So you want horns?
Grown by Prospero
We look to the stars for transformation when there are magnificent aliens in our back gardens. When we talk of shapeshifting we normally mean lycanthropy: the transformation from human shape and psychology to that of a lupine beast. The practice awakens and develops the natural predatory and pack-associated instincts that are repressed and diverted by modern secular societies. Beyond the lupine form, shapeshifting operates throughout the panorama of our shared evolutionary heritage.
From an Initiatory perspective shapeshifting is essential if we are striving to understand the role of instincts in our decision making and behaviour, and to utilise those as a key to further awakened consciousness in daily life. It is not only fundamental to bind instincts under Will as Initiation progresses but to separate and distil our own unique and immortal essence by having a thorough map of the complete human being.
It is not difficult to identify that as the highest life form on the planet, ignoring the implications of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, human beings have a responsibility to understand and sustainably manage all other organic life forms within the biosphere that share in the phenomena called "life". This is a very different stance to that of major Right Hand Path religions and immature forms of the Left Hand Path which view other life forms as created for human use by a divinity or as inferior. On the contrary the Setian has the utmost respect for organic life in its diversity and seeks to intelligently preserve it rather than harm it.
With non-mammalian forms we get further from our own intrinsic nature shifting towards more alien modes of being. Some magicians will have experimented with Lovecraftian shapeshifting where the practitioner overcomes fears and embraces the unknown through, say, becoming a hybrid amphibian creature or a ghoul. This is one possible extension of human evolution, but perhaps the most frighteningly bizarre is the insect.
Our world is populated with these arthropodic creatures in many physical forms, social structures, and exhibiting numerous divergent adaptive mechanisms and behaviours. Compare the hierarchical society of the ant where each organism is a part of the whole, having its own role from soldier [big ones] to feeder [little, common ones] to queen [the fertile one] to coloniator [the winged ones] to the solitary existence of the Preying Mantis. The female Preying Mantis eats its mate, and with its long slicing thoracic pincers and hypnotic movements it was used as a model for the type of animal based Kung Fu of the same name. This raises questions on human and indeed mammalian societal structure. [As an interesting side note only the Naked Mole Rat colony approximates insect hive-like society where the continuance of the whole is placed above the individual. In the course of their isolated evolution they have lost all hair, most sight, and the ability to shiver becoming almost a cold blooded mammal dependant on the temperature regulation of their colonies].
The insect is a very alien element within popular culture as seen from films such as Mimic, Starship Troopers, Dark City, and the hybrids of Independence Day. They embody the unspoken fears of humanity at the dawn of this new cycle - that just as civilisations have fallen so may the species: that another species may overrun us; that the naked ape may not always be at the top of the evolutionary ladder; that something unknown and outside of our understanding may have power over us, prey on us with its superior killing ability and use us as a giant food stock. Perhaps I go too far into the real purpose of man within the physical biosphere...
Such films also show us what it is to be human - identification with our own species and group via emotion and being.
To formulate your own shapeshifting rituals I recommend that as a basis you watch nature programmes, popular films, and study insect behaviour from specimens. Notice the movements they make, the noises they create, the phases of their life span, the tools their bodies provide and how they utilise them. It is up to the desire and ingenium of each adept as to the form they choose to work with [if any].
Working with such states of consciousness will have a surprising effect on you in their degree of logical precision, calculated coldness and sheer outlandish separation. The insect intelligence differs from mammalian shifts in the nature of the instincts. The insect can be a potent symbol of the extension of existence into the unknown and alien, and of instinctive [i.e. natural] species fears to be overcome.
Remember also that the Prince of Darkness, called Set in our times, is not a loving caring companion, and Setians echo its footsteps in seeking knowledge, understanding and enlightened mastery of organic and inorganic life and its processes from the perspective of the Outsider.
This is the next leap. Chatter, chatter...snip, crunch. We are more than human. We are less than human. Xeeper.