Shamanic initiation and the ways of the afterlife in the North American tradition

Similarly to the European tradition, also the North American one recognizes in the period of the winter solstice the "gateway" to the world of the dead and of the spirits and, therefore, the suitable time for youth initiations and masked ceremonies, including the Iroquois one of the โ€œFalse Facesโ€ and the kwakiutl one of the โ€œCannibal Spiritโ€. These beliefs and practices, as well as the analysis of shamanic journeys to the "Village of the Spirits", allow us to understand the doctrines of the native peoples of North America on the various souls that make up the human being and on the relationship entertained by the living with the spirit world. .


Towards โ€œTimeWave Zeroโ€: Psychedelia and Eschatology in Terence McKenna

In addition to being one of the "prophets" of the psychedelic Counterculture of the second half of the last century, Terence McKenna was able to build, in the course of thirty years of studies and experiments, a real eschatological system for the Third Millennium, in view of final explosion, based on the recovery of shamanic practices, on a new interpretation of the Sacred as "Mysterium Tremendum" and on the vision, beyond the ordinary dichotomy between life and death, of what he called an "Ecology of Souls".

Buffalo sacrifice and megalithic funerary cults in Sulawesi and Southeast Asia

From the analysis of the Indonesian funerary rites (Sulawesi and Sumba), and more generally in Southeast Asia, a conceptual plot emerges including the erection of megaliths, the ritual sacrifice of the water buffalo (psychopomp animal par excellence), the cult of the Ancestors and its link with the fertility of rice fields. Let us try to understand how such different symbolic areas have harmonized with each other over the millennia.

Gunung Padang: the Javanese "Mountain of Light", between (fanta) archeology and folklore

We went to the island of Java in Indonesia to visit Gunung Padang, an enigmatic archaeological site that some have called "the oldest pyramid in the world". From the โ€œOut of Sundaโ€ theory to the recent surveys with the carbon-14 method, we will try to give a historical location to the โ€œMountain of Lightโ€, between (fanta) archeology and folklore.

โ€œAltiplanoโ€: the pangs of Pachamama and the Anima Mundi

Brosens and Woodworth's film is much more than a heartfelt appeal to the conservation of our planet's natural resources: in the drama of Saturnina, symbolisms and sacred conceptions of the New and Old World converge, which allow us to address the question on multiple levels intimately connected between They.

Bada Valley: the โ€œxenomorphicโ€ megaliths in the jungle

We visited the island of Sulawesi, in the Indonesian archipelago, and ventured into the rainforest of Lore Lindu in search of the mysterious Patung, megalithic sculptures of only partly anthropomorphic aspect which constitute for archaeologists (but also for natives) a real enigma. Taking into account the various hypotheses regarding the cults of ancestors, those of fertility and supposed human sacrifices, we will try to connect them in aย framework as coherent as possible.