The Ancients and the New Age
I have frequently made reference to our hunting and gathering ancestors while describing our journey into the New Age. What do these ancestors have to do with this journey? I offer three reasons that are important for understanding:
• First, Jean Gebser describes five eras of consciousness: the first is the dreamlike consciousness of the archaic era, followed the magical era of our hunter-gathering ancestors. The third is the mythical era of the beginning of recorded history, followed by the current rational era of the last 2500 years. Now is the beginning of the new era of time-free transparency. During the rational era we have limited our consciousness to what we perceive through our five senses. In the new era of time-free transparency we will regain our sixth sense, the sense of listening to and valuing the spirits of our ancient ancestors and of what they have to teach us. During the first two eras, humans communed with and learned much of how to live from the spirits of the Earth and of their ancestors, but we have denied the presence of these spirits even though we do commune with them most every night in our nighttime dreams. The title of Gebser’s book, The Ever Present Origin, suggests that as we open ourselves to this New Age that our origin in the archaic and magical eras will become present to us.
• Second, the recent discoveries of quantum physics, the discoveries of such concepts as non-local coherence and entanglement, offer validity to the extrasensory experiences of the spirits that come to us from beyond our five-senses. I have reviewed these discoveries in three of my books, first in The Power of Ecstatic Trance where I describe how this form of trance opens us to the world beyond our consciousness, the world of the universal mind, the world of the spirits. Then in the next two books, Baldr’s Magic and Beowulf’s Ecstatic Trance Magic, I use ecstatic trance to journey back from 1200 to 1500 years ago to commune with my ancestors and the spirits of the Earth. From these journeys I have learned much of how to live in oneness with the Earth, experiences that have much to say about how we can and need to live with the Earth and all life on Earth in the coming New Age. More recently my book, Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers, is of the experiences of others in my ecstatic trance groups that have brought them into the world of the New Age.
• Third, a quote of Felicitas Goodman that I have often used in my writing well describes the way our hunting-gathering ancestors lived and what we have to learn from the way they lived: “In a very real way, the hunters and gatherers open the first chapter of our human history. And fittingly, this dawning was as close to paradise as humans have ever been able to achieve. The men did the hunting and scavenging, working for about three hours a week, and the women took care of daily sustenance by gathering vegetal food and small animals. It was such a harmonious existence, such a successful adaptation, that it did not materially alter for many thousands of years. This view is not romanticizing matters. Those hunter-gatherer societies that have survived into the present still pursue the same lifestyle, and we are quite familiar with it from contemporary anthropological observation. Despite the unavoidable privations of human existence, despite occasional hunger, illness, and other trials, what makes their lifeways so enviable is the fact that knowing every nook and cranny of their home territory and all that grows and lives in it, the bands make their regular rounds and take only what they need. By modern calculations that amounts to only about 10 percent of the yield, easily recoverable under undisturbed conditions, because they do not aspire to controlling their habitat, they are a part of it.”
It is these three sources that can bring alive within us how our hunting gathering ancestors are playing a very relevant role as we move into the New Age.
My next book, Ecstatic Soul Retrieval, is to be released in two weeks.
• First, Jean Gebser describes five eras of consciousness: the first is the dreamlike consciousness of the archaic era, followed the magical era of our hunter-gathering ancestors. The third is the mythical era of the beginning of recorded history, followed by the current rational era of the last 2500 years. Now is the beginning of the new era of time-free transparency. During the rational era we have limited our consciousness to what we perceive through our five senses. In the new era of time-free transparency we will regain our sixth sense, the sense of listening to and valuing the spirits of our ancient ancestors and of what they have to teach us. During the first two eras, humans communed with and learned much of how to live from the spirits of the Earth and of their ancestors, but we have denied the presence of these spirits even though we do commune with them most every night in our nighttime dreams. The title of Gebser’s book, The Ever Present Origin, suggests that as we open ourselves to this New Age that our origin in the archaic and magical eras will become present to us.
• Second, the recent discoveries of quantum physics, the discoveries of such concepts as non-local coherence and entanglement, offer validity to the extrasensory experiences of the spirits that come to us from beyond our five-senses. I have reviewed these discoveries in three of my books, first in The Power of Ecstatic Trance where I describe how this form of trance opens us to the world beyond our consciousness, the world of the universal mind, the world of the spirits. Then in the next two books, Baldr’s Magic and Beowulf’s Ecstatic Trance Magic, I use ecstatic trance to journey back from 1200 to 1500 years ago to commune with my ancestors and the spirits of the Earth. From these journeys I have learned much of how to live in oneness with the Earth, experiences that have much to say about how we can and need to live with the Earth and all life on Earth in the coming New Age. More recently my book, Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers, is of the experiences of others in my ecstatic trance groups that have brought them into the world of the New Age.
• Third, a quote of Felicitas Goodman that I have often used in my writing well describes the way our hunting-gathering ancestors lived and what we have to learn from the way they lived: “In a very real way, the hunters and gatherers open the first chapter of our human history. And fittingly, this dawning was as close to paradise as humans have ever been able to achieve. The men did the hunting and scavenging, working for about three hours a week, and the women took care of daily sustenance by gathering vegetal food and small animals. It was such a harmonious existence, such a successful adaptation, that it did not materially alter for many thousands of years. This view is not romanticizing matters. Those hunter-gatherer societies that have survived into the present still pursue the same lifestyle, and we are quite familiar with it from contemporary anthropological observation. Despite the unavoidable privations of human existence, despite occasional hunger, illness, and other trials, what makes their lifeways so enviable is the fact that knowing every nook and cranny of their home territory and all that grows and lives in it, the bands make their regular rounds and take only what they need. By modern calculations that amounts to only about 10 percent of the yield, easily recoverable under undisturbed conditions, because they do not aspire to controlling their habitat, they are a part of it.”
It is these three sources that can bring alive within us how our hunting gathering ancestors are playing a very relevant role as we move into the New Age.
My next book, Ecstatic Soul Retrieval, is to be released in two weeks.
No comments have been added yet.
