The Emerald
The Emerald explores the human experience through myth, story, and imagination. Hosted by Joshua Michael Schrei, it draws from poetry, lore, and world cosmologies to challenge conventional narratives on politics, mindfulness, art, and science. The podcast advocates for an imaginative vision of human life and discourse, questioning deep assumptions about societal progress.
Episodes
Seven
Seven years ago last Tuesday, The Emerald podcast was born. This episode reflects on the journey of the podcast so far and gives hints of what's to come, all through the prism of the number 7, which is — to say the least — a mythically important number. The myths often iterate in cycles and families of seven—seven swans, seven dwarves, seven ravens, and seven gates of the underworld. In many
Enter the Dragon, Part 2: On Order and Chaos
The dragon, or serpent, in myth and story, is the coiling, spiraling power of nature itself. And so, how cultures have treated the dragon depends a lot on how they view nature and how they view the world. Some have celebrated and honored the serpent power, some have sought to harness or direct it, others to contain or tame it, while some have labeled it as chaos and sought to subdue and slay it. T
Enter The Dragon, Terrifying and Beautiful (Part 1)
Dragon lore is everywhere in global mythology — no matter what continent you live on, the land you inhabit holds dragon story, and quite possibly was shaped by dragons, or has sleeping dragons in it. Such dragons have captured human imagination across hundreds of cultures and thousands of years. But the dragon is much more than a category of fantastical beast. In many traditions the world-dragon,
Carry That Weight: On Mythic Burdens and Cosmic Supports
There is a weight to modern existence — perhaps you've felt it. In a world in which social and environmental crises only seem to be deepening and our familial, communal and spiritual support systems are steadily crumbling, individuals are buckling under the weight. This weight is not simply metaphorical. When the web of relationships that traditionally hold human culture together is fractured
I Think I Hear the Coming of a Planetary Roar (with Louder Music)
In times of rising frustration over the state of nations, times of personal, ecological, societal, and planetary impasse, when cycles of senseless suffering seemingly repeat themselves over and over, and all the global upheaval still isn't bringing about change... in times when stuck energies need to move and forces that have been restrained for generations long to break free, the myths offer
I Think I Hear the Coming of a Planetary Roar
In times of rising frustration over the state of nations, times of personal, ecological, societal, and planetary impasse, when cycles of senseless suffering seemingly repeat themselves over and over, and all the global upheaval still isn't bringing about change... in times when stuck energies need to move and forces that have been restrained for generations long to break free, the myths offer
On Powers, Great and Small
POWER is on the mind these days, as the world grapples with shifting global power dynamics, old powers crumbling, new ones rising, and archaic power paradigms resurfacing… Yes, issues of power run rampant and discussions on power are front and center. But like everything else in modern discourse, the discussion on power has been decontextualized. Power is seen as an abstract bodiless force that go
Trickster Jumps Sides (Re-Issued for Tricky Times)
Tricksters and culture disruptors populate global mythology. From Loki to Coyote to Èṣù and Hermes, they bend rules, cross boundaries, commit deliberate and unintentional offenses and generally mess with established orders. Yet they are often seen as indispensable to these orders — they are renewers and cultural innovators and often pave the way for great change. So in many cultures, Tricksters, d
On Singing to the Beloved in Times of Crisis
We live in times of individual, sociocultural and planetary crisis, exacerbated by rising divisions between people. How have humans historically navigated such times of crisis? Yes, we've organized, taken action, and responded as we've been called to respond. But we have also deepened our connection to the greater cosmos, through songs and poems and rituals of devotion, through crying ou
For the Divine Mother of the Universe (Remixed and Reissued)
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 w
This Episode is FIRE
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 th
(Why Mindfulness Isn't Enough)
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 c
Guardians and Protectors!
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 traditio
Let Us Sing of the Syncretic Gods of Outcasts and Wanderers
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 tradi
On Clouds and Cosmic Law
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 water
Oh Justice
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
For the Intuitives (Part 2)
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
For the Intuitives (Part 1)
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 d
All of My Lessons Come in the Form of a Sound ( w/ Trevor Hall)
There is... a sound. Many, through the ages, have heard it. It echoes in the world all around us, it reverberates in songs of joy and lament, it vibrates in the names of the gods and goddesses themselves. Across the world, tradition after tradition describes a sound that is the source of all sound, a sound that can be heard if we practice attuning ourselves to it. So the Indian yogi follows the so
Reissue: On Trauma and Vegetation Gods
Modern discussions on healing individual minds, cultural wounds, and painful societal histories now revolve around the word ‘trauma.’ Yet addressing trauma is nothing new — traditional cultures across the globe have historically had their own forms of trauma work, without ever labeling it trauma work. For many cultures for many years, cathartic ritual practice that bypasses the conditioned mind ha
So You Want to Be a Sorcerer in the Age of Mythic Powers... (The AI Episode)
The rise of Artificial Intelligence has generated a rush of conversation about benefits and risks, about sentience and intelligence, and about the need for ethics and regulatory measures. Yet it may be that the only way to truly understand the implications of AI — the powers, the potential consequences, and the protocols for dealing with world-altering technologies — is to speak mythically. With t
Inanimate Objects Aren't Inanimate (Or Objects)
In the myths and fairytales, everything teems with sentience and agency... Everything is alive. There are talking trees and singing stones and hedges that move of their own will. Mirrors speak. Swords dance. There are flying carpets and far-seeing spyglasses and cloaks and boots that leap by themselves. This pervasive insistence in the old stories that absolutely everything is alive — that everyth
Animism is Normative Consciousness (Re-mixed, Re-musicked, and Re-released)
For 98% of human history — over 10,000 generations — our ancestors lived, breathed, and interacted with a world that they saw and felt to be animate — imbued with life force, inhabited by and permeated with beings with which we exist in ongoing relation. This animate vision was the water in which we swam, it was consciousness in its natural dwelling place, the normative way of seeing the world and
The Revolution Will Not Be Psychologized, Part 2 (Interview w/ Báyò Akómoláfé)
Báyò Akómoláfé is an author, celebrated speaker, teacher, and self-styled trans-public intellectual whose vocation goes beyond justice and speaking truth to power to opening up other spaces of power-with. In this episode of The Emerald, Báyò joins Josh for a deep-dive discussion into how the Western psychological vision shapes modernity, and the need to expand into alternative stories of what &ap
The Revolution Will Not Be Psychologized
Once upon a time, psychologist James Hillman spoke of anima, the breath of life, the soul of the world, as something that had to be rescued by psychologists from theologians. Now, with pop-psychology vernacular inundating all aspects of life, it may be time for the breath of life to be rescued all over again. The New York Times recently released an article entitled 'The Problem with Letting T
Universe, Adorned: Ornament in Culture, Cosmos, and Consciousness
Human beings adorn. Scientists now say that the earliest adornments date back over 160,000 years. Why is adornment so universal? It is easy to see adornment as simply an indication of status, wealth, and identity. But adornment is also more than this. The word 'adorn' and 'ornament' relate directly to the word 'order,' to the pattern of the cosmos. And so to adorn has
On Birds, and the Imperative of Mystic Flight
Birds in myth are messengers, deliverers of prophecy, and instigators of journeys. But birds are much more than this. Human neurobiology is deeply linked to birds, who, through the arcing patterns of their flight, their hypnotic songs, and their high, piercing calls, awakened human sense faculties, taught us to look up in wonder, and therefore gave us the ability to soar into imaginal spaces. Soma
Embodiment Means Being Torn Apart and Flying Away
Modern embodiment discourse has arisen as a reaction to the Western world's fraught history with bodies. In a world of deep fracture from the natural world, the current emphasis on embodiment serves to help reclaim a relationship with ecology and with the sacredness of the immediate. But what does 'embodiment' really mean? For some, embodiment is synonymous with wellness. For other
No One Here Gets Out Alive (The Death Episode)
Death is universal, an undeniable fact of existence that every single one of our ancestors faced, just as we will. So mythic traditions around the world are full of stories of death. Many initiatory rituals directly enact death, taking the initiate through a process of dying while alive. For Ancient Egyptians and Tibetan Tantrikas, death was not something to run from, but something to actively emb
Reissue: How Trance States Shape the World
Human beings need ecstatic trance. Trance states have played a vital and necessary role in human culture and in the shaping of human history, causing some anthropologists to label the attainment of these states the 'main need' of the 'ceremonial animal' that is the human being. Trance states traditionally help communities reinforce shared bonds, establish values, gain insight i
I Wish It Could Have Been Another Way (A Lament w/ Peia Luzzi)
Not easy listening, but possibly necessary listening — this episode of The Emerald dives deep into the heart of the grief many are feeling over the social and environmental ills that are plaguing the planet. The consequences of ecosystem destruction, species loss, industrialization, social inequality, and rising extremism can be felt everywhere — acutely, in the bodies of those affected by environ
Your Consciousness Comes From the Moon
Traditional mythic, animist, and astrological systems have long told us that the moon is more than a distant, detached object in space, but rather plays an active role in governing the daily rhythms of life. The moon — in its repetitive pulse — gave early humans the first systems of measurement and the first calendars. So the word 'moon' is directly related to the words meter, measure, a
Awake in the Forest of Dangers and Wonders
How many myths and stories and fairy tales take place in... the forest? The forest in these stories is more than just setting or backdrop. It is a character of its own, alive, awake, animate, both treacherous and beautiful. The forest doesn't 'represent' something abstract in the myths, it is exactly what it was for our ancestors — a place of beauty and peril, of life and death, of
War and Ritual Ecstasy
The horrors of war have been part of the human story since the beginning. While there have been differences in how different cultures have done it, war is so widespread that it is impossible to see it as anything other than a primal human drive that fulfills some type of deep somatic need. What is that somatic need? It is easy to chalk war up to a base and 'primitive' aggression or to co
Neck Hairs of the Shapeshifter (w/ Simon Thakur)
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,
For the Divine Mother of the Universe (w/ Nivedita Gunturi)
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 w
Snail Juice & Bear Fat & Werewolf Moons (w/ Leah Song of Rising Appalachia)
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
The Body is the Metaverse
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 remov
Festivals! Initiation and 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 heal
On Resonance: Caves, Hooves, Hearts, Harps... and the Birth of Culture
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,
Becoming a Ruin: Decomposing and Regrowing the Mythic with Sophie Strand
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 wor
Mapping The Mystic: Geographies of Ecstasy in Consciousness and Culture
Modern studies of mystic states focus on the 'ineffability' of the ecstatic experience — the impossibility of explaining what the experience was like. Yet mystic experience might be indescribable in modern culture simply because we’ve failed to culturally describe it. For those cultures historically who tread the mystic space with great regularity, there’s nothing indescribable about it.
The Shape of Stories: How Myths Move Through Bodies and Worlds
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 an
TRA is for Trance: On the Linguistics of Crossing Over
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 tra
On Trauma and Vegetation Gods
Modern discussions on healing individual minds, cultural wounds, and painful societal histories now revolve around the word ‘trauma.’ Yet addressing trauma is nothing new — traditional cultures across the globe have historically had their own forms of trauma work, without ever labeling it trauma work. For many cultures for many years, cathartic ritual practice that bypasses the conditioned mind ha
Tyson Yunkaporta on Pattern, Kinship, and Story in a World of Decontextualized Minds
In his book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, author, teacher, artist and Apalech clan member Tyson Yunkaporta presents a model of five minds — kinship mind, story mind, ancestor mind, pattern mind, and dreaming mind — that together form a way of seeing, knowing, and interacting with the world in a relational context. This episode looks at the rampant fragmentation in the mode
Semele, Kuṇḍalinī, and the Path of Interiorized Lightning
Stories of lightning and lightning-bearers pervade global mythology. With so many tales of mighty gods who punish mortals with lightning it can be easy to view the presence of lightning in the myths as simply a metaphor for power or brute force. Yet the lightning myths go a lot deeper than this. Across the world, the traditions most familiar with states of ecstatic rapture use a common language
Trickster Jumps Sides: Disruption and the Anatomy of Culture
Tricksters and culture disruptors populate global mythology. From Loki to Coyote to Èṣù and Hermes, they bend rules, cross boundaries, commit deliberate and unintentional offenses and generally mess with established orders. Yet they are often seen as indispensable to these orders — they are renewers and cultural innovators and often pave the way for great change. So in many cultures, Tricksters, d
The Many Voices of Water, Part 2: Imagining Water Beyond Lines
With the announcement that water futures have begun trading on the stock market, it's time to take a deeper look at our relationship with water. Water challenges us to ask how we are in relationship to something that is both continuous and discrete, something that flows, moves, evaporates, seeps, and pours forth. Yet rather than honor this multivalent nature of water, humans have tended to tr
How Trance States Shape the World
Human beings need ecstatic trance. Trance states have played a vital and necessary role in human culture and in the shaping of human history, causing some anthropologists to label the attainment of these states the 'main need' of the 'ceremonial animal' that is the human being. Trance states traditionally help communities reinforce shared bonds, establish values, gain insight i
The Many Voices of Water, Part 1: Oceans of Melancholy and Bliss
Water is life — all life on planet earth depends on it. So it is no surprise that in the mythic visions of all peoples, water teems with personhood and agency and speaks with many voices. The Ancient Greek world was populated with water beings, who existed not just as abstract concepts but as living entities that were deeply tied with ecstatic trance rituals. The Greeks heard the voices of hundred
Give the Drummer Some: Trance, Danger, and Rapture in the Oldest Instrument of All
The link between music and trance is so deep that many ethnomusicologists will say that every single culture on the planet has some form of musically-driven trance tradition. Right at the heart of these traditions sits the drum. Far from being a 'primitive' instrument, the drum is advanced technology — more often than not, it is the essential instrument that opens up the doorway to state
When Exactly Was the Age of Reason?
Telling people to 'just listen to reason' or 'just look at the facts' in a post-fact world mired in addictive consumption is akin to telling an addict 'just stop using.' Well intentioned, but not ultimately addressing the root of the issue. So while rational analysis of factual sources is certainly necessary to combat conspiracy and widespread untruths, there are deep
Animism is Normative Consciousness
For 98% of human history, 99.9% of our ancestors lived, breathed, and interacted with a world that they saw and felt to be animate. Imbued with lifeforce. Inhabited by and permeated with forces, with which we exist in ongoing relation. This animate vision was the water in which we swam, it was consciousness in its natural dwelling place, the normative way of seeing the world and our place in it. I
Giving Thanks
Spontaneous expressions of gratitude on this Thanksgiving Day, and a look at the role that gratitude plays in consciousness, community, and cosmos. Support the show
Seeking the Luminous in an Age of Manufactured Light
Light, within nature, has always drawn us in, held our attention, and revealed marvels through its variegated displays. Coleridge said that the “eye is to light like lover to the beloved.” Light and human attention share a very deep relationship. And with our attention increasingly drawn towards a luminous focal point that is manufactured, it becomes more and more difficult to experience somethin
Medusa and #MeToo: How Modern Narratives Miss the Heart of Myth
Who remembers Medusa? Hair of snakes, gaze that can turn to stone, beheaded by Perseus… that Medusa. She's in the news again, because a sculptor has re-imagined the story of Perseus and Medusa as a tribute to the #MeToo movement — and this time, Medusa's the one doing the beheading. Some have embraced this re-telling, but the founder of #MeToo has spoken out strongly against it, saying t
When Bread is No Longer Bread: The Importance of Context in Consciousness, Community, and Cosmos
The defining characteristic of the postmodern capitalist world is a cycle of decontextualization for the sake of monetization. It happens everywhere — with the products we buy, the food in our grocery stores, and the spiritual traditions we import from other lands. Modern Yogic and Buddhist practices have been removed from the deep context of their original practice — and often what is lost in the
The Return to Focused Presence: Rediscovering the Greatest Conspiracy of All
Conspiracy theories abound these days. The Yoga and wellness communities have come under fire for being particularly prone to indulging these theories. Yet the teachings of Yoga ask us ultimately to look deeply at the difference between focused presence and spiraling mental agitation. This is how, in indulging conspiratorial world views, the yoga world is overlooking a profound treasure that lives
The Honey that Hums and Blazes: Somatic Nectars of the Trance State
Honey was revered across the ancient world — found in Egyptian tombs and Chinese apothecaries and referred to glowingly in ancient Sumerian medical texts. The myths and stories that come to us from the ancient world are soaked in honey. Honey is certainly a remarkable substance. But is that enough to explain the presence of liquid nectar in myth upon myth upon myth? There are strange commonalities
A Brief History of Want: Longing and Its Place in Cosmos and Consciousness
Human beings have a complicated relationship with want. For some traditions, desire, want, or longing sits right at the heart of creation itself, providing the spark that sets the universe in motion, and is inherent to what it means to be human. Yet unchecked want has also resulted in untold suffering for people and planet. Renunciate traditions have put forth practices and philosophies designed t
In These Mythic Times: Monsoon, Apocalypse, and What We Are Truly Longing For
These are mythic times. And what are we called to do in mythic times? What is the deep mythic transformation we are seeking? Often the mythic journey requires something very simple of us. Often, it asks us to cultivate the simple acts of paying attention and remembering. Remembering, in a chaotic age, who we are and what we want, what we truly long for. This episode of The Emerald draws upon the b
Holy River of Flows: Words and Discourse in a Declarative Age
Wonder of wonders, words have started arriving for my 13-month old son! Their arrival is a deep reminder that words are more than detached concepts — they are somatic, they invoke, they carry with them the power and potential of transformational magic. Speech, or voice, in the Vedic vision is the goddess herself, and poetic discourse is a river whose ultimate promise is to allow us to 'step i
Sand Talk with Tyson Yunkaporta
Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland Australia. He's the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Sand Talk looks deeply at the basic pattern of nature and how that pattern reflects through all of creation, informing not only how natural systems operate, but reflecting into systems
Space Hex: The Curse of Restlessness in Worldviews of Perpetual Escape
"We don’t go to other planets because our planet is dying. Our planet dies, specifically because we perpetually want to go somewhere else." Today on the podcast, we look at humanity’s increasing obsession with transcending planet earth, in the context of the mythologies of human restlessness. How human beings, whether through certain religious visions of transcendence, or through the inc
Rapturous Focus and Extraordinary Powers: Breathing Life into the Third Book of the Yoga Sutras
The third book of the Patañjali yoga sutras, the Vibhūti Pāda, is often skipped over in modern yoga teacher trainings. Why? Its descriptions of supernatural powers — of yogis who can shrink to the size of an atom, fly, and read minds — can cause cognitive dissonance or discomfort in the modern mind. Yet right in the heart of this discussion of the extraordinary powers is an animate, rapturous visi
Broadcasting Live From the Time of Poets and Bards
The poet/bard/singer holds a special place of reverence in many cultures and traditions. Far from being seen as 'escapism,' sung music, incanted verse, and told story was essential technology for transporting people to a place of greater presence, awareness, focus, and timeless vision that ultimately could assist in navigating life well. This is why story, poetry, and song are more vita
Broadcasting Live From the Center of the Universe
In this live storytelling episode, we look at mythological visions of the world axis or central column across a range of cultures. Starting with the simple upright alignment of the human spine, and journeying to the central mountain of the Indian mythologies and the world tree of the Norse and Siberian cultures, we explore stories and ritual practices that illuminate 'center' and our rel
O Holy Rupture: Cracking Open the Great Myth with Joseph Sansonese
There’s a great myth that is told and retold in cultures throughout the world. The story goes like this — something is harnessed, raised upwards, suspended there, until finally there is a great cracking open and then a cascade of sweetness downward. Mythologist Joseph Sansonese calls this — and not Campbell’s monomyth — the real Great Myth. Today on the podcast we explore myths of rupture — from t
The Pandemic and the Goddess: Perspectives on Humanity, Disease, and Nature
More and more pandemic experts are saying that humanity's disruptions of natural environments are responsible for outbreaks of new viruses. This sense of disease as intimately tied to imbalances that occur within nature is found in traditional Indian and Tibetan understandings, in which local nature goddesses are seen as both bringers and dispellers of disease. If there is something to be lea
The Eyes Have It: The Optics of Creation and Consciousness
Eyes have always held sway over the human imagination — mesmerized us, scared us, inspired us. The windows to the soul, they’ve been called. They’ve been the subject of song and poetry, folklore and myth. Consciousness, in the Indian texts is repeatedly described in relation to eyes. These glorious visions of eyes and consciousness reach their culmination in the 8th century Netra Tantra, the Tantr
Reimagining Our Ancestors: A Dive into the Paleolithic Heart and Mind
We often assume that Paleolithic people lived in a world that was fundamentally less than ours because they didn’t yet have what we have. We assume that their existence was incomplete, because it hadn’t yet culminated in us. Yet new findings on our ancestors' culture, physiology, and physiognomy paint a very different picture. This episode takes us deep into the Paleolithic era, in which 97%
The Shape of Art: Place, Relevance, and the Living Force Between Adorer and Adored
Bette Midler recently made headlines for tweeting a picture of three girls at a museum distracted by their phones instead of admiring the art. Yet the context in which we view art tends to be just as compartmentalized and distracting as a phone. Today on the podcast, we look at varying visions of art in cultural context — from the paleolithic caves to Indian temples to modern performance art — and
Airplanes, Epilepsy, and Shamanism: A Respectful Response to Neil deGrasse Tyson
A few weeks back, wizard-yogi-talkshow host Russell Brand interviewed scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson on his podcast Under the Skin. It’s the November 1st, 2019 episode and it’s highly worth listening to. On the show, Neil puts forward some commonly held suppositions about western science — that the scientific method is the only valid method of arriving at the truth. That subjective reality has noth
Melting Frost: A Holiday Hymn to the Animate Heart
In this poetic ode to the animate vision of the cosmos that has been so central to humanity for so long, we explore the idea that the ritual heart of both culture and cosmos itself is poetry, and that poetry is the only way to accurately convey and invoke a cosmos that is ultimately artful. Poetry exists so humans can be propelled into states where we feel one with nature. Hence the gods “clothe t
How to Churn an Ocean and Breathe Like a Horse: Rekindling the Somatic Heart of Myth
The power of myth exists beyond representation and symbolism. Myths grow out of a time when to utter the word ‘sky’ around a fire at night would transmit something directly to the listener, something very different than the experience of reading the word ‘sky’ on a page from the comfort of a library. Today on the podcast we explore the somatic dimension of myth, the idea that the great myths take
Great Bear: The Being at the Heart of Global Tradition
Bears have been right at the center of pan-global belief systems for a very long time, causing some anthropologists to speak of a circumpolar bear cult dating back possibly over 100,000 years. Given the role that animals have played in shaping human imagination, it's not a stretch to say human beings have, over the ages, learned a whole lot from bears. And it may not be a stretch even to posi
The Poetry of The Point: All of Cosmos and Consciousness in a Little Round Dot
What's the point? Well, far from being an image of smallness or insignificance, the single point, the dot communicates a lot. In fact, in India, there are songs devoted to the point, texts that extol its radiant qualities, practices designed to link to it as a focal point of meditative awareness. The importance of little dots takes on even greater significance when we realize that all life fo
On Cauldrons, Inner and Outer
Cauldrons — cooking vessels — have been part of the human experience and have captured the human imagination for a very long time, from the ancient Celtic cauldron myths to Shakespeare's archetypal vision of three crones and their bubbling brew to the cauldron cults of the African diaspora.But far more than a simple vessel, the cauldron becomes in many cultures synonymous with larger internal
Healing the Science-Spirit Divide in 34 Minutes
In this episode we take a deep dive into the abyss — the seemingly unbridgeable gap that exists between science and spirit. Are there places where science — which sees the universe as something that, to quote physicist Stephen Hawking, doesn’t need God in order to exist, and spirituality, which sees an animate universe created with consciousness and perhaps infused with consciousness — can find co
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