Contents

1. Ritual Trance—The Experience of Altered Realities

1.1 Shamanism and Ritual Trance
1.2 Shamanism and the Experience of the Soul
1.3 The Door to Paradise Opens Again
1.4 Physiological Effects of Trance

2. The Adventure Continues

2.1 Research into “New” Body Postures
2.2 The Olmec Baby—A Short Story About a Powerful Posture
2.2.1 The Olmec Baby
2.2.2 The Olmec Dragon
2.3 New Insights into Familiar Postures

3. Advice for the Practice of Ritual Trance Postures

3.1 Setting and Ritual
3.2 Ritual Accessories for the Trance Postures
3.2.1 Patterns for Accessories and Body Painting
3.3 Ritual Body Painting and Healing Postures

4. The Alternate Reality and Our Daily Life

4.1 A Trance Story with Mice
4.2 A Trance Story with the Bear Spirit
4.3 The Mystery of a Pilgrimage Chapel—A Trance Story

5. The Golden Bridge—Fairy Tales as a Key to the Door to the Alternate Reality

5.1 “Tell Me a Story!”
5.2 The Story of the Medicine Bear
5.3 The Red Raven

6. The Main Categories of Experience in the Trance Postures

6.1 Spirit Journeys
6.2 Initiation
6.2.1 The Secret of the Eleusinian Mysteries
6.3 Death and Rebirth
6.4 Healing
6.5 Metamorphosis
6.6 Myths as Experiences of Another Reality
6.6.1 A Map of the Lower World
6.7 Divination

7. Recently Researched Body Postures

8. Ritual Body Postures—Instructions and Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index of Body Postures