Watch MoviestoWatch. "It's something between a dream and being awake. An in-between state. And if you can stay there, then you can channel something out-of-this-world, non-human," said Butler, who is considered the heir to Kenneth Anger. Aleister Crowley practiced a magical ritual in which he brought his consciousness into a trance-like state by copulating between sleep and wakefulness in a hypnagogic state.