There are many ways of doing this. My very first attempt entailed using a mirror in the bathroom with a white sheet over the shower curtain behind me to act as a white background, and a dim light for the check. Eventually the relaxed focus became possible and the steamy vapor of the innermost level became visible.

But I needed a little more validation than that. I knew people who could see auras, of others anyway, in bright colors, and a tenuous vapor that could have been due to eye fatigue didn’t seem too much of an achievement.

Then I did some more work on the mantra of Sophia and things began to go better. This simple method of seeing the aura projected from the fingers is very satisfactory and leads to the confidence necessary to do greater things. So I now advise novices or frustrates to start with the method that is very suitable to all Goddess oriented groups and soloists.

This comes from the Goddess worshiped by the Gnostic Christians of the 1st Century, who were pretty much wiped out by the persecution of the Pauline Christians. The Gnostics thought that personal experience was superior to blind faith in a dogma invented by another person.

The Holy Ghost was associated by the Gnostics with the goddess Sophia, otherwise known as Wisdom in scriptures. This Sophia used the mantra AIO (aaah…eeee…ooooh) when confronted with obstacles to her work. This particular word, and its six permutations has been sacred to many over the centuries, though few knew its origin, only its power. The name Sophia has the same vowels in another permutation.

When Sophia as primal goddess energy burst into the world again at the discovery of the Nag Hammadi scriptures in 1945 every aspect of goddess worship was enhanced, and has continued to grow since. Check your Craft and pagan history and you will see that this is so.

Sophia is one of the great goddesses to contact for any ritual purpose because her name was used in the Greek to translate the work of both Chokmah and Binah on the Kabbalah Tree. She is therefore the first entity available to the human psyche after the Creative Swirl that initiated the universe.

Here then is what to do. In a dim light hold your hands close together, palms parallel, so that you can see the gap between them. Use the Great Voice, which is the soundless one that booms in your head, (if you haven’t come across that term before), and say Aaaaah, locating at at the back of your head. Change to Eeeeee as you slide down the nape of the neck, and Oooooh as you drop between the shoulder blades.

Feel from this point the flow of energy down each arm into the hands. Repeat this three times and watch the area between your palms. The dual relaxation brought about by the mantra and its energizing potential will result in your seeing what looks like a mist forming between the palms, and the palm chakras will begin to feel hot. If you are a Reiki person you will recognize the feeling.

Continue to build up the power in the area with the same word and method until you know that it is happening. Then prove it by extending your hands parallel to the floor and holding the outstretched fingers a few inches from each other. At this point you will see what look like extended fingers of vapor streaming between the fingers. To validate the experience lower one hand and you will see the same trails now joining the finger tips at an angle instead of following the lines of your fingers, which skeptics could, and would translate as a simple trick of tired vision.

When you have got to that stage your hands will look like lanterns to a clairvoyant. Bring both hands together and rest the palms lightly on your navel area. Now make a circle about a foot in diameter, moving round your navel the same way as the hands on a watch would move if it were placed face up on your body. Make several circles, each smaller than the one before and spiral in to the navel.

You have mended tears in your aura and have energized it throughout the body by doing this, and the bent lines of force from your fingers will bring the confidence that makes a lot of other stuff possible.

The practice of chanting AIO can be done at home and will connect you to whatever goddess is your current focus. Sophia seems to be the only goddess who crosses all egregores effortlessly. The AIO can be permutated to IAO, AOI, AOI etc. All work well. Ritualists and experts in matrika shakti will see why immediately. This is an all vowel mantra. The vowels represent feminine energy. It is the masculine consonants that interrupt the vowels in speech to form words. The vowels themselves emanate contiuous power.

Here is a prayer in English that uses the vowel orders of the Sophia mantra to produce a tangible magickal effect when repeated by anyone whose focus of worship is a goddess.

Lo, I have opened unto you
the gates of my being
And like a tide you have flowed
into me.
The innermost recesses of my
spirit are full of you
And all the channels of my soul
are made sweet with your
Presence.
I am utterly content.
In all my being there is no
ripple of unrest
For I have opened unto you the
wide gates of my being
And like a tide, you have flowed
into me.

Enjoy experimenting. It’s all you in the final analysis.