When in 1965 she began her studies in anthropology, Dr. Goodman was already an expert linguist. Her research on glossolalia (speaking in tongues) led quite naturally into investigating its experiential context: alternate states of consciousness (= ASC) but in particular, the religious (or ecstatic) trance, a specialized state of consciousness. Religious trance occurs in a religious context, that is, when one makes contact with an alternate, sacred reality. With the aid of her students at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, she devised a ritual for inducing this state that relied chiefly on sensory overstimulation. In general the ritual involves four basic steps. First, a purification rite establishes communication with the spirit world (alternate, sacred reality). Second, a period of relaxation focusing on breathing, clearing one’s mind of distractions, etc. Third, in a 15 minute period of rhythmic sensory overstimulation (by rattling or drumming 210 beats a minute), participants can experience a trance state (ASC) either completely or intermittently. Key to determining the nature and results of the trance experience is the assumption of a specific bodily “posture” held for this period of time. Fourth and finally, at the end of this period, participants send the spirits back to alternate reality with gratitude. Participants then record and interpret their experiences, and after a snack to break the preparatory fast, they share their reflections. Dr. Goodman’s research and ritual continued now by members of her Institute is not New Age Shamanism. It is rather an attempt to continue Shamanism in various contemporary contexts.

The Chiltan Spirits Posture
In the male version of this posture, the subject stands with feet parallel about six inches apart, toes pointed straight ahead. The face is trained straight ahead with eyes closed. Knees are slightly bent. The left hand is placed down along the waist with palm against the waist just to the right of the navel. The right hand is placed over the chest making a 30 degree angle from the lower left arm. In the female version, the subject sits in a cross-legged position, with the right leg crossed in front of the left leg. Subjects can select either posture regardless of their own gender.

Contemporary women shamans in Uzbekistan (central Asia) sit in the cross-legged version of this posture to enter trance. They call the spirits of forty-one female knights who assist in the shamanic task of healing. The female knights are known as the Chiltan Spirits and like to lick blood. For this reason, the shamans smear tambourines with the blood of sacrificed animals as an offering to these spirits for their help. This same posture has been identified elsewhere as well (Central America, North America, Central Asia, Alaska, West Africa) and spans a time period between 2000 B.C. to 700 A.D. Contemporary Western practitioners do not sacrifice animals or use blood.

Research prior to 2000
Earlier research by Dr. Goodman and her associates in the Institute at Columbus, OH and Santa Fe, NM discovered that trances occurring in this posture were characterized by the experience of multiple energies expressing the forty one female knights. Some have seen a circle of women swirling around a fire in a cave. The energy in his posture can effect powerful healing especially at a distance. Dr. Goodman documented one such experience in collaboration with a mutual friend, a pediatric nurse, in her book Jewels on the Path.

Healing techniques experienced in this trance include the slicing of a sick person down the middle for easier “hands on” therapy by the maidens, the use of sound and rhythm for the benefit of the sick person, and the use of fire for purification. The female spirits are sensed as “women in gauze,” “women with diaphanous wings,” “women in white swirling in gentle but powerful energy circles,” and the like.

Research between 2000 and 2007
This present report from the Annapolis, Maryland (USA) Research Group of Cuyamungue: The Felicitas D. Goodman (1914-2005) Institute summarizes seven years of research on the Chiltan Spirits ritual posture for achieving ecstatic trance (May 2000 – May 2007). The group meets for two hours once a week every week during the year. During this session, the ritual and a selected posture are experienced, discussed, and recorded. The ritual is preceded by the arrival and informal discussion among participants. It is followed by recording the experience, partaking of a snack to alleviate the preparatory fast, then sharing, discussing, and recording each member’s experiences.

During this seven year period (2000-2007), the Annapolis group researched the Chiltan Spirits posture nineteen times: 2000 - once; 2001 - twice; 2002 - three times; 2003 - three times; 2004 - four times; 2005 - three times; 2006 - three times. The group decides which posture to research during its informal discussion. Since Chiltan spirits is essentially a healing posture, group concerns about the health of its members or their relatives and friends (or world events, taking healing to mean restoration of meaning to life) usually determine the choice of this posture. Chiltan Spirits is but one of seventeen healing postures identified by the Institute, hence the relatively few times it is used in a given year. The number of researchers varies from week to week between three and ten, but a core group of four researchers has remained constant throughout this seven year period. The researchers who contributed to this report include: Joan Scott, Judy Lazarus, Melissa Moss, Pat McHold, Jan Fleming, Sue Williams, and Tony Teano.

Physiological experiences
Even with eyes closed, subjects see a gray color. The spirits appear in white gauzy material or something similar. Colors also indicate neurophysiological stages of trance: to see white is a sign of trance; orange indicates the trance is lessening; naturalistic colors indicate a further lessening. To see actual figures, clear and distinct, signals the end of the trance. The subject has returned to consensual reality. Indeed, consensus of the researchers is that this posture produces trances that have less visual content but are more kinesthetic.

Subjects (males and females) also feel an overwhelming surge or intermittent surges of swirling energy from the bottom to top of the body. At other times it is felt through different parts of the body. Since the energy is predominantly associated with women on horseback, it would seem to reflect the grounded earthiness of female energy. Yet the energy is always healing. Some subjects who arrived at the session with a physical issue (congestion; headache; etc.) felt improved at the end of the trance. Indeed, this posture does stimulate multiple energies. Related to the experience of energies is an experience of heat (being hot), quite likely related to actual physiological changes in the body.

Trance content
Subjects experience intense female presence of the warrior maidens who are the source of energy in this trance. The experience is variously interpreted by subjects. Sometimes it is healing energy, but sometimes it is rage or fury of the maidens at a condition or situation presented for their healing intervention.

Sometimes sounds and rhythms characterize the trance experience. This is likely because sound and rhythm are capable of effecting healing. Musicians have heard operatic arias, ecclesiastical and other chants, or seen the maidens dancing in a balletic style. A Slavic American subject has heard traditional Slavic music. Other subjects repeat mantras. For instance, “heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed” (sana me Domine, et sanabitur anima mea); or a Taizé chant melody (France): “Grant to me O Lord, a heart renewed; Recreate in me your own spirit Lord.”

Ethnic influence
One of Dr. Goodman’s guiding principles was to propose a posture to a research group but not inform them about the trance experience that it might produce. The Annapolis research group still honors and observes this principle when the occasion arises. A bilingual Slavic American member of the group was instructed in how to hold the posture (but not told about the 41 warrior maidens or its use by shamanesses in Uzbekistan). When the ritual began, he entered trance. The male subject was disappointed not to have visual content. Gradually the subject began to sense an intense female presence but chided himself thinking that this might be some sort of projection. Some time later, the sound track of the trance changed into his ethnic language. His entire being switched into that mode: thinking, hearing, all with grammatical correctness. Again, he chided himself for allowing his mind to wander back to the land of his heritage which he has visited regularly in recent years.

In sharing his notes with the group afterward, he admitted embarrassment and disappointment over the content of his trance. His experienced associates laughed and told him about the association of this posture with 41 warrior maidens who assist in the healing process. His sensing of intense female presence was quite congruent with this posture. Furthermore, since contemporary shamanesses in Uzbekistan, a state of the former Soviet Union located in central Asia, sit cross-legged in this posture, it is also not surprising that a bilingual Slavic American subject would switch into the Slavic mode: thought, language, music, and all.

Individual Belief Systems (Ideology)
Members of the Annapolis research group represent a broad spectrum of religious belief systems both by birth and by choice. Some have remained in one tradition while others have integrated other traditions as well. These traditions help to shape both the experience and its interpretation. Dr. Goodman thought that the trance experience is generally vacuous. The individual subject supplies the sound track and the interpretation. Indeed, only the individual can interpret and reinterpret the trance experience.

The bilingual Slavic American subject is also a Catholic Christian, and his trances routinely have a distinct Christian dimension. His experience in the trance induced by the Chiltan spirits posture and his interpretation of it is distinctively Christian, hence theistic. The final comment of his interpretation of the first experience of the posture was: “It must be of God.” Other researchers offer similar interpretations in accord with their respective belief systems.

Group experience
Dr. Goodman encouraged group research, though personal experience of religious ecstatic trance is certainly possible and indeed quite traditional. There are, however, advantages to the group experience. One consistent element in group trance experiences is a congruence of imagery. We record our experiences immediately after the ritual. Then when each individual reports her or his experiences, others point out overlaps with their experience. Such congruence seems to confirm that all the researchers have arrived at the same place in alternate, sacred reality. Nevertheless, each member perceives it differently!

Sharing experiences helps each member fill in gaps. Even recording the experience as we do immediately after the ritual, very often the sharing of one individual will remind another of something she or he forgot when transcribing his or her own experience. Moreover, though there is congruence of imagery, there also occur supplements to another’s experience. In one session, a researcher imagined self to be God involved in an activity. A second researcher reported seeing this first researcher in the trance and saw this person as God. The two trances complemented and affirmed each other.

Interpreting the experience
Interpretation of a trance experience is a process that takes place over time. Each subject in the research group writes a personal recollection of the experience immediately after the ritual ends. The recollection is often incomplete. The subsequent sharing of another’s report reminds one of something forgotten about the experience. On the way home, a subject reflects on the session. Upon arrival, the subject begins to transcribe and flesh out the sketchy notes. Returning to it later, the subject may alter it perhaps in line with a preceding or subsequent dream or other ASC experience. Reinterpretation of a trance experience seems to be a legitimate way of discerning its significance.

There is a precedent for such reinterpretation in the sacred writings of the Jewish and Christian traditions. Nothing in anyone’s Bible is an instant-replay, on the spot report. It is rather an interpretation and reinterpretation of an event or a memory or a statement which might or might not have taken place. What we hold in our hands today is the end product of a long line of interpretation and reinterpretation. Teachers and preachers, of course, continue the process. So it is with religious ecstatic trance experiences as described by Dr. Felicitas Goodman.

Conclusion
The basic insights of Dr. Felicitas D. Goodman concerning religious ecstatic trance continue to be confirmed by the ongoing research of the Institute she founded. This report on the trance experiences in the Chiltan Spirits ritual posture by the Annapolis, MD research group contributes additional insights. Further research and reports by this group are in progress. See http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/pilchj/Goodman%20Institute.html

John J. Pilch, Ph.D. is adjunct professor of biblical studies in the Theology Department at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. He has lectured widely in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Africa and is a well published and translated author. He also serves as a board member for the Cuyamungue Institute.

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