XLV Why Counting Down?

One could speculate, counting down is doing things backward, though, back when I thought hypnosis demonic, this was not one of my arguments.

There are two reasons which are in and of themselves not demonic.

First, entering the hypnotic state is scaling down attentions and tensions. And going to numbers that are fewer and fewer mirrors this.

The other is, whether you use hypnosis to get some relief from stress or fatigue, or you are trying a therapy to change your behaviour - or both combined - you will sooner or later have to try to do hypnosis with no external hypnotist, so called autohypnosis.

What does the counting downwards have to do with this?

There is one degree of confusion where you forget you were counting, and a somewhat lesser one, where you forget what number you were at ... and here it doesn't much matter which way you are counting. But at an even lesser one, you could be aware you are counting and aware where you are, and yet forget where you were supposed to stop. Counting from the total down to one helps with this.

Obviously, in the case of stress relief, the more confused you are (for the moments) the better, since the deeper hypnosis. But the confusion won't remain that deep, unless you do sth to get deeper or remain in trance, you will be gliding soon up from trance (sooner or later, depending on fatigue or prior habit), and this means, you will also be back at where you can do the counting.

In the case of hypnotic affirmations, it is obviously equally useful to start from the total number, if the number is anywhere important (like 21 times).

So, I'll stand against superstitious views (including my past own ones) of hypnosis as demonic, and consider it in and of itself as licit, provided the goal is licit.

The alternative would be to have a kind of rosary, as with the rosary prayer./HGL