Ghostsooth is our word for deity yoga — devata yoga in the Tantric Buddhist and Hindu traditions. It is the most important form of Sooth in Tianmu.

In ghostsooth, the practitioner channels, becomes, or emanates a Ghost — whether that Ghost is a deity, an idea, a concept, an energy, or a quality. It is not mere visualisation or prayer. It is an act of becoming: one communes with the thing and brings it into the world through oneself. The boundary between practitioner and Ghost dissolves, and for the duration of the practice, one is the vessel through which that force expresses itself.

This is the same principle that underlies possession rites in many traditions, the tsam dances of Tibetan Buddhism, and the channelling practices of Shinto miko. In each case, the practitioner makes themselves transparent to a force larger than themselves, allowing it to move through them and into the world.

Ghostsooth can be practiced with any of the Twelve Ghosts, with Lowghosts, or with more abstract qualities and energies. What matters is the act of communion — the sincere opening of oneself to something beyond one's ordinary identity, and the willingness to let it reshape, however briefly, the way one moves and sees.

Because ghostsooth involves the direct embodiment of cosmic forces, it is the form of sooth most intimately connected to Weaving and to the cultivation of ghostly awareness described in the Twelveness.