The Greenwood Wheel of Trance

[Mi-Shell]

For a long time already, I could see it, hidden within the artwork of the cards:
A wheel of the trance experience.
This now is my attempt to bring it to paper in a way that other Greenwood fans can fathom it as well.

First however let me explain a little what trance is.
- the scientific end of it as it is understood by all the smart scientists.
Luckily I can just post this link to the Teaching Tent!
http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=1013341&postcount=54

Well, since this link is not availlable for none-subscribers, i will post here, what i explained/ wrote:
Very modern very un-traditional teachings !!!

Trance and brainwave activity:

We have ( hopefully) 2 brain hemispheres r + l
Both run on different cycles of different brainwaves all the time. they usually switch every 45 min as to who is dominant , You notice, when you feel you need a break or you just sort of lost it the other half took the lead to give the previous one a break. They may both run on beta but are not synchronized or one is sound in alpha and you sit in the office in a meeting and it all zoooooms by....
Drumming synchronizes both brain hemispheres onto one rhythm few other things do!!!!!!!!!!!!!
fast rhythms when your hands are flying over 4 conga drums synchronies on Beta and then, when the brain is entrained go to alpha
Shamanic drumming =160 to 210 LOUD beats per minute on a (frame) drum with overtones will synchronies you to low alpha and from there maybe into Theta and delta waves=
Thetha =ecstatic trance= (you can move , dance do a few other things but your eye balls are rooed inside = only white visible and the surrounding is just a faint shade in the background or the world around you is GONE)
-> orDelta= stupurouse catatonic trance. (You lay on the floor do not move and are OUT for a while, come back and hopefully remember where you were)
Coming back from that one involves Shaking very badly! a saying amongst practitioners is : NO SHAKING NO SHAMAN
from “journeying" in low alpha you do not shake it is like waking our from a dream. But it is not considered trance, it is however a profound altered state of consciousness and there are as many variations as paths in the forest....
Brainwaves
awake and alert = typing this stuff= reading it = 13-26 herz = cycles per second = beta waves = not trance!!!!
awake and deeply engrossed in - reading relaxed, surrounding fades to background +high alpha 13 to 10 herz
meditation, visualization, journeying in the western boooook sense = low alpha 9 or 8 herz and low alpha when both brain hemispheres synchronies to have the SAME rhythm YOU SEE THE COLOURS But it is not trance
theta = 6 to 8 is full ecstatic trance
Delta below 6 it gets tricky and you may pee your pants unless you are asleep. Delta waves is seen in deeeeep dreamless sleep, catatonic trance and also with brain injuries and in Coma
C, trance Can last 5 min to usually 20 to up to 6 hours
People in Delta only breath 4-6 times a minute! that and stiff neck and fixed pupils divide the “Medicine makers from the fakers.”



Sooo and I have a teaching circle here in my house tomorrow and now have to clean the joint!!!!!!
M.

 

[Mi-Shell]

Next I will just post an article by David Lewis Williams on the 3 stages of trance as current neuro scientists understand it.

Although different means of induction and different hallucinogens may produce slightly different effects, a description of these stages gives a general idea of what shamans experience when they enter an altered state of consciousness. In this book, we deal principally with what people see, though, as we have said, all the senses hallucinate. Neuropsychological laboratory research has shown that three overlapping stages may be distinguished.4 Every subject does not necessarily pass through all three stages.
In the first, or lightest, stage of trance people "see" geometric forms, such as dots, zigzags, grids, sets of parallel lines, nested curves, and meandering lines. The forms are brightly coloured and flicker, pulsate, enlarge, contract, and blend one with another. With the eyes open, they are projected luminously onto surfaces such as walls and ceilings. In some shamanic societies, certain of these forms are given meanings; others are ignored. Among the South American Tukano, for instance, sets of brilliant dots represent the Milky Way, the goal of shamanic flight. Nested curves may, in some Tukano hallucinatory, mythological contexts, represent a rainbow, while in other contexts they are said to be the Sun-Fathers penis.5 Many meanings are possible. We do not, for example, know the meanings that the San, or their ancestors, attached to the geometric rock engravings (petroglyphs) of the Southern African plateau, but many of them are very like the geometric forms that neuropsychological research has established.
In the second stage, subjects try to make better sense of the geometric perceptions by illusioning them into objects of religious or emotional significance. The objects may also depend on the emotional state of the subject. Westerners, for instance, may construe a round luminous form as a cup of water if they are thirsty, or as a bomb if they are fearful. Shimmering zigzags may be construed as a writhing snake.

The third stage is reached via a vortex, or tunnel. Subjects feel themselves drawn into the vortex, at the end of which is a bright light. On the sides of the vortex is a lattice derived from the geometric imagery of Stage One. In the compartments of this lattice are the first true hallucinations of people, animals, and so forth.
When subjects emerge from the far end of the tunnel, they find themselves in the bizarre world of trance: Monsters, people, and settings are intensely real. The geometric percepts are still present, but chiefly peripherally. With one's eyes open, Stage Three hallucinations are, like the geometries of Stage One, projected onto surrounding surfaces. Western subjects liken these projected images to "pictures painted before your imagination” and to "a motion picture or slide show. They seem to float across walls and ceilings. At the same time, the surfaces themselves become animated. A picture hanging on a wall, for instance, will be seen in three dimensions and with heightened colors, and it may start to move, to come alive. In Stage Three people feel that they can fly and change into birds or animals. People no longer simply "see" strange things; the things become part of their hallucinations. Sometimes, they believe that they actually become a geometric percept. A Western subject, for example, reported seeing and then becoming identical with a fretwork pattern; as his arms, hands, and fingers turned into fretwork, he exclaimed, "The fretwork is 1.
One of the most frequently reported experiences of Stage Three altered consciousness is transformation not into a geometric form but into an animal. A Westerner experiencing an altered state said, "I thought of a fox, and instantly I was transformed into that animal. I could distinctly feel myself a fox, could see my long ears and bushy tail, and by a sort of introversion felt that my complete anatomy was that of a FOX." The vividness of that sort of experience is captured by southern African San rock art images of shamans turned into not foxes but antelope. They have antelope heads and hooves but human bodies.
We emphasize that these three stages are universal and wired into the human nervous system, though the meanings given to the geometrics of Stage One, the objects into which they are “illusioned” in Stage Two, and the full visions of Stage Three are all culture-specific; at least in some measure, people see what they expect to see. A San shaman may see an eland antelope; an Inuit will see a polar bear or a seal. But, allowing for such cultural diversity, we can be fairly sure that the three stages of altered consciousness provide a framework for an understanding of shamanic experiences.

Soo do not ask me how they came to that conclusions.
Try some LSD?
Some of the mushrooms from underneath my deck?
Borowed a drum for a few days....??
Twice in my life I have been the test subject of scientists trying to make sense of the phenomenon of trance.
Both agreed with the science of the brain waves but had different hypotthesis for how come I “see” what I see in trance and what it means...

 

[Mi-Shell]

Now, having gone over the basic stages of just how altered states of consciousness proceed in all human beings, we can go on a “journey “ through the cards of the Greenwood.
While most neuro scientists today talk about 3 distinct stages in a trance experience, I personaly usualy experience 4 stages. = the so called stage 3 of the scientific study I often experience as first a Lower World journey and then also as an even more vivid Upper World encounter.
I see this reflected in the ARTWORK of the Greenwood deck. = loooooking at the art, regardless of the name of the card and its position within the structure of the deck.

This will take a while - even some monster posts - so get a cup of tea and get your Greenwood cards - aaaand maybe clear some space on YOUR carpet to lay them out as we go along.


...........................................................................................
This is my personal viewpoint of this deck based on my growing up, living and working within a shamanistic world view.
It is inspired by my personal experiences with trance and visions as well as the experiences of other traditional as well as core shamnic practitioners and the work with my students.

A wheel has no beginning and no end, but begin somewhere we must and so we will chose the
5 of Stones as the beginning:
Our journeyer sits by the fire at the entrance of the cave and contemplates the flames, maybe chants and ever so slowly consciousness changes and white zigzags and streaming squiggles form a curtain about a foot in front of her/ his face....
7 of Wands:
The fire is still there, (filled with the spirals and squiggles of a beginning trance journey) - -so however are the thoughts of the tasks to be accomplished tomorrow, - - But the white squiggles have changed into barely recognizable trees, forming a gate....

Ace of Wands:
The fire is changing - becoming a light through a long tunnel, into which the consciousness is drawn by the lure of the bow...
Eight of wands: The tunnel is widening, the light larger, engulfing and surrounding the traveler, still geometric forms are most prominent

Here now you can “see the transition from stage 1 to stage 2 of the trance experience
Ace od arrows, squiggggels and light and geometrical shapes we all tecognize - even when upside down...
6 of Wands
4 of Wands - Here are still dominating geometric shapes but they are giving way and transforming into objects and sceneries still filled in flarring light, squiggles and whirrrrling shapes.
Ace of Wands: As the mind and sadly - ego tries to make sense of the things seen, the trance experience takes a step back - into the more geometrical spirally swirrrrling phase, shapes vaguely remind our traveler of things seen and experienced in ordinary reality, but the arrow from the Ace of Wands Guides his mind on, (to better: silences the inner judge and critique) and follow the vision.
6 of Stones: And so the square of the previous card changes into a hexagon, opens up wide and is filled with a multitude of swirrrrrling objects floating in a multidimensional bluish black sea of light squiggles and spirals (the vision re-opens)
Here we reach an intermittent plateau in the trance experience: Swirrrrling light, shapes and squiggles often form a gate or “frame” for the first visionary sceneries. These already may be moving and speaking, interacting entities. Examples in no particular order:
3 of Stones
2 of Wands,
Nine of Stones, to a lesser degree the 5 of Wands
Almost reaching stage 3 in the 4 of Cups
Then however there is “sort of a wall”, a point, where the vision either aborts or goes on into a full blown theta trance experience (stage3) with vivid colors, talking Spirits, more real then life itself. It is a “tricky corner” the traveler has to negotiate and only experience can aid him.
In the
10 of Cups we see the vision being “swamped with white and blue and the “picture deteriorating
Blue in my experience is the sign, that NOW we go deeeeeper!
However, the 8 of Arrows has straight lines and tooooo much black in it and would be a sign, that the trance is aborting back into ordinary Beta consciousness.
The 3 of Arrows is tooooooo black - there is the superimposed light .....
but also the “tunnel” back again.
But let’s assume all is well and we enter stage 3 !
The gateways with the guardian flirring in it, like in the
3 of Wands
2 of Cups,
7 of Stones
the 4 of Stones and
the 6 of Cups
then open up to full stage 3 images of - still somewhat one-dimensional / two dimensional scenarios, now beyond the gate, filled with surreal light and a multitude of objects.
Examples for this stage are:
9 of Arrows
5 of Cups
Ace of cups
and to a lesser, less dramatic degree the
5 of Arrows, showing our celestial steed
2 of Arrows, a journey bow
7 of Arrows, the skeletal Wind Horse
and the 6 of Arrows, the Spirit Boat.
All these depictions of the shaman’s mode of transportation “up” or “further along” are present in all shamanic cultures and well represented in pictographs and petroglyphs from around the world.
They also announce the proceeding of the journey into the next stage of the trance journey, what I personaly would call stage 4 of trance. ( scientists only talk of 3 stages - but did they ever experience the trance - other than induced by some form of Halucinogenic drug????
And sure enough the colors, having receded momentarily in the last few images - just to make sure we “see” what is out mode of transportation,- are now more vivid then ever:
Ten of Arrows
Three of Cups
But there will be another plateau to surmount:
Yet another Guardian, onward?? Or back into the previous stage- or loooooose it??? that is his questioning in the
9 of Wands
But we go on and the colours intensify again showing us more images like the previous 3 of Cups:
2 of Stones
4 of Arrows (maybe showing us a person experiencing the vision?)
- - Did I tell you guys, that this one is my “card of the Day and got this whole process started:
WHAT do I “see”????

 

[Mi-Shell]

Continued:
And then something changes dramatically! The colours!!!! More vivid, colours never seen before,
colours that have feelings, that are expressed in sounds!! Also more plasticity in the images, multidimensionality, 4, 5, 6, 7 dimensions!
Queen of Arrows - Deer: Her fur is singing songs of cinnamon her antlers feel like howling fire.....
And She is just the first of many like her:
The Guardian and
Death - still having the feel of remnants of the “tunnel” - but still....
The Blue gets lighter:
King of Stones, Horse
King of Arrows, Lynx
Queen of Wands,Hare
King of Wands, Adder
Knight of Stones, Wolf
Queen of Cups,Heron
King of Cups, Reindeer
Page of Cups, Kingfisher
Page of Arrows, Woodpecker
Knight of Cups, Salmon
to the Seer
All of them showing us our Guides - loooookin like the inhabitants of the recesses of
the Lower World. And then, Guardians part Animal part Human part Spirit! - Like the
ones one often encounters in the Upper World Journey:
Judgment
The Ancestor
Strength
Justice
The Shaman
Balance,
Reflection
The Lovers
Then there are others, more abstract ones leading us onward:
The Sun
The Blasted Oak
Green Woman
Green Man
The Fool
The Hermit at the Gate of the shamanic Tree of Life
The Wheel of Fortune - is that , what you see, when the Hermit opens that gate?
Or will that path lead us on into the wide open plain of the
World Tree?
- as the culmination of this vision??/
Something is happening! the colours are changing again!
An experienced traveler recognizes the sign!
9 0f Cups, .. and flirrrring squigggggels of light again!
And there, faaaaaar below is the realm to which we return:
The Pole Star, our Guiding Light has appeared!
The field of vision is again framed by an exit gate or tunnel, we are on our way to the
10 of Stones, Home!
The Moon:
And there is the “tunnel” again in the last bluish milky gray colours and the birds are
landing to roost - rest....
............ and so our traveler has reentered the tonal every day world.....................

 

[Mi-Shell]

The The wheel of the Greenwood - back in the every day world:

The Archer
Here she is, with her hunting bow, with her singing bow, with her travelling vehicle, with her arrow and her 2 trusted animal familiars.
10 of Wands shows us the most Tarot like card of the deck:
Tonal, everyday life, the things we have to do. After enlightenment - chop wood, fetch water, stoke the fire and fed the kids!
The tent in the Background!---- And he is holding- - - -
the tent poles upside down but fanned out correctly - to “capture” the firmament above him? To tell us to stand our regular viewpoint on its head??? See, what we get then???!!!
After trance journeys and encounters with the Spirits depicted on the artwork here NOTHING is EVER the same!
And so the journey through the ordinary life of the traveler continues:
We now meet a couple of Animals that he/ she might meet in the forest and around the camp site:
Knight of Wands - Fox, the most ordinary - tonal - looooking of the Critters in this journey deck - but do not be fooled, he is a trickster and in Siberia Dilgi is a Gate keeper to the East....
Knight of Arrows, Hawk
Page of Stones, Wrens at their nesting site
and the Page of Wands the Stoat and her family
All these Animals our traveler may encounter in the real forest as regular Critters, but immedately upon seeing them he also will be reminded of their spiritual significance and their Powers as Guides in the “OtherWorld”. He may even place an offering at a significant place, as a sign of honor and recognition.
A little away from them I placed the
Queen of Stones - Mama Bear and her cub, in their den, lounging in front of a couple of long bones and a CAVE BEAR SKULL
Now here you better re -read about the significance of Bears in this post -
>
and have another looooook at the Guardian.....
>
For with the next card we will again enter the Cave of the She Bear
Queen of Stones:

This time to do some serious work:
8 of Stones also called Skill shows our traveler as the artist that
transforms the knowledge and wisdom gained in trance journeys into
tangible reality by producing artwork, that manifests and solidifies the
vision and makes it accessible to his/ her contemporaries.
The last 3 cards of the Wheel of Trance show us some of the artwork produced and also how artists have tried to depict the different stages of the trance experience in their art:
Ace of Stones:
The spirals, labyrinths and dots show the geometric swirrrrling shapes of light and colour seen in stage 1 of a trance experience and designs like this are found in rock art all over the world.
8 of Cups
shows the full theta vision manifested in a variety of artwork created to honor the Spirits of the trance journeys he/ she has undertaken and complete with surrounding squiggles and flirrrring lights and colours
7 of Cups shows us the refined masterworks of a potter or metal sculptor, someone working with all 4 elements in the creative process and using all his shamanic visionary knowledge, but simplifying it into classical shapes of timeless beauty - and utilitarian usefulness.
And sure, he/ she does so, always knowing the fragility of life, the transient magic of life, the life of an object - and the life of a Being.....

 

[Mi-Shell]

This is - an idea of, what it looks like, when you sort the cards according to the Wheel of Trance.
The images that go with the speciffic stages - or sub-stages are interchangable of course....
I also realize that other people's trance imagery is different and so their Greenwood Wheel of Trance will look different...

 

[flying black kat]

Dearest Mi-Shell:

Amazing is such a poor substitute for words for how I feel now after looking at your Wheel. It has brought tears to my eyes.

I printed it out before I even answered your post.

Thank You so much for being you and sharing.

Kathy

 

[Bat Chicken]

Fascinating! And a lot of work in order to share!
I went through card by card, and not that it matters based on your reasoning (I use that word only because you had to reason it to communicate it to us), but I didn't get a place for the Ace of Arrows and 7 of Stones. I can see the Ace of Arrows tucked in with the Ace of Wands in your picture, so I understand where you are going with this. And I can guess where the 7 Stones goes as well! Either that or I just missed them!

This is really something can only truly be understood with experience I am sure! Very inspired! This deck has so many layers.

I wonder how trance images really get assigned meaning as they must in order to communicate. With so many symbols being repeated across the world, it makes me wonder what we are missing??

 

[Mi-Shell]

I can see the Ace of Arrows tucked in with the Ace of Wands in your picture, so I understand where you are going with this. And I can guess where the 7 Stones goes as well! Either that or I just missed them!

??

... or I missed them...!!
Since I picked the cards up from the floor, where they were lined up nicely - to type this - I am sitting in a caleidoscopic card mess

 

[Milfoil]

I've kept reading and re-reading this Mi-Shell, its so complex, there is a lot to take in.

I can see some of what you mean but I think I don't have the extensive experience to understand it all fully.

The images could refer to stages of sleep, dreams and lucid dreaming.

For me, the start would be the 6 of Cups, where I meet with my ally(s) before journeying down, into the spring to the source.

Quite an amazing way to look at this deck, a vibrant new way to see our own experiences outside the traditional confines of the Tarot story.