Jung, the Red Book, and Prophesy

The prophetic aspects of Carl Jung’s Red Book, published in 2009, was the topic of Stephan A. Hoeller’s lectures at the Theosophical Society’s Krotona Institute in Ojai.  Hoeller, an ordained priest in the Liberal Catholic Church and now Bishop of the Gnostic Catholic Church in America “Ecclesia Gnostica”, spoke of Jung’s vision of the coming new religion.  In Jung’s visionary experience in 1913, the time frame was one Platonic month or 800 years.  Jung referred to the God Within, which resides in each and everyone of us humans.  He called it the Self.  The Work of humanity is to become Individuated, to become whole through our encounter with the Unconscious Divine dimensions of the human psyche.  Through a process of confronting the Shadow and other archetypes it is possible to reach a state of integration of the opposites within us.  When the ego learns to serve the Self, the God Within, in fact this has always been the relationship, so it is more when the ego, the “I” of consciousness, becomes aware that the Self has always been guiding and creating our experiences, the ego changes its perspective.  The attitude is one of reverent awe in the face of the overwhelming synchronicity.

According to Jung the Self will finally become enthroned in  human consciousness during the Zodiacal Age of Aquarius.  Jung told Max Zeller in 1949, in response to Zeller’s sharing of a dream,  that the Temple of the new religion would be 600 years in the building and that people of all cultures are working on its structure.  This process is an experiential one.  One can only become aware of the archetypes through encountering them personally.  We can read about other people’s experiences, but ultimately we have to attain knowledge through our own experience.  That is the definition of gnosis in Greek philosophy, so it is no wonder that a Gnostic Bishop would find support in Jung’s prophetic visions.

Most of Jung’s early insights came through visions recorded in his Red Book and were expressed in his privately published Seven Sermons to the Dead attributed to the pre-Nicene Gnostic Bishop of Alexandria, Basilides.  Hoeller’s insight on this matter is correct.  I too noticed this in 1977 when I was studying with Russell Lockhart and Malcolm Dana at the Jung Institute in Los Angeles.  In fact I had a dream at the time in which Basilides and his wife Sophia told me “what you do is Hermeneutics”.  That is precisely what the early Christian gnostics were doing, Hermetic philosophy.  They were studying the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistes.  An interesting personal interchange with Bishop Hoeller came just as we were returning from lunch.

Stephan spied the Santo Daime sparkling rhinestone cross on my coat.  “Oh, le croix de Lorainne,” he said.  “Yes, but also Santo Daime,” I responded.  The Bishop lifted his right hand, on which his Bishop’s ring shone forth, and said, “I probably shouldn’t say this, but that [the Santo Daime tradition] is where the promise lies.”  As a teacher of world religions he would know that the Santo Daime Brazilian Christian tradition is based on personal visions of the founder Mestre Ireneu, Padrinho Sebastiao, and all of us who drink the ayuaska, which is called Daime.  Through the Holy Sacrament we have an individual and personal relationship with the Divine.  This is much the same as the Gnostic tradition.  The Bishop has the ancient manuscripts discovered in 1949 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, the ancient gnostic library.  The Santo Daime tradition has been evolving through visionary experiences since its beginning in 1930.  Whether or not Jung’s visions of 1913 foretold of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library 35 years later, he did predict the coming of three phases: war, magic, and religion.

As Hoeller noted in his lecture, we all have experienced war.  The present technological age and the amazing things our cell phones can do would be described as “magic” in earlier times.  The coming of the new world religion is based upon our personal encounters with the Divine which occur every night in our dreams.  It is building the Temple of the New Religion.  Some of us build with medicines like peyote and ayuaska.  Others with yoga and meditation practices.  As the Theosophists have been saying for years, all religions lead to the same place, the Source, the Creator.  Some are arriving sooner than others, but we all get to the goal eventually.

Jung's Shadow in the Red Book

Divine Cosmos, Theosophy, and Dreams

As we drove up the winding mountain road to dance with our Santo Daime Tradition family, I told my nephew the morning dream.   I was meditating, laying down, covered with blankets, when I decided to get up to use the bathroom.  I thought I was in my waking life bedroom.  But then I noticed two other elders laying there beside me.  This was confusing.  Two interpenetrating dimensions were merged. Throwing off the bed covers and swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I noticed there were several people sitting, meditating around the base of the raised bed.  The dreamspace was not my bedroom.  Rather it was a very large open room, where about 40 people, all blond (they looked like David Wilcock, although I had never seen a photo of him at the time) were sitting.  They were wrapped in one seamless piece of emerald-green fabric, which smoothly stretched around each person, covering everything except their heads.  I couldn’t see their eyes.  When my nephew asked me to describe the people, all blond, he felt he understood the images. “They are meditating to help you wake up, to remember who you are.  They are the Sons of Ra.  You are one of them Uncle.  Like them, Uncle, you are one of the sons of Ra.” That got me telling him about remembering my soul’s journey through several different incarnations, Buddhist, Greek, Native American, French Canadian, to mention a few, so I found his suggestion inviting and decided to explore David Wilcock’s blog.

When we got home from the Santo Daime Work, I consulted our modern Oracle, the Internet, and found Wilcock’s Divine Cosmos site.  There I discovered a younger version of myself (I used to wear that same East Indian style jacket when I was his age).  In David’s Occupy your Self video is an excellent summary of David’s research over the past 20 years.  It also reflects my research over the past 50 years, including the importance and meaning of Dreams. His blog on Human ETs in the 1950s has a pdf transcript of telepathic communication and evidence which has a strikingly familiar ring for anyone who is familiar with Theosophical literature. The ETs of the mid-20th century have the same message and magic technology as C.W. Leadbeater reports his experience of the Masters/Adepts of the late 19th century. The similarities are astounding. Could Leadbeater’s Master Kuthumi be a human ET? Wilcock’s video reports Voltaire’s letter to Count Germain.  Evidently Germain had  similar technology in the 18th century and demonstrated it to Voltaire in many of the ways the Italian Friendship Group experienced their technology in the mid 1950s.  The teachings of Blavatsky, Leadbeater, and Besant are seamless antecedents to Wilcock’s discoveries.

Evidently we have been tapping into the Divine Source.  Carl Jung called it the Collective Unconscious, because It is independent of human consciousness, something we can experience, however we cannot “know” It as an object of science.  He later wanted to focus on the objectiveness of the Collective Unconscious and started talking about the Objective Psyche.  In his final years he referred to it as the Psychoid (Reality).  Wilcock reflects Jung’s emphasis when he calls it the Source Field.  All of these people appear to be talking about the same phenomena.  Jung stressed working on our personal spiritual evolution in the process he called Individuation.  If we all do the Work of Individuation, the Collective Spirit evolves.  The Theosophists teach Service to Others, Meditation, Spiritual Evolution and talk of 7 interpenetrating dimensions.  Wilcock adds Love of oneself and Love of others, a reflective mirror of the God Within.  His Source Field has 12 interpenetrating dimensions. That’s similar to the message of Gnostic Christianity, Alchemy, and the Liberal Catholic Church, which the Theosophists’ created in 1916.  Each path leads to the same place.  Amazing!

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Fantasy is another word for imagination, for the world of dreams and illusions.  C. S. Lewis’ Narnia is such a place, where animals and mythological creatures speak our language.  We understand their nonverbal communication.  We hear them and understand their speech.  Their words are intelligible.  The scene is that of war between the forces of light and darkness, of good and evil.  This is a place where the soul can evolve depending upon one’s choices as the consequences of our actions play themselves out.  We can learn and suffer from our mistakes.  We can be redeemed by the magic of love, courage, respect, and the Divine within us.  This is a place where our emerging adult can become heroic, rise to the occasion, and forgive the wrongs done to us.  Here our hidden destiny is played out, lived and enjoyed, and, like a dream, abruptly ends in a surprising re-entry to the “real” world from which we came.

Narnia is a metaphoric kingdom inhabited by symbols of our collective psychic evolution.  The King is a lion, the lion of Judea, who suffers humiliation as an innocent lamb of sacrifice.  This is a rather obvious characterization of the paradoxical Christ consciousness.  Azlan is both ferocious and kind, cunning and innocent, wise and trusting.  He is an excellent image for the Divine Self which dwells in the inner realm of the mystic and the dreamer.  The children are destined to become kings and queens of this magic realm.  But first they must suffer at the hands of the ice queen, whose scepter is like the stare of Medusa, turning man and beast to stone.  Unlike the warm, caring mother the children had to leave behind in London, the Witch is logical, cold, and heartless.  This eventually becomes her undoing, as her icy cruelty is destroyed by the fire of love.  This is a battle of the opposites where both sides are wounded.

We see the ideal resolution of the war in the redemption of Edmund, who experiences the consequences of betraying his brother and sisters, and then understands his mistake.  Ultimately his rejoining the group brings about the alignment of the masculine and feminine.  Peter is the inner king, the older brother of the trickster/fool, who sees his own faults and is able to forgive with understanding.  The women are sensitive and aware of the relational realm, they sense Azlan’s need for companionship during the dark night of the soul.  They are there for him and the Christ figure is grateful for this gift, freely given.  In the end there is a four-fold cooperative brotherhood and sisterhood.  Four rulers, two masculine and two feminine, bring about a flourishing of the frozen wasteland, a rebirth of culture, interracial warmth and cooperation.  All of this is prophesy in the beginning, the possible script for the imaginal play.

We reenact these dramas nightly.  They heal us just as the stories of Ali Baba and the forty thieves healed the Sultan.  The dream world is constantly at work re-weaving our psychic stories, teaching us and healing us.  When we can remember these nightly journeys and record them, sometimes the become great literature.  They touch the universal depths within the reader and movie goer.  They speak to the soul, to the psyche, which has come here to learn and evolve into a higher form of human.

The Spirits Have Already Arrived

Synchronicity is a way the soul is making meaning of personal experiences.  This morning, the first day of Advent in the Liberal Catholic tradition, was focused on Discrimination.  The visiting Celebrant scheduled to perform the Liturgy canceled last night and the Rector gave his sermon “from the hip”.  He began with a quote from the Upanishads and continued with references from the East Indian sage Shankara and Helena P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine.  For me that was mind blowing synchronicity.  Why?

Last night I drank Santo Daime with my church community.  After the service I was talking to a psychic about the feast of St. John the Baptist, which in the Eastern Orthodox Church, is celebrated on January 7th.  That is the date of my birthday celebration in the Native American Church, or the Peyote Way as it used to be called before 1918.  The Liberal Catholic Church was founded in 1916.  The Santo Daime Tradition in 1930, a few years after the (re)birth of my spirit guide in this lifetime of John R. Cole.  I wrote his name on the list of disincarnate spirits during the Healing Work called a Cura last week.  Synchronistically the book John Cole had inscribed for me, The Prophet (1923), showed up in a drawer during the ceremony.  The inscription in my copy was the quote from the Upanishads, exactly word for word in the Priest’s sermon this morning.  Last night the psychic was looking into my eyes when I was talking about the feast of St. John and she said, “I can see that”.  It seemed a little odd at the time.  It was as though she could see the Baptist in my eyes.  Since she is Brazilian and has lived in Mapia, the community founded by Sebastiao Mota de Melo, who claimed to be an incarnation of the Prophet, John the Baptist, this gave me food for thought.  Could the people in the spirit world be using our eyes so to speak?  Could she see them in my eyes?  And who was she seeing in me?  Sebastiao?  John Cole?  The Baptist?  Does it matter?

What I got out of the whole experience was the feeling that I am not alone in my work on this planet.  I have helping spirit guides all around me and in my 68th year, I am beginning to be more aware of them.  And the vehicle for this assurance is synchronicity.  In 1997 I taught a course in Critical Thinking at Mendocino College and decided to add a text to balance out the overly analytical book in its 5th edition.  What did I choose?  The text was given to me by my son Christopher Melville at Christmas and published in 1996, called Synchronicity: Science, Myth, and the Trickster by Allan Combs and Mark Holland.  That book profoundly changed my life and ushered in the end of my marriage of 30 years.  It heralded, like Hermes (one of the Trickster figures described in the text) the coming into power of another of my spirit guides, Meyalo, Keeper of the Sacred Smoke for his Papago tribe and who died in 1979.  The Native American Trickster figure dealt with in the text is Coyote.  This was the start of Coyote’s Magic Carpet ride for me and my entry into the Native American Church.  It has been a wildly wonderful teaching journey for me which I call Riding Coyote’s Tail (2010).

Today I wore my Santo Daime cross to the Liberal Catholic Church founded by Theosophists.  One of the young fathers I have been mentoring took the cross off of his tie last night and said, “I just have the feeling I am supposed to give this to you.”  And after church this morning one of the members, a life long Liberal Catholic, asked me about the tie pin and then told me about the blue heron standing outside the window of her home and how this led her to look up the significance in her Medicine Cards.  I told her that the Water bird is the symbol of the Native American Church, since it sees its reflection in the morning water as it flies over, much the way we do after a night of eating medicine, chanting and praying.  We see ourselves more clearly with the help of the sacred medicines.  My friend was moved to join our Dream Group/Workshop because of the appearance of the Blue Heron, another of my totem animals, which is discussed in Riding Coyote’s Tail.

This morning I had a sense of awe given all the synchronicity and thanked Creator for one more day of this beautiful life on this amazing planet.

Native American Story Therapy

Michael Watson raised several issues regarding counseling people with First Nations indigenous heritage in his recent essay in Dreaming the World. In my own therapy with my counselor, who was a graduate of Columbia University and a licensed Clinical Social Worker, the difference in paradigm was always present in the therapeutic container. Although my therapist had studied with an Arapaho Shaman, carried her drum, and was surrounded by artifacts, she hadn’t been recognized, as I had, by an Elder as someone who understood “The Stories of Life”, the stories of the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. The way our difference in perspective would typically show up was with the therapist’s comment and question: “Michael, I hear you talking about your relationships to all these “spiritual” relatives, and how they affect you, but what about yourself? Why don’t you talk about Michael, as an individual?” At first I tried to explain that “we are all related”, that the web of life includes all of our relations, people, animals, plants, air, water, earth, and spirits. But after a while I realized that she was a wonderful “good enough” mother for my wounded inner child, but she was living in a different paradigm, just like my biological mom and dad had been. In fact that was part of the problem.

Had I been living 400 years ago, my family would have known that my gifts weren’t normal ones. My gifts in dreaming and intuition were psychic gifts which a Medicine Person would know how to cultivate. I was a throwback to my Native Iroquois/Tsalagi genes. I had incarnated into a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant family, or so it appeared on the surface. My dad’s Mormon roots spoke of pride in their Native American brothers and sisters, as well as their Jewish tradition (the Nephites were the members of the lost tribes of Israel). But I was never encouraged to explore the possibility of having genetic ties to those cultural traditions. Both were “beneath our station” in life. But I felt called to those traditions by a powerful force. In my mid-life crisis at 35, when all of our elders began to pass into the spirit world, I discovered that both the Jews and the Indians were in the family closet. Had we been able to be honest about all of the secrets, I wouldn’t have had to live out the unconscious aspects of my family of origin.

As a result of my long journey toward consciousness of my genetic roots, I have discovered a basic problem in counseling indigenous people. They inhabit a different paradigm from the European consciousness which invented psychotherapy. In a paradigm taking for granted the interconnectedness of all the people and the web of life, everything one does affects others. Boundaries are almost non-existent in this paradigm. Personal sacred space is valued, but not in the way Europeans value privacy. In an indigenous community everybody knows your business, so why try to hide it? Better to be honest, transparent, vulnerable and walk your talk, correcting your mistakes as part of the process. Integrity is essential, as is flexibility. Spiritual forces, which might be considered projections in Western medicine, are still just as real for the client. It is far better to step into the client’s psychic world with her/him and be a friend and guide, a companion on the dangerous, scary journey toward maturation, than to maintain “objective distance” and all the isolation which it creates. Losing our land base, language, and culture is only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath lurks the murder, rape, and ravishment of our ancestors. Those hurt, angry voices are within us all. They need to be heard and grieved, before we can move on to a “normal” way of living.

And then there is the “therapeutic container”, which works great in European immigrants’ healing. But in the Native American world knowing that people are watching and are aware of one’s problems is what helps us feel “part of” the community. Often we have to contact a family member with graceful tact in order to change the family of origin. And this violates the “therapeutic container”.  And sometimes it backfires on the therapist. But that is life in community. We are all affected. We are all related. When I understood the basic conflict which I was continually involved in, I realized, after talking to my therapist/colleague about all of this, that I cannot practice within the Western model. That’s why I am a Spiritual Counselor. I have a MA in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology (Freud/Alice Miller and Jung especially). My European lineage is very helpful in my work with First Nations people. The Jungian tradition is quite compatible with the Native Ways and there is a lot of cross-fertilization in 21st Century America. I am even finding it helpful in bridging with the South American traditions of the Amazon rainforest. What amazes me is how the indigenous wisdom is rising to the surface of consciousness again, like it was 500 years ago. And the Eagle/Condor prophesy is coming true. How this will change psychotherapy remains to be seen.

Dickens’ Christmas Carol: Preparing for a Good Death

In Dickens’ classic Christmas tale of redemption, Scrooge finally is shown his Shadow, the repressed aspects of his personality. He is shown his lonely, abused, abandoned, and neglected inner child, his longing for the love of family and friends, and his choice to love finance more than his fiance. The Spirit of Christmas past, present, and future intervenes (as Dream visions) showing him where his life choices are taking him. Scrooge is terrified with the dream mirroring of his cold, lonely death. Then he awakens to the beauty of the present moment. The inner visions have affected him profoundly and he changes. He takes action to change not only his own life, but the lives of all those around him, his employees as well as only nephew’s family. We, like Scrooge, have the opportunity to change our life direction.

We are told that the love of money is the root of evil (not money per se, but the love of it). Dickens illustrated that well. He also showed us how dreams can lead us on the path of redemption and ultimately to the transformation of our lives. Wake up and pay attention to what Great Spirit is telling you. Today may be the last opportunity you have. How do you want to live? Who do you want to love? How can you show it? Act now. Say what you need to say and move on. That is what it means to have Death as an advisor. Live today as though it were your last.

The Self teaches us many things, which we can acknowledge.  If we listen to our dream messages, and integrate the archetypes into ourselves, to the extent possible, we leave this life as whole persons.  And we return to Source with the information gained on the Soul’s Journey.

Cracking Open and Finding Help Within.

Marie-Louise von Franz presented a Romanian folktale in her book (1999) The Cat: A Tale of Feminine Redemption (1999) The enchanted cat gives the hero a nut, which when cracked contains smaller seeds of maize, wheat, and a weed. Within the last of these magic nesting objects is a treasure of fine linen cloth. In discussing the meaning of the story, von Franz compares the nut and seeds to the process of individuation. What she said is just as true today as it was then.

“When we first approach the unconscious, it is a hard nut for us to crack. We can’t penetrate it, we don’t understand our dreams and so on; we have to bite through to understand dreams and we are repelled until we get into them and find there is a message within, something that nourishes. You often see that in analysis. People who have a heavy depression or some other problem, generally, if they have had other types of analysis before, or never had any analysis, at first are bewildered by our Jungian methods. We say, “Any dreams?” and then we begin to nut-crack dream symbols, and they wonder what that has to do with their marital problem or depression–until they discover for themselves that yes, their dreams have a life-giving message, and then they begin to realize the nourishing aspects of the unconscious. For instance, they leave the analytic hour feeling better; they came into the hour depressed and they haven’t understood much yet, but they feel better, more hopeful. They come in contact with the nourishing aspect of the unconscious, and this begins to give some vitality to consciousness, to impart some hope.” (pp. 105-6)

Sailing the Divine

Healing comes from the Great Mystery, the Divine, the Spirit, That of which we are not conscious (the Unconscious). Healing comes on its own and when it wishes. Those of us who work with this Power must wait patiently and accompany our friends and relatives on their individual paths. We wait for a vision, a dream, a synchronous event, a message from the Great Mystery to guide us on our journey. Good counseling is helpful, but provides no cure. That must come from the depths of the soul, from what Carl Jung called the Self. There are many ways to symbolize the Self, but when we are confronted with its tremendous Power, the ocean comes to mind. It can be calm and mirror-like. It can change quickly and become menacing. A ship is the symbol for what keeps us afloat, what keeps us protected from drowning, when we are carried by water-force, the emotions and experiences evoked by the Divine.

Marie-Louise von Franz said that “any philosophy, religious teaching or cultural tradition” will function like a ship when we go into the unconscious’ realm. She claimed that Jung fashioned such a ship, “by creating certain hypotheses to which one can cling when one doesn’t know up from down. When one is in danger of drowning in the unconscious, of having a huge inflation or something of the kind, falling into a possession or being overwhelmed by an affect, then such psychological concepts as Jung’s can help. . . All teachings and traditions have some value in preventing one from complete disorientation, which is a typical effect when one touches the unconscious; one becomes disoriented and that’s the drowning.” (pp. 34-35, The Cat: A Tale of Feminine Redemption, 1999) It doesn’t matter what tradition provides the conceptual framework, so long as there is something to which the counselor and the patient can relate their experiences.

Jung drew upon all of the religious and cultural traditions available to him at the beginning of the 20th century. He was a student of Chinese, Indian, Judeao-Christian and Islamic, Alchemical, Gnostic and mythological traditions. He was looking for universal threads which are found throughout these diverse ways of establishing respectful relationship with the Divine. He came up with the best ways of characterizing the process given his (vast) understanding. Jungians have been clarifying and refining the basic foundations of analytical psychology ever since.

I have found that Jung’s insights are reflected in my study of Native American culture and religion. We use slightly different names for the same phenomena, but human nature is essentially the same. We are all brothers and sisters; all different colors of the Rainbow created by the Divine Mother/Father. Messages from the Source often come in dreams and visions. That’s why we seek visions. We want to communicate with the Divine. We use purification (sweat) lodges, fasting, ceremonial retreats into nature, medicine plants and related ceremonies of meditation to connect with the Divine, with Great Mystery, and listen. Often the imagery we experience is symbolic and requires someone with whom we can safely share our “transmission”. The good news is that such people exist and they have shared their skills, their art, with younger people so our traditions continue to thrive.

Always requiring adaptation to new situations and new people, the old ways are renewed in council and ceremony. Their efficacy is very pragmatic. If they work, they are renewed, transformed to fit the new generation. If they don’t work, they die. That is the way of nature. It is our choice to continue teaching the methods which work. That is how we are co-creating the world. We pass on to the next generation what we have found useful and efficacious.

Transmodern Rave Shamanism

Having drunk medicine in 2007 with a young man trained by the Shipibo people of Peru, I was surprised to encounter (2011) my first eclectic Ayuaska experience. Described by my grandson as a Shipibo trained shaman, the photo looked like a model from GQ. “How old is this guy?” I asked. “Twenty-six, but he exudes pure love, like Christ,” he responded. I was intrigued. There was something odd, just didn’t fit, so I pushed further into my puzzlement with, “He looks like a model; are you sure he’s Peruvian?” The young jaguar answered succinctly. “He used to be a model.” That was even more confusing. Are there male models in Peru? I met a Brazilian guy who modeled underwear a few years ago, but he was the party type, not a shaman. So I was looking forward to meeting the Peruvian last Friday night. What a surprise!

He was wearing one of those Andes Peruvian woven wool hats, a poncho, pale purple colored pants, and leather sandals, the kind desert people wear. He had that mystic other worldly look in his eyes and gave me the feeling I knew him from some other incarnation or inter-dimensional dream traveling. So I asked him where he was from. Spain, Andalusia, Seville. His family background had history in Morocco. That explained the dark olive complexion, but when I heard him sing in Hebrew later in the evening, I was impressed. During ceremony he dressed in traditional white clothing, invoked the spirits of the seven directions, south, west, north, east, earth, sky, and soul. He told me we would experience a potpourri of Andes and Rainforest traditional songs and music from the several tribes from whom he had received permission to share their ways. He also shared Huichol and Zapotec teachings, included invocations to the Blue Ray of Christ, the Golden Ray of Krishna, and the Silver Ray of Buddha.

One of the main spiritual invitations of the Santo Daime tradition “there is only one presence here, it is harmony, which makes all hearts vibrate with happiness and joy”, opened the work, then we drank medicine, and the shaman launched into Brazilian Portuguese Santo Daime songs. He kept his promise with the songs in Spanish and native dialects of Peru, he played the flute, and did the vocals.  After the second glass of medicine, the shaman popped open his laptop computer and chose selections from his Ipad to feed into the amplified acoustic sound which Raved on throughout the night. His choices seemed geared to the cultural background and healing concerns of his circle of clients, who went through profound changes in response to the music. This was definitely a whole new level of sound therapy.

In the morning light of sunrise the young man beside me described the ceremony as “Transmodern” shamanism for the new era.  He felt it was “epic”, and I suppose it was. This was shamanism taken to the global level. His play-list included trance and ceremonial music from every background on the planet, Mongolian throat singing, Tibetan chanting complete with Temple gongs and trumpets, African tribal music, Japanese and Chinese traditional singing, Hindu chants and music. Those were the ones I could recognize and there were more, which the young shaman had collected on his travels over the planet. His musical choices had a profound impact on all of us.

I had received a chiropractic adjustment earlier in the day and was in pain most of the night, but when I emptied my bowels early in the morning, all the pain dissipated. It was uncanny, sort of miraculous. All the time I was fighting with the Rave music’s intrusiveness, my discomfort continued. When I literally let go of my control, and allowed flow in my body, it responded with relaxation and acceptance of joy. I was impressed with my experience of techno-shamanism. It forced me out of the traditional ceremonial box I have acquired sitting with Native American, Columbian, and Peruvian medicine people.  It made me look at the results instead of the cultural form.

The profound healings reported by most of the participants could be attributed soley to the power of the medicine.  The medicine seemed to like the sound vehicle the shaman provided.  My Santo Daime fardada granddaughter told me that “the medicine will not be dominated or predicted,” it is a Divine Being and creates healing in whatever way it chooses. The medicine is the Queen of the Rainforest and the Goddess of the Rainbow, Abuelita, and Mama. In the Santo Daime tradition it is called Juramidam, Christ in the Vine.  There are other names by which it is called, this marvelous healing plant medicine, Ayuaska. Whatever you call it, one thing is certain, it transforms the soul, reworks the neurological net, and enlightens those who drink it. I am always amazed at its ability to speed up human spiritual evolution. It uses a wide variety of people from different cultures to carry it’s healing throughout the world, and as the spirit of the condor, it is flying with the spirit of the eagle, just as the prophesy predicted 500 years ago.

Song and intent, the channel for spreading love and blessing

Bishop Charles Leadbeater wrote a lot about his clairvoyant visions. He could see the Angel of the Presence, an agency of the Christ, creating a spiritual temple during the Divine Liturgy. This temple is constructed through the combined energies of the people and the clergy, who provide love and devotion during the service, the building blocks used to create the spiritual temple and the channel through which the Divine energies can flow. Leadbeater says, in Christian Gnosis, regarding the Sacraments, that “the congregation’s main purpose in attending the service should not be the reception of communion, wonderful as that is, but to give something of themselves in order to help in the great work.” (p. 235) The force created during the Mass is intended to be distributed not only to the people in the church, but to all those in the immediate vicinity.

“Every celebration of the Holy Eucharist, then, not only strengthens and helps those who take part in it, but also floods the entire neighborhood with spiritual power and blessing. To what extent this blessing is assimilated by the souls upon whom it falls depends upon their attitude and their degree of development; but assuredly it must produce some effect even upon the most careless.” (p. 233)

Of course he is referring to the Liberal Catholic liturgy, but he also says this is happening in the Roman Rites and the Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy. He claims to have seen, clairvoyantly, these constructions in many Anglican, Roman, and Greek Christian churches, which he visited prior to 1916, when he and Bishop Wedgewood devised the present service. I cannot see what Leadbeater saw, but I can feel what he describes, a divine outpouring of blessing. That’s why I attend the services. I love to sing the Divine Liturgy, whether it is in the Greek Orthodox or the Liberal Catholic Church. The songs “bring down the spirit”, just as they do in the Native American Church, the Brazilian Santo Daime tradition and the shamanic traditions of the Kofan and Shipibo tribes of the Rain Forest. The songs and the intentions of the people who celebrate together change the psychic atmosphere.