Reiki Clowns & Psychedelic Aftershocks

Small interlude from our angel magick posts…

Yesterday (Monday), I was laying on a massage table, with Josephine, my Somatic Experiencing facilitator standing next to me.

“I can turn on the heat for the table,” said Josephine. Her voice, much like the dimmed room, was calm and grounded.

It was close to 6pm, and the Sun runs away early in NYC winter. But I wasn’t drowsy when I closed my eyes. So, I wasn’t dreaming when I saw, through my mind’s eye, a tall clown at the foot of the table.

I know this clown well. When I was in kindergarten, my older cousins were watching Poltergeist on VHS and that’s when that clown came into my life. Then, there was Killer Clown from Outer Space. And Stephen King’s It (both the book and the TV movie with Tim Curry).

I’ve had raging coulrophobia (or the phobia of clowns) since I was a child, even though I’ve never personally encountered a clown in real life. And it’s not like I think about clowns 24/7 - instead, this menacing figure stays at the very edges of my periphery, only popping in when I’m closing my eyes while washing my face, or about to go to sleep.

Sure, I tried to do shadow work around this phobia, around this clown. According to Internal Family Systems, this clown was a part of me, and I wanted to know why it was there. Once, I asked the clown, “will you please change your costume? Show up in a hoodie and Anonymous mask instead. The clown get-up makes me really really scared.”

The clown part seemed to agree. For a day or so, it came in like Anonymous. But, like an abusive boyfriend, it couldn’t help but go back to its terrifying clown form.

Things escalated after my Bufo experience back in June of this year. Suddenly, the clown was right in front me, constantly. No longer just showing up on the visceral edges of my imagination.

Instead, it stood in the doorway of my bedroom, staring at me.
It came up and hovered over me as I lay down.
It opened its mouth, as if it wanted to devour me.

6 months out, the clown is still omnipresent in my hallucinations, but maybe I’m getting used to it so it’s not quite as jarring to see. The clown stood, as usual, right at the doorway of the room. Not exactly asking for permission to come in. But not yet ready to breach the boundary.

But then it walked over the doorway threshold, and it morphed. No longer a clown, but instead a woman with dark stringy hair. She stood by the table and leaned over to examine me. This is not the first time the clown morphed into a human form.

“I see the clown, the clown I told you about? But now he’s turned into a woman who is looking over me,” I told Josephine. “But I’m not scared.” ← half-lie

Why did this clown suddenly appear during my session with Josephine? This is a rhetorical question. The clown is a harbinger. I should have been prepared for what happened next.

“What part of your body feels neutral?” Josephine asked.

“My legs. My knees.” I closed my eyes, and was circling my ankles, reminding myself that, despite the fluttering of weird feels in my chest, at least my legs, my ankles, my knees, they were ok. Neutral. Just chillin’.

This is what Somatic Experience does - it helps us remember that there is still small places of somatic safety in our body. Even if it is at the very tip of our toes.

Josephine’s voice seemed closer, “What if I were to put my hands above your knees?”

This is another thing Somatic Experience can be (depending on the practitioner). Josephine also is a Reiki practitioner.

My knees starting to tingle like crazy. As if there was some electrical nodes glued to the skin. Damn, Josephine’s hands must be on point tonight.

The tingle starts to get intense, like now I was being slathered with Icy Hot ointment while the electricity was being turned up. The tingling becomes a cold burning inside the blood, the nerves, of my legs, as it zings down to my feet, and then up the sides of my abdomen, going to my shoulders and down my arms. I feel scared.

“Oh this is a weird feeling,” I say, my tone as casual as possible. Until the electricity moving up my arms suddenly goes into my chest and I lose my breath.

Time out.
Time out.

“Hmm, ok, I think in the spirit of titration, we should stop here,” I say. Titration is a big thing in Somatic Experiencing, which mean you don’t go hard into intensity. Instead, you titrate, just go slowly drip by drip into intensity, and as soon as the first inkling of overwhelm hits, you retreat. Titration is the opposite of flooding.

I was flooded when I inhaled Bufo. I wasn’t ready for that invisible hand to reach in and grab me and fling me into the void.

“My breath…I’m losing it.” I think there is something in the tone of my voice that is starting to veer into panic. No, please, I don’t want to be flooded again.

“Open your eyes.” Josephine’s voice is firm. Immediately, my eyes spring open and I look up at the white ceiling.

And then her voice turns gentle again. “You are not back at the retreat, smoking Bufo. You are here, right here right now. On this massage table. And by the way, I haven’t even put my hands on your knees yet.”

What? How is that possible?

My head starts to feel fuzzy, like I put my head inside a large ringing bell. I feel like two things: my head, my consciousness. My consciousness is starting to separate from my body / head, and my vision doubles.

No, please, I don’t want to be flooded again.

I start circling my ankles again, and lift my arms as if I’m the conductor of an orchestra. The electricity in my body is still zipping around in a full body circuit. It’s mini-shock, I think. Because I am getting freezing cold. And I remember watching those Law & Order episodes where people in car accidents were given warm blankets after seeing someone get shot in front of them.

“Yes, good. You are in control. You can open your eyes. You can move. You don’t have to be swept away. You are here now,” says Josephine. “Maybe you want me to move away from you? Give you space?”

Yes, let’s try that. Because while I’m still vibrating with shock, my mind is starting to swirl with questions about what just happened to me. If Josephine didn’t even start the Reiki with her hands, why am I losing my breath?

“Sometimes, just putting my attention on a body part can create energy,” Josephine explains. As she pushes her chair away, I can feel that she is now purposely turning her attention and gaze away from me. “It’s like…when you just know someone is standing behind you even if you can’t see them. You can just feel them.”

I still feel my consciousness floating around my head. If I just melted into it, if I just surrendered into it, I think that I would have an out-of-body experience. But I’m not ready to leave my body. Sounds scary. Also, I still need to take the NYC subway home.

So I do what I do best: ground myself.

This is where years of doing occult rituals is my saving grace. I have a level of control over my consciousness that I am starting to realize is above average. Just like I can very easily go into altered hypnosis states while in ritual, I can also “snap out it” easily as well.

Is this what 7 years of occult ritual was ultimately about? To learn to have agency and control over my consciousness?

Whether I’m working with demons or angels or any ritual, I don’t allow myself to be jerked around when I’m not ready. But psychedelics have jerked me around.

Don’t jerk me around.

I sit up on the table, still a little out of it. When I feel loopy, I go deep inside myself, to the solid anchor of stability that I’ve cultivated for years inside of me.

“We’re doing this again,” I tell Josephine. The trepidation I had felt just minutes before have turned to excitement, curiosity.

Is this a new way to do ritual? Is this is a new way to do psychedelics, without the psychedelics?