In the deepest, oldest caverns of human memory, a fire burns... and that fire has been with human beings since the very beginning. Scientists now say that the human relationship with fire goes back over 1.5 million years. And so — fire has played a profound role in shaping human bodies and human consciousness in ways we're often unaware of. For fire... changed everything. It took us out of the immediacy of the animal experience and gave us a focal point, a place to gather and tell stories, to ideate, and to dream. And because fire created for us a perpetual hearth in the midst of shifting seasons, fire also gives us the ability to pause and plan ahead. Forethought, in many traditions, is a gift of fire, as is ritual. Our ancestors recognized the universe itself as lit by a great cosmic fire and recognized that same fire present within themselves. So ritual practice — often centered around fire — reflects and enacts the transformative friction of the cosmos. And practitioners heat themselves through repetitive dance, drumming, rattling, singing in order to participate in a primal alchemy, a transformative process that is not possible without the heat of fire. The spiritual promise of fire is in the transformation it brings, in how it burns away dross and reduces old patterns to ashes and regenerates us anew. Yet fire has another side too. The very thing that warms and nourishes us, that cooks our food and provides the spark for our ideas can also... burn us. In dozens upon dozens of cultures, fire is brought to human beings by a trickster, and the gift of fire has consequences too. For, poorly tended, fire can burn out of control. Today, in a world inflamed, a world of conflict driven by obsessive hungers and enacted through incendiary discourse and weapons of fire, we can see clearly that there is a fire imbalance on planet earth. What is called for in such times? Perhaps a return to the old gods and goddesses of the hearth, and a lot of time spent learning what it means to properly tend the fire. Featuring incandescent music by Travis Puntarelli and Victor Sakshin, listen to this episode on a good sound system and perhaps while staring into the hottest part of a roaring fire.

Support the show

In recent years, the practice of 'mindfulness' has become ubiquitous. Mindfulness has outgrown its traditional Buddhist roots and now permeates modern wellness and optimization culture, finding its way into corporate boardrooms, therapist's toolkits, and an ever-increasing number of calmness apps. Yet modern iterations of mindfulness practice often live removed from their original context. The forest ecology from which mindfulness grew was animate and alive, and what we call mindfulness practices formed only a part of a rich tapestry that included rituals of ancestor worship, enacted connection to ecology, spirit mediumship, healing, and esoteric somatic practices. Modern adoptions of mindfulness tend to view the solitary meditative aspects of practice to be the 'essential' part, whereas the ritual and animist elements are seen as expendable. The reasons for this are deeply tied in with colonial history, and with the western legacy of body-mind divide. For it turns out that the animate, ritual context is profoundly important for shaping and architecting relational minds, and post-modern minds — free of context, already fractured from relational connectivity, left to simply 'sit with what is' or left to focus on individual optimization at the expense of relationality — may not benefit or be able to assimilate the power of such practices. Extracted from context, freed from ethics and the heart connection to other beings, mindfulness can exacerbate isolated individualism. In an age of fracture, is being mindful of an already fractured mind enough? Or is a more robust vision necessary? As science increasingly comes to recognize the importance of the context that traditional cultures have understood for thousands of years, we come to understand that minds need a contextual body. Mind needs fire and water, breath and movement, it needs story and song... it needs to establish a living relationship with those that came before and those yet to come, to offer in devotion and to repeatedly enact its place in the larger cosmos. Such realizations return us to the sacredness of... form. We find that all of the supposedly 'non-essential', ritual, form-based aspects of tradition actually architect a mind that has true fullness to it, and perhaps we can't find true fullness of mind without ritually placing the mind in living context.

Support the show

Practices of guardianship — invoking guardian deities, enlisting spirit help, clearing spaces of questionable energies, and establishing boundaries around ritual, communal, and personal space — are common to animate traditions across the world. In many traditions, guardianship is absolutely central as we navigate a world of forces, not all of which are traditionally seen as beneficial. So traditional practitioners — even as they commune with the natural world — also draw clear boundaries, send wayward spirits fleeing, and even do battle with malefic energies. Such practices challenge modern western minds and are often dismissed as 'superstitious' or as the least important part of any traditional practice. They rub up against modern visions of a cosmos or a natural world that is 'all good', as they suggest the existence of things like malefic forces that are incompatible with a modern rationalist vision. So modern spiritualities forgo traditional understandings of guardianship and promote a vision of 'openness' within a universe that is 'all good.' Yet many traditions focus a lot of attention on closing, sealing, and directly establishing boundary. Even in non-dual traditions that see a cosmos ultimately beyond yes and no and good and evil, practitioners spend years establishing boundary, cultivating discernment, and invoking guardian entities. With the rise of modern freeform spiritual experimentation, people are invoking and inviting spiritual forces and navigating heightened states of consciousness often without any attention to guardianship. In such a time, when mental states are fragile and traditional safeguards are no longer in place, it can be important to understand what guarded space looks like personally and ritually. Guardianship practice needn't be complicated. It starts very simply, with offering and gratitude, and with how we navigate our own thoughts and feelings. Featuring conversations with Tantric scholars Dr. Ben Joffe, Dr. Hareesh Wallis, and Dr. Sthaneshwar Timalsina, author and Ayurvedic Doctor Robert Svoboda, sculptor Rose B. Simpson and activist Nadia Irshaid Gilbert, this episode dives deep into how traditional systems have viewed guardianship practice and its necessity in an age of spiritual free-for-all and excessive exposure to internet imagery. Listen on a good sound system at a time when you can devote your full attention.

Support the show

The story of human ritual and cultural tradition is one of depth and deep connection to land, to place, and to processes and protocols that remain steady across generations. But it's also a story of constant mutation, assimilation, and re-expression. There is a fluidity to culture and tradition that is not always acknowledged in modern discourse. Religious scholars will tell us that all traditions are — to one degree or another — syncretic, and when we lift the lid off of traditions and look deeper, we start to see that even those that seem the most anchored and fixed are deeply porous and adaptive, that traditions have always traveled and changed shape, just as the land itself changes constantly. At a time when more and more people are looking to reconnect to ritual practice, to tradition, and to the land — and yet wanting to be respectful of cultural boundaries — it can be helpful to also understand the fluid, spontaneous, artistic and adaptive aspects of cultural tradition, to hear stories of traveling gods and cross-cultural mashups and innovations that arrive with the movement of travelers. Right at the heart of this exploration of adaptation lives the Divine Mother, who continually re-invents herself to meet the needs of the ecosystems she encounters. So the Polish Black Madonna becomes assimilated into Haitian Voodoo, the Indian mother goddess finds a way to re-express as Catholic St. Sarah, and the African sea goddess Yemoja re-arises to become the most popular vision of the Divine Mother in Brazil and possesses bodies from all socio-cultural and ethnic backgrounds regularly. In many places, syncretism — the fusion and blending of traditions — is welcomed, even if the histories that led to that syncretism are painful. And in these syncretic cauldrons, new traditions are born all the time. Once we start to view the flow of culture and tradition beyond a human-centered sociocultural lens, we see a living animate process in which gods travel and the forces of 'place' are not static, in which outsider species are assimilated into new ecologies, and in which wanderers and outcasts play a key role in the adaptive movement of traditions. These stories teach us that the world is not so neatly divided into those who belong to a place and a tradition and those who don't. And that the story of 'not feeling at home' — of feeling rootless and separate from a homeland that is far away — is actually a key part of the human story and serves as a starting point to the process of reconnection. Featuring conversations with Peia Luzzi, Scout Rainer Wiley, Tyson Yunkaporta, Skye Mandozay and Bayo Akomolafe and music by Egemen Sanli, Victor Sakshin, Beya, and more, this episode is an oceanic cross-cultural ride that asks us to leave our preconceptions of what is fixed and what is fluid behind.

Support the show

In the modern world, words like 'law' and 'order' carry with them a good deal of sociocultural baggage, and are often associated with restriction, burden, and arbitrarily imposed rules. Yet historically, tradition after tradition sees an innate, artful order to the natural world and views the Law of the Land as something vibrant and alive, present in the breath and in the waters and in the endless cycling of the clouds. In this living vision of Law, nature unfolds along particular patterns and pulses, and the task of the human being is to understand what it means to align to this inherent pattern. The culture attunes itself to the Law of the Land — and its dances and its artworks, its ceremonies and its cycles of planting and harvest are a reflection of this living Law. At the heart of this Law is a responsibility to give back to the living web of which we are a part, and the understanding that in the very act of being alive, we owe debts to the larger cycle of creation. Talk of shared responsibility and debt can seem at odds with a modern culture that focuses on individualist freedoms. Yet traditional visions of Law remind us that our responsibility to nature is not burdensome. In fact, to align to the larger web of life alleviates a great modern burden — the burden of isolation. So Law, ceremonially enacted, places a person in direct somatic relationship with the community and the ecology and the larger cosmos. In this vision, Law is not something that can be theoretically imposed. It must be felt, and it is traditionally felt ritually. So any discussion on Law — Natural Law, environmental law — that does not include a sacred, ceremonial component, is incomplete. For the Law of the Land, as it is traditionally seen, is alive, and what matters most is our communal ritual connection to it. Nyoongar Elder Noel Nannup, Native American activist and author Jose Barreiro, and author Bill Mahony join for this vibrant journey into Law... and clouds. Featuring original music by Marya Stark, Nivedita Gunturi, and Andy Aquarius.

Support the show

In times of global upheaval, ecological destruction, and societal inequity, justice can seem very far away. Justice in the modern world is often viewed as a contract, an agreement forged between human beings rather than something inherent to the natural world. And yet, for many cultures and traditions, justice is seen as a living presence, as the actual dynamic flow of cause and effect that serves to keep a larger natural balance. Tradition after tradition speaks of the larger law of the cosmos and of the human role in aligning to it. At a time when people are experiencing deep grief and anxiety over the fate of the planet, understanding and reconnecting to a living vision of justice can help provide not only a sense of somatic anchor, but a way forward that asks us to align to something both immediate and ultimate. This vision of living justice asks us to move away from the language of abstract 'justification' towards a more palpable understanding of cause and effect, of excess and repercussion, of balance and flow. Even as it asks us to be awake to the suffering of the world and take action to help remedy its imbalances, it also provokes us to find this living flow within ourselves, to go deep into the roots of cycles of vengeance and retribution in our own hearts. At once a lament over the sorry state of human justice, a cry out to a greater justice, and a deep inquiry into justice as a living force, this episode draws on a range of voices from activists and elders from diverse traditions. Joining for this episode are author and Islamic scholar Dr. Omid Safi, CNN commentator and activist Van Jones, former Tibetan political prisoner Ngawang Sangdrol, author and death row inmate Jarvis Jay Masters, Palestinian-American activist Nadia Irshaid Gilbert, Aboriginal Nyoongar Elder Noel Nannup, and author and Native American activist Jose Barreiro. Featuring original music by Leah Song, Chloe Smith and Duncan Wickel of Rising Appalachia and Sidibe, this episode is meant to be listened to on a good sound system at a time when you can devote your full attention.

Support the show

Across the globe, the arrival of 'civilization' brought with it the persecution of the seer, the shaman, and the visionary. Why? Perhaps it is because civilization, with its narratives of individual agency and control, its relentless emphasis on forward progress, its commitment to the removal of mystery from daily life, and its encouragement of numbness over feeling, is fundamentally at odds with the seer's sensitivities and alignment to larger forces beyond human control. So modernity pushes the seer to the fringe — and once cast aside, seeing can veer into charlatanry and delusion. The rise of free market spirituality and New Age conspiracy is a result of the unmooring of the seer from traditional context. Yet what this points to isn't something 'wrong' with seeing or spirituality. It points to the need for context in a larger culture of disconnect and fragmentation, for slow learning and earned wisdom within a culture that always rushes things outwards. Dichotomized narratives that pit scientific rationalism against the spiritual, shamanic, or oracular ignore the central importance that spiritual movements play in culture. Visionary movements drive all aspects of culture, including scientific innovation. And ultimately — as science itself tells us — having a 'fringe' that sees things differently than the mainstream is absolutely essential to the growth of culture. So perhaps the modern-day seer must re-learn what it means to find anchor and context and earned wisdom, just as society must remember that the seer is vitally important. In a world of fragmentation and numbness, the seer comes to wake the culture up, to restore its sensitivities, and ultimately to drive culture forward. Featuring conversations with Sophie Strand and Healingfromhealing's Adam Aronovich and music by Peia, Marya Stark, Char Rothschild, and more. Listen on a good sound system!

Support the show

Across cultures and traditions, there have always been those that speak with the dead, hear voices, enter states of oracular trance, and receive visions of what is to come. Such sensitivity, traditionally, is common. It's common to have premonitions that come to pass, to have dream experiences that translate into day-to-day life, and to be in continual felt dialogue with ancestors, with the dead, and with a larger world of animate forces. For most of human history, the people that received such visions lived right at the center of culture. But what happens when the seer is ripped from the ecology in which they traditionally lived? The intuitive is cast out, othered, vilified, and pathologized. Cast aside, relegated to the margins of society, without the context that once held it, oracular seeing can veer into charlatanry and delusion. So these days visions — like everything else in the modern world — are immediately monetized, translated into marketable pop-spirituality and much of the mastery and depth of visionary tradition is lost. But what this points to isn’t something “wrong” with intuition or the practice of oracular vision — it points to something wrong with modernity’s relationship with it. The proclivity towards vilifying and pathologizing intuition on the one hand and claiming it as an exotic and monetizable gift useful for attracting internet followers on the other — all of this is a function of the othering of intuition in the modern world. Societally, we would do well to rediscover the central role of the seer. For if we lose our ability to learn from the visions of seers, we lose the feeling body of culture — the very thing that drives culture forward. Featuring music by Marya Stark, Char Rothschild, and Peia, and featuring discussions with author Frederick Smith, psychoanalyst Bernardo Malamut, and Sophie Strand, this multi-part episode series seeks to place the seer back in their rightful place at the center of culture. It is simultaneously a celebration of the gifts of the intuitive and a reminder that dreams and visions need an ecology of accountability in which to live and grow. Listen on a good sound system, at a time when you can devote your full attention.

Support the show