Detroit Hoodoo Month: Entering a Rapture: Trance in American Root.

Entering a rapture: Trance in American Root-Doctoring and Conjure Practices

By Orion Foxwood
Foxwood is a witch, conjure-man and faery seer; and, the author of “The  Faery Teachings” (RJ Stewart Books), “The Tree of Enchantment” and “The  Candle and the Crossroads” and "The Flame in the Cauldron" (Weiser Books).. Orion is the founder, and primary teacher, of the House of Brigh Faery Seership Institute, a multi-year teaching program in the "Tree of Enchantment" Seerhship lore, practices, traditions and skills; and a co-founder of Conjure Crossroads (CC), which is a collaboration between five (5)  seasoned root-workers and witches focused on preserving and promoting the healing and helping benefits of southern root-work, witchcraft and other folk traditions. CC hosts the annual Folk Magic Festival in New Orleans, Conjure-Craft in Santa Cruz, CA and an ongoing blog show. He is the Founding Elder of Foxwood Temple, a coven dedicated to passing on the traditional witchcraft of his elders . He holds a Master’s Degree in Human Services. His website is orionfoxwood.com.

The use of the word “trance” was something I never heard of until I moved northward to “the big city” of the Washington D.C. and Baltimore metropolitan areas.  The people I grew up with were not always that formally educated to use, as my mother would say, “highfalutin” words such as this. They saw what we think of as trance as something that happens when we offer our spirit up to God (or the Great Spirit, maker or source), to be used as a tool for works greater than the constraints of daily life and the human flaws that may lay within us. Yet, there is no doubt that what we call trance, or altered states” was without doubt a core practice among root-doctors, spirit-workers and conjure people as well as in many of the “back-woods” churches I attended where the parishioners and the laity entered into a state of awareness where they were in the presence of the source or “God”.  Without doubt, these people and their experiences gave me access to trance and its blessings.

Often, the steps to this state where called “approaching the throne”. These steps may involve singing, clapping, rocking, spinning, praying, reciting biblical phrases, and a host of other practices until the “shift” was made into the state desired.  The state, which we may call trance, reached was called by my folks “a rapture”. Once in a rapture-state, a person may speak the spirit-tongue (the voice of God), prophesied (pray true, see true and speak true), do healing (restoration of well-being), perform miracles (make change beyond the explainable), speak and work with the spirits (bear forth the power of the unseen world), access wisdom or do conjuration (draw forth power). The “rapture-state” (or trance) was the very means by which the worker could be the vessel of spirit, a force far beyond the everyday limits of the human life. A force that was divine made manifest the realms of humanity!

My Background

I was born and raised outside of Winchester Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley in the early 60s in a culture that was a mix of southern Appalachian and southern elements influenced by African culture from the slave trade of the 1800s in Virginia.  I moved from Virginia to Maryland in the 1980s to continue my study of witchcraft (which I had started there) and to “find myself”. I had no idea of the value of the folk wisdom I learned and lived with my mother and other teachers in my home culture. The folks who most utilized the rapture-state where folks who were doctors of the root (or spirit) such as preachers, faith-healers and the other folks who were gifted and trained to doctor the spirit which were called “root-doctors” (for they doctored the spirit, which is the root of life), spirit-doctors and occasionally conjure-workers.

Now, a very important part of understanding my life with the rapture-state is to be aware that I was born with what my culture calls “the veil”, known in other cultures as “the caul”. My mother and sister had it. This veil as a certain way the placental sheath falls over the eyes of the newborn and it indicates the ability to see into and access the unseen world of the spirits.  In my view, as one living with the veil now for nearly 50 years, is that the attributes of this gift is the ability to swiftly, effortlessly and even un-willfully enter into “trance” and access information that is seemingly not accessible to the “normal” person. I did not understand the full implications of this so-called “blessing” or “gift” until much later in my life as I came into harmony with it. It really was not until I formally entered my training as a witch and Faery seer that I really understood the veil, the rapture, and the knowledge and power that comes with it.     

A part of my witchcraft studies was learning how, as my witch teachers called it “to enter into the place between the worlds” or “fly beyond the hedge” of the seen into the unseen realms of the spirit. It was not until far into my training as a witch that I realized this was the same state of consciousness that my southern elders called rapture”. I experienced this state in sessions of faith-healing, root-doctoring and conjure work and it has specific feelings or sensations associated, which include the following:

• A light-headed sensation similar to intoxication

• Shifted-ness wherein a feeling of not being oneself is present

• A feeling of “otherness” entering into the mind

• The knees feeling weak

• Awake sleepiness

• Part of the body moving in an uncontrollable way where you feel like a puppet on strings   

• A feeling of being outside oneself looking at oneself

• A feeling of expansion and “hollowing-out”

• A feeling  that there is a flow of something greater than oneself moving into you and pouring out in words, actions and/or expressions

• A sense that you will be forever changed somehow after the experience.

So, here are some insights into the presence and use of the trance-state in American southern magical and spiritual traditions and how witchcraft and its uses of this state actually lead me back to the teachings of my childhood. In conclusion, I wish access to the rapture as a gift to all who earnestly seek to access the healing and helping benefits of the spirit world.