Spirit Culture : Celebrating the Soul
Friday, May 23, 2008 by Delvin Solkinson and Lunaya Shekinah
artwork by Carey Thompson : www.galactivation.com
The everpresence of Spirit in culture has provided medicine for the many. Rich with bards and healers, painters and poets, musicians, monks, and all manner of temple keepers, Spirit Culture is the foundation for a healthy future. Bringing life and authenticity to the story of our world, this is an expression of the human impulse towards transpersonal experience of divine connection. The spirit community is everywhere - an intersecting lattice of direct links between the human and more than human realms.
Accessible to everyone, public gatherings throughout history have hosted sacred celebrations, rites of passage, and places for creative spiritual practice. We are living in the shadow of a time in which these spiritual gatherings and public rituals were persecuted by religious and governmental forces. During this dark era much direct memory of Spirit culture has been lost.
Fortunately, the living practice of Spirit culture has survived, safeguarded by those practitioners willing and able to go underground with their rituals. In our time of trials and spiritual vacuum, the experiences of Spirit culture are now beginning to emerge again into the collective domain. The new world is being reconnected with these ageless elements of community oriented rituals, rites, prayers and practices.
Throughout the modern movement of the North American all-night party scene emerges an expression of Spirit Culture, exploring ritual and ceremony as a fundamental key to the experience of celebration. Elaborate central altars, ritual circles invoking the elements, sacred theatrical storytelling and a variety of performance-based and participatory rites have become common in some emerging cultural circles. Returning spiritual practice to public celebrations imbues modern culture with a revitalized sense of destiny.
In alignment with the increased presence of shared ritual, many have asked : How do these practices draw on the traditions of various ancient cultures, and do our variations on them truly honor the lineage? Can a party setting really offer the commitment necessary to responsibly carry out these ceremonies start to finish? Can we steward the real effects these practices may have on those involved? Is it possible to anticipate how this work could change culture on a larger scale?
The shamanic spirit of our age is framed by a need for transformation, healing and growth at the individual and collective levels. The hope and prayer of our time is that we can respectfully draw from wisdom of ancient culture in order to divine the solutions we need and build foundations for future generations. Fostering the successful stewardship of these lineages of Spirit culture empowers their ability to create and maintain harmony in our world.
Re:sources :
mirroracle.com
mythmaker.ca
boomfestival.org
Damanhur : Temples of Humankind - Alex Grey
Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Sogyal Rinpoche
The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape - Erik Davis