Catherine Clement, a well-known feminist in France, writes in the fields of anthropology and psychology. Her book, The Call of the Trance, provides vivid panoplies of scenes, ceremonies, and settings in which ordinary individuals, mostly but not exclusively women, seek out trance experiences as a form of escape or relief from the hardships and stresses of life, or as a ritual tool to create existential or spiritual metamorphosis. They seek out the captivity of the trance state, surrendering their individual will, their orientation to the world’s outward reality, and their connections to time, place, and identity, in order to gain power. She connects this activity with shamanic customs and transformative effects.
The narrative begins on page 1 with women far from Europe dancing to hypnotic, overwhelming drums, not for trivial entertainment, but rather as entranced captives of “the burning heart of the rhythm.” Clement points out elements of the human will, and often consciousness, still in existence, but deliberately circumvented. Her subjects crave the trance but do not go into detail describing its effects, or visions they may experience while in a trance state. Words seem inadequate, perhaps. Violence and fear at the total loss of control, which seem inescapable, trigger the necessary metamorphosis at the heart of the experience. If the person undergoing the trance is to emerge without serious lasting harm, supportive people standing by, not engaged in trance themselves, are necessary. Solo trances are dangerous (146).
The purgative effects of trance as Clement describes them would not seem alien to Aristotle, who found in the community experience of tragedy in the theater the purgative effects of fear and pity, wrapped up in the process of identification. If one takes Aristotelian identification a half-step farther one arrives at the trance-related alienation from oneself and perhaps from being human. Often trance states involve animal yelps and screeches, according to Clement, and/or lack of control over bodily functions, and lack of shame at performing them, much as animals are thought to behave. Some entranced people seem to vaunt their ability to endure pain and hardship, eating vile substances, starving themselves, or arranging for themselves to undergo severe physical ordeals such as crucifixion.
Clement proceeds from the assumption that the transformations wrought by trance are beneficial. The sacrifices they exact are high, and can include death. The process can mandate fear, pain, and such things as drinking potent fluids until one passes out. The trances Clement describes include animalistic behaviors—barking, screeching, howling, for example—to achieve a redemptive metamorphosis. In her eyes this kind of fundamental change, a catalyst affecting the individual and society, is by definition beneficial.
The coup de foudre--violent, obsessive love at first sight—many of the rites of adolescence and maturity, and certain extreme acts of religious devotion are all trance-inducing or trance-related phenomena, according to Clement. Nearly all involve extreme actions or physical suffering.
Scholarly readers will savor the book’s rich panoply of anecdotes, gleaned from medieval romances, modern American vampire sagas, and everywhere in between. It is this colorfully rendered catalog of trance-related events and conditions that such readers will find of greatest use.
There are no quiet, inward trance states here, no hermits or cloistered nuns achieving trance through ruminative prayer or long chains of Bible verses repeated hundreds of times. Christianity, or any other religion for that matter, is present only in reported extremes of ritual self-mortification. Trances as described here are not so much therapy as they are violent upheavals.
In Clement’s opinion trance states do not require people to engage in ridiculous actions, as stage hypnotists do, nor do they overcome people unawares, while they are praying or meditating. Instead, people set up the entry points for trance intentionally and plan them out in detail, as for a staged drama. Most interesting, perhaps, to scholars of mysticism, Clement’s description of medieval trances centers on knights and ladies, in romances that include magic, fantasy, and whimsy. They do not extend to medieval scholar-mystics such as Meister Eckhart or Beguine mystics such as Marguerite de Porete.
Visions are at the heart of the inwardly focused trance experiences of a good many medieval mystics, those who sought direct union with God or divine forces during their lifetimes. Their experiences in many instances yielded narratives, revealing their visions and experiences of another world or of encounters with beings on other planes of existence.
The trance states described by Clement consist mostly of description, from a non-entranced observer’s point of view, of the outwardly perceptible process of attaining and prolonging the trance state, or dealing with its aftermath. The entranced people do not tell their own stories about the experience.
It would be interesting to learn more about how the entranced people of Clement’s book incorporated their transformations—after the experience—into their lives. What impels them to return to seek out the experience again and again? What can they say about the experience other than to express their craving for it? Leaving the reader with a desire for more – this is a hallmark of a truly effective book. Clement’s is clearly a valuable contribution to the study of human consciousness and one of its alternatives. I recommend it highly.
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[Review length: 860 words • Review posted on March 1, 2015]