Trance

Trance is a perceptual state measurably different from wakefulness that is a common feature of ritual behavior throughout the world, including North America, where it figures prominently in a wide variety of religious traditions from Spiritualism to Santería. Trance states can be induced by drumming, chanting, clapping, and dancing as well as by breathing techniques, meditation, scrying (staring into a translucent object), and a variety of other methods. The function of trance states varies greatly according to tradition, time, and place, yet like other altered states of consciousness, trance is usually intended to facilitate communication between humans and spirits or deities.

Owing largely to the association of trance with mediumship, spirit possession, and the occult in North America, skeptics and orthodox religionists have often relegated trance to the margins of acceptable religious behavior, yet that has never dampened public curiosity. The nineteenth century produced a number of popular religious movements such as Spiritualism that featured trance as a central ritual. Spiritualist mediums, most of whom were women, would enter a trance state during public performances, claiming to speak with the dead, who often conveyed radical political messages as well as words of comfort. Spiritualism waned after 1860, yet it found enduring institutional expression in groups such as the National Spiritualist Association of Churches. Trance was also ritualized in meetings of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1876.

Interest in transpersonal psychology and in attempts to alter consciousness through meditation and other spiritual exercises led to a second eruption of interest in trance during the 1960s and after. Although the renowned psychic Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) had previously claimed to transmit messages from celestial beings and other spirit entities while in a trance state, it was Jane Roberts (1929–1984) who was first among a wave of New Age trance channelers. Roberts used trance states to connect with a spiritual entity she called Seth. In books such as The Seth Material (1970), Roberts published Seth's counsel on self-love and the divinity of humanity; these works circulated widely among readers interested in New Age spirituality. By the 1980s trance channeling proliferated, producing its own celebrities such as J. Z. Knight and Kevin Ryerson. During private readings and public performances at New Age gatherings, channelers like Knight and Ryerson would enter trance, then deliver messages from various spiritual entites ranging from ancient inhabitants of Atlantis to beings from other galaxies. Quite predictably, skeptics accused these channelers of defrauding their public.

Although trance channeling waned as a cultural phenomenon in the 1990s, interest in trance as a means of enlightenment continued unabated. The neoprimitive aesthetic and practice fostered by global youth culture included a style of popular dance music known as trance dance. At events of very long duration in urban nightclubs throughout North America and the world, young dancers met in loosely organized communities to induce trance states by rhythmically moving to heavily percussive, neopsychedelic music. Organizations such as the Texas-based Natale Institute have tried to connect this youth subculture with New Age neoshamanism, which promotes trance as a path to individual and collective healing.

See alsoChanneling; Chanting; Dance; Drumming; Healing; New Age Spirituality; Psychic; SanterÍa; Shamanism; Spiritualism; Theosophical Society.

Bibliography

Brown, Michael. The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. 1997.

Carroll, Bret. Spiritualism in Antbellum America. 1997.

Goodman, Felicitas. Where the Spirits Ride the Wind:Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences. 1990.

Hughes, Dureen. "Blending with an Other: An Analysis of Trance Channeling in the United States." Ethos 19 (1991): 161–184.

Taves, Ann. Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James. 1999.

Winkelman, Michael. "Trance States: A Theoretical Model and Cross-Cultural Analysis." Ethos 14 (1986): 174–203.

Jesse T. Todd