The Planetary Grid

Earth, human, and solar processes are interwoven through a vibrational resonant network around the planet. The lines and intersection points of this energy grid match most of the Earth's seismic fracture zones and ocean ridges, as well as worldwide atmospheric highs and lows, paths of migratory birds, gravitational anomalies, and the sites of ancient temples and megalithic structures. Early man discovered these planetary currents called ley lines. In China, they were known as dragon currents. The Aborigines of Australia know them as a line of songs. In England, the Druids referred to the old straight track. Native Americans regarded the energy channels as the serpent power or the great dragons. According to Cherokee mythology, the dragons once followed the will of the great shamans who would invoke them to protect the people and the land.

Through a type of dowsing called geomancy, the ley lines were located and marked. Roads and pathways were often constructed along the lines, such as those leading out of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, or the series of tracks emanating from the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco, Peru. In China, dragon currents marked all sacred paths and centers throughout the country. Visible lines tie together every major religious site in England. Early Christian churches were located along the currents, their steeples serving to unite heavenly and earthly energies.

At the intersection points of the planet's energy web exist holy places, power spots, or acupuncture points. According to the Hopi, the world would fall apart without these nodes of concentrated vitality. These sacred places are like nerve centers that distribute vital energy throughout the surrounding natural systems. Primal peoples around the world discovered these power places and their significance long ago. They made pilgrimages to the power points, often linking them together with a network of wide and defined trails, such as those leading into the great ceremonial complex in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. They interacted geomantically with grid nodes by building such landscape temples as Palenque, Stonehenge, and the Great Pyramid. They performed sacred rituals and ceremonies at these sites to maintain the harmonious flow of the planetary energy currents.

Earth and humans exist in a reciprocal bioresonant relationship. Through the planet's resonant web, we affect our environment; our environment, in turn, affects us. By interacting with sacred places, we are capable of generating a world of peace and harmony. Seek out power places. Your power spots can be identified by your desire to go to them. Their significance to you is always revealed by your planned or accidental presence at them. Every square inch of the Earth Mother is sacred and a potential connecting place for someone. You can create a powerful vortex of energy in your own home by making an altar or shrine where you may sit each day and offer prayers and incense. Like the ancient temples, such a sanctuary space serves as a drawing point for the healing energy needed by the planet.

Siberian Neoshaman Zarina Kopyrina

Zarina Kopyrina

Zarina Kopyrina is a Yakutian ethno singer from the Republic of Sakha, in northern Siberia. From her tiny village, she has traveled to several continents, absorbing new perspectives but ever guided by an unfailing passion for her ancestors' spiritual beliefs. Thus she has created a unique harmony between the old and the new, from the traditional deerskin tambourines and mouth harps to the latest in electronic drums. Drawing from her kaleidoscope of interactions, she blends those that speak to her to create a voice in the world that is truly her own.

Playing an instrument so closely tied to the powerful Shamans carries a daunting amount of responsibility. "At first I was scared to play," Zarina said. "It's really sacral. To be a shaman – it's not work; it's a way of living. It's a mission." A true shaman, in her view, is someone with a finger on the pulse of nature, living in the forest, possessing supernatural abilities such as hypnosis, healing and the ability to fall into trances. The title of shaman is not for her to claim, she said with assurance. Instead, she aligns herself with neoshamanism, a contemporary form of spirituality for people who live in cities, including musicians, painters, writers and more. These people don't have the full set of qualities of a shaman – yet they possess some of these aspects. "They get some signals from the universe, and they transfer information through themselves," she explained. Read more.

Meet Mexico's Curandero Healers

Paloma Cervantes

A curandero (from the Spanish curar: to heal) is a traditional Native healer or shaman found in the United States and Latin America. However, Mexico, in particular, has a rich and fascinating history of curandero healers, who administer remedies for mental, emotional, physical and spiritual illnesses based on their evaluation. The role of a curandero or curandera can also incorporate the roles of psychiatrist along with that of doctor and healer. The history of Mexico's curanderos dates right back to the pre-Hispanic period, making it one of the country's most authentic and long-standing practices, with a firm root in indigenous culture. Here's everything you need to know about the curanderos of Mexico.

Using Virtual Reality to Explore Consciousness

Virtual Reality is a computer technology that uses headsets, sometimes in combination with physical spaces or multi-projected environments, to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate a user's physical presence in a virtual or imaginary environment. Virtual Reality is pursuing new frontiers in the exploration of consciousness. Similar to the psychedelic experience, Virtual Reality is opening new paths towards mystical experiences like those that have inspired foundational insights for religious and cultural traditions. Through this powerful technology, we are closer than ever to being able to enter altered states of consciousness by being immersed in the shamanic realm where time travel is possible, where we can participant directly in the evolution of creation, and where we can prepare ourselves for the next great adventure after this life. Researchers are using Virtual Reality to prepare people for death, to induce lucid dreaming, and to treat what our society calls "mental illness." Read more.

The Medicine Wheel of Life

Bighorn Medicine Wheel

The Medicine Wheel, sometimes known as the Sacred Hoop, has been used by generations of various Native American tribes to represent all knowledge of the universe. Within the cosmology of primal peoples, the Medicine Wheel represents the circle of life. All aspects of life, energy, and the ever-moving universe spiral in circles. The plants, the animals, the minerals, and the elemental forces of nature all exist within the circle.

The Medicine Wheel provides a means of entering sacred space--that place where you can find yourself over and over again. The Medicine Wheel of Life is a mandala, a symbolic blueprint or map of reality. It represents a multidimensional, interwoven web of relationships that are in constant communion with each other. The sacred wheel exists simultaneously in a horizontal and vertical axis, as well as in the unfolding continuum of time--past, present, and future.

The Medicine Wheel of Life serves as a portal to consciously enter the cyclic, time-space unfolding of Tao or Great Mystery through a practice of reverent, harmonious relationship. It is based on the belief that the universe is alive, sentient, and constantly communicating its wisdom to who ever makes an effort to listen.

To move around the wheel and develop a relationship with each direction is to step onto a path of learning and fulfillment. Each direction has qualities and attributes that help us spiral toward completion on the wheel of life. All creatures walk the circumference of the Medicine Wheel, experiencing birth, life, and death. After completing a cycle of learning on the sacred wheel, each of us returns to the source, the Great Mystery at the center or heart of the circle.

The Medicine Wheel of Life is symbolized by a circle that is bisected first with a line of light from East to West. From the East the sun arises and the guardian Eagle takes flight. Though the qualities attributed to each of the four cardinal directions tend to vary from culture to culture, the energy of the East is typically associated with the vernal equinox, Eagle, Hummingbird, morning, birth, beginnings, the rising sun, illumination, inspiration, ascending consciousness, and the element of Air.

From the South rises the vital energy of renewal, regeneration, and growth. From the South we learn to plant seeds of good cause. We learn that our thoughts and actions create our reality. South is related to the summer solstice, Serpent, Coyote, midday, youth, trust, growth, and the element of Fire.

From the West flows the energy of transformation. In the West we assimilate our life experiences. Experience is the only baggage we carry with us from this Earth walk. From the West we exit the realm of physical experience and join into vast levels of experience in the spirit worlds of light, or we choose to return and walk again the sacred wheel of life. West is connected to the autumnal equinox, Bear, twilight, introspection, emotions, flow, the moon, death, endings, transformation, and the element of Water.

From the North flows the energy that completes the quartering of the circle. From the North we receive wisdom and clarity of mind. North is linked to the winter solstice, Buffalo, night, wisdom, clarity, patience, renewal, blessings, abundance, and the element of Earth.

Quartering the circle defines all that is the Great Mystery. We are here on earth to experience and realize the mystery. The vision of that mystery is ever present within each of us. When we still the incessant chatter of the mind, we begin to realize the Sacred Vision. We begin to recognize certain qualities from the four directions that help us evolve on the wheel of life.

Father Sky and Mother Earth together generate the powers of creation. The four directions are the power and life-giving forces of the created. When we begin in the East and turn clockwise, acknowledging the four directions, we align ourselves with the powers that shape our reality. We are also creating a circle--a boundary that separates the sacred from the ordinary and profane. Such a ritual creates a sacred space that can be slipped in and out of at will. By creating a circle, we are also structuring an energy pattern that will contain, focus, and amplify the power generated by ritual. A circle will shape the elemental forces into a powerful current that will spiral upward and downward, uniting heaven and earth. Thus, we synchronize our environment and ourselves to the circle of all that exists.