The Emerald

Shapeshifting is nearly universal to global mythic tradition. The myths of the world feature shapeshifting gods, shapeshifting animals, shapeshifting spirits, and, of course, shapeshifting people who assume the forms of tigers, bears, wolves, eagles, and more. The prevalence of shapeshifting in myth challenges our assumptions about the static nature of selfhood. Yet even from the scientific view, we are shapeshifters. We contain multitudes of beings within us — we are at once fish, bird, mammal, reptile, and more. Understanding and connecting to this permeable, malleable self was key for our ancestors for many thousands of years, as we learned about things primarily by becoming them in states of conjunctive trance. Shapeshifting, accomplished through the animal dance, through the assumption of the animal form in states of ecstasy, formed the foundation of  how we learned, communicated, and cultivated empathy for the world. In a world that has turned its back on the sensate animal body, shapeshifting is more important than ever, as it offers a way back to a deep relationship with the living world. Simon Thakur of Ancestral Movement and Biblical Scholar Dr. Natalie Mylonas join us for this episode on shapeshifting, conjunctive knowing, and the sensate body. Support the show

There’s a lot of cultural clutter these days around 'The Goddess.' She appears everywhere, her many names are invoked free of context in a hundred thousand ways. She’s what? An empowerment tool. An archetype. A self-help course. A political symbol. Something that is invoked to bring more creative energy or material abundance into our lives.  Something that, in an individualistic modern world, always seems to have a whole lot to do with us. Yet the goddess, traditionally, is much more than this. She is the animating power of the universe itself, felt in bodies, realized in states of deep conjunctive rapture, accessed through ritual protocols, alive in trees and stones and living geography, alive in song, alive in the myths and stories of her, alive in sound, alive in longing, alive in trance, alive in the states of consciousness realized by those who feel her. This devotional episode honors the goddess as the animating power of creation, drawing on her texts, her myths, her songs, and on personal experiences of journey to her sacred seats to evoke her as a living presence rather than as a conceptual abstraction. With songs and slokas from special guest Nivedita Gunturi. Support the show

Modern culture increasingly encroaches on unknown, uncharted space, both geographical and mental. This primordial space is accessed during times when we unplug, slow down, and allow ourselves to incubate and connect to a deeper rhythm. Traditionally, this space was accessed in trance rituals, in journeys to underworlds and otherworlds and in festivals which exist outside of mundane time. Access to this space is the true intention of the holidays — the holy days — that are meant to be time outside of time and so serve as portals to the eternal, to true unknown wild. Yet in the modern vision, this unknown space must be quantified, categorized, mapped, and regurgitated into a commodity at all costs. Why? Beyond the obvious monetary implications, the want to colonize these imaginal slow spaces stems from a deep-seated fear — the fear of nature, of an order that exists beyond our control... and the fear that if we succumb to this larger order we may experience the annihilation of our mundane concerns and encounter instead a world that operates in slow, spiraling, billion-year cycles that have very little to do with us. Yet we vitally need these unknown spaces. Defined, articulated access to unknown space is essential to maintaining our alignment to the greater rhythms of the world around us and is therefore vital to the process of planning for and creating lasting change. In a world that is facing the consequences of its own addiction to urgency and anxiousness, access to such spaces remains essential, even in the midst of all that needs to be addressed right now. Special guest Leah Song from Rising Appalachia chimes in for this episode on the ongoing necessity of access to the deep, slow, primordial and wild.Support the show

Science fiction writers and tech enthusiasts have long spoken of a digital Metaverse — a virtual otherworld that, as the narrative goes, is the logical next phase in human technological development. This Metaverse serves a deep mythosomatic function — it satisfies our collective need for otherworlds, for trance, for mythic narrative, for journeying, and even for shapeshifting. Yet it does so removed from all somatic context — without the accompanying ritual, without any somatic sacrifice, without the sweat of the dance or the fast or the vision quest and without providing any larger contextual purpose or individual/cultural renewal. The brokers of the new digital Metaverse seek to sell us a shamanic otherworld, while traditional access to such otherworlds takes place through the simplest of all vehicles — the body. Traditional trance practices harness breath, movement, vocal invocation, and artistic visioning as portals to otherworlds, whose ultimate purpose is not escape, entertainment, or distraction but to re-invigorate our relationship with this world. And so the magisters of tech veer into what, according to the myths and fairy tales, is profoundly dangerous territory — misusing the power of the otherworld, harnessing mass trance-induction techniques for profit rather than for communal transformation and renewal. Tech dystopias, shapeshifters, plant beings, Tantric meta-anatomies, fairy woods and more... on this episode of The Emerald.Support the show

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.

The word ‘resonance’ is commonly used these days to convey agreement with a point of view or perspective. But resonance is much more than this. ‘Resonance’ implies a universe that is sonorous and reverberatory and that operates according to the principles of harmony. Within this, many cultures have seen the role of the human being to become an instrument — to cultivate, through ritual repetition, a resonance with our fellow beings, with land, and with cosmos. This vision is not metaphorical. Science is increasingly finding that nature operates through resonance, that music predates language, and that when human beings decide to do things — to embark on adventures, to vote for politicians, to join groups — the primary driving force to do so is not ‘fact’ but resonance. Culture itself almost certainly arose through resonance, as we entrained to one another, in sync, through musical somatic ritual in resonant spaces. From the deep sounding board of the Paleolithic cave to the resonant spaces that birthed Greek prophecy to mythic visions of humans-as-instruments, this episode explores how resonance is utterly central to human experience, how modernity has become what one sociologist referred to as a ‘catastrophe of resonance,’ and what we can do to reclaim our deep resonance with one another and the natural world.Support the show

Sophie Strand describes herself as a writer, an animist troubadour, and a giant pile of composting leaves. Her lyrical, eco-centric vision of the mythic has gained her a wide following, as she blasts monomyths wide open into swarms of glittering spores. With essays entitled 'My Saint is a Weed,' 'Confessions of a Compost Heap,' and 'Becoming a Ruin,' Sophie's work brings the mythic into the tangible, helps myths regain their body, and places stories deep in the middle of a living ecosystem of time, place, and specificity. In this episode, Josh and Sophie discuss her model of looking at stories through the triple lens of Myco Eco Mytho, and then go on a rhizomatic conversational journey into kingdoms of astonishment, Orphic root systems, flowering wands, and visions of how to give the Gods back their bodies. Support the show

This podcast explores the cultural descriptions of mystic experiences and the mapping of mystic spaces across different cultures and time periods. It delves into the frustration of describing mystic experiences in modern society and the lack of cultural frameworks. The chapter discusses the existence of similar visions and depictions of a mystical tree in different cultures. It also explores the concept of 'center' and its significance in rituals, art, and communities. The podcast emphasizes the importance of a defined mythology and cultural lens in understanding and applying the mystic experience.

Author Kurt Vonnegut once proposed that stories have shapes — that there are a few common wave-trajectories that underlie all of our stories. This episode builds on Vonnegut's thesis and explores the energetic shapes and trajectories of myths — trajectories that serve, within oral myth telling cultures, to take the listener on an experiential journey of scattering and rejoining, of rupture and cascade, of coiling and release, and of journey and return. These wave dynamics exist throughout nature and are inherent to our somatic structure, which is also why certain story structures, like the Hero's Journey, are difficult to get away from. Stories of journey and return mirror energetic cycles that exist in the breath, in the brain, in seasonal cycles, and in the phases of the moon. So while the socio-political externals of Hero's Journey stories can — and in some cases probably should — change, the underlying circular energetic of departure and return is as fundamental to human experience as the breath is. From the tale of Sisyphus, a breath-journey of rise and fall, to the vibrant spiral dynamics of the Indian goddess tales, this episode explores myths in terms of their directional energetic dynamics and cracks open a way of understanding and feeling story that is somatic rather than analytical.Support the show

Trance, traverse, transformation, tradition, transcendence, transgression — all come from a single Indo-European linguistic root TRA, which signifies some type of crossing over. Crossing over is something human beings have always been inclined to do — populations migrate across great expanses as explorers seek new horizons. Too much emphasis on crossing over, however, can lead to worldviews of transcendence, in which the purpose of existence is to 'get past' rather than exist in harmony with what is. Transcendence worldviews are alive and well in modern apocalyptic religion and in modern science, which seems determined to transcend nature, blast us to mars, and extend human lifespans. Yet traditionally, this human need for traverse was addressed through ritualized trance, which carried practitioners across a great inner divide. The great inner traverse offered by trance practice brought the practitioner into a state of focused presence, a flow state that is the heart of mystical tradition, and that requires the greatest of traverses to reach — the traverse across the torrent of agitated discursive thought to a state of seamless integration. These days, this traverse is harder and harder to make, as we are inundated with technologies that 'carry us across', and we spend most of our waking lives in an unwitting trance, perpetually crossing over without even realizing it. TRA is for trance — choose your trances wisely. Support the show