It's nothing new. It can, however, be starting the first time its tried in this albeit modified form.

As an aside, if you have the interest, learning to play a musical instrument can increase one's sensitivity to the interplay of sound and silence dramatically as can learning to sing. These things are beneficial to magical practice because not only are entire systems of magic (like Norse galdr) based on sound, but understanding rhythm and flow helps one better sense and understand natural energy flows. Everything is connected in this way. One pattern of flow mirrors another.

Best of all, begin to moderate your speech. Speaking simply to fill up natural silences, to break uncomfortable silences, or to hear oneself speak is a deeply ingrained habit in many people. It is one that it behooves the mystic, spiritworker, magician or priest to break. Words have immense power. Begin to seriously consider the meaning and import behind the words you speak. How often do you lose your temper and speak vitriolic words out of a lack of control? Or how often do you respond to platitudes of affection with similar comments of your own out of a feeling of social obligation? How often do you tell tales or spread gossip without ever thinking about potential consequences. Do you talk just to avoid the silence?

The place where magic beings and gathers lies in silence. It takes a balanced understanding of both the discipline of silence and the discipline of speech to truly tap into it. Not to mention that it's nearly impossible to hear the Gods and deepen that relationship when in the turmoil of constant sound. So an excellent way to approach this new discipline is to work on becoming aware of the words you speak. Try going through an entire day at work speaking only when necessary. Or better yet, try going through an entire day speaking only the truth. Or try the same thing but never speak either the truth or a lie -- there is an interesting verbal game to play. Observe how much verbal noise you create for your co-workers or family members and think about why. Really explore and examine how you yourself utilize the power of your words.

I've saved the best for last, of course. The silent fast is a powerful meditation and at first it can seem deceptively simple but it's more difficult than it looks. For three days, engage in a silent fast: no tv, cds, radio, computer, books, friends, family, phone, cel phone or any other computerized gadget. For three days go off by yourself (or stay in your home but turn off all communication devices) with just a journal. Spend those days meditating, praying, and writing. Nothing else. Above all else, don't speak. I once did this for ten days, and though days three to five had me going stir crazy, in the end I found it immensely beneficial. Be aware that coming back into the world of noise can be quite jarring after the silent fast is finished. If you are able to arrange to do this for a longer period of time, that is even better. 10-14 days is ideal. Be sure to record your responses, thoughts, feelings and any other inspirations that come to you throughout this time.

Not only is this beneficial to the budding magician, but it is especially beneficial to the spiritual devotee. Spending two weeks in prayer, meditation and interaction with the Gods can be an amazingly opening experience. You may even want to try silent rituals, a ritual utilizing only gesture but no sound as part of the experience.

Of all the tools and techniques of magical practice, this is one of the most neglected in the modern community. Yet conversely it is one of the most beneficial and even necessary. The discipline of silence, like that of breath or galdr take nothing but what we carry with us: our awareness, our breath, our voice, our minds and our wills. It is magical practice at its most basic and its most enduring.

"You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind."
---Shri Sathya Sai Baba

Raven Kaldera
cauldronfarm@hotmail.com

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