Some of Julie’s early work in channel about channeling from 1987.
• Can doing this work, and these rituals, be dangerous or evil? This work could seem dangerous to dogmatic belief systems and rigid thought forms like those in organized religions. Experimenting with and revising your beliefs may seem dangerous. There is no hell and damnation. However, ritual created with the intent to do harm is dangerous to the creator because “what you create is with you.” View Section
• What is the purpose of oracles and how can they be used? “[These] draw from your own pool of knowing/not knowing and show you what the inner landscape of your awareness is like.” View Section
• Why do some people who begin automatic writing or channeling at first get very positive information, and then it becomes grandiose, punishing and authoritarian? “In the presence of a weakly-developed ego structure, the individual may draw up elements of its own internalized self-hater.” This voice will then take on the mask of a channel personality. View Section

   Micciah:  We greet you, dear friends.

   Julie:  We do greet you, indeed.  This is Micciah Channel, and I’m Julie Winter.  Micciah is an energy entity who works with me while I’m in trance, and while I’m in the trance state I have access to a point of view that seems to come from a non-physical realm.  This series of programs is drawn primarily from videotapes taken during my regular classes.  We want to expand our circle, and include your energy and interest in our work.
   This program is taken from two separate sessions.  It’s about the nature of channeling, what channeling is.

   Micciah:  So, please, what are your questions?

   Woman:  Well, this question came about because I wanted to do a prosperity ritual with a friend of mine who’s not familiar with this work, and when I explained it to him, his reaction was that the ritual sounds religious in the wrong way.  And I was wondering if, in doing these rituals on our own, in working with them..., among our friends, people who aren’t doing the work, doing them on our own, is there a way of doing them that is dangerous?  That could be dangerous, working with trying to go, you know, deep inside and empowering ourselves?

   Micciah:  Well, first we must define what you mean by danger.  So what are you meaning by dangerous?

   Woman:  Hmmm.  Well, is it, um, is it possible in doing this work, in trying to work with consciousness and manifesting things in our lives to be perhaps drumming up evil forces or...  [laughs]  That type of thing.  Dangerous in uh ummmm.  I think that’s probably mainly what it is.

   Micciah:  What would be an evil force?  The evil forces were really invented by religions.  There are evil spirits, in many group beliefs.  Christianity developed the evil spirit of all time, the devil.  And, uh, theologically Christianity is based on exactly what we were speaking of. The more you split life experiences, ordinary life experiences — eroticism, sexuality, joy in your body, loving your food, wanting to touch people, dancing in, uh, the wind, whatever — the more you split off the deep needs of the body and spirit, the more you say “These impulses are good and nice, these impulses are bad and wrong,” the more evil persists, the more you have a devil to tempt you.  So, what would be an evil spirit?  What would be your idea of how that could turn out?

   Woman:  Hmm.  [pause]  Huh.  Well it’s interesting because it makes me realize I’m asking this question for my friend in a sense.

   Micciah:  So you would have to know what he meant by evil spirits.

   Woman:  Umhuh. Because my feeling when he said it was this is coming... I felt like it was a member of the, you know, Catholic hierarchy talking to me and saying, “This is religion in the wrong way.”

   Micciah:  Well of course this is exactly not religion.  Religion is composed of a system of beliefs, and most often, although perhaps as in the case of the Jewish commentaries you can comment on it, you, uh, it is not up to you to be wiggling it around and revising it. So this is exactly not a religion.  There may be an association, a popular association of the idea of ritual with religion, because there you are exposed to consciously chosen rituals but you don’t choose them, they are in the religion, in the context of religion, you see.  You have that association.  Your lives are full of rituals that are unacknowledged and therefore not enjoyed or conceived of as powerful.  To not know your own innate skill and divinity, that is, uh, the greatest loss.  There are no evil spirits.  We interpret this as an expression of fear that has been induced around the natural playfulness of consciousness wanting to know more about itself and experimenting with form.  If you did not want to experiment with form, you would not be here.  You would be elsewhere.  There is the feeling that the decision to experiment yourself is somehow dangerous.  Or that you’re not really experimenting yourself, but you have divorced yourself from the acceptable religions   (many of which of course have waged horrendous war and violence, violence on the world, you know, in the name of religion).  You are divorcing yourself from some acceptable safe religion, you have chosen some other competing brand, Brand X, with its own prescribed activities that are counter to those loving and acceptable notions of hell and the devil.  Or whatever.  We are being somewhat facetious.  But it is fear.  It is induced by fear at the playfulness of consciousness.  If you say, “Well, no,  we have, I have learned certain things and, uh, I, my living experience is that we are powerful, and it is our birthright to experiment in consciousness,” that evokes fear.
   Now, it depends, you see.  Ritual is very powerful, can be very powerful.  If you create a ritual the core intention of which is to harm someone, then of course that is dangerous.  It is far more dangerous to you than it is to the other person.   What you create is with you.  So what is important is your intention.  What are you up to when you are deliberately designing a ritual that says, “Let us celebrate the natural prosperity and abundance of all that is.  Abundance is a law of the universe.  I am part of the universe.  It is not other than me.  I will celebrate, with crystals, with water, with flowers.  I will align myself in some way that I choose with that abundance, to be a funnel for it.” Or, “I will align it with myself to put it in my bank account and never share it with anyone.”  Is that evil?  No.  It will not ultimately be as pleasurable as knowing that you are just a conduit for abundance.  And let us add that you could go through a ritual designed by the Catholic Church, or by the Hindus or the Jews, you could go through, you could make your own, any kind of ritual that touches your heart.  So no, it is not dangerous.
    We would say praying to save your soul from eternal damnation is dangerous, in the sense that it presupposes there is...

   Woman:  Eternal damnation.

   Micciah:  Yes.  Eternal damna...  something a litle wrong with you to begin with.  [laughter]  Something that you will never work off.  It’s always there. Is that clear?

   Woman:  Yes.

   Micciah:  And it’s all right if someone is afraid, you don’t have to convince anyone.  It might be useful for them to think about the rituals they already perform.  What you call neurotic behavior is a stylized ritual of — all rituals are stylized — but it is a distortion of the dynamic principle in some way that was originally construed to protect you.  So.  War is most assuredly a ritual.

   Julie:  Okay.  Stop for a moment.  Pay attention to what your response is to the information that’s just been given.  Does it seem to be comfortable, right, and appropriate for you?  Would you like to think about it further?  What does your body feel like right now?  What is your breath like right now?  And now we’re going to go back and do some more channeling.

   Woman:  Micciah, what is the purpose of oracles?  Or how can oracles be used?

   Micciah:  You mean oracles people or oracles like the I Ching or the tarot cards?

   Woman:  Both.

   Micciah:  An oracle such as the tarot cards or the I Ching, which is a very old book of Chinese origin, draw from your own pool of knowing/not knowing and show you what the landscape of your awareness, your inner landscape, is like.  So if you are troubled or seeking further knowledge about some issue it is a very useful practice to have a relationship with an oracle. It could be the tarot cards, it could be the I Ching, it could be the rune stones, could be tea leaves.  Again, to use the, uh, the magnet idea, you are full of knowing, and you are often also full of peekaboo, hide-and-seek about your knowing, particularly about yourselves.  “I don’t know about myself.”  So when you use the cards, for instance, you are drawing from the aspect of the self that does know.  Not “know” in the sense of “I am right,” but it is a mirror.  Oracles also, people.  There have been people in, again, many many cultures who underwent rigorous training — Make no mistake, it is a skillful act if it is properly done — to become like mirrors,  and, depending on the culture and the way the journeying evolved, to cross into other dimensions and bring back that wisdom as part of the natural way of being alive in a web, a crystal of so many facets.  The Bible is full of prophecy, yes?  The Native American people, various groups, have ways of speaking with the other realms.  Shamans in different tribes.  You are trying to develop it in your culture.  And, uh, so,  the oracles are mirrors,  and hopefully give you insight and information, give you a way of reframing something that puzzles you so you can go into it with greater awareness.  “Ah, yes, that is it.  I am to meditate on rivers.  Or roses.”  Or, “I am to use the wiliness of a fox in dealing with this situation. I have to find out about the fox.”  Now also in your culture you don’t, you have not incorporated the wisdom of animal allies and their intelligence, so you might have a harder time being the fox.  But you can develop your resources.  You are in the process of developing your resources.

   Julie:  Okay.  Again.  I’ve just done a chunk of channeling. Stop for a moment and pay attention to what your own internal response is to what you’ve just seen and heard. What do you feel like with this information? How do you see it? HOw does the hearing of it strike you personally? Notice your breathing. Notice the way your body feels. Okay. Now we’re going to go back to the rest of the program.

   Micciah:  Yes.

   Brenda:  Micciah, Julie had a question about people who do, I’ve forgotten the type of writing...

   People in class:  Automatic writing.

   Brenda:  Automatic writing.  Why some of them get into trouble.  It seems that at first they receive very clear, positive messages, and then they start getting grandiose and punitive and controlling.

   Micciah:  Yes.  Again, it is different...  What really...  The mechanics of what transpires is different depending on the person.  But, uh, to do this kind of work, although it is not in itself in any way dangerous... People who fall into difficulties probably would have fallen into some other kind of difficulty called something else.  Not always, but often.  But it takes one who, to use psychological terms, has, is a strong and quite healthy ego.  In the presence of, uh, a weakly developed or damaged or abraded ego structure, the individual may draw up elements of its own internalized self-hater, what is called the self-hater, what, you know, Starhawk has written about.  The voice that you, most of you carry within you that is, um, an introjection, a swallowing down of punitive cruel messages you have received that then becomes a voice you carry, and you turn that voice on yourself.  “Oh you fool!  You idiot!”  This voice is quite, uh, self-important.  And if, uh, in the relaxed state one begins to write, and that voice is what springs out, the material will be of the nature of that voice.  Self important, um, falsely martyred. “We come to you at great cost.”  Punitive.  Controlling.  So you, what you are getting often, oftentimes, is a very big version of that voice.  Not so pleasant.  It’s full of fear, it’s full of hatred, born of the fear.  That is most often what happens. Then the person reads this on the paper; this, this aspect of the self purports itself to be very powerful, ready to count you out if you don’t obey!  And it is very frightening.  That aspect of the self, the self-hater, takes on the cloak of a wise one, and it is a distortion.  And it can be very frightening. So...
   We will leave you now.  We thank you all for being here.  And we bid you a very good and joyful evening.

   Julie:  I want to remind you that the channeling that I do with Micciah is really an ongoing exploration; in watching and listening, you’re part of the exploration.  So the work is here and it is our intention to share it with those of you who watch.  You need to evaluate it for yourselves, to go over the information, to assess what feels right to you, use what feels right and let the rest go.