The Witch's Cradle

This is an article from Carl's previous blog, Conversations Across the Table, originally posted on Friday, May 13, 2005 Seabrook wrote about another sensory depreviation device believed to aid Extra Sensory Perception in Witchcraft: It’s Power in the World Today. He said that while vacationing in France he discovered a device -- “suspended by heavy chains from the ceiling was a life-sized contrivance of wood, with blackened leather straps . . . a witch’s cradle.” It was used to bind the user in an upright position inside a wood frame that could be raised free to swing and rotate while suspended in space. In other words, there was both sensory deprivation, as with the meditation mask alone, and a deprivation of movement combined with the sensation of weightlessness. In his autobiography, No Hiding Place published in 1942 he described his experiments with a reproduction of it. I’ve lost track of my copy of the book, but my recollection is that the results were similar to those with the meditation mask. I looked for more information on the Witch’s Cradle, with no luck. Then, much later, in the 1950’s, I started corresponding with Gerald Gardner and asked him if he knew anything about it. Gerald literally hemmed and hawed, and then referred me to several other people including Margaret Bruce and Charles Clark who did provide considerable more information, enough so that as the eager experimenter I was able to build my own version of the Cradle. Over the next several years several people experimented with it, but without any breakthroughs in either clairvoyance of out-of-body experiences. Yet I learned enough to write and publish an article in a short-lived magazine titled MinuteScope in 1964. I am going to republish that article in the Llewellyn Encyclopedia which can be found on-line at the Llewellyn website. That article was read by a number of people and then Robert Masters and Jean Houston built a somewhat similar device and patented it as ASCID – an Altered States of Conscious Induction Device. Since that time I’ve heard that others have experimented more successfully with similar cradles, but I’ve not had direct contact with any of them. Intent I go back to what I wrote recently in discussing rituals. I think the keys to obtaining real results with any aid or tool like this is direction and intention. In other words, an organized procedure intended to induce access to another realm of consciousness in order to answer a specific question or accomplish a particular mission. In those early days, I was not yet involved with a coven or even a group of really interested experimenters. Those who tried the cradle were curious, and mostly enjoyed the experience, but we were too inexperienced to get anywhere. The Book of Shadows It was also during this time that I was given the copy of Gardner’s own Book of Shadows as a carbon copy produced on his own typewriter, and told that I could publish it if I so chose. The time was too early. I will write more about that another time.