Opening to vision : the use and interpretation of trance in contemporary society
Date
1991
Authors
Wagner, John Richard
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Abstract
This study describes and compares three groups of people who work deliberately with trance states: 1) the Coast Salish, an Aboriginal People of wide distribution on the southern coast of British Columbia and Washington State; 2) wiccans, a community of modern witches whose ritual practices are rooted in the pagan belief-systems of pre-Christian Europe; 3) hypnotherapists and their clients, a group focused on the therapeutic use of hypnotic states in both private and group contexts.
Interviews were conducted with individuals from each group with the purpose of developing case studies that would chronicle each informant's life-history of significant trance experience, with close attention paid to the way trance states are shaped, interpreted, and socially integrated within each group. Cultural/historical profiles accompany each set of case studies, in order to make clear the extent and form of innovation occurring, and to outline the kinds of social change to which trance innovations are a response. The most significant common feature of trance experience among the three groups was the experience of awakening reported by all informants, an experience that occurred during a time of important life changes brought about through the direct influence of, or in close association with, trance states. Awakenings appear to have two dimensions, one extremely personal and mystical, the other social and intimately connected with the individual's sense of self and social identity. By focusing on the social dimension, it became clear that the role of community operated very differently in the three groups, and was the most important criterion by which to distinguish their varied approaches to trance states.
Arnold van Gennep's concept of rites of passage and Victor Turner's more recent work on rites of transition and liminal experience were the most useful sources of interpretive theory for this study. Various approaches to the cross-cultural study of trance states were examined but were found to be of limited relevance because of their pre-occupation with typologies of trance states that did not correspond to the experiences described here.
A study of the Kalahari by Robin Horton provided a useful model for conceptualizing the process of social innovation relative to the content of trance experience. He described how minor deities can "incubate" on the margins of a culture, and then, during a time of social upheaval, be drawn towards positions of greater social prominence. In this study, social innovation in trancework is interpreted in terms of movements to and from positions of cultural marginalization. The concept of resonance is used to describe the way that similar movements among different groups or communities can amplify and strengthen one another and in so doing reveal issues of broad social significance within the larger, pluralistic society in which they are situated.