The Emerald

• On Powers, Great and Small

  POWER is on the mind these days, as the world grapples with shifting global power dynamics, old powers crumbling, new ones rising, and archaic power paradigms resurfacing… Yes, issues of power run rampant and discussions on power are front and center. But like everything else in modern discourse, the discussion on power has been decontextualized. Power is seen as an abstract bodiless force that governs from above, or an arbitrary human construct that is either relentlessly pursued or seen as 'bad' and flattened entirely. Traditional animate systems hold a very different vision of power, in which power is a tangible presence, a living breathing force inherent to the structure of nature itself.  Within this vision there is the recognition of a greater power that operates in cycles and spirals of creation and destruction, and to which all temporal powers are beholden. When the existence of this power is acknowledged, then human beings can architect their ritual and social systems to be in alignment and harmony with it. In the absence of recognition of this power, human beings settle for the crudest, most obvious vision of power — the power to seize and force and control. These 'obvious' powers have come to dominate our vision of power. Yet the world is shaped by a multitude of powers, some silent and invisible. Every small power in the mandala of powers has its role to play in the overall web of power, and perhaps a complete vision of power means recognizing the power of the less obvious things, and cultivating those powers that slowly shift and repattern the more obvious powers. This means recognizing first and foremost that power is real and tangible, and that the structures and harmonic architecture of nature itself reveals much about what it means to construct systems that can honor it, call it, receive it, hold it, and pass it on. Featuring contributions from Nyoongar writer, storyteller and researcher Jack Mitchell, Hawaiian cultural practitioner Kanani Aton, and Living Sanskrit's Shivani Hawkins, with music by Althaea, Victor Sakshin, Marya Stark, and Travis Puntarelli. Let's take a deep dive into... the ***POWER***Support the show

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• Trickster Jumps Sides (Re-Issued for Tricky Times)

  Tricksters and culture disruptors populate global mythology. From Loki to Coyote to Èṣù and Hermes, they bend rules, cross boundaries, commit deliberate and unintentional offenses and generally mess with established orders. Yet they are often seen as indispensable to these orders — they are renewers and cultural innovators and often pave the way for great change. So in many cultures, Tricksters, despite their shenanigans, are seen as sacred. In modern society, we have no such ritualization of cultural disruption. Trickster is relegated to the margins. So when Trickster comes along these days, he tends to upend everything. Sometimes, we welcome that change — it’s a wonderful thing when Trickster shows up and topples the gods that we want toppled. It’s a lot more disconcerting when it’s our gods being toppled. And ultimately… Trickster isn’t on our side. He’s the mythic embodiment of the other side.  From ritualized mockery in Ancient Greece to the Merry Pranksters to Ol’ Dirty Bastard to the Capitol riot, this episode explores how a society acts in relation to its own dirt…and how, when Trickster is not honored by keeping a society fed and renewed, he shows up in darker ways.  Warning: This episode contains explicit subject matter — because that’s how Trickster rolls.Support the show

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• On Singing to the Beloved in Times of Crisis

  We live in times of individual, sociocultural and planetary crisis, exacerbated by rising divisions between people. How have humans historically navigated such times of crisis? Yes, we've organized, taken action, and responded as we've been called to respond. But we have also deepened our connection to the greater cosmos, through songs and poems and rituals of devotion, through crying out to a beloved universe whose workings remain a mystery but to whom we feel intimately and inextricably connected. In times when we are raw and situations are precarious, many poets tell us, the breath of life is closer than ever. So we have sung aloud to source, and honored the emotional intricacies of our relationship with a beloved world whose turnings can be maddening, painful and often beyond our control. Singing to the beloved in this way isn't about blissing out and bypassing, it's about finding a practice that honors the depth and emotional texture of our experience of a paradoxical world and that matches the intensity of the times we're living in. For the wounds of these times cannot simply be addressed through rational analysis and diagnosis, nor can they be addressed only with the short-burning flame of outrage. We need a deeper resourcing.  At a time of a profound pan-societal longing for meaning and sacredness, connecting to the cosmos as beloved and seeing the sacred in every phase of the beloved's waves has deep implications for how we resource and replenish ourselves, how we align our movements to the actual ebbs and flows of the natural world, and how we begin to heal the divided sociocultural space between us. Featuring a conversation with Dr. Omid Safi and music by Leah Song, Chloe Smith, Duncan Wickel, Jeunae Elita, Marya Stark, Sidibe, Serena Bixby, Forest Sun, Haley Young and others, this episode of The Emerald podcast encourages us to pause for a moment in the midst of all the great world-turning events and remember and connect to the living, breathing, source of it all. Just... for a moment.Support the show

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• For the Divine Mother of the Universe (Remixed and Reissued)

  There’s a lot of cultural clutter these days around 'The Goddess.' She appears everywhere, her many names are invoked free of context in a hundred thousand ways. She’s what? An empowerment tool. An archetype. A self-help course. A political symbol. Something that is invoked to bring more creative energy or material abundance into our lives.  Something that, in an individualistic modern world, always seems to have a whole lot to do with us. Yet the goddess, traditionally, is much more than this. She is the animating power of the universe itself, felt in bodies, realized in states of deep conjunctive rapture, accessed through ritual protocols, alive in trees and stones and living geography, alive in song, alive in the myths and stories of her, alive in sound, alive in longing, alive in trance, alive in the states of consciousness realized by those who feel her. This devotional episode honors the goddess as the animating power of creation, drawing on her texts, her myths, her songs, and on personal experiences of journey to her sacred seats to evoke her as a living presence rather than as a conceptual abstraction. With songs and slokas from special guest Nivedita Gunturi. Support the show

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• This Episode is FIRE

  In the deepest, oldest caverns of human memory, a fire burns... and that fire has been with human beings since the very beginning. Scientists now say that the human relationship with fire goes back over 1.5 million years. And so — fire has played a profound role in shaping human bodies and human consciousness in ways we're often unaware of. For fire... changed everything. It took us out of the immediacy of the animal experience and gave us a focal point, a place to gather and tell stories, to ideate, and to dream. And because fire created for us a perpetual hearth in the midst of shifting seasons, fire also gives us the ability to pause and plan ahead. Forethought, in many traditions, is a gift of fire, as is ritual. Our ancestors recognized the universe itself as lit by a great cosmic fire and recognized that same fire present within themselves. So ritual practice — often centered around fire — reflects and enacts the transformative friction of the cosmos. And practitioners heat themselves through repetitive dance, drumming, rattling, singing in order to participate in a primal alchemy, a transformative process that is not possible without the heat of fire. The spiritual promise of fire is in the transformation it brings, in how it burns away dross and reduces old patterns to ashes and regenerates us anew. Yet fire has another side too. The very thing that warms and nourishes us, that cooks our food and provides the spark for our ideas can also... burn us.  In dozens upon dozens of cultures, fire is brought to human beings by a trickster, and the gift of fire has consequences too. For, poorly tended, fire can burn out of control. Today, in a world inflamed, a world of conflict driven by obsessive hungers and enacted through incendiary discourse and weapons of fire, we can see clearly that there is a fire imbalance on planet earth. What is called for in such times? Perhaps a return to the old gods and goddesses of the hearth, and a lot of time spent learning what it means to properly tend the fire. Featuring incandescent music by Travis Puntarelli and Victor Sakshin, listen to this episode on a good sound system and perhaps while staring into the hottest part of a roaring fire.Support the show

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