A VERY ROUGH GUIDE TO ECSTASY: WITH SOME CONTENT WARNING

He is suspended upside down by two hooks through his flesh, on a scaffold. Propelled into a trance state by pain and ritual, he calls to members of the crowd and divines for them, using Runes.

He is Tim Nancarrow, and he is a PhD student at the University of Newcastle researching the virtues of ritual sacrifice. The event was Midgardsblot 2022, an extreme Metal music and Heathenry festival in Norway. Here is their poster for 2023.  On their website, the cursor is in the shape of the Horns, which amuses me greatly. I wish I had been there!

https://youtu.be/BJvcBhIpALM 

is the address for The Nordic Mythology Podcast's interview with Tim, where he discusses his work in hook suspension and how this is a very visceral interpretation of the sacrifice of the Northern God Odin. Odin hung for nine nights on a windswept tree, with no food or drink, and sacrificed himself to himself, in order to bring us the Runes. Odin went hard, went to the utter limit in his search for wisdom, put his body literally on the line.

Earlier this year, talking of windswept, a young man is running at night. He has not slept for days. He's eaten as he's run. He's buggered, he thinks. He is Dean Stewart, aged 19, and he is running in the Revenant, Aotearoa/New Zealand's toughest adventure race. 

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/other-sports/131036862/toughest-adventure-race-crushes-all-entrants-again

This race takes place over 150 kms of Southland's roughest high country and only four people have ever finished it. Dean, the last competitor left from a field of forty........did not finish it.

Neither did Jean Beaumont, who I heard interviewed during her period of afterglow after the race, inarticulate with joy, relief and brain chemicals. And neither did Karl Watson, who gave up after a night of hallucinations caused by lack of sleep. And neither did Callum Wilkie, who thanked the organizer after he tapped out and said 'I'm really glad I found my limit'.

Limit experiences are one way of attaining ecstatic trance. Not all trance states are ecstatic. There is a trance state that is reflective and inward seeming. Simple Shamanic journeying is not ecstatic. The ecstatic state is more embodied, or at least more likely to involve the body. It is more likely to start with bodily sensations such as pain or heat or cold, and it is more like an upwelling of the senses to the point where the person leaves the body, or becomes greater than the body, or the body becomes greater. It is not always pleasurable either. Pain is an excellent entry point to the ecstatic trance.

Limit experiences are also well understood in the BDSM community. Here BDSM stands for Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism. I want here to describe particularly the state of the submissive partner in a Dominant/Submissive situation. Those who are successful Subs have discovered that pain and a temporary dismantling of the personality change their states of consciousness. By temporary dismantling of the personality I mean treatment that humiliates, confuses, torments a person to the point that their usual personality disappears. Then they enter a state called subspace, an altered state of consciousness where they experience a sense of dissolution, a lack of boundaries, and an exquisite vulnerability, openness and trust. When they are in that state, it is the responsibility of the Dom(me) to ensure their safety and re-integration. This aspect of BDSM play does not just mimic a Shamanic type of limit experience, it is that experience. It is as transformative as an ultra-marathon or a magical ritual in that all ecstatic work puts the body on the line. It is very much worth talking to people within the BDSM community; every one of them knows things about themselves that 'vanilla' people don't. And one of those things they know, is how to enter an ecstatic trance.

Hook suspensions, similar to the one described above, take place within the BDSM community and are treated with the moral seriousness and respect such rituals should afford. There is a cottage industry around setting them up and running them safely. It is the equivalent of an elite sport in the BDSM world. So I take Tim Nancarrow's attempt as not just a spectacle, but a genuine piece of magic with a somewhat ironic heritage, given that it is the BDSM community that are the wisdom keepers of what is essentially Shamanic knowledge. 

Then there is the mosh pit, that wonderfully primal source of ecstatic trance that is open to every Metal head, even me. I once used the group energy of a mosh pit to charge a sigil, throwing it into the crowd at a climactic moment. And last night I was lucky enough to attend a gig by seminal Norwegian Black Metal band Mayhem. Mayhem, and other Black Metal bands such as Wolves in the Throne Room, call their gigs rituals. I think this is an acknowledgement of the effects the music has. 

Honestly, after the first blast beat I am gone. I say I won't mosh, because I am 63 after all and have recently been diagnosed with osteoporosis, but I work my way through the crowd, and the black-clad young chaps are terribly helpful and soon I am up the very front, leaning over the rail at the front of the stage. The venue is tiny, dark and sweaty; it has been 29C today. The atmosphere is brilliantly charged. I am in the ecstatic trance state we all share, and this time I use it to chant the names of Runes I need. Thus it becomes a piece of ceremonial magic.

Mayhem are a longstanding jobbing band, and their original members, Hellhammer and Necrobutcher and Attila, are well into their fifties. They gave it heaps that night. It was a pure performance, in the way the drummer drums for the Shaman, the riggers build the scaffold and execute the hook suspension, and the supporters give time and skill to the race. 

And the Dom, or Domme, who takes complete control of the Sub and who is also completely responsible for their safety and welfare - what do they get out of it? The same as the musician or the drummer. Facilitating someone else's limit experience is an act of love and service. It looks glamorous and ego-filled, but properly done, it is the opposite. These curated and contained acts of transgression, by which I mean the literal meaning of crossing over, are happening in different ways all the time. Those who experience them are often otherwise ordinary people, and that is all to the good. The need to work in and around trance is being fulfilled, even when it is understood a bit differently. Where we have no religious language or space for it, we do it anyway. We need ecstatic trance. 

The photos below are of the Mayhem gig. The middle one, which is a bit blurry, is of Necrobutcher and Teloch checking their equipment in between sets. I have mad respect for Necrobutcher; he has seen some shit for sure.

THE BLANKET AND THE BURIAL MOUND

 

 

This is my special blanket. It has the Elder Futhark Rune alphabet on it and these beautiful ravens, and a hood. It is double layered and has a fluffy lining.

 

Midsummer I was out in the middle of the night, undertaking a Northern practice called Utiseta, or sitting out. Traditionally, the magical practitioner sat on a burial mound overnight, although after the practice was discouraged by the church it took place just in secluded areas. It is a way of contacting the dead, or in my case divining through the Night. I once was told that every place is an urupa, the Maori word for cemetery. On every inch of the earth someone has died, so every part of the earth is worthy of attention. All places have spirit. So I can make my own place of power, or sit in an actual cemetery, whatever.

 

I will say little about the night, except that when I left the sitting place to go have a piss, the cloud cover dissolved momentarily and I saw a shooting star for only the third time in my life.

 

I was under a maple tree, and to get there and back I walked through a field of dry grass up to my hips. Of course I had my special blanket with me. I won’t do that again.

 

Afterwards, there was so much grass in the blanket. Over the following weeks I tried to pull out all the grass seeds. At first they were just annoying. My gorgeous blanket! After a while I began to have some respect for the grass and the seeds. Each seed was winged and barbed like a fantastic missile. Each seed burrowed its way into the blanket, to plant itself between the layers. Each seed needed to be individually pulled out, and boy did they resist me. And there were different grasses, I noticed over time. Some were burrowers, and they burrowed through the top layer of blanket. Some were nesters, and they tangled themselves within the fluffy bottom layer. Nesters and burrowers. Each seed has its way, had its purpose, its impetus to grow.

 

I am not great at detail and patience and perseverance, but if the seeds taught me anything it was those calm and underrated virtues. In the end, I washed the blanket and hung it, and stood and pulled and pulled and stroked and teased and pulled and detangled.

 

Grass just evolved that way. Natural selection has made grasses super successful. We humans have been creatures of steppe and plain. We like grass a lot. But also this:

 

Grass seeds have voices too. Seeds told me about need, and earth, and how to hide and grow in the hiding. Seeds made me patient and slow and focused. Seeds changed my state of consciousness.