Discovering the origins of trance across cultures
- 05/09/2023
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If you’ve ever been to a rave party or techno night and felt like you were leaving your own body, you should know that many people around the world enter a trance thanks to music.
Repetitive rhythms combined with prolonged rotary dancing have a way of disconnecting the brain and taking those who indulge in it into mysterious territories.
Let’s embark on a psychedelic journey to discover ancestral cultures with expertise in altered states of consciousness.
Objectives of the trance state
The word “trance” comes from the Latin verb “transir”, which was used in the Middle Ages to mean to leave, to pass away, to pass on. Today, it’s used to describe a powerful sensation of floating beyond the realities of everyday life, allowing you to decompress and extract yourself from the real world. Fans of techno music and wild open-air parties know all about this feeling of escape. Hypnotized by maximum bass and head-spinning body movements, they generally manage to immerse themselves in a deep sense of well-being and a unifying collective euphoria that provides them with a particularly intense temporary bliss. Additional psychoactive substances such as cannabis, hallucinogenic mushrooms or methamphetamines help them to achieve this. Among the various peoples who engage in the same kind of activity, the aims are slightly different. These people are more interested in communicating with spirits, talking to ancestors and curing certain physical or mental ailments than in the recreational aspect described above. Here are a few examples of traditional rituals in which trance plays a key role.
The spiritual dances of the whirling dervishes
Let’s begin our journey among peoples who enter into trance through music and dance with a stopover in Turkey. This Muslim-majority country is home to the Sufi members of theMevlevi order. They are nicknamed the whirling dervishes. To get closer to God and feel his presence more concretely, they gather in groups and perform clockwise rotations to simulate the movement of the planets around the sun. They are dressed in long white robes that represent the shroud of earthly life. Melancholy music of flutes and drums and religious chants accompany them throughout their ritual. Together, these elements create a perfect harmony in the assembly, enhancing the spirituality of the moment. Tibetan monks, through the “Cham” dance, perform the same type of carefully codified ceremony to make contact with their deities.
Australian Aboriginal commemorations
When we look into the ancient customs of the historic inhabitants of the Australian landmass, commonly known as the Aborigines, we discover that these men and women, still largely unknown in France, have always been accustomed to celebrating the memory of their elders by going into a trance. Exhilarated by the notes of the didgeridoo and the rousing rhythm of the shaking sticks, they sing, shout and dance for hours on end, with the aim of reconnecting with their departed loved ones. The altered states of consciousness they achieve in this way bring back buried memories that are difficult to bring out under normal conditions. They seek to anchor themselves in the earth to benefit from its creative energy. During these rather special commemorations, speeches are also made by community leaders. They recount legends and stories related to the deceased. Some participants even claim to receive visions or messages from the other world, which they pass on to their comrades as advice on how to solve their current problems.
Shamanic treatments
The last great benefit of trance and the altered states of consciousness it implies is the healing of stubborn pathologies that modern medicine finds hard to treat. In fact, many Westerners travel to South America to benefit from the historical know-how of local shamans and find relief from pain. Tribes such as the Shipibo-Conibo in Peru, the Shuar in Ecuador and the Yawanawá in Brazil, for example, practice the famous ayahuasca ritual. This plant decoction has a powerful hallucinogenic effect. Combined with music and chants sung on a loop, it draws its users into unexplored areas of their brains. This deep meditation sometimes helps them to understand and overcome their unspoken traumas. Lessons that might have taken years to uncover through psychotherapy are learned in just a few hours on an initiatory trip through the Amazon jungle.
The next time you’re swept away by the decibels of a festival arena, and your wiggle makes you lose your footing, remember that this sensation is not surprising. In fact, it’s been sought-after all over the world since time immemorial. If you can master it, like the people who go into trance to heal or meditate, you’ll feel the full health benefits. Don’t forget that a good set of music and the total involvement of your body in the moment are more than enough to take you on a journey. Stimulants are just extras, and you can do without them.
