Meeting The Spirits
The following article originally appeared in Conscious Choice Magazine.
All through my childhood, I felt certain that something extraordinary – absolutely amazing and out of the ordinary – was going to happen to me. The world seemed bursting with a secret that nobody would divulge, and someday this tremendous mystery would be revealed. Simply because they were older, I assumed that all adults had passed through this portal into the miraculous essence of existence, although they never spoke about it. As I approached adolescence, I began to suspect that my deepest hopes were going to be unfulfilled. By the time I went to college, I had realized, to my horror, that “maturity” meant accepting contraints and being bound to a limited career path, rather than blossoming into a deeper dimension of possibility and wonder. This was a painful shock.
I now suspect that what I felt is a nearly universal disappointment for young people in our world: I was yearning for initiation in a culture that had abandoned it. Initiatory techniques and rituals have been an essential part of human cultures for tens of thousands of years. In tribal and aboriginal societies, initiations serve a number of different purposes. On one level, rites of passage create a threshold between childhood and adulthood, marking a major life boundary. They are also a time when the elders pass on oral traditions and knowledge to the young. But most importantly, the traditional process of initiation involves a disciplined training in extrasensory perception and non-ordinary states of consciousness – learning to communicate with the spirit worlds that lie beyond the limits of our physical senses.
While our modern secular culture denies the existence of a spiritual dimension to life, many of our popular post-secular movements of mysticism still refuse to address the question of spirits. Philosophers such as Ken Wilber tend to reduce them to psychological tropes or delusions. Based on my own experiences, I strongly suspect we need to attain a more sophisticated understanding of how spirits may operate, as well as a set of techniques for dealing with them, before we can approach higher states and stages of development. We cannot have “Spirit” without spirits.
For many indigenous cultures, it is a high priority to stay on good terms with the ancestor spirits, who can wreak havoc if they are not given respect. The living and the dead maintain a reciprocal relationship. For the indigenous Maya, if the dead are not handled properly, their ghosts hang around, inflicting neuroses, addictive patterns and depressions upon their descendants. Such a perspective does not conflict with modern psychology, but adds a deeper dimension to it. As Amit Goswami explores in The Self-Aware Universe, quantum physics offers the possibility that incorporeal patterns of thinking, feeling and action might continue and have effects in the world, even without a physical reference point in a living organism.
One way we could consider our current situation in the US, perhaps, is as a case of spirit possession on a mass scale. Since we dismiss spirits as nonexistent, we have no defenses against the forces that prey upon us. When a college student guns down his classmates, when a soldier tortures a defenseless victim, when corporate officers avoid facing the environmental consequences of their profit-making, we might be looking at situations in which unappeased demons and aggrieved ancestor spirits are overtaking people, entering their psyches in states of detachment and disconnection. Such a situation cannot be solved through rational means alone, but calls for shamanic techniques such as soul retrieval and banishment.
Personally, my youthful sense of being cheated of some deeper potential melted away once I discovered shamanic practices as an adult, and explored visionary states of consciousness in traditional ceremonies in South America, West Africa and the US. Through this work, I restored the primordial connection to the sacred that I had lost after my childhood, as well as my original sense of wonder, and this was tremendously healing and empowering. Through my own shamanic journeys, I realized that modern culture was facing an initiatory crisis on a global scale. We have created a planet of “kidults,” perpetual adolescents trapped by material desires, with no access to higher realms and little sense of purpose or moral responsibility.
Despite the best efforts of people like Robert Bly and Malidoma Some, we are not going to institute a new culture of initiation in the next few years. As Westerners, each of us has to follow a personal path to recover the numinous for ourselves, shedding our self-limiting beliefs and narcissistic complexes in the process. In tribal cultures, initiation is ultimately a public process that requires an act of witnessing from the collective before it is complete. The visionary knowledge gained through initiatory discipline only becomes meaningful when it is integrated into the community through storytelling, dance and pageant. In our post-modern world, those who undergo initiation may need to create a shared cultural context to impart the wisdom they have gained from their ordeals. Such knowledge is both a gift and a responsibility: Indeed, if frenzied spirits and sneaky demons are attacking us from beyond the margins of our interpreted world, we may require a revival of shamanic practices to reveal and release them.
Image: Creative Commons, Vaultboy on Flickr
Tweet- 7-10-07
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The ultimate disappointment
thoughts on modern spiritual life
Already Planning to Avoid the Disappointment
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Wadda if...
Finding initiation...
" Perhaps our initiation is to FIND initiation..."
Excellent point. I've sometimes felt that the vilification of drug use in modern society forces those seeking out altered states to go through a processs of self-actualization, against the grain of social norms. In order to experience these other realms, you must choose a path opposite that which you've been conditioned to follow, risking scorn or social exile from friends and family, and of course flirting with criminal behavior.
;)
st
Reverse Initiations
beautifully stated
That is a beautiful comment, Jon!
Very well said.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Getting Prepared, Getting Support
Real Reality
I’ve been amazed by the same thing. I think I’ve said elsewhere that I’ve always found it more than a little odd that Western existence is based solely around what one is worth in terms of productivity. I find it very hard to understand why such an obvious system of control is not questioned more. But of course, it’s a security blanket and a short cut to thinking – pity then (for certain parties) that it’s a scenario we cannot afford to maintain any longer. You don’t need to even believe any particular ‘scare’ or doomsday warning to come to the same conclusion. Tactics designed to limit, segregate, panic or exploit people and the planet have to finally be seen for what they are, and then disregarded. There really is no other way if we are to carry anything of any value forward.
When I was a child (growing up in rural SW England) I remember ‘dreaming’ all kinds of bizarre entities in the fields and gardens where we lived; they weren’t particularly attractive or friendly, and weren’t regurgitations of anything in books or films (Walt Disney wouldn’t have touched them), yet I considered them real. My adult senses seem not to be capable of spontaneously ‘imagining’ any such things these days, even after exposure to a myriad of fertile archetypes through literature and television. Does this mean I’ve been so overloaded with a certain type of information during my life that I can longer process ‘real’ reality? Probably.
I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories particularly but I believe that to be the role of Western society if only for keeping us passive and unquestioning. If our instincts serve us, Humans are more powerful, and exist on more levels, than we could possibly believe. There are situations playing out right now at which we’d be amazed. It has been the job of certain institutions to safeguard the good stuff for the rich kids but it seems the wheel is now turning. I mean the whole thing’s (universe, multiverse) just astounding yet we plod like we’re the most bored thing in creation. I think any initiation must surely be a clarification of that which we were born to experience – first hand.
Rings true
Loss of primitivism
I happen to be of Italian and German heritage, yet have little sense of identity with either culture, since assimilation was such an important goal for the millions of immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The only connection I ever had with mythology was as a child growing up in the Roman Catholic Church. Yet, the pomp and ritual that was so much a part of the Church (especially in the days of Latin) never touched in me the spiritual needs Daniel talks about. Instead of magic, we were offered rules, structure and all the political subtext of a 2000 year old institution.
Like the old men who continue to lead this institution, the Church itself always seemed somewhat stodgy, moldy and half-dead. So when friends of mine abandoned this religion and found the kind of joy they felt they needed in some kind of charismatic faith, I always felt rather bad for them.
Lately, however, I've been reading about our cultural lack of joy and ecstacy in books such as "Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy" by Barbara Ehrenreich. In doing so, I'm more and more convinced that I must open myself up to the experiences that might connect me with that part of my psyche that longs for the kind of joy most primitive people experienced in the past--and the kind that Daniel has spent many years pursuing.
"Breaking Open the Head" has been a seminal book in my own personal development and in my own reach towards the "Spirit".
Thank you, Daniel, for your curiosity, courage and your wonderful ability to describe the experiences, both good and bad, with your readers.
dancing in the street
Perhaps you should review that Ehrenreich book for Reality Sandwich?
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
"Lately, however, I've been
"Lately, however, I've been reading about our cultural lack of joy and ecstacy in books such as "Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy" by Barbara Ehrenreich. "
I don't know the book but that sentiment reminded me of something from my own cultural heritage. As a Trinidadian Englishman I have been fortunate to a more rounded life. I recall the difference between English town carnivals, with there lack lustre floats, half interested spectators whom at best smile or wave, and West Indian carnivals, with folk jumping like maniacs, hollering, dancing and blowing whistles. Its does make you wonder whats gone wrong with the 'joie de vivre' of many westernised people, whatever their background.
"Become a detective of existence" - Prem Wat
spirts of the jungle
>if frenzied spirits and sneaky demons Spirits abound.
Of course many do not see them or behold them or encounter them unless they know of them or understand the means to ´knock on their door´.
Having just returned from deep within the amazon jungle, where spirits both malevolent and benevolent are plentiful and present, it seems to me to make sense that the same ´level´ or population of spirits reside in other locations, urban centers and so forth.
Yet in ´the west´or large cities where ¨spirit possession on a mass scale¨ may occur, this may likely be a result of concrete spirits, road spirits, media spirits, fast food spirits and so forth- the ´brujos´of any particular concrete jungle.
Even in the forests of the amazon, where one may be often met by benevolent and wondrous spirits, if one is not careful, respectfull and aware, the harsh environs of La Selva will rip you apart.
In the forest there are tales of black and white magic, healing and assasins, good and bad, dark and light. However in the cities, urban centers, the ´west´ and so forth, there tends to be a focus, one way or another, on the negative, giving rise and strength to negative spirits and genrally dissapointing benevolent spirits.
To meet with new spirits in new ways one needs to call them into being, call them into contact, assure them that they will recieve respect and that they themselves wont be brought into a time and place seeping with the wrong kind of darkness.
One must find cause, place and time to befriend and behold the spirits of beauty and benevolence, wherever they may be. At the same time, one must not give those malevolent and destructive spirits the time of day. Let them get lost.
Also worth noting is that benevolent spirits and plants like tobacco. Tobacco scares away the bad spirits. However, in ´the west´ many people smoke diseased tobacco, tobacco saturated with ill intent. Essentially feeding malevolent forces. To cast away the bad spirits, blow the smoke of pure jungle tobacco.
Potter Initiates
great post!
Hi Martin,
Great post!
While you have pretty much said it here, it might be good to take this one step further and turn it into an essay for Reality Sandwich. There may be other writing around the Net that offers other visions of this. I recall someone trying to convince me that Potter represented a secret "counter-initiation" with dark intent. I also read Rowling's story about receiving the Potter plot as download from a long-dead alchemist while on a train ride. Does anyone else remember this?
Along similar lines, apparently a black woman writer originally concocted the story of The Matrix, and the filmmakers eventually had to pay her off. I wanted to write an article about this a few years ago - if someone has information, I would be interested to learn more. The Matrix, obviously, also presents the shamanic model in a modern-world context.
The resurgence of popularity in the comic book heroes of the 1960s is another interesting phenomenon, from a shamanic perspective. Spiderman, Batman, etc., are modern retreads of the traditional shaman/shapechanger with his animal familiar, as memorialized in some of the Nazca Lines. While working on 2012, I found it interesting that most of the 60s comic narratives began with a physical "mutation" caused by radioactivity or something similar. I connected this with Jean Gebser's concept of a mutation in consciousness as we shift to the "integral-aperspectival" structure of consciousness. It was almost as if those comics were representing a materialistic literalization of this process of psychic shift, and that 1960s generation was perhaps the first with the capacity to embody that new intensity of consciousness.
Anyway, Martin, I would love it if you would do a bit of work to expand your comments for a feature piece for us. It is almost there already.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Cheers
I really must learn to scroll down when looking for replies.
Thanks for the encouragement. I'm on it.
A "counter" initiation, huh? Perhaps Harry's particular journey will turn out to be a cautionary tale, a warning of how we can go awry in our rites of passage, rather than a guide. I guess we'll all find out Saturday.
It seems to me that much of comics, fantasy and sometimes SF has a bent on actualizing, or materializing inner mystical phenomena. I suspect that was the basis for a lot of their appeal to me when I was young. I marvel at how today that expression has exploded with the rash of comic-book movies, fantasy adventures and dystopic visions that are bombarding the marketplace, driven in part by the extraordinary tools we have developed to realize them. Flip through Apple's trailers and it's just one after another: nightmarish transformation, whimsy, questing, spiritual yearning, end times, as expressed by future releases Into the Wild, The Golden Compass, SpiderWick, The Waterhorse, 10,000 BC, Skinwalkers, Sunshine. To me it all seems rather feverish and desperate, like our collective unconscious is making haphazard and hasty stabs at understanding where we are and where we are heading.
dealing with the past
" Perhaps our initiation is to FIND initiation..."
I think this is almost unquestionable. Really, it's always been that way, if the myth of your local region isn't working for you. Many of us unfortunately mistake the talking heads of politics and advertising for those mythic icons... or they search backwards in history for something, and get hooked into a tradition that is thousands of years out of date, or a literal interpretation (I'd say the growth of fundamentalist religions is a direct result of the fact that this need is left unsatisfied.)
The alternative of course is to look at what has worked in the past- as I think Daniel has done- and then integrate it into the present, and into your own personal life. There are people out there, both living and dead, who can help you along this process, but I think part of our heritage at the moment is the fact that in the end we must bring about this process ourselves.
At the same time, I don't think that "new tradition" will really differ much from the underlying (essential) forms of traditions a thousand years ago- despite many changes that have arisen due to our technology, very little has changed in a fundamental, existential sense. We have pride, we have fear, we have anger, we have to figure out how to best interpret and deal with these things and the other energies and forces we encounter within ourselves or the world, we have to figure out how we fit in with other humans, and with the world at large, etcetc. A mythic system is meant to give a road map for this... since we're all doing it ad hoc, our mileage is naturally going to vary. :)
http://joinmycult.blogspot.com
initiation
I feel and need spirit but not spirits
L.D. Gussin, author of The Seeker Academy, a novel set at a holistic retreat.
I accept Daniel's "We have created a planet of “kidults,” perpetual adolescents trapped by material desires," and Sati's "Perhaps our initiation is to FIND initiation." Today many people feel lost in the dark. I find it wrenching to ask what deep guidance I have for the young.
My seeking, though, leads me to reject Daniel's "We cannot have “Spirit” without spirits," and a lot of what follows from that claim. A Latin word that means "breath," spirit has had varied meanings in varied cultures. While it can point to planes of being and entities beyond normal human sense knowledge, it can also point to such everyday words as intention and vigor.
I feel little relative interest in spirits as entities, and I think that the idea of spirit worlds lends itself, in our abstract society, to further abstraction (building out these worlds, like versions of some SimSpiritWorldLife game).
I feel more interest in what spirit has come to mean in an everyday but often counter-cultural sense, opposing materialism from within. The initiatory struggle to "find" Sati speaks of leads me to root around in the culture of my ancestors... and I am from the West.
The Ecology of Initiation
I can't seem to get my HTML tags to disappear, so please excuse my formatting issues and read on . . .
<p>Having researched some traditional initiation ceremonies, I thought that I would share a few thoughts.</p>
<p>Like many of you, I certainly agree with Daniel that we, in the postmodern west, are seriously in need of initiation rituals, bringing us into a spiritually mature perspective on our selves, our world, and our places in the universe. No doubt many of us have had to find such initiations on our own through chance, fate, spiritual abduction (unexpectly being introduced to the spirit world through spontaneous visionary experience/dreams/etc.), or entheogenic experience. If we're lucky, we've stumbled upon some kind of "enlightenment" experience that has radically expanded our view of ourselves and the universe, bringing us to a deeper and more holistic understanding. Perhaps we discover it through an entheogenic session with friends, a trip to Burning Man, or what have you. Whatever the case, we can probably all agree that intentionally and consciously constructed initiation rituals simply don't exist, at least not in any formal sense, and this is currently a largely individual quest.</p>
<p>Since we all know the problem, and Daniel has articulated it well, there is no need to rehash these issues here.</p>
<p>What I would like to do is leave a couple comments based on my research among the Mescalero Apache of New Mexico, as I think their initiation rituals hold some keys that we may want to collectively consider when contemplating initiation rituals of our own.</p>
<p>Some background: Mescalero Apaches are members of the Athabascan language family, one of the most widespread indigenous language families in Native North America. Athabascans include Navajos, all Apache cultures( there are several distinct groups of Apaches), and numerous nations in Canada and Alaska. </p>
<p>Something that is nearly universal among Athabascans is the central role that initiation rituals play, particularly for young women. Among the Mescaleros (who, by the way, are named after the food, mescal, NOT mescaline/peyote), the female initiation ceremony is known as a girl's "feast." This is a communal event where all members of the tribe and community are invited to participate over the four public days of the ceremony. Despite the fact that public part of the ceremony last only four days, preparation for the ceremony is something that literally takes years. It involves a long education for the girl who will be going through her ceremony. She has to hire a medicine woman who will act as her "sponsor" for the ceremony, who takes on the role of pedagogical guide for the young girl, educating her on traditional Mescalero skills, food gathering and preparing, traditional stories, etc. In sum, she is taught how to be an Apache woman.</p>
<p>For the actual ceremony, the initiate is understood to both literally and spiritually transform into Isanatlesh, or "Woman Who is Painted with White Clay," a figure who is understood by Mescaleros to be the spiritual source of their culture. In other words, the initiate becomes a divine figure over the course of her initiation.</p>
<p>During her initiation, the young girl must dance on four consecutive nights to the songs of the medicine men who sing for her in the "Big Tipi." What I want to draw attention to is the content of the songs, in conjunction with the education the initiate is receiving from her medicine woman sponsor. The content of the songs is quite literally the encyclopedia Mescalero. Through structured, highly ritualized song, the medicine men impart the sum total of Mescalero Apache knowledge to the young girl. The songs literally catalog plant types, geological formations, insects, animals, birds, etc. Additionally, these songs tell the creation story of how Isanatlesh originally brought culture and spiritual traditions to the Apache.</p>
<p>Also during this time, generally on the last night of the ceremony where the initiate must dance all night long, she is taught how to perceive spiritual messages in the forms of dreams and visions that she may receive while participating in the ceremony.</p>
<p>At the conclusion of the ceremony, the girl is understood to be fully transformed into Isanatlesh. On the last morning, the "Big Tipi" comes down and the entire community lines up to both bless the girl, and be blessed by her in a process of reciprocal spirituality.</p>
<p>My point in all of this is that an initiation ritual, to be done correctly, is a long and instructive process. I also want to point out that while generating altered states of consciousness and direct perception of spiritual realities are integral, so is basic ecological/biological/geological knowledge. Furthermore, the initiation is a community based event that centers on the production and reproduction of culture which in understood to exist within the nexus of sacred ecology and spiritual universe. In other words, the spiritually transcendent is in no way divorced from the immediate ecological and geographical environment. Mescalero tradition is not a disembodied concept, but is a living tradition in a specific ecological/spiritual environment. As such, it cannot be copied by non-Mescaleros and still make sense, but the basic formulation of an initiation ritual is instructive.</p>
<p>We can probably all agree that initiation rituals that center an individual not only on a perception of spiritual realities, but also basic ecological realities and perceptions (which are of course thoroughly integrated in Mescalero culture), would be extremely valuable in our largely spiritually and ecologically displaced culture. In order to achieve authentic initiations, we need to reintegrate with not only altered states of consciousness, but also with the earth itself and ecological realities of our lives in an earth-centric cultural discourse and system of practice, and in doing so, indigenous cultures can be enormously instructive, though they should not be copied or appropriated.</P>
On Creating My Own Initiations
I moved into the woods in 1972 and created my own initiation.
Late one night I came across a being the size and shape of a man but made entirely of a deep, golden brown light. Not being familiar with such beings, I kept walking, even while knowing or feeling that he or it was very much aware of me.
Ten years later I created another initiation, described at http://www.realitytest.com/resource.htm#link11 .
This led directly to the teachings of a particular "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical form" -- a kind of spook, you could say -- but all of this went on a back burner for many years owing my return to the wonderful world of work.
Eventually, thanks to the Internet, I found others sharing my interests (or some of them, anyway). As many have noted, the Internet is like a vast externalized nervous system; few realize, however, how the psychic or mental equivalents of the active ingredients of hallucinogenic plants have found their way into this nervous system...
Thus my began my third initiation.
Regards
Bill I.
http://www.realitytest.com
Loving this
Self initiation
Well what a brilliant thread!
There are so many parts that I feel one ought to comment on, have resonance with or at the least got me thinking.
Its great to see mention of Malidome, his book 'Of Water and the Spirit' exemplifies the path of the wise elders that don't use plant teachers, and is an important balance for people to hear about in that respect. Anyone familiar with his decription of the initiation experience will know that despite not using etheogens he went through equally mind bending and reality shifting occurences as anyone here likely has with them!
I do agree with those here discussing the premise that we make our own initiation, in a rather freestyle format, however I also feel its right to say we are 'the new elders' and will be put to work providing more formal initiations to youngsters in the not to distant future [read: 2012].
Indeed I suspect many of us are doing it on a small scale already. Taking the 'big brother' mentor approach at times with the younger spiritual seekers we meet (whether younger in age or just spiritual experiences). I was lucky I suppose in that although I can relate to Daniel's feelings about the magic of childhood and the expectation of more, I don't relate so much with the disapointment. Certainly I do in the respect that career, money, fashion and such turned out to be much more s*ite than I would of expected, and indeed than our culture dictates to us. However I was fortunate enough to have unbroken magic from childhood to adulthood. Always having been an avid fantasy book reader as well as having become engrossed in mysterious subjects like ghosts, crystal skulls and pyramids from about ten years old.
I guess i'm just one of those people blessed/cursed with a natural shamanic gift/calling. Like one of our friends in the thread I grew up in the rural West of England, which I think helped. Indeed as mentioned one can naturally intuit more beings in fields and woods than on a housing estate I suspect.
Even the path next to my home we nicknamed 'ghost lane', and populated it with various coloured ghosts.
Interestingly along the path grew several etheogens, deadly nightshade and such. Fly Agaric grows dotted around the village also and the occasional patch of Cubensis. Perhaps the 'spirits' of these plants played a role?
Additionaly I am of mixed Carib Indian, Asian Indian, African and white European heritage, perhaps this genetic line carried something inately pedisposing me to shamanic reality?
I certainly had psychic abilities from early on in my teenage years, and also experiences that point toward alien abduction (at least the experience popularily called that). Certain dreams, constant nose bleeds and other matching criteria alluded to this. Of course the abduction experience is merely an overlay of the shamanic calling experience in other cultures (not to discount there being actual ETE's out there).
Still for me, as with many others out there, there was still a crunch period in which I had to go through more formal, more intense, experiences that would qualify as initiations. I may of been 'in the magic' still, but I had not had my metal properly tested, nor had much oppertunity to actually help anyone, even myself. Without that interactive element one is certainly no shaman, and psychism becomes not much more than parlour tricks.
At age 24 I hit a style in the path. Inevtiably I had to find a way over it, but first I had to acknowledge its presence. Externally I 'had it all', a very pretty girlfriend, university education, career in Europes largest private Investment bank, and a pretty nifty cash flow. I had always been popular, supported by a good family, and am not bad looking. Yet there it was, a gnawing feeling, something chewing away at my spirit. Too young perhaps for a classic male mid-life crisis, yet thats as near an explanation for the feeling as I can give that others can more easily relate to. After a few weeks I acknowledged the style and made preperations to jump over it.
I inundated myself in spiritual research and practices, and essentially fell down a rabbit hole that lead from one teacher to another, and one initiation after another. Some very pleasent stuff, some darn right weird stuff and the odd scary moment.
Yet now 7 years after that process began I am on the other side a more whole being for it. And have had many opportunities to actually help within my community (the whole e-world included in that also). Thats not to say my learning is over, ha ha ha. No way! But I am now able to actually function as a kind of Neo-Westernised-Shaman of sorts. i.e. in a tight pinch I will do better than having nobody able at all. In the times ahead of us its clear to me that people like myself, and likely many of you, will have to step into real shamanic, or spiritual teacher type roles. Sure we might suck a bit compared to great yogis and masters, but look around. Where I am those are thin on the ground. If the world collapsed tommorow who will be trying to offer spiritual comfort and wisdom to the survivors? Like it or not we will have to step up. Thats not arrogance, its cold hard fact. I feel we need to use these next few years to initiate ourselves as much as possible. Share ideas and practices. Because if things fare poorly over the next five years people may well be counting on us.
Anyway its late, my spelling and thoughts are crumbling, time for bed...
"Become a detective of existence" - Prem Wat
Wow!! what a great site to
Wow!! what a great site to find....Here I am sitting at home doing some research part of my reseach is to find a way make contact with Daniel Pinchbeck, I am producing a project to do with 2012. I typed in his name and here we are.............
I. am in the middle of reading your book 2012, which let me say is absoulutly brilliant I'm definitley into and on to it. You give me goose bumps. I've been reading Jose Arguelles Mayan Factor since 1995.....So yes!! In your 2012 I.ve just read the bit about mushrooms and my own amazing experience came to mind, you then contiue to mention the book Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, my head spun. The synchronicities at this very moment in time are many many many. Is there another way I can contact you so I can send something to you. Sorry to gatecrash this site, however having found it I shall return. 2012 is calling for my attention just now.
I came to the party late...
Traditional magic/mythic initiatory rites and rituals have indeed been eclipsed by more modern and, to use Gebser's model, "mental" rites and rituals. The rigid indigenous monocultures for the most part died out arguably some hundreds of years ago, and now more than ever we're left with a multiplicity of subcultures, most still resplendent with powerful and binding initiatory practices, as anyone who's graduated high-school, had a quinceanera, or been jumped into a street-gang will tell you.
Part of the initiatory practice in the twenty-first century has become finding the right subculture in which to participate. Spirits in the sense of the spirit guides of indigenous cultures have a difficult time in the mental or rational era, but again they have transformed themselves to reflect the aforementioned multiplicity of subcultures --- and really, they wouldn't work if they were the same spirits as our grandparents' (or our grandparents' grandparents). Just as your grandfather's bible, for example, can't be your bible. Fairies, Little People, the Grey aliens, angels, the constellation of personalities at the center of conspiracy theories, and celebrities are some of the spirits of our age, and I expect more to come, in iconic, totemic, mythic forms I can't even begin to fathom. They wouldn't be spirits if I could.
Culture as Archetype