American Traditional Witchcraft

This is a transcript from a conversation on Facebook on The Mysteries and if they can be taught or not.

I don't care how long you've been a Witch or a Pagan, or how adept you think you are, I guarantee you will never be able to teach the Mysteries to another person, not face to face, not by video, not by email. Those Mysteries require experience. And if you say you're teaching the Mysteries to someone by any of those methods, you're a fraud and a charlatan. In fact, I daresay that the Mysteries of which you speak aren't even the same for everyone, so how in the eff do you think you can teach them?  --Alan Fuller, Author and Owner at WitchInTheBurbs.com

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I would say that you can give guidance on how to enter trance but not much on what will happen to a person during trance, because it's so different for each person. In learning how to trance, I did read a lot of articles about *how* to do it, but there were only generalized statements on what would happen during it, or clues to let you know that you had reached trance. But the actual experience is your own. The best advice I got as a beginner was to set yourself up for trance and then start daydreaming. I am an expert daydreamer!!! :) Dancing, drumming, darkness, and a bonfire are great creators of trance. There are also many cultures who do group circle dancing. The charismatic Christians who speak in tongues are trancers as well.
So I agree with you --- the method may be suggested and practiced, but the actual Mystery itself is given individually and is only meant for that person.  -- F.O., pagan, practitioner of trance, tarot reader

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Mysteries seem to appear almost by accident. Sometimes by greater design, but even that feels accidental. The only thing a guide, or teacher, can give you is a method to make you more accident prone. Maybe that method can be transferred by morphic resonance but I feel even that would be better in person. There's an energy that is more easily accessed when we're searching together with other like minded folks. --- Tim Wilkerson, astrologer, practicing alchemist, and author.