Festivals! Initiation and the Brilliance of Eternity
Nov 18, 2021
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This podcast explores the role of festivals in providing communal and individual focus, the split between sacred and profane, the significance of ancient Greek festivals, the loss of initiatory moments in modern festivals, and the importance of cultural mechanisms such as grief and group bonding. It also discusses the rise of alternative and transformational festivals.
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Quick takeaways
Festivals serve as a gateway to accessing regular ritualized rapture and provide a space for communal bonding and renewal.
Ancient festivals centered around singing, dancing, and athletics to induce rapture and engage participants in a full sensory celebration of life and connection with the gods.
Festivals were sacred spaces where the initiatory moment took place, leading participants towards the eternal and providing glimpses of the divine through the body.
Deep dives
The Power of Festivals: Accessing Regular Ritualized Rapture
Festivals have historically served as a gateway to accessing regular ritualized rapture. They provide a space for communal bonding, renewal, and insight into the laws of nature. By enacting rituals and celebrations linked to celestial bodies, mythic stories, and the cycles of nature, festivals create a sacred time outside of ordinary time. The initiatory moment is the climax of the festival, where participants are cracked open to glimpse the divine. Ancient festivals involved singing, dancing, athletics, and theatrical enactments to induce transcendent states. However, the desanctification of festivals and the split between sanctity and entertainment has led to the loss of meaning and insight in modern culture. The festival's power lies in its ability to take participants on a journey towards the brilliance of eternity.
Singing, Dancing, and the Role of Athletics in Festivals
Singing and dancing were integral to ancient festivals, serving as devices to induce rapture and access the eternal. Choruses, individual songs, and rhythmic dances were performed to honor and invoke various gods and goddesses. Athletics also played a significant role, with sport and physical activities serving as a means to achieve peak states of consciousness and communal bonding. The energetic rhythm of the festival, with its music, movement, and athletic competitions, mirrored the workings of consciousness itself. The emphasis was on somatic experiences that engaged participants in a full sensory celebration of life and connection with the gods.
Festivals as Sacred Spaces: Consciousness, Initiatory Moments, and Theatrical Enactments
Festivals were sacred spaces where the initiatory moment took place, leading participants towards the eternal. The festival enacted the story of a god or goddess, involving grief, joy, death, and renewal. By shedding tears, dancing, chanting, and engaging in theatrical performances, festival-goers forged a deep connection with the mythic narrative. The journey towards the initiatory moment involved a procession, creating tension and anticipation. The reveal, often simple yet profound, symbolized the culmination and transmission of life. Festivals mirrored the cyclical nature of consciousness and provided glimpses of the divine through the body, leading to spiritual insight and personal transformation.
The Power of Pain and Grief in Ancient Festivals
Ancient festivals were characterized by pain, grief, and catharsis, serving as transformative experiences for participants. These festivals, often centered around goddesses, involved fasting, self-mutilation, fire-walking, and other rituals that induced pain. Pain was seen as a necessary component to open the doorway to the eternal and invoke renewal. However, modern festivals have shifted towards entertainment, focusing on amusement rather than the initiatory power of pain. The loss of pain and grief in festivals has led to a lack of transformative power, limiting their impact on individuals and communities.
The Decline of Focused Festivals and the Rise of Entertainment
The modern festival landscape lacks the focused initiatory moments of ancient festivals. Festivals have become more varied in their offerings, encompassing a range of experiences without a central focus. While these festivals promote personal growth and exploration, they may lack the transformative power and lasting impact of festivals centered around a specific deity or theme. The fear of religious overtones and structured experiences has hindered the potential for deep bonding, communal grieving, and genuine transformation within modern festivals. There is a call to reintroduce depth and focus into festivals, allowing for the rediscovery of tactile relationships with plants, the embodiment of rituals, and the reconnection with the brilliance of eternity.
Just in time for Holiday season, an episode that dives into the deep role of festivals in providing regular, ritualized access to states of rapture and initiation. For thousands upon thousands of years, the festival formed the drumbeat of culture. Festivals forged bonds and provided communal and individual focus. The festival gave space for grief, for rapture, for joy, for renewal. Hurts were healed at the festival… thresholds crossed, revolutions hatched, at the festival. The festival renewed our relationship with the vegetal world and established us in right relation with plants. The festival was able to accomplish all these things specifically because the festival was a shared agreement around time, an architecting of temporal reality to construct a portal to the eternal. Yet at a certain point in the history of the modern west, the festival was de-sanctified. And so, we are left with a schism between the sacred and the profane, in which the festival and its associated arts become simply ‘entertainment.’ The results of this schism are deep. Traditional festivals took participants on a fully enacted journey through pain, grief, loss, death, and then renewal and ecstatic communion, while the modern holiday celebrates only the consumptive side of this cycle. The ethos of modern capitalism removes all possibility of ‘sacred time,’ and gives space only for debauchery as an antidote to the numbing cycle of the workplace. What do we lose with the de-sanctification of the festival? Ultimately, we lose the potential for the festival to provide one very important thing — enacted access to the initiatory moment, to what Byung-Chul Han calls the brilliance of eternity.
