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before you actually start
the trance; it’s very disruptive to have to interrupt your induction process to
do backstretching exercises before you can go on. Try doing any standard
relaxation exercise and you’ll soon feel where your troublesome areas are. For
some reason, the minute you start to quiet your mind, your body feels obliged to
speak up about its various problems.
    Different cultures throughout the world and throughout history have employed
a variety of aids to trance and magic: various drugs, sleep deprivation, sensory
deprivation or sensory overload, and even physical suffering, to name a few. 1 For the level of tranceworking I am talking about here, I don’t think any of
these are necessary or advisable. Most of the time drugs, fatigue, stimulation,
and pain interfere with the ability to trance. What you want is to take care of
the needs of your body and mind as completely as possible so that nothing will
interfere with your concentration.
    HELPFUL AIDS TO TRANCEWORKING
    Some other traditional aids to tranceworking that are more
helpful are various forms of music and dancing, particularly very rhythmic,
monotonous music. Shamans of many cultures have long used drums and dancing as
aids to getting into and staying in trance, though there is little evidence that
drumming was a traditional trance method among Norse seið-workers. The one hint
that such an instrument was used is found in a passage from the Lokasenna (24),
where Loki taunts Odin with “beating on a vet like a völva.” It’s not
clear what a vet was, but it seems to have been some sort of musical instrument
that could be struck or tapped. It could also have been some other sort of
surface, like the lid of a container of some sort, for no drums have yet been
excavated from Norse archaeological digs. 2 Ritual chanting, which was
used by the old Norse wisewomen, among others, can also be useful, as can soft,
barely audible music or a spoken phrase repeated over and over, like a mantra.
Incense can also be a powerful trigger; I have always used it in my trance
rituals and now I find that just a whiff of certain incenses can put me into the
beginning stages of trance.
    This is another area where you need to experiment to see what helps you and
what doesn’t. Unlike religious rituals or magic, where you might want to include
only those things that fit the tradition with which you’re working, trance
journeys are so personal and so difficult to accomplish that just about anything
safe and legal that helps you go into trance is fair game. Drumming was not a
traditional trance method among Norse seið-workers, for example, but if you’re
following a Norse path and you find that drumming helps you achieve a trance
state, you might as well try it.
    You will want to do the actual trance in a room with a comfortable
temperature, perhaps a tad warmer than you’d usually keep it, because
tranceworking tends to make the body cold. Your setting should be dimly lit,
fairly quiet, and safe from interruption or intrusion. Because you are going to
withdraw your attention from the outside world, you will not be able to protect
youself as you normally would. Therefore, unless you have a trusted companion to
keep watch for you, you should probably avoid doing a trance outdoors in a
public park or campground, or in any other location where you will not be
private and secure.
    A RITUAL BEFORE THE TRANCEWORKING
    In addition to being physically safe, you also want to make sure
you are psychically safe. Once you are ready to begin the trance, you should
first set up a ritual space. This can be a very simple or a very elaborate
procedure, but you should do some kind of beginning ritual to give yourself a
safe place in which to open yourself psychically; otherwise, you run the risk of
letting in undesirable forces while your soul is journeying and your physical
body is left unattended and