We are a wounded culture living in an anti-ecstatic conspiracy.
-Margot Anand
We live in an age of magical renaissance. Walking into your local occult shop or spiritual center it wouldn’t be uncommon to come across 5-6 different types of witches, a shaman, a Santera, a Houngan, a Heathen, a Rootworker, a Theistic Satanist, a Thelemite and a Devotional Polytheist all in one evening. Simultaneously, we live in a culture that champions consumerism and scientific materialism above all else and often unconsciously carry that ideology into our spiritual work.
As more and more information and traditions become accessible, discernment becomes harder and harder, and often it’s easy to get lost in the magpie approach, collecting all the shiny bits and moving farther and farther from our center, forgetting why we were moved to explore spirituality or magic in the first place. We become deaf to that small voice in our heart that calls us to seek out the mysteries that have been lost, that which is bigger than ourselves, that sense of wholeness and purpose that comes from knowing who we are and where we have come from.
The center I come back to again and again is the pursuit of ecstasy. The ecstasy of praying to the holy powers and feeling their presence envelope you. The ecstasy of tears flowing down your face as you stand in front of your ancestor altar and feel the support of those who have gone before reaching back to you for the first time. The ecstasy of fully inhabiting your body and through it coming into intimate relationship with the complex network of intelligences that make up your world and support you in a way that you know you can never fully pay back, but have to try anyway. The ecstasy of direct experience with that which the Dagara people call Yielbongura, ”the thing that knowledge can’t eat.”
I seek to share and continue to gather the tools to crack open our hearts so they may heal bigger, fuller, stronger, clearer and more open than before. I seek to highlight other practitioners doing this vital work, fostering community and dialogue across diverse traditions. Let’s band together to end this anti-ecstatic conspiracy and the great lie of separation once and for all.
Won’t you join us?
SHAMAN BOMB 