ABSTRACT
The days of the Golden Dawn several occultists have developed trance and ‘active imagination’ approaches to magic which in many ways resemble the techniques of traditional shamanism. Austin Osman Spare learnt his technique of atavistic resurgence, or trance activation, from a witch named Mrs Paterson who claimed a psychic link with the witches of the Salem cult. Like Spare, Edwin Steinbrecher regards the Guides as entities who lived on earth in a former time but who have entered a psychic plane and have become ‘humanity’s lost teachers’. The shamanic aspect aside, the Inner Light group highlighted the role of the feminine archetype in much the same way as Austin Spare had done: it is the woman that holds the keys of the inner planes for a man. The Inner Light developed a series of guided meditations which, for each member, heightened the imagery of the mythic environment and made possible an internal ‘transfer of consciousness’ to the locale concerned.
