Program Notes
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Guest speaker: Shonagh Home
Celtic goddess, Cerridwen holding the cauldron
Today’s program features a talk given by Shonagh Home at the inaugural Viridis Genii Symposium that was held in July of 2015. In this talk Shonagh discusses the role of women through the ages who have worked with visionary plant medicines. She explains the role of the Oracle of Delphi and her relationship with sacred plants, as well as other classic healers who were assisted by the plant spirits. Shonagh also shares some of her personal experiences with the sacred mushroom and the incredible synchronicities that have occurred as a result.
“When I think of the technique of religious ecstasy, I think of high trance states that bring you into direct contact with the divine, with the ancestors, with the spirit of the plant medicines that you are working with.” -Shonagh Home
Visionary Mushroom Practicum:
A Medicine Woman’s Perspective
on the Practical and Mystical Layers
of Visionary Mushroom Medicine
https://www.shonaghhome.com/visionary-mushroom-practicum
Shonagh Home is a shamanic therapist, teacher, writer and poet. Her specialized private sessions and retreats are probing and revelatory, assisting clients to break chronic, self-defeating patterns, and move into empowered personal sovereignty. Shonagh is an international public speaker on the subject of visionary shamanic-spirit medicine, a voice for stewardship of the honeybees, and a teacher on the subject of Traditional Foods. She is author of the books, ‘Ix Chel Wisdom: 7 Teachings from the Mayan Sacred Feminine,’ ‘Love and Spirit Medicine,’ ‘Poetic Whispers from the Green Realms,’ and ‘Honeybee Wisdom: A Modern Melissa Speaks.’
Website: www.shonaghhome.com
The Viridis Genii Symposium
Sisters of the Extreme: Women Writing on the Drug Experience
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Transcript
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Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic
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salon on our 2.0 track.
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is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon on our 2.0 track. Well,
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since today is the last day of 2018, I thought that it would be nice to do a podcast that reaches everyone in the salon on the same day, and so I’m using the 2.0 track to publish this program.
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As you know, new programs on the Salon 1.0 track have been appearing on my Patreon feed first,
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and then they appear here
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on the classic RSS feed three months later. And I’m doing that, of course, to give a little
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something extra to my supporters on Patreon, who are basically my bulwark against poverty these
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days. However, I also host a live version of this salon every Monday night, and so in a few hours
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I’ll be hosting a live salon
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for my Patreon supporters. And even though tonight is New Year’s Eve, I’ll be here in the salon
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visiting with some of our other fellow salonners who, like me, prefer staying home on nights when
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so many drivers have had a bit too much to drink. But for those who can’t make it to tonight’s live
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salon, I’m going to play a recording of a talk that Shauna Holm gave a while back, but which my super filing system misplaced somehow.
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When I came across it the other day, I gave it a listen, and I realized that, as in many of Shauna’s talks, the subject matter is timeless.
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As you’ll hear, her focus today has to do with the history of psychedelic medicines,
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as seen through the works of prominent women in the field. This talk was given in July of 2015,
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and it is titled, Woman as a Visionary Plant Medicine Shaman. Although, as you’ll hear in
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just a moment, she decided to change one word in it, but I’ll let Shauna tell you that herself.
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So, all right, woman as visionary plant medicine shaman.
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I really should have titled this woman as visionary earth medicine shaman
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because I’m going to speak a little bit to plants, fungi, and cacti.
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And we’re going to kind of go back and forth in time.
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The Chukchi Eskimo from northern Russia say that woman is by nature a shaman, and I see
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the shaman as an intermediary between the worlds of the seen and the unseen.
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And shaman serves their community, of course.
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They are a healer, seer, oracle, prophet.
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And woman has long taken on that role.
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There is a fabulous book by Barbara Tedlock, Ph.D., called The Woman in the Shaman’s Body.
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And I’m so happy she wrote that book. She is an anthropologist and herself an initiated shamanic woman.
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shamanic woman. And she wanted to write a book and feature these women who she found in her research have really been ignored through history. We know we have amazing male shamans,
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but the female shaman has been dismissed in many ways. And it was simply the bias of the day.
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The great majority of anthropologists back in the day were men,
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and before them we had the priests and whatnot.
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And then a woman as visionary medicine shaman,
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that is a woman who works with the visionary plants that will take you in very high
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trance states. Well, those women were very special indeed. And so I’m going to speak of some of those
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women from the past and today. And just real quick, Barbara Tedlock, her definition of shaman, she writes, and I love this, quote, shamans are seers, oracles, and oral poets,
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and their artistic language creates a healing path for their patients. And then Mircea Eliade
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says, quote, a first definition of this complex phenomena, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be shamanism equals technique of religious
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ecstasy. And so when I think of a technique of religious ecstasy, I think of high trance states
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that bring you into direct contact with the divine, with the ancestors, with the spirits of the plant medicine that you are working with.
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And ultimately, I see the shaman and the shamanic woman as a bridge.
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And so I chose this image I thought that was just absolutely beautiful,
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where the shamanic woman will take you on a journey of healing,
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a journey to profound self-knowing. She has a bridge,
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and the medicine is ultimately a bridge. I call it medicine or sacrament. It is a bridge
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to that plant, fungi, or cacti, and the intelligences behind it, the bridge to the ancestors, and ultimately it brings us into a deep place of soul examination,
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if you will,
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coming to deeply know our soul.
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And so I think a very relevant question to ask right now would be,
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okay, that’s all well and good, but what relevance does the visionary shamanic woman have in modern culture, really?
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How does that work?
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And so let’s just quickly take a little look at our current reality, which I actually see as a kind of plague in many ways. And so here is a
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typical city, and cities are places that are very crowded, very rushed. We get a lot done in cities.
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People are very, very busy. They’re also highly stressful. There is little to no connection with nature in the city,
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and virtually no place to go where you can just experience silence.
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And I am always struck by the great crowds of people in cities,
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and yet the great numbers of desperately lonely people who live there.
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And then we have this aberration, which is rush hour traffic.
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And, you know, I think to myself, gosh, you guys, I mean, think how recent really this is.
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You know, I mean, we’re used to it. We’ve grown up with this.
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But this is a relatively recent phenomenon.
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And I read in Forbes magazine that the average American, their commute time is 25
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minutes each way. But for upwards of 10 million people and over, that commute time goes up to two
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hours each way. And so that is no way to live. That’s not living as far as I’m concerned.
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There’s no time for family or yourself.
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Now we have this, the television.
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And the average American watches four hours of television a day.
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That’s an average.
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And I see TV really ultimately as the wet dream of the oligarchy. It is the ultimate tool of
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propaganda and the ultimate tool of mind control and think about it. I mean we all really have
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since we’ve been children we’ve been watching these what do you call them programs you know
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that portray families in certain situations that, you know, we’re supposed
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to think are kind of normal. And it’s anything but. And the late, great 20th century seer Bill
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Hicks once said that watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.
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And I think that about sums that up. And then this next piece, I think this is an extraordinary image.
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And so technology, and now technology is indeed a double-edged sword, is it not?
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I mean, it’s so fabulous in one way.
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It has brought us all together.
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I can record this talk.
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I mean, it’s amazing.
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And at the same time, my goodness, has it ever taken over our lives?
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goodness, has it ever taken over our lives? And particularly our teenagers, our children,
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have this constant onslaught of manufactured imagery and very little time to develop their imagination. And not only that, but how often now do you go out in nature and see people, and they’re walking, but they’re walking with their nose in their phone, yes?
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And so that film I keep thinking with regard to this is Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland.
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I keep thinking of that.
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so you know I mean great on one hand on the other hand
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it’s really tapping us out in a lot of ways
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which brings me to this
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antidepressants
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and so in spite of all our quote unquote
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modern progress here
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in the last two decades
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the use of antidepressants has skyrocketed
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upwards of over 400% and Americans are taking antidepressants has skyrocketed upwards of over 400%.
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And Americans are taking antidepressants.
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For women in their 40s and 50s, that figure is 1 in 4.
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And for adolescents and teenagers, it’s 1 in 25.
00:10:32 ►
And so back to that question of what relevance could the visionary medicine woman possibly have in today’s modern culture?
00:10:38 ►
Well, I think that she is desperately needed.
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She provides as a healer, seer, prophetess, oracle, if you will.
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She provides a catalyst, a very desperately needed catalyst to assist people, I think in my opinion,
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to call them back to themselves.
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And ultimately I see this growing interest,
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I would say growing thirst in people to experience these visionary plants,
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ayahuasca, the mushroom, the cactus, and more.
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There is a thirst for deep meaning
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and to connect directly to that meaning. And so
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there are certain women who can assist people. There are, of course, men who do that as well,
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but I’m speaking today to the women. And this has long been the domain of women to provide that.
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of women to provide that. So let’s look at some of these ancient classes of women, beginning with the, I would say, most famous, the oracles of Delphi. And these women were a guild of
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very highly trained priestesses, and they were oracles, prophetesses. They were known for going into very high trance
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states and bringing through information. Now, this temple was around for over 1100 years. It
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started as a temple dedicated to Gaia, and then eventually the Apollonian priesthood imposed Apollo onto the temple,
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and so it shifted to the Temple of Apollo.
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And so these women would go into these trance states
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and call in the temple authority
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and allow themselves to be temporarily possessed
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and bring through this information.
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They would often speak very poetically.
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They would speak, that’s where a hexameter came in. There’s one famous priestess who brought that
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through. And I will tell you that for this place to have lasted as long as it did, I mean, the
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people who showed up to speak with these oracles were people from every strata of society, including very high-ranking people.
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Now, if these ladies were full of shit, they would have closed that place down in a couple of months.
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So clearly, truly, they were in touch with something very powerful. And so the most commonly
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thought entheogen that they used was the sweet-smelling vapors of the ethylene gas
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that came up through the fissure in the floor of the adytum of their temple. And so they would sit
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on the tripod, and the fumes would come up around them, and they would inhale those fumes, and it
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was thought that they would then go into these very high trance states and be able to access Apollo. And so that’s one piece. Also there was
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the sacred spring of the Kasotis and that water plunged downward and again came up through the
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floor of the adytum of the temple and so the priestesses would drink that sacred water.
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They used a variety of libations and ungeons.
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I will say that the Greeks were, I would say, master pharmacologists,
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just as the Egyptians were, herbalists.
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I mean, they knew the exact combinations, yes,
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to use for healing and also this kind of visionary use.
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And so another thing that the priestesses chewed was laurel leaves,
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and it was said that if you chewed the laurel leaves,
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that would take you into communion with the deity.
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Another thing also it is thought that they used was henbane
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seeds. And henbane actually was very sacred to the god Apollo. And so you would throw the
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henbane seeds into the fire and the smoke from the henbane seeds would bring you into states where you could bring through revelation. And also, they drank a quote-unquote
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sanctified draught, and that was a psychoactive mead. And it was very common back in the day
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to drink spiked meads. They were spiked with henbane and other things. But there was also a mead made from a psychoactive honey,
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and that was taken from Rhododendron ponticum,
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and it still produces that psychoactive honey today.
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And I understand that in Greece they make darn sure to destroy those beehives
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when that honey starts running.
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And so in any case, they drank this sanctified drop, which I love.
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There was a fabulous connection between the priestesses and the bees.
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And it was said that in the second incarnation of the Temple of Delphi,
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the walls were lined in beeswax and feathers.
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So I can only imagine how heavenly that scent was.
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And so those are the oracles of Delphi. I’m just
00:16:06 ►
going to touch on these briefly. And then we have the Germanic people. And the pre-Christian
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North Germanic people were no strangers to shamanic practices and psychoactives. And there
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was a little passage in a heathen periodical called Tyr, T-Y-R, in the second edition.
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And they wrote, quote,
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We know that the German people added mushrooms to their ritual beer or mead.
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It is likely the mushrooms would imbue the drinker with the power of divine revelation.
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For those who drank in the circle saw the gods descend among them.
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And so we have from that culture the valva,
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and a valva was a shamanic seeress.
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And so valva is the old Norse word
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that translates roughly to wand carrier
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or carrier of the sacred staff.
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And so these were very highly respected women
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and they would travel from community to community
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where they would be very warmly and respectfully welcomed
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and they would be put up for the night and fed
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in exchange for prophecy
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and so the vulva would sit on a high seat
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and she would have others around her and she would go into high trance state and travel in through the nine worlds and bring through prophecy.
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And so they could also curse, and they could bless, and so they were both revered and I’m sure also feared.
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It was thought that they could change destiny itself.
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And so warlords found these
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women very valuable. And it was actually often highborn women who took on this position,
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and also very old women as well. And I have to say that really struck me because as I
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look back on some of these older cultures, you see that many of them really treasured
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their women, and they particularly treasured the women who were in touch with this, with
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really almost the untouchable.
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They were in touch with something that it took training to access.
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And so there was great respect for these women.
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to access. And so there was great respect for these women. And so now we’ll get to the Celts,
00:18:38 ►
and this is the Celtic goddess Ceredwen, and she’s holding a cauldron. And the cauldron was a very sacred symbol to the Celts and central to their religious practice,
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which I think is very interesting,
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because what do we do in cauldrons?
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We make brews in cauldrons.
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And so she was a goddess of nature and fertility and herbs,
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and that cauldron was said to be a cauldron
00:19:01 ►
of initiation and transformation, which leads me to the obvious understanding that the Celts, too, were working, of course, with these substances.
00:19:18 ►
They didn’t write anything down, so we don’t have a whole lot to go on here.
00:19:22 ►
But, of course, the Celts were known as master storytellers, metal workers, musicians.
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They were very illuminated people and pantheistic people.
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I’m speaking pre-Christian Celts.
00:19:35 ►
And there is no question that their women wereeda who went sort of back and forth between the
00:19:49 ►
Germanic, she lived among the Germanic tribes, and she arbitrated between two Roman factions
00:19:56 ►
on either side of the Rhine around 69 to 79 AD. So we know these women had status and were very connected. And of course, think
00:20:10 ►
of how important it would be to find someone who had that power to divine for military
00:20:17 ►
strategy, but not just that. For day-to-day things, all the same reasons why we would
00:20:22 ►
seek out a good oracle if we could. Yes, they brought
00:20:26 ►
through great wisdom for people, great wisdom, and they would connect them with ancestors, lost
00:20:33 ►
loved ones, and the like. And so this is Tatyana Urbakan, and she is a seventh generation Sami Shaman and or rather from the Tungus tribe of
00:20:48 ►
Siberia and so she works with fly agaric and you can see her dress reflects the cap of that
00:20:54 ►
mushroom and so her tribe and many other tribes in that region would work with that mushroom, and it would create a soul flight,
00:21:06 ►
and they would be able to then access the dead
00:21:10 ►
and find out the causes for illness and how to heal that illness.
00:21:16 ►
And I will say across the board that these plants, fungi, cacti,
00:21:23 ►
have long been used to do just that.
00:21:25 ►
You would have someone very sick,
00:21:27 ►
and so the CRS or healer would go into that high trance state
00:21:31 ►
and locate the cause
00:21:34 ►
and often bring through the ancestors, helping spirits to assist.
00:21:40 ►
This woman was actually the subject of a documentary
00:21:44 ►
called The Song of Mukomar
00:21:46 ►
which is spelled M-U-K-H-O-M-A-R
00:21:50 ►
and it’s Tatiana Urkachan
00:21:52 ►
and also the fly agaric mushroom
00:21:56 ►
was used by native people in northern Canada
00:21:59 ►
and the Great Lakes region
00:22:00 ►
and I’ll just read you something I thought was very interesting
00:22:03 ►
this also comes from Barbara Tedlock’s book. She writes, quote, a nine-year-old Ojibwe girl named Kiwai Dinokwa
00:22:11 ►
spent two years, 1925 and 1926, with a famous woman herbalist and midwife. During this time,
00:22:19 ►
she learned how to prepare various hallucinogenic and non-hallucinogenic mushrooms for healing.
00:22:24 ►
She was trained in the
00:22:25 ►
first three levels of the Great Medicine Lodge, or as she put it, quote, I was medicined three times.
00:22:32 ►
At her initiation, she was given a single large cowrie shell tied on a leather string to wear
00:22:38 ►
under her shirt around her neck. She was also shown a pictographic birch bark scroll that recounted the origin story of fly agaric,
00:22:46 ►
known as Mosquito in Ojibwe,
00:22:48 ►
and considered the spiritual child of Grandmother Cedar and Grandmother Birch.
00:22:54 ►
Ojibwe shamans at that time prepared this mushroom
00:22:57 ►
by mixing it with a kind of blueberry juice,
00:22:59 ►
which strengthened its overall hallucinogenic effects.
00:23:03 ►
And by the way, also the North Germanic people,
00:23:07 ►
they used the vulva and others in the community,
00:23:11 ►
they used henbane and cannabis.
00:23:17 ►
Fly agaric was used there, but also blueberries.
00:23:20 ►
There was a symbiotic fungus that would grow sometimes on the blueberry bush,
00:23:26 ►
and it would create a hallucinogenic wine. They would add that to wine. And one other thing I
00:23:35 ►
meant to say to you, in Europe, in early Europe, I want to get back to henbane real quick, there was an ointment, a flying ointment that the women would cover themselves with. and that would be put in like a pig fat, some kind of animal fat, and kept aside.
00:24:08 ►
And then ritually, they would put it over their bodies and even rub it on their genitalia
00:24:14 ►
because it would be absorbed in through those very sensitive tissues.
00:24:18 ►
And because these nightshades were very poisonous, it was safer to rub this on your body
00:24:25 ►
and then it would take you on a shamanic soul flight.
00:24:30 ►
And actually, I just want to read you something
00:24:32 ►
that I found that I thought was fascinating.
00:24:35 ►
This was written in 160 AD.
00:24:38 ►
We hear of the witches and their, you know,
00:24:40 ►
flying on their brooms, you know,
00:24:41 ►
as a result of using that ointment.
00:24:44 ►
But this goes way back.
00:24:46 ►
160 AD, this was written by Lucius Apuleius from Golden Ass, book three, and he wrote,
00:24:53 ►
on a day, Fotis came running to me in great fear and said that her mistress, to work her sorceries
00:24:59 ►
on such as she loved, intended the night following to transform herself into a bird and fly whither
00:25:06 ►
she pleased. Wherefore she willed me privily to prepare myself to see the same. And when midnight
00:25:13 ►
came, she led me softly into a high chamber and bid me look through the chink of a door,
00:25:19 ►
where first I saw how she put off all her garments and took out a certain coffer sundry kinds of boxes, all
00:25:26 ►
of which she opened one and tempered the ointment therein with her fingers and then rubbed her body
00:25:32 ►
therewith from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head. And when she had spoken privily with
00:25:38 ►
herself, having the candle in her hand, she shaked parts of her body, and behold, I perceived a plume of feathers did
00:25:47 ►
burgeon out, her nose waxed crooked and hard, her nails turned into claws, and so she became
00:25:53 ►
an owl.
00:25:55 ►
Then she cried and screeched like a bird of that kind, and willing to prove her force,
00:26:01 ►
moved herself from the ground by little and little till at last she flew quite
00:26:05 ►
away.
00:26:07 ►
And so Tatiana was doing something very similar, just using a different medium.
00:26:19 ►
And often these ceremonies were held at night.
00:26:23 ►
And there is a very different quality to the night compared to
00:26:27 ►
the day. And it is said in some traditions that there are very different spirits that come out at
00:26:32 ►
night. And when I get into my own use of the psilocybin medicine, I also do it only at night. And then this turning into a bird I think is also very interesting
00:26:47 ►
because the owl especially has long been associated with women of this kind because of course
00:26:55 ►
the owl can see in the dark and the owl is a symbol of wisdom. And these women were known
00:27:01 ►
for their great wisdom and their ability to heal people,
00:27:07 ►
not just physically, but also their soul.
00:27:12 ►
There are many people with great problems,
00:27:16 ►
and these medicines will work amazingly addressing that.
00:27:22 ►
Now, I want to speak a little bit to the Mayan use of these medicines.
00:27:26 ►
This is the Mayan cosmic mother, Ixchel,
00:27:29 ►
and I have a very special connection with her.
00:27:33 ►
I worked for a few years in the Yucatan
00:27:36 ►
with a very sweet and humble shaman, Miguel Angel,
00:27:39 ►
and so I was initiated into her mysteries.
00:27:43 ►
And so there once on the island of Cozumel,
00:27:50 ►
that island was dedicated to Ixchel, the cosmic mother,
00:27:54 ►
and the Maya called it Cusumil, or Place of the Swifts.
00:27:59 ►
And Maya women of all ages went to that island
00:28:03 ►
to learn the women’s mysteries.
00:28:05 ►
And that included midwifery, healing, prayer, astronomy.
00:28:14 ►
In fact, one of the bishops wrote that the women of Cozumel were master astronomers,
00:28:25 ►
and they had their own observatory
00:28:27 ►
and even their own maps that they created.
00:28:32 ►
So these women were very impressive,
00:28:35 ►
and twice in the life of a woman,
00:28:38 ►
she had to make the pilgrimage to this island,
00:28:41 ►
the first time at the beginning of her menstrual cycle
00:28:44 ►
and the second time at the beginning of menopause.
00:28:48 ►
And the Bishop Landa from the 15th century referred to Cozumel Island
00:28:54 ►
as that infamous place of idolatry where many women go to for partition.
00:29:02 ►
And there was a high priestess of that island, and she was the voice of Ixchel.
00:29:11 ►
She would prophecy, and Ixchel would speak through her, and she would sit in a seven-foot-high
00:29:17 ►
clay image of Ixchel. And I can assure you that they were working with the visionary medicine. Psilocybin
00:29:29 ►
was used a great deal by these people. And there are mushroom statues all over the Yucatan,
00:29:38 ►
Guatemala, around these sites. They also worked with psychoactive morning glory seeds. And in the
00:29:47 ►
16th century Florentine Codex, written by Bernardino de Sahagun, he spoke of the use,
00:29:55 ►
copious use, of the psilocybin mushrooms and said that they would be served with either honey or
00:30:01 ►
chocolate. And they were used at all the rituals
00:30:06 ►
and even coronations and even business meetings.
00:30:10 ►
And so there’s no question they were working with that.
00:30:13 ►
And also there was a Mesoamerican mead called Balche.
00:30:18 ►
And that was made from honey of a stingless bee with water
00:30:23 ►
and the bark from the leguminous belchee tree,
00:30:27 ►
which was psychoactive.
00:30:29 ►
And Christian Rache surmises
00:30:32 ►
that they also added other inebriants to that belchee,
00:30:36 ►
like psychoactive morning glory seed
00:30:39 ►
and psilocybin mushrooms.
00:30:42 ►
So again, these people were master pharmacologists, yes, and so they knew
00:30:46 ►
exactly what would create just the right ungent to be used. Let me make sure I haven’t forgotten
00:30:55 ►
anything here. Well, also, they said, they would say that taking the mushrooms in particular
00:31:01 ►
would allow the essence or the soul to leave the body.
00:31:06 ►
And so there is your classic shamanic soul flight
00:31:09 ►
and then could commune with the ancestors
00:31:11 ►
or the gods and goddesses.
00:31:14 ►
And then real quick, this is the Red Queen,
00:31:18 ►
Lady Zakuk, and she ruled Palenque
00:31:21 ►
about 1,100 years ago.
00:31:24 ►
They think through her, either her son, Lord Pakal,
00:31:27 ►
or he may have been her husband. But she, too, was known for going into high trance states
00:31:34 ►
and bringing through prophecy. And I will tell you just a quick story. I went, I led a group of
00:31:42 ►
women in the Yucatan a couple of years ago, and Palenque was
00:31:46 ►
one of the sites we were going to. I led this group with Miguel and Al and I to deal with Miguel and
00:31:50 ►
Al. I said, listen, when we get to Palenque, you take the group. I want to talk to the ladies that
00:31:55 ►
cook. And so I was able to procure a little bit of mushroom medicine, and I found a quiet place, and I took the medicine, and first the bat, which is Lord
00:32:08 ►
Tots, flew over me, and then the jaguar, and then some darker spirits, and I just said, look, I don’t
00:32:15 ►
want any trouble. I’m here to speak with the Red Queen, and then before me was this image of this woman, and she was reddish-orange,
00:32:25 ►
and she had a headdress of feathers, and in between each feather was a serpent.
00:32:32 ►
And she was eyeing me, and they were eyeing me,
00:32:35 ►
and I knew in that moment, because I’d been working with the medicine long enough,
00:32:38 ►
that they were simply reading my frequency.
00:32:41 ►
And so when I travel like that, I open my heart,
00:32:44 ►
and then we proceeded to have a conversation. And later when I got like that, I open my heart. And then we proceeded to have a
00:32:45 ►
conversation. And later when I got home, I did more research on her. And I found, I did not know this
00:32:51 ►
before, that she is always shown with a headdress of quetzal feathers. And so that was just one of
00:32:57 ►
those lovely affirmations that you get from spirit. So this kind of thing was not without its dangers, and so just to touch on briefly
00:33:08 ►
the witch burnings, which in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII put forth a papal bull where he recognized
00:33:18 ►
the existence of witches, and he kind of gave the green light to the inquisitors to move on them
00:33:25 ►
and to, let me just find this here,
00:33:29 ►
to quote, to proceed with, quote,
00:33:33 ►
correcting, imprisoning, punishing, and chastising such persons
00:33:36 ►
according to their deserts.
00:33:38 ►
And so that was referred to as the Witch Bull of 1484,
00:33:42 ►
and we all know what happened next.
00:33:45 ►
Witches were accused, now this is a perfect example of ancient propaganda,
00:33:50 ►
of having slain infants yet in the mother’s womb, so using herbs to abort pregnancy,
00:33:56 ►
and hindering men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving,
00:34:00 ►
so using herbs for birth control.
00:34:07 ►
And also, the flying ointment, back to that flying ointment made with the henbane and
00:34:12 ►
the belladonna and whatnot, I said that they would put that in an animal fat and use it
00:34:18 ►
on their bodies, but the propaganda from this time said, oh no, that was made with the fat of unbaptized newborn babies,
00:34:27 ►
right? So, you know, you see how the stigma has moved through time of witches or any kind of
00:34:39 ►
woman who works with the unseen, works with something that sort of the rest of the folks
00:34:47 ►
aren’t really necessarily in touch with. And I’m always interested to see kind of the carryover.
00:34:53 ►
And I like to play with words. I like to look them up. And I like the older dictionaries. And
00:34:58 ►
there’s a dictionary, Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, I refer to quite a lot. And I thought, I wonder
00:35:03 ►
what old Webster had to say
00:35:05 ►
about a shaman. And so just for giggles, I looked it up, and sure enough, he says,
00:35:10 ►
definition of a shaman, in Russia, a wizard or conjurer who by enchantment pretends to cure
00:35:17 ►
diseases, ward off misfortunes, and foretell events. So very dismissive. And then I just
00:35:23 ►
thought, well, let’s just see what he has to say about which. Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, which a woman who by compact with the devil practices sorcery
00:35:34 ►
or enchantment, and two, a woman who is given to the unlawful arts. Now, ironically, interestingly, in Lucerne, Switzerland, in the 16th century,
00:35:47 ►
before they would torture and put some of these women to death, they gave them a, quote,
00:35:54 ►
draught of compassion, which ironically was composed mostly of henbane. And that was to
00:36:02 ►
take them in a completely different state so they wouldn’t feel
00:36:05 ►
the pain and torture. I thought that was very interesting irony. All right, so let’s get on to
00:36:12 ►
this beautiful 20th century woman, Doña Maria Sabina. She was a Mazatec shaman in Oaxaca and
00:36:21 ►
worked with the mushroom. At the age of 12, she and her sister went out and about,
00:36:26 ►
and they found mushrooms, and they ate them. And they felt very strange, and they started to cry,
00:36:33 ►
and then they started feeling really good, and they both experienced this wonderful feeling.
00:36:40 ►
And they came home later that day and told their mom and she forbade them from ever eating them again.
00:36:48 ►
So it was 20 years before Maria Sabina worked with the mushroom again
00:36:53 ►
and that was because her sister was very ill.
00:36:55 ►
So it came to her to use the mushroom and they work with them in pairs
00:37:00 ►
and so she gathered 12 mushrooms, six for her sister and six for herself, and went in and
00:37:08 ►
she said even though she was an illiterate woman, she heard herself reading and chanting from a book
00:37:14 ►
that had been handed to her. And now it is understood that the voice of the mushroom must be expressed, and it is the job of the shaman, seer, medicine person
00:37:28 ►
to bring that voice through poetry or singing or chanting.
00:37:34 ►
And so Maria Sabina would work with people, and she would chant.
00:37:39 ►
And I have a little piece of a chant, one of her many chants I’ll read to you.
00:37:44 ►
It’s very beautiful.
00:37:46 ►
So she would say, quote,
00:37:49 ►
Woman who waits am I.
00:37:51 ►
Woman who divines am I.
00:37:54 ►
Woman of law am I.
00:37:57 ►
Woman of the southern cross am I.
00:38:00 ►
Woman of the first star am I.
00:38:03 ►
For I go up to the sky.
00:38:07 ►
And then there was another Mazatec shaman, Irene Pineda de Figueroa,
00:38:11 ►
and she actually would work in tandem with her husband,
00:38:14 ►
but she too would chant when she was on the medicine,
00:38:18 ►
and this is one of her chants.
00:38:21 ►
Woman of medicine and cures, who walks with her appearance and her soul
00:38:27 ►
she is the woman of remedy and medicine
00:38:30 ►
a woman who speaks
00:38:32 ►
a woman who puts everything together
00:38:35 ►
doctor woman, woman of words
00:38:39 ►
wisdom woman of problems
00:38:42 ►
and so I’m just very touched
00:38:48 ►
by how empowered those words are.
00:38:51 ►
When these women work with this medicine,
00:38:53 ►
it’s like they come into, I think,
00:38:56 ►
the language of the soul,
00:38:58 ►
and they realize their power.
00:39:01 ►
They own it, and they express it,
00:39:04 ►
and yet with, I think, very deep humility.
00:39:08 ►
Now, this is Doña Julieta de Casimiro.
00:39:12 ►
She is on the Council of the Thirteen Grandmothers.
00:39:15 ►
And she too is a Mazatec curandera.
00:39:18 ►
And she’s born in 1936.
00:39:23 ►
And she met her husband at 15 and at 17 got married,
00:39:28 ►
and her mother-in-law was a curandera and initiated her into the medicine of the tenokana kato,
00:39:38 ►
which is the sacred mushroom.
00:39:40 ►
And so she initiated her into that medicine, and she’s been working with it ever since.
00:39:45 ►
And for the last 40 years, she’s been working with people all over the world
00:39:49 ►
who come to her for mushroom ceremony, for healing on every level, emotional, spiritual, mental, physical.
00:40:01 ►
And she’s a very humble, beautiful woman. And she says, quote, for the
00:40:08 ►
work to go well, I am always invoking God. And then she says, quote, because we don’t have money
00:40:15 ►
for doctors, we heal ourselves with mushrooms. It is believed that God gave mushrooms to the
00:40:21 ►
peasants and to those who could not read in order for them to have a direct experience of him.
00:40:30 ►
And now, oops, oh, I don’t have her here.
00:40:34 ►
All right, well, I thought I had a picture.
00:40:35 ►
I will speak to her.
00:40:36 ►
She is a Dine medicine woman named Walking Thunder,
00:40:40 ►
and she is out of New Mexico.
00:40:44 ►
And she works with peyote, and she writes that
00:40:48 ►
at the age of six, she had her first peyote, taste of peyote. At the age of nine, she participated
00:40:56 ►
in her first formal peyote ceremony in the teepee with everybody. She was just nine years old.
00:41:07 ►
And when the…
00:41:09 ►
Hang on here.
00:41:11 ►
Let me just find this here.
00:41:13 ►
When the roadman came to her
00:41:16 ►
and handed her the staff,
00:41:18 ►
she was just a little girl.
00:41:18 ►
She was meant to pass it to the person next to her.
00:41:21 ►
But she reached out and she grabbed it
00:41:23 ►
to the surprise of everybody.
00:41:26 ►
And then she didn’t know any formal peyote songs, but one just came to her and she started singing
00:41:30 ►
it. And so the roadman smiled and he prophesied that she would become a very powerful medicine
00:41:35 ►
woman. And then the next formal peyote ceremony that she participated in, he was there again,
00:41:41 ►
and he proceeded to feed her a teaspoon full of peyote every half hour until
00:41:45 ►
she could take no more and for uh and then she was she was in that space for a week and a half
00:41:52 ►
and over the course of that week and a half people from the community started uh making their way
00:41:57 ►
over to her house and uh and visiting her for healings and so she has grown to become this very beautiful healing woman.
00:42:07 ►
And so this next image is a woman in Peru, Borca Cafu and Cafuc. Borca Cafuc. And she
00:42:17 ►
runs the Yana Puma Healing Center in Peru. And she is the chief healer there. She does the ayahuasca ceremony and
00:42:30 ►
sapo, and she oversees the dieta. And she masters, actually, in removing negative entities,
00:42:41 ►
if you will. And I don’t know her personally,
00:42:46 ►
but I know a woman who has taken groups to Peru
00:42:48 ►
and has worked with her a number of times
00:42:50 ►
and said she is the real deal
00:42:52 ►
and just doing beautiful work.
00:42:56 ►
So now I want to just look at a couple of women
00:42:59 ►
in our country.
00:43:01 ►
This is pretty dicey, we know,
00:43:02 ►
because these substances are illegal. And so, you know,
00:43:08 ►
we have to keep it on the QT, because I think this is very important conversation to be having
00:43:13 ►
and to bring this back, particularly the women’s voice and particularly the medicine women’s voice.
00:43:19 ►
I’ve read plenty of academic tellings. This is really heart medicine,
00:43:28 ►
and it has a profound effect on humanity.
00:43:30 ►
And so this is my friend LaLaurian,
00:43:33 ►
and I actually had a conversation recorded with her for Psychedelic Salon,
00:43:34 ►
so it’s fine for me to speak of her.
00:43:36 ►
And she has worked very reverently with ayahuasca
00:43:41 ►
and with the mushroom,
00:43:42 ►
and she is an artist and a visionary,
00:43:45 ►
and she is coming up with this very magical language.
00:43:48 ►
And she’s a mentor, and she works with students at Evergreen College.
00:43:52 ►
She’s just a fabulous woman,
00:43:55 ►
and she started recently an eco-village called Atlan in the Columbia Gorge.
00:44:02 ►
And so, for me, she is a modern medicine woman
00:44:09 ►
who works with the medicine
00:44:11 ►
and then brings forth that inspiration,
00:44:17 ►
brings forth that wisdom,
00:44:20 ►
and anchors it in a very beautiful way.
00:44:24 ►
So in other words, we have to sort of work with it as best we can.
00:44:29 ►
Unfortunately, we cannot openly invite you or young people or whatever
00:44:36 ►
to participate in the way that these Oaxacan ladies are doing
00:44:40 ►
or these women in Peru.
00:44:42 ►
And so I’ll just get into a little bit of my background.
00:44:46 ►
That’s me as an owl. And so, I came to this medicine, maybe, I call it medicine or sacrament,
00:44:55 ►
I just call it medicine. Four years ago, about a dozen years ago, I came, I found very organically
00:45:09 ►
dozen years ago, I came, I found very organically the practice of shamanism, if you will, which happened very organically for me out in the desert in Arizona, actually. And I didn’t know anything
00:45:15 ►
about even what a medicine wheel was or the four direct, no, really nothing. And I ended up creating
00:45:20 ►
this during three days of fasting and silence when I was working with a teacher out there and everything opened up for me. And one of the speakers earlier was talking about
00:45:30 ►
stomping the ground. And that was one of the things I did when I created this circle, again,
00:45:35 ►
totally clueless, which I actually kind of like not having any sort of preconceived ideas of what
00:45:41 ►
this should look like, but just letting spirit, you know, kind of speak through me.
00:45:45 ►
But I realized I have to wake the ground up to create this circle,
00:45:48 ►
and I was stomping the ground and slapping the ground
00:45:51 ►
and calling up spirit, and this beautiful circle was created.
00:45:58 ►
And so I never looked back.
00:46:00 ►
And then so I’ve worked with some very lovely teachers,
00:46:04 ►
and I think of them as the kind of shamans who are very quietly doing good work, very humble,
00:46:11 ►
not the sort of what I think of as rock star shamans or paper shamans.
00:46:15 ►
There’s a lot of those, but these guys are really good guys, and they’ve taught me well.
00:46:21 ►
And my one sweet teacher, Miguel Angel, said to me once,
00:46:24 ►
Shana, I am not giving you this to open you to my power or my lineage.
00:46:29 ►
I am giving you this information to open you to your own power.
00:46:34 ►
And so he certainly has. And so four years ago, the mushroom was calling me very loudly.
00:46:43 ►
And I do not drink alcohol.
00:46:45 ►
I don’t smoke pot.
00:46:46 ►
I mean, I just don’t do anything sort of quote-unquote recreational.
00:46:50 ►
So my only approach that I knew for this was through reverence,
00:46:54 ►
and it was up in the Olympic rainforest at night in this mossy, wild forest.
00:46:59 ►
And I did a high dose lying down in the dark, eyes closed,
00:47:04 ►
and I didn’t know what to expect.
00:47:06 ►
But I received a powerful healing that night where the earth spoke to me.
00:47:11 ►
And I went home and I was just haunted by this because I realized this is a portal.
00:47:17 ►
This is a portal.
00:47:18 ►
It is ancient and it is a mystery.
00:47:20 ►
And I felt deeply humbled and grateful to have had the, first of all, training behind me
00:47:29 ►
and I felt like I’ve been preparing for this my whole life and then I had to do it the following
00:47:34 ►
month. I went up there again and did it and then I went back the following month and the next month
00:47:39 ►
and it ended up being a year of monthly shamanic immersions into that medicine, very high doses.
00:47:47 ►
And, you know, after a while you realize, okay, this is a soul’s calling.
00:47:53 ►
Because there aren’t that many middle-aged ladies in the suburbs, you know, running out to the forest to do, you know, five grammars and whatnot in the dark.
00:48:01 ►
So, and what was happening to me cumulatively was the nature spirits were speaking to me,
00:48:07 ►
and then they started entering me and temporarily possessing me. And then, which it haunted me
00:48:15 ►
reading you that piece from 160 AD of that woman who then made the owl sound, because that was the
00:48:20 ►
first sound I made was the sound of an owl. And I proceeded to have a conversation with an owl that was on a nearby tree back and forth.
00:48:29 ►
And so over the course of that year, the owl came to me more and more
00:48:33 ►
until it finally announced itself as my medicine.
00:48:37 ►
And so again, the owl being one who sees in the dark.
00:48:41 ►
And I find that there are a great many men and women who are feeling called
00:48:46 ►
to the owl. And I think that is because we have been in the dark, quote unquote, for quite some
00:48:52 ►
time. And so what everyone in this room is calling back is something that was, I think, taken from us
00:48:58 ►
a long time ago. We’ve been very seduced by this artificial construct that I briefly touched on at the beginning of this talk.
00:49:05 ►
And we’re calling this back.
00:49:08 ►
This is what has been missing.
00:49:10 ►
And being in touch with the sacred, in touch with nature.
00:49:14 ►
And so that is what this medicine has done for me.
00:49:16 ►
And this is an image by my friend Tara Holcomb, who is a visionary artist, photographer.
00:49:23 ►
And so I love this because it speaks to me
00:49:25 ►
of immersing or merging with nature.
00:49:29 ►
And Rudolf Steiner once said,
00:49:31 ►
if you want to know a tree or a flower,
00:49:34 ►
you must merge with it.
00:49:37 ►
And certainly these medicines,
00:49:40 ►
these sacraments, if you will,
00:49:42 ►
well, you ingest them and you become them.
00:49:48 ►
And what has happened for me over the course of time, it has come to me that, of course,
00:49:53 ►
in a sense, I am the medicine.
00:49:56 ►
And the medicine has said, you no longer need to take me.
00:49:59 ►
You’re welcome to come and visit.
00:50:01 ►
We love to sit and visit with you.
00:50:03 ►
But in other words, that training was done. And I will say also, I didn’t have a good shaman to initiate me into this.
00:50:12 ►
Nature initiated me and let us all, of course, I don’t have to say that to this crowd, but not
00:50:17 ►
underestimate the power of nature to initiate us. And I sense that what is happening with these medicines
00:50:25 ►
and this thirst of people to experience this
00:50:28 ►
is that nature, I call her Mama,
00:50:32 ►
is calling us back.
00:50:34 ►
She’s calling us back to her through her plants.
00:50:39 ►
And helping us to heal our soul
00:50:42 ►
because I think the greatest sickness on this planet is a soul sickness.
00:50:48 ►
The people have lost themselves entirely.
00:50:51 ►
They have lost touch with nature and their own human what?
00:50:56 ►
Human nature.
00:50:58 ►
Yes?
00:50:59 ►
So, very, very important and something that we once had,
00:51:06 ►
but I see it coming back as that merging with nature.
00:51:09 ►
And then I will touch just real quick on the fae being a Celtic woman.
00:51:16 ►
And I don’t talk very much about this because whatever anyway,
00:51:20 ►
but this is also what happened over the course of that year
00:51:23 ►
was the fairy folk would come in and speak to me and speak through me. And so that has been very profound. And so
00:51:33 ►
you can think of them as like the over-lighting devas of the plant world. And they have much to
00:51:40 ►
teach us, and they have taught us for a long, long time. There’s a wonderful book called The Fairy Folk in Celtic Countries by W.Y. Wentz, and this man in 1909, thank goodness, like an
00:51:51 ►
anthropologist, he walked around Ireland and Scotland in the Isle of Man, basically interviewing
00:52:00 ►
people who had had experiences with the fae.
00:52:09 ►
And he would make sure from the townsfolk that these people weren’t out of their minds.
00:52:11 ►
You know, make sure they are of sound mind. And then he recorded all of what they had to share.
00:52:17 ►
And so the fairy faith, if you will, was…
00:52:23 ►
The Catholics couldn’t knock it out of the Celts. They couldn’t do it.
00:52:26 ►
They never lost that connection. And I, of course, what is associated with mushrooms?
00:52:32 ►
Fairies, of course. And so there is a very wondrous relationship I have there.
00:52:39 ►
And so I’ll finish with this beautiful image, by my friend Tara because it
00:52:46 ►
speaks to me of
00:52:48 ►
a woman as conduit
00:52:50 ►
for the sacred
00:52:52 ►
waters of wisdom
00:52:53 ►
of gnosis
00:52:55 ►
to, what perfect
00:52:58 ►
timing, to
00:53:00 ►
come through
00:53:01 ►
and to be that vessel
00:53:03 ►
to carry that and then be that vessel to carry that
00:53:05 ►
and then having the wings to take that outward.
00:53:10 ►
And so I will tell you that ever since I’ve been working with medicine,
00:53:14 ►
well, no, after my first year of working with the medicine in that way,
00:53:18 ►
I was saying how the mushroom wishes to be expressed,
00:53:25 ►
and it is the job of the seeress, the shaman,
00:53:30 ►
to bring that voice through in some way.
00:53:32 ►
Well, I have been writing poetry.
00:53:36 ►
I never wrote poetry before,
00:53:38 ►
and especially when I go into the woods,
00:53:42 ►
the trees will speak to me,
00:53:44 ►
and this poetry comes in, and I rush home and I type it out.
00:53:49 ►
And so lately I would just call in a poem.
00:53:53 ►
And so this past week, Thursday night, I sat down,
00:53:56 ►
and I asked, I call them the beings,
00:53:59 ►
I asked, please give me a poem to share with these beautiful people at this conference
00:54:03 ►
that will work well, you work well to end my talk.
00:54:08 ►
And so a poem came through, and it’s called The Oracle.
00:54:12 ►
So I would invite you to just shift states of consciousness a bit and open,
00:54:18 ►
because ultimately I see poetry as a language of the soul,
00:54:22 ►
and it really is an altered state.
00:54:24 ►
And we once spoke
00:54:25 ►
very poetically. All right. The seers of old knew our kind well, as dust-covered books will surely
00:54:36 ►
tell. They journeyed to worlds not known by their folk. They put forth their offerings and with courage spoke with respectful intention to
00:54:47 ►
gently commune, to taste of the magic that comes when the moon shines brightly its luminous light
00:54:54 ►
on the glen where the mushroom caps gleam in the brightness and then she picks just the ones that whisper and call and ritually eats them stems and all.
00:55:07 ►
And behold, it appears, the door to the sages
00:55:11 ►
who’ve spoken through oracles down through the ages.
00:55:15 ►
The seer approaches with heart open wide,
00:55:18 ►
light as a feather with nothing to hide.
00:55:21 ►
She bears her soul bravely and ventures to ask if entry is possible so she can
00:55:27 ►
bask in the secret and mystical ethers of knowledge where keepers of wisdom hold court
00:55:34 ►
in a college known only to those whose hearts betray their burning desire to learn the ways
00:55:41 ►
of legendary mythical beings of story
00:55:45 ►
whose noble exploits brought power and glory
00:55:48 ►
to people who’ve long left this planet behind.
00:55:53 ►
Yet still, there are those who wish to find the beauty
00:55:57 ►
that once was known to so many.
00:56:01 ►
The oracle asks if it’s possible any good spirit
00:56:04 ►
can make itself known to her now.
00:56:08 ►
And lo, comes the owl, in soft, silent flight, its great wings shimmering in the moonlight.
00:56:17 ►
Then standing before the oracle’s eyes is a lady in white who doesn’t disguise her love and affection for this noble priestess
00:56:26 ►
whose training spans lifetimes that highlight her prowess as alchemist, herbalist, woman who heals,
00:56:35 ►
as prophetess, seer, and woman who kneels on the sacred ground where the roots of the tree plumb deeply beneath her
00:56:45 ►
and lead her to see the ancestral inhabitants living below
00:56:50 ►
who take her hand and help her know
00:56:53 ►
the source of her own roots held by the earth
00:56:57 ►
that shows her the memories she had before birth.
00:57:03 ►
Thank you.
00:57:04 ►
Thank you.
00:57:16 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
00:57:21 ►
And so I have to ask,
00:57:23 ►
do you think that you had any memories before birth?
00:57:27 ►
Well, that’s an interesting question, but one that can’t be definitively answered by us here in Flatland, I’m afraid.
00:57:34 ►
Perhaps a better way to phrase this question is to ask you if you have ever had a feeling
00:57:40 ►
that you weren’t just here to bounce around from place to place and person to person.
00:57:45 ►
Have you ever felt that maybe you have some sort of a destiny yet to fulfill?
00:57:50 ►
Well, I must admit to having had that feeling myself from time to time.
00:57:55 ►
Of course, as that old U2 song goes, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
00:58:01 ►
Now, I realize that maybe that sounds a bit strange to some of our fellow
00:58:05 ►
salonners who maybe think that my various careers and adventures have provided me with some sense
00:58:11 ►
of closure about this feeling of destiny that seems to haunt so many of us, but the bottom line
00:58:17 ►
is that you and I are very much alike. Now in my case, having been raised in a somewhat strict Catholic family, when I first became
00:58:26 ►
acquainted with the concept of destiny, I thought that it meant that there was this
00:58:31 ►
specific plan just for me.
00:58:34 ►
The priests and nuns told me about this invisible being that they believed in, and that he had
00:58:38 ►
fixed my destiny even before I was born.
00:58:42 ►
And this was definitely a he who was in charge. You know, in the Catholic
00:58:46 ►
Church, the men are in charge and the women do all of the hard work. Not unlike the rest of the
00:58:52 ►
world, is it? Of course, the idea that the one and only supreme being had a personal interest in me,
00:58:59 ►
well, it made me feel really important. At least it did until I realized that their idea of God’s plan for
00:59:06 ►
me was for me to pass up on the pleasures and joys of this life in the anticipation of some
00:59:12 ►
unknown future existence that, well, that they firmly believed would begin once I died.
00:59:18 ►
It took me many years to overcome this brainwashing. Today I no longer base my
00:59:23 ►
decisions on the possibility of a non-earthly
00:59:25 ►
existence. I prefer to remain in the here and now, and I’ll take my chances with the possible
00:59:31 ►
afterlife once I die. I shouldn’t have to point this out, but these days are far, far, far from
00:59:39 ►
being in any way to be considered normal. Not only does the American emperor have no clothes,
00:59:45 ►
he has no mind either.
00:59:48 ►
President Bonespurs is a complete and total moron.
00:59:51 ►
You know, he isn’t even qualified to be a Cub Scout leader,
00:59:54 ►
let alone the most powerful person on the planet.
00:59:57 ►
And this insanity is now being played out
01:00:00 ►
in the main ring of our human circus.
01:00:02 ►
I realize that many people seem to think that in another two years,
01:00:06 ►
after the next elections, we’ll have different people in charge
01:00:09 ►
and everything will go back to being normal.
01:00:12 ►
Well, guess what?
01:00:14 ►
Things are never going to go back to the way they once were.
01:00:18 ►
Not only has the U.S. system of government descended into unworkable madness,
01:00:23 ►
the entire world has also begun a period
01:00:26 ►
of readjustment that is of a magnitude that hasn’t been seen for many centuries. The best part is
01:00:32 ►
that you and I are alive not to just witness this fast wave of change that’s rolling over the world,
01:00:38 ►
we’re also players in this unfolding drama. Now, you may think that I’m being a bit melodramatic here, and the reason I say that
01:00:46 ►
is because, well, I think so myself. But maybe this isn’t the right time to be ultra cool. Maybe we
01:00:54 ►
should get more excited about this great shift in humankind that has already begun, because if
01:00:59 ►
people like you and me don’t become engaged in the change of consciousness that’s sweeping over our species right now,
01:01:06 ►
well, we’re in danger of being swept under ourselves without ever having sung our own songs.
01:01:12 ►
I no longer believe that our destiny is something that was assigned to us when we were born.
01:01:17 ►
I happen to believe that our destiny is ultimately what we make of our lives.
01:01:22 ►
And now, my dear friends, now is the time.
01:01:27 ►
The time to stand up and be counted.
01:01:30 ►
So let’s make 2019 a year to remember.
01:01:34 ►
And, if we do it right, I think that it can be a lot of fun as well.
01:01:40 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:01:45 ►
Be well, my friends.