Possession Club

From the summer of 2021 to the summer of 2022, the Lunar Shenanigans crew and I ran a year-long cycle of Drawing Down the moon. One by one, each of us took a turn as “Priestess” and “Priest”: serving first as vessel for the nameless lunar goddess and then as invoker, drawing the power of the moon into the next vessel.

In some ways, it was an exercise in frustration. I knew going in that few of us (and I not among them) had extensive experience with deity possession, but not how few had ever even researched the practice. As we set out to write our ritual, the templates we found were extremely heterosexist, with a disturbing emphasis on wombs and penises as prerequisites for the roles. Several members of the group were so disengaged that it felt like they were barely humoring me, and did not put much effort either research or execution.

The project as a whole was a very mixed bag. I felt like I had to re-explain both the theory and the practice every month, and like I did a worse job of it each time. Some of us did very well at it. Others found it very difficult to let the Moon in. I never got the chance to try: on the date that we had appointed as our last, another member came back from sabbatical to put her hat in the ring.

In the wake of that experience, though, came something good. Soon after, one of our members took point on organizing and hosting a trance possession study group. She invited those of us who, successful or otherwise, had shown the most interest in the Drawing Down the Moon project and posed the question: how can we develop this practice into a skill?

We started with one of the very few books we could find on the subject: Lifting the Veil by Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone. The book proved to be a mish-mash of ahistorical garbage, something one would expect from the mid-1990s rather than its actual publication date of 2016. There was a similar amount of cultural appropriation, a surprising amount of weird apologia, and some very weird and creepy jokes about dropping gods into people they knew were not prepared for the experience. But there was also a viable-looking ritual and, lacking much else in the way of templates to work from, we took it and ran with it.

The core of the Farrar/Bone ritual is this:

Establish sacred space. Build an altar for the deity to be invoked. Build a throne for the vessel. The ritual facilitator invokes the deity into the vessel using a guided meditation. An audience comes in and the possessed oracle answers questions and/or issues prophesy.

Which is all solid, except for the weird and heterosexist way Farrar and Bone frame the facilitator as male priest who does all the work, and the vessel as passive priestess who just sits back and lets it happen to her. But we liked the guided meditation and the rest of the framework enough to break it down for parts.

In our reworked version, the facilitator is just that: someone who takes the leadership parts of the ritual so that the vessel can focus on the talking-to-god and talking-as-god parts. As vessel, we take point on building the altar and throne, then sequester ourselves while the facilitator gets the room and the other participants ready. A third member of the group takes point on casting the circle and consecrating the temple. A fourth focuses on taking notes during the rite. The facilitator performs the consecration of the altar and the preliminary invocation of the god, then brings the vessel in for the guided meditation leading them to the underworld where they will meet the god. Once the vessel is possessed and speaking in the voice of the god, the facilitator works the room, directing the participants to ask their questions, and managing the incense and libations. It is the facilitator’s responsibility to make certain that the possessed vessel doesn’t do anything they’ll regret later, and that they are not overwhelmed by the god, then to send the god home when the oracular session is complete, and to guide the vessel back to their body at the end of the rite.

We’ve refined the details a lot over the year and a half that we’ve been doing this work. We had a very tight script for the first round, almost exactly by the book. We changed things up a bit for the second round, based on lessons learned. For the third round, each ritual was idiosyncratic, similar to the others only in outline. We have begun our forth round in similar style.

Round One

Our first round, all four of us called upon the goddess Hekate. It was an obvious choice. We knew her, and she knew us. I had even served as a vessel for her, before. Were we not the Accidental Hekate Cult?

I don’t remember, now, if we drew lots or if I was chosen, but having served as a vessel for Hekate in several previous rituals with the Lunar Shenanigans Crew, and having been inadvertently shut out of the Drawing Down the Moon experiment, I was happy to take the first turn in the hot seat.

I was struggling financially, at the time, and my questions all revolved around the prosperity magic I was doing, and how it could be improved. I, at least, was not taking good notes this round, and can no longer remember much of it clearly. I do remember that some of the answers I got were actionable, but others were not.

Round Two

For the second round, we took on a fifth member. We also took on different gods. One of us invoked Lilith, one the Morrigan, one Helios, and one Prometheus. I invoked Baphomet.

With my financial situation somewhat settled, I struggled to come up with questions to ask. I know that, at the time we conjured the Morrigan, I suspected that someone was flinging some cursework or evil eye my way, but when I asked “who is it”, the answer “you know who, crush him” was … cathartic, but not actually helpful. I did not (and do not) know who was fucking with me. And, as surprising as some may find this, of the three or four candidates that I could think of, at the time, I didn’t want to crush any of them … just be quit of them. I was facilitator for the Helios ritual, and was able to avoid the issue in that ritual. When the time for Lilith came, I admitted that I had nothing to ask for, and accepted the blessing I was offered. In retrospect, that caused as many problems as it fixed.

Preparation for Baphomet came in fits and starts. There were things that I could see clearly – the need to make a horned headdress, for which I cannibalized one I had made previously, and added a black lace veil. Mostly, though, I struggled to make contact with the god until the time came.

I remember parts of my time as Baphomet very clearly. I remember that the god/dess was waiting for me when I sequestered myself to prepare for the trance, and that I could have walked out into the circle, fully possessed, while the others were still casting the circle, and that there was less of me than there could have been by the time the ritual caught up to me. As a result of this, we added “ask if the god is there already” to the ritual before the trance induction.

Round Three

Through a series of schedule conflicts, the third round became a sprint: we conjured Odin and Freya and Persephone, one week after another, only breaking for our Beltane campout before I took on the mantle of Eros Protogonos. (Which, given the amount of magic that I did over Beltane, was no break at all for me.)

This round was more of a challenge for me, personally, than the previous two. Opening with Odin and Freya, we ran face-first into two of my major issues: god-kings in general and the Norse pantheon in particular. I hate god-kings. I do not sacrifice to them, period. I do not honor them. And, after twenty-five-plus years in the neo-Pagan community, I can count on one hand the number of Norse-focused pagans I’ve met who didn’t turn out to be assholes without ethics if not outright fascists. I did my very best to participate in good faith. I failed.

Honestly, coming up on a year later, I don’t remember much except my discomfort. I wish that I had taken better notes. I didn’t want to ask anything of Odin or Freya. I was more focused on my role as facilitator for Alvianna’s channeling of Hermes, but my question was the same as the time before: who is fucking with me? Unfortunately, as facilitator, I could tell that the answer I got came from the vessel, not the god. So, with the signal lost, I brought the ritual to a close.

Our conjuration of Persephone is a notable exception to my struggle to engage with the gods and remember what was said. As I mentioned above, I frequently struggled to come up with favors or questions to ask of these unfamiliar gods. When this round came, though, I finally thought to ask for an image that I could make in jewelry. This is the oft-referenced possession rite that produced the Dread Queen Persephone pendant that I am (still) so very proud of.

Then came my turn in the hot seat. I had chosen to play vessel to Firstborn Eros, the desire at the heart of creation.

Eros Protogonos, Eros Phanes, Eros the Elder, is a god chiefly attested in the Orphic Hymns. His is first-born, self-born, hatched from the golden egg laid by Time, itself. Whether he was the same entity as the better known and hornier Eros, as Aphrodite Urania is the same goddess as her more … distant aspects, is a matter of some philosophical debate. I say he is, but it was Phanes Protogonos that I intended to invoke. As such, I advised my compatriots to ask larger scale questions, not ask the god-in-me for advice about getting laid.

For all my daily offerings, my relationship with Eros was/is not as close as my relationships with Hekate and Baphomet. The “signal” was neither strong nor clear. It was, however, productive, and the god (through me) blessed two of my compatriots with strong visions (that I got no glimpse of). In addition to those visions, and the questions I answered for our fourth compatriot, I consecrated a series of candles for us, each imbued with the Light of Creation. In the aftermath of that ritual, my own candle has become a part of my daily rituals, helping me maintain contact with the light of creation.

Round Four

We started the fourth round in September. The idea was that we would abandon our established script and go fully bespoke for each ritual. That didn’t quite happen.

The first god invoked for the second round was Macha. I was notetaker this round, as our usual notetaker was facilitating for the vessel. I struggled to get into the group headspace, but I did get an image of an eye and a crow and a sheaf of wheat that may yet become a devotional pendent.

Macha was the most standoffish of the gods we have yet summoned. She did not appreciate our freeform format and demanded clear articulation of what would be expected of her, and what she would get in return … but then she ended up going beyond the parameters we set, so … ?

I won’t speak to what answers and blessings she gave others, but I will say that her answer to my request for words of wisdom was not at all helpful.

When I took my turn as vessel for the fourth round, what I really wanted was to have the experience that I had been hoping for but missed out on from the original Drawing Down the Moon cycle that had, in part, inspired the creation of Possession Club in the first place.

My plan was to come up with a seamless and stylish synthesis of the original DDtM ritual, the Possession Club ritual, and the ritual framework that I had been developing for my personal work throughout both projects. Somehow, despite having a clear plan and a perfectly serviceable pile of scripts, I failed to write that ritual and ended up using an only-slightly-modified version of the ritual that I wrote for Eros. Interestingly, what little genuine inspiration I did have came from wearing my moon crown while sitting at the computer.

When it came to actually do the ritual, I thought everything was adequately in hand.

Then we called the goddes and … I failed. I couldn’t let her in. I couldn’t trance deep enough, or I couldn’t open far enough, or … I don’t even know. But I failed, and it really, really hurt my feelings.

On a certain level, we all knew that such a complete failure was always an option. None of us channeled the gods equally well every time. There were points in every possession ritual where the human was answering as much as or more than the god. But this was the first instance of a giant, big-nope, goose-egg, nothing.

We closed down the ritual. Made our final offerings. Had dinner. And we went home.

Unplanned Hiatus

My failure to Draw Down the Moon turned out to be the end of Possession. There are a few reasons for that; some logistical, others emotional.

We had a couple meetings after to talk about what went wrong and what to do differently in the future. Those meetings did not go well, also for a variety of reasons, the details of which are not for public consumption. In retrospect, though, I don’t think that an immediate post-mortem was the way to go.

Then I caught Covid (my second confirmed infection), which took me out for a solid three weeks. Then it was Christmas, the least wonderful time of the year.

We’ve tried to start back up a few times, but illness or bad weather or worse omens have nixed every attempt. Planning meetings met with the same blockages as attempts to schedule the final ritual of round four. When we were finally able to sit down together and discuss the fate of the project, the five of us were in four very different places psychologically, spiritually, and energetically. Ultimately, we decided that it was time to shutter the project.

Speaking personally, I was – and am – still so drained after this winter’s deep, deep depression, that I am struggling to be fully present for any work, even my own. I am also (and there’s a post about this already written and waiting) really struggling with the idea that the gods are worth of love and trust, making continuing this project uniquely difficult. Neither of those are energies to bring to a group project.

I feel bad that one of us never got to do her fourth round. But stepping back was the more honest and good-faith course than ploughing forward.

What I’ve Learned So Far

I’ve learned a lot from these escalating experiments. Some of it is the technical and experiential knowledge that I came for. Some of it is much more logistical and interpersonal.

The first thing I’ve learned is that everyone needs to be on the same page at the beginning of the project. When I orchestrated the year of Drawing Down the Moon, I sincerely believed that everyone else was fully on board. I also thought I knew how much everyone else knew. I was dead fucking wrong on both counts, and that made a lot of messes. When we started up Possession Club, we started off with a shared reading list and enough conversations that we were all in a much more similar place to one  another, and the successes of those experiments are largely attributable to that.

The second thing I’ve learned, also a logistical lesson, is to write everything down someplace you can actually find it. Project drift will happen, that’s not only fine it’s inevitable, but it’s good to have a source document to return to as that goes. It also makes it easier to onboard anyone added to the project once it’s in motion.

The magical aspects of what I’ve learned are harder to articulate. I also am not at all sure that they apply to anyone who is not me. But I think the below points are universal enough to be worth sharing.

Alcohol and marijuana facilitate being possessed by Dionysus, but not by anyone else as far as I can tell. At least not for me.

BaneFolk ointments DO facilitate trance possession. Or, at least they were great for Baphomet and seemed helpful for Eros.

Everyone in the room needs to have a compatible idea of who the god is. I think this is one of the places where Drawing Down the Moon went so wrong, both in the initial year of DDtM and last October.

In Conclusion

Finally, I want to come back to a logistical and social lesson that these experiments taught and confirmed, over and over again. This sort of work is only possible when everyone involved is acting in good faith and communicating successfully. Being along for the ride is neither. Not everyone needs to be totally sold out / all in, but everyone does need to be genuinely open to the experience, the process, and the result. Yes, that means me. I know I brought the group down by not discussing my Norse allergies during the planning of round three. I suspect that was a lot of what went wrong with the DDtM experiments that preceded Possession Club.

Although I have framed several moments above as failures, because that’s the only word I know for that feeling, I do not believe that the experiments as a whole were failures. They were experiments. Some of our results were things we wanted; some were things we predicted; some were complete surprises. We learned from them all. As such, the projects, as a whole, were resounding successes.

Post Script: The ritual from Lifting the Veil is worth pillaging. The book, however, is not worth paying for. Steal it. Mock it. Someone, for the love of all that’s holy, write something better.