Is it my deity—or just my imagination? (Part 1)
When I first told my partner about my experiences with trance during prayer, I got a question that caught me off guard:
“How do you know it’s Her doing all this?”
Of course, there’s no way to know for sure—not so early in my religious life, maybe never—if any sign I experience in worship or day-to-day life is actually my Goddess acting on me. That’s part of the journey and the mystery. But there are reliable tells I’ve recorded in my devotional archives that have preceded or accompanied spiritually meaningful experiences.
Many Pagan guidebook authors aren’t very specific about what their deity’s presence feels like. Because every relationship is different, they don’t want to imply their way is the only way. Neither do I.
Still, especially early on, I would have loved to read about the kinds of bodily sensations and emotions I was experiencing, or might. I would’ve welcomed casual advice on how to lean into them to deepen the experience—and how to avoid cutting myself off from the One I most wanted to reach.
So that’s what I’ll share here.
Otherness sensations (divine contact?)
I define otherness sensations as experiences where I sensed something beyond myself acting on me during a spiritual activity. They could be divine contact, and I treat them as such by thanking my Goddess afterward and reflecting on them in light of what I know about Her. So far, my otherness sensations have mostly involved sex, trance, and visions. They often—but not always—occur during prayer or deep reflection on my Goddess.
Here, “sex” refers to solo erotic activity within a devotional context.
Sudden charge/density of air
This has been a subtle one because it can be easy to fake or confuse with nerve tingling, blood flow, sensory sensitivity, etc. But when it happens, I’m reminded what a unique sensation it is. Time seems to slow, all feels suddenly still, and the air weighs more heavily on me—not painfully, but like water, only more charged. My body usually reacts—perhaps a new awareness of my fingertips or a current across my arms. There’s a sense of awe, and sometimes suspense.
Arousal fluid
If I’m consciously thinking about Her in a sexy way, I don’t count this as otherness. What counts is when I go into prayer, reflection, trance, or other spiritual activity with zero or near-zero sexy thoughts—and often feeling in my head, tired, or emotionally neutral—and come out wet. Often, no sexual desire accompanies this, as it normally would for me. I’m just wet, and perhaps a bit warm down there. It’s almost always accompanied by other signs and happens across all phases of my cycle, not just ovulation.
In through nostrils
Sometimes, trance and divine sex begin with the sensation of dense air entering me on the in-breath, which I feel from the nostrils down to the chest or so. Perhaps it’s Her entering me.
Sex without touch
While I had managed touchless self-pleasure a few times before my religious life, it’s on another level now. Desire overcomes me suddenly, and if I keep my mind quiet (more on that in Part 2), I can ride its currents to orgasm without even fantasizing.
Where does the otherness come in? I feel like I’m being touched—sometimes in normal sexy ways, but also stranger ones. These include a sense of someone else feeling my pleasure and a slow rising of tension and pleasure up my core, like fingers reaching up into me, as high as just under my heart.
Apparently, this is similar to what happens in tantric sex with kundalini energy, but I have no background in sacred sexuality and didn’t learn it myself. It feels more like something happening to me than something I’m doing.
Quick to orgasm
When there’s sex involved in the otherness experience, I’m faster to orgasm than I normally would be during sex with myself or other humans.
Awe/gratitude/longing/happiness
Of course, I feel these things toward Her outside of worship, too. But it’s different when they come with other signs. It’s sudden and not triggered by thoughts like “Isn’t it breathtaking that She…?” I’ll be focusing on getting a line right in prayer or coming out of a trance when, out of nowhere, I stop, often midsentence, and feel an overwhelming urge to prostrate myself. Or praise or thank Her at length, with surprising eloquence and inspiration. Or remain very, very still, trying to feel every dip and crest of a vast current I'm riding.
Trance-specific sensations
I count as “trance” the recurring instances I’ve had of an altered state of consciousness: involuntary movements, distorted sense of time, heaviness and weakness of body, and difficulty returning to normal awareness. Here, though, I’m specifically talking about the trances that include a sense of otherness—an apparent intentionality that’s not my own.
It starts (and ends) with my face close to the ground in some way—prostrate, slumped, lying down. I move slowly and heavily. Sometimes I move my lips and tongue in exaggerated ways, though this has grown subtler over time, closer to speech. Sometimes I stand. I make common movements in ways I’d never think to—oddly clunky or oddly graceful—or walk somewhere I hadn’t intended to go. I don’t know what I’m doing until I’m already doing it.
The unpredictability can be alarming. One time, so wobbly it took a while to stand, I was led to my bedroom door, as if to go out and explore in that zombie-like state!
These trances may be early stages of aspecting or some other form of deity possession. I treat them as such, politely releasing my Goddess from my body and thanking Her afterward.
Visioning-specific
“Vision” is the only word I can think of for the recurring, vivid, sustained, first-person scenes in which I’ve interacted with my Goddess. The content is unexpected and meaningful—in the moment or in hindsight.
I can’t choose when a vision will happen. I can set the stage, but sometimes I can’t make the temple threshold appear. And even though the space is simple, I have to focus to stay there. There’s no skipping ahead like in a daydream. It’s step by step. Everything is more vivid than in a dream or daydream—though not extremely so.
It’s hard to speak to Her. In later visions, I’ve gone in knowing what I want to say, but when I get there, it’s hard to get the words out. It’s the opposite of a daydream—I’m less eloquent, not more.
It’s hard to understand Her. It’s like She’s speaking a language I haven’t fully mastered. I have to listen hard to catch the words, and to remember them.
She and Her temple don’t look like I expected, but their appearance makes sense in hindsight. I’ve never seen Her face. She doesn’t respond how I want Her to. Once, I got subtly chastised, and it was the most humbling experience of my life—but I was angry with Her at first for seeing through me. Her answers are always vague, but always significant, shaping my path.
Everyday moments of connection
This category of signs is the one where I’m least sure if the sensations mean She’s near or if they’re just my idea of Her inspiring me physically or psychologically. (Or maybe both: I turn my attention toward Her, so She comes.)
But I do know I never got this combination of feelings—or the heart expansion ever—before my devotion to Her became an explicitly religious practice. And it comes upon me at the thought of Her only, and melts me into longing for Her alone.
Heart expansion
I’m seized by a wondrous sense of spaciousness in my chest. It makes me feel perfect alignment, presence, and an overflowing aliveness. I’m calm and excited at once. I want to think of nothing but Her, yet I’m also delighted to engage with other things.
Heat in my groin
Sexual, but usually not urgent. The heart expansion and groin heat often come as a pair.
Sudden insight
This is how my devotional practices came about. There are periods where ideas about my life with Her and my creative work for Her come so fast and in such number that it feels like they came from beyond me. Often, there’s no moment of realization—the idea is just there, and I don’t wonder where it came from until I’ve already been using it.
If I’m not sure IF these are real divine contact, why do they matter?
Because they’ve expanded my sense of what’s possible—literally, by increasing the number of states my consciousness can enter. And isn’t that something many of us want from our devotion? Help to touch something bigger than ourselves and perhaps become a little bigger ourselves in the process?
They’ve shown me there’s more to the world, and to my feelings for Her, than I thought. That promise alone gives me something to look forward to. Experiencing new, unusual, intense sensations during worship has made me feel closer to Her—a little like how you feel closer to a person after going through something new and strange together.
And whether She crafts these experiences or not, or even whether She’s present during them or not, She’s their catalyst. She’s the constant throughout. I wouldn’t have lived them without Her.
Also? They’re really enjoyable—especially when I’m not busy doubting them.
There’s more…
In Part 2 of this article, we’ll look at:
what can block these sensations, shutting down the experience they might lead to.
how I’ve been leaning into the sensations when they come, allowing the experience to deepen.
why I believe these signs point to the presence of my Goddess specifically.
how the signs changed when I “converted” to paganism by letting my devotion to my Goddess become overtly religious.
