The Vital Evolutionary Role of Shamanism

Streaming live on the Co-Creator Radio Network on Tuesday, October 16, at 11 a.m. Pacific time/2 p.m. Eastern time, on her show "Why Shamanism Now?: A Practical Path to Authenticity," Christina Pratt talks to Don Oscar Miro-Quesada, originator of The Pachakuti Mesa Tradition (PMT), which is rooted in Peruvian shamanism. In this episode, Don Oscar tells listeners, "Any heartfelt practitioner of shamanism in the world today is deeply aware of the vital evolutionary role of this ancestral eco-spiritual tradition... Indigenous culture is based on the understanding that people are not moved through persuasion; rather, people are moved through being aligned in purpose. One's experience of communion and reconnection with the living earth always arouses the desire to act on its behalf...(and when) you act on behalf of something greater than yourself, you begin to feel it acting through you with a power that is greater than your own." Prior episodes from "Why Shamanism Now" can be downloaded for free from iTunes. 

Vandana Shiva and the Seed Freedom Movement

Vandana Shiva, a renowned scientist, philosopher, feminist, author, environmentalist and activist, is currently leading a campaign to create a global citizens' response on the issue of seed freedom. In a recent interview, Shiva explains why the two week campaign on seed freedom against major corporations, which culminates on World Food Day later this month, is so important and the consequences of failure. In 1991, Shiva founded Navdanya, a movement which aims to protect nature and people's rights to knowledge, biodiversity, water and food. It does this by setting up community seed banks that generate livelihoods for local people and provide for basic needs. In a July 2012 interview with Bill Moyers, Shiva explains that seed is the source of life and that corporate control over seed means control over our lives, our food and our freedom.  

Black Sky, White Sky: A Shamanic Novel

Black Sky, White Sky is a novel by Ken Hyder, a Scottish percussionist and member of the British-Siberian experimental music ensemble K-Space. After making a series of trips to Siberia to perform and study with Tuvan shamans, Hyder has published a semi-fictional account of his shamanic experiences. In his ethnographic novel, Hyder recounts an American artist’s apprenticeship into Tuvan Shamanism as it rises from decades of Soviet repression. After years of working in secret, the shamans form group-practice clinics, but rivalry among “black” and “white” sects leads to in-fighting – with deadly consequences. The author is a fine storyteller, rendering all of his characters in order to provide his readers with the possibility of communing, as he has, with these contemporary shamans. 

Drumming in the Great Kiva of Chaco Canyon

I have made pilgrimages to sacred sites throughout North America, but the Great Kiva Casa Rinconada in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico is the most powerful place I have ever drummed. A Great Kiva is a large, circular, usually subterranean structure that was designed and used by Anasazi peoples for ceremonial and communal gatherings. The two masonry box-like vaults found on the floor of most Great Kivas are believed to have been covered with planks and served as foot drums. I first drummed here in 1991 when the NPS still allowed entry into the kiva. The sonic phenomena within a kiva transcend the usual range of auditory experience. The walls of the stone structure reflect, amplify, and transform the sounds of the drum, resulting in some extraordinary harmonics. Drum sounds become distorted and seem to expand and move around the chamber due to an acoustic phenomenon known as standing waves. As sound waves reverberate between the walls, they either cancel or combine, causing certain resonant frequencies to either completely disappear or intensify, change in pitch, and develop vibrato. Within a kiva, it is possible to compose an entirely new auditory universe from the architecture of sound itself. Click here for a guide to Anasazi sites of the Southwest.