Shapeshifting

[sd_draggy]

Hello.  I'm interested in using Salvia in shape-changing rituals, as such I'd like to become a dragon in the other plane.

Would salvia be useful for this purpose?  Or am I looking for some other Shamanic plant?

[TooStonedToType]

I'm not familar with shape shifting rituals.  However, salvia can cause ego loss to such an extent one can shift into even inanimate objects...or at least subjectively feel as thou one has. Using some sort of ritual approach may help focus your thoughts, but salvia is very difficult to control and unpredicable.

[mykayl]

It depends on the method you use. Smoking puts you in the realm of Elemental Air: the realm of mind and intellect {the human spirit}. Using a tincture or chewing leaf puts you in the realm of Elemental Ether: transmission/vibration/sound {the soul, if you define soul as a spirit-body that transports the human spirit out of the body}. Smoking it dislodges your spirit from your soul, which is what causes the psychological dissociation that people speak of, and puts people in external objects {i.e., no soul to carry the spirit out of the body means the spirit must find another material body, even if it's just the side of a building or a couch}.

This is why the Mazatec shamans discourage smoking divinorum; it only results in madness. Smokers see the barrage of confusing images and are terrified because they're trying to find their way back to their soul. You don't want to leave your body without being centered in your soul. Chew it or make a tea or tincture from it, and you'll see your soul/be centered in it before you leave your body. I steep 3 tablespoons of crushed leaf in some red wine for 12 minutes {after bringing the mixture to a boil}, then strain it thoroughly and hold sips in my mouth for 30-60 seconds before swallowing. Doing it this way takes me somewhere that smoking it can't, without the visual hallucinations, disorientation and horror {not any less intoxicated; just an easier transition, and longer trip}. You could use 6 and go further, but you might want to work your way up from 3 {I've done 4, and that was a pretty hefty trip}. I use the premium Mazatec foliage from iamshaman.com, because it's both cheap and potent.

As for the guy talking about dragons, what is your trip with that? Just curious; I used to be into that.

[DrYRHead]

Quiding SD, or doing it via a tincture, does slow down the take off on SD, but it also elongates the trip too. That can be bad or good. To each his/her own I suppose. One usually does it via tincture these days.

However, smoking SD extract is one way to shape-shift into other creatures or things. One has done plenty of that before too. I have many trip reports about such blogged about the net.

http://www.elfstarstudios.com/sm-realm.html

[DrYRHead]

By the way, on one trip, where on took a combination of ethocin and DPT, one did turn into a dragon, as well as a maiden. On ana-huascas I have also turned into other people before.  :shock:

http://www.elfstarstudios.com/ana-realm.html

[dergheist]

Glad to see that I am not the only one Mykayl, I am glad that you also interact with Sally this way.  I was beginning to think that I was the only one here that preferred her this way instead of smoking.  On shape shifting, one can do this even without the assistance of plants, just it is easier and a lot less work.  To me, I love the plants, but do not neccessarily need them to go off into that world nor does anyone for that matter. Eventually you will understand what I mean and no I am not referring to Freebies.

[mykayl]

Right on! A lot of people are into the quick hit to the head, but coming from 20 years of experience with entheogens, I can say that it's definitely not the way to go if one really wants to learn anything of lasting permanence. Trauma kills the present; one only learns from trauma in hindsight, and only what one needs to do to avoid trauma.

I agree on the shapeshifting part. Once a person knows their soul, they can shift into that awareness as a matter of will. I'm in that state in 90% of my waking consciousness {mirrors throw me off, and socializing with some people for work purposes makes me ground in a human body-image, but that's about it}.

Zedrov y bogat ko vam {health and wealth to you}

[Chris W]

You are a soul with a body and not a body with a soul.  The term   "your soul" therefore is incorrect       .   You would be better off learning to Astral Travel to change your soul form. The reason being  your conciousness is in control during Astral travel  and is much harder to control with Salvia.   The true shape of the soul is like a gas cloud and you can change it into whatever you want. You can also change your surroundings. But this all takes practice and time to learn. I have been Astral Traveling since I was 7 and am 34 now  and I have only once changed my complete surroundings by thinking about it. My favorite thing to do when out there is fly through buildings at high speeds.   Once I flew right straight into the ground.

[mykayl]

Chris W: Maybe that's true in your Judeo-Christian influenced understanding of spirituality, but not in traditional shamanism and sorcery.

Before modern Christianity grafted it's own false meaning onto it, soul literally meant "body" or "containment"; either a literal, flesh body or a spirit body, which in most animist cultures is an animal spirit one is born with. In the spiritual definition, the soul is an image which the human spirit utilizes as a tool for individuating from material forms when it leaves the body. People who leave their body and find themselves in a wall or a couch or another person have been separated from their soul; i.e, they go into an external form because it's the only way they can maintain individuated consciousness.

What you refer to is your imagination, based on your preconceived notion of what a soul is. If you don't first know what animal your soul is, then there is no real way to leave your body voluntarily; you have to be on some drug that can force your human spirit {your ego, or conscious will} out of your flesh by overwhelming your brain with sensory overload. That's why people see what they do on SD; a person finds themselves out of their body sans a soul, so they drift around trying to find another embodiment, and are confused by all the images they see as they pop in and out of other people's bodies, experiencing the phantasmagoric, unconscious images residing within their brains. I don't believe you've ever left your body voluntarily. That would require first knowing what animal spirit is your soul, then knowing whether or not that animal is a trickster {i.e, capable of appearing as other animals; traditionally, that would be the bat}.

As for your notion of what is "astral", astral means "of the stars"; i.e, a light image or apparition. The soul is the etheric double: the body of transmission. What other people see when you project is an apparition created by the etheric double after interacting with a living person: a projected image of either your human memories of fleshly existence, the memories of the fleshly existence of the animal spirit that is your soul, or some combination thereof. If no one saw you out of body, then you didn't really astrally project. But don't believe me; study etymology, and the basis for Western Elemental symbolism in Greek philosophy. There you will learn that essence is a quality discerned from experience, not a preexisting "energy". Matter {existence} follows form {potential}, and essence {conscious discernment of forms} follows material interaction; that concept is based on earlier animist concepts of reality, along with the idea that spirits must be fed {i.e. interact with living matter} to maintain a "disembodied" existence. The belief in OBE consciousness is an extension of animist/totemic belief, and I don't see anything in your beliefs that would allow you to objectively experience an authentic OBE of the willful variety.

REAL shamans and sorcerers always have a reputation that precedes them; people see them when they're out of their bodies, interacting with living people in various stages of apparition, and doing things which have an objective effect of healing or destroying. What you've described to me doesn't sound like something a person would see while voluntarily projecting; it sounds like some video-game fantasy notion of what you would expect to see and experience. I don't know ANYONE who actually projects out of body that conceptualizes it in terms of accelerating or deccelerating within a time/space continuum, because travel is instantaneous. One sees oneself in animal spirit form, then one sees an environment unfolding around them. There is no "travel" in the material sense you're describing.

Drugs can't get you there, and neither can simply imagining it to be true. There's a process that 7 year old children certainly don't have privy to, because they haven't reached the levels of mental and emotional maturity that are prerequisite; they haven't fully individuated yet. These are things that can only be learned after one has become an adult; i.e, one has reached the age of procreation {if going by tribal standards}, and has a fully formed ego. Even then, it takes years of preparation before one can learn to voluntarily project out of one's flesh body, because one must attain what people into Transcendental Meditation call the 4th state of consciousness, which is beyond normal waking consciousness. Ecstatic trance is not something that can be achieved on drugs; it's a heightened state of consciousness, whereas drus produce a diminished, dreamlike state. Drugs only show you what's in your head, or by extension via the collective unconscious, what's in other people's heads. That's a rudimentary type of OBE, but it's not astral projection. That's why Hyakytaki can't move past agnosticism and psychologcial rationalizations--he hasn't had any experience outside of drug stupor that would indicate a tangible existence of spiritual concepts.

I know these things because I was raised in an environment of traditional sorcery. Anywhere you go in the world, regardless of the language, it's the same belief. As for age, I'm 35. That single year may not make me more informed than you, but my lifetime of training certainly does.

For an example from my own experience, one night, I left my body and found myself in the room of an old woman with buzzed hair, wearing blue and white striped pajamas, in a hospital-style bed, with some sort of oxygen equipment on her face {a breathing tube from an oxygen tank attached to the nose, as one would wear if one had serious lung disease or a collapsed lung}. Being the type of sorcerer I am, I proceeded to attack her, as it's my job to strike the final blow of death to people who are unnaturally hanging on. She freaked and tried to push me away; I left and returned to my body, knowing that my work there was done.

Three days later, I saw the same pajama-suited woman on the news, in her railed-bed with her breathing tube, claiming that a person with my description had entered her room at night while she was sleeping, mounted her and tried to strangle her. She literally believed that a living, flesh person had entered her room, that she had fought him off, and that he had jumped out her window while knocking over some vases. The police reported that there was no evidence of entry, no physical disturbance, and no exit through the window. The intact window had an undisturbed internal lock on it, the vases and other allegedly-disturbed items were unmoved and intact, and everything had cobwebs and dust on it because her caretaker hadn't hired anyone to clean the place in months. Imagine that; a woman whom I had never physically seen or met claiming that she had actually seen me in her room the same night that I had been there in my etheric double. A few weeks after that incident, I found out that she had died a few days after the TV interview.

REAL OBE has social consequences, whether malevolent or benign. Anything else is just a fantasy, exacerbated by false belief. Until people started seeing me out of body in my early 20's, I made no presumption that any of what I was seeing was real or valid; neither should you.

[Chris W]

did you ever read any Seth material??      He is a spirit that was never in human form at all aside from occupying the body of Jane Roberts and  writing whole books on the nature of our reality.    
      My beliefs are beyond any religion or shamanism and therefore I wont preach anything or say that my religion is correct.   I do believe in the Holographic Universe theory "science" however
    I leave my body all the time without drugs or anything and here is how I do it.......
   when I awaken sometimes early in the morning I will lay on my back and allow my body to relax and just sink in to the bed until it starts vibrating and then I relax it more.   Then I can just get up and be out of my body altogether.   When I do this I have full  awareness of the whole process of my body falling asleep and theres no lost time.    Also the way way I started doing  OOBS  was by learning to realize I was in a dream when I was having one.

[Chris W]

also who are you to say what other people can or cannot do based on your beliefs???  
    or what a 7 year old can do that learned to stop his nightmares by learning he was dreaming and therefore controlling it?     My mother taught me that  and that is what started me in the right direction for being able to do Out Of Body Projection.      
       Also one more thing.......
     I always try to stay out as long as possible but I always come back to my body naturally without the need to go finding some animal.
     Everyone leaves their body every night but the trick is to know it and have complete awareness.  The hardest one is to project from an awakened state and that I wasn't able to do until  I was about 11.

[TroutMask]

Jeebus will kick both of your asses.

-TM

[Chris W]

hmmmm your lifetime of training started in your early 20's ?
    and you are beyond me?            I highly doubt it.  
   you dont know what I have done or seen.

[Avery L. Breath]

Is that sulfur I smell?

[Chris W]

also go read some Edgar Cayce books if you want to learn about dimensional travel.    He is a PROVEN healer that uses the knowledge from the other dimensions. He has healed thousands of people while in a trance and it has all been documented and proven.   I have never heard of any Shaman healing thousands of people all over the world.
     while a lot of Shamanism is corrects about the other side   dont beleive eveything you read.  
   You are connected to your body  and leave it every night but just don't remember. You never have to worry about finding your way back because it happens automatically unless something happens to your body like death from a heartattack or something.  
    By telling the others that they could die from not being able to get back was a way for them to still hold their places of power.
    I have come acrosss Evil entities in my travels but they could not harm me.   They are at a lower level and thrive on fear of newly departed souls.  They can torment you all they want but you would get bored of it and just leave.    
    also one more thing on the spirit having to attatch itself to other things........
    Everything in this reality is all connected already.  Every atom no matter how far away can communicate to tohers instantly and this has been scientifically proven recently.   Theres a mechanic that shifts his conciousness inside cars that he works on to diagnose them instantly and faster than they could hook up a diagnostic computer.     he is no "Shaman"   but he is PROVEN
        Jane Roberts   was no Shaman either nor was she into anything occult.