Sylvapolitan Articles
Sylvapolitan Rising
Sylvapolitan Rising I am a student of culture, and have studied the whys and wherefores of the social beast thru academic degrees (MA and PhD in anthropology), travels to many lands, work among many peoples, and intimate relations with my own shifting ecology...
From Cosmopolitan to Sylvapolitan
From Cosmopolitan to Sylvapolitan Modernity and its Discontents Modernity is rooted in an assumed split between Nature and culture, and beneath that, between the spiritual (often assumed not to exist at all) and the material worlds. This rift first appeared...
On Indigenous Consciousness
On Indigenous Consciousness . . . The Sylvan City Equatorial rainforests ring this planet like a pearled chain of evolutionary heat. Direct overhead solar radiation, unvarying climates, and high rainfall, create a hothouse environment crowded with life forms. The...
How We Learn from Plants
How We Learn From Plants To Learn from Plants . . . The premise for what follows is that plants have been actively engaged in guiding humanity since our emergence as species, and that we would do well to wake up to this fact and take advantage of it, as we need...
The Human Flowering Creation-Song
The Human Flowering Creation-Song 'He who does not imagine in stronger and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all'. – W. Blake What follows . . . is a journey thru the Creation-body, aka the microcosmic earth (Gaia) within each of...
Imaginal Hygiene
Imaginal Hygiene ‘Imagination lays the tracks for the reality train to follow.’ - Caroline W. Casey, Visionary Activist Astrologer A few years ago I attended a talk given by RJ Stewart at the International Human and Fairy Relations Congress International Human and...
Songs of Mythic Renewal
Songs of Mythic Renewal This paper was presented at the 108th American Anthropological Association annual meeting, December 2-6, 2009, in Philadelphia, PA. It is very . . . anthropo-logical This paper is descriptive of the culture that moves in the eco-festival...
The Gaian Dreamtime Song Village
The Gaian Dreamtime Song Village Introduction What follows is a discussion of songs as living beings, as life forms. This includes the cosmology they inhabit, their teleologies (ends, goals), and the potentials offered to us humans when we engage with them in...
Early Medicine Encounters
Early Medicine Encounters The following is a partial account of three ceremonies that occurred within a few months of each other in the mid-1990’s. They set the template of much to come . . . I first drank ayahuasca by a very beautiful, isolated, coastal lake...
Ayahuasca, Religion, and Nature
Ayahuasca, Religion, and Nature Ayahuasca, is a word from the Quechua linguistic family of Andean-Equatorial South America. It means “vine of the soul” and refers both to a large forest liana (Banisteriopsis caapi), and a strong infusion (tea) made from its...
What is a Dieta?
What is a Dieta? Dieta is a Spanish word that means - simply enough – diet. However, when used in Amazonian herbalist traditions that deal with the more powerful and often reality-altering and visionary varieties of plants known as plantas maestras or teacher-plants,...
Ruminations on Appropriating Culture and Ayahuasca Tourism
Ruminations on Appropriating Culture and Ayahuasca Tourism Sit, be still, and listen, because you're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof. ~ Rumi The idea that the earth is alive, aware, and on a teleological (purposeful) journey of evolution that we are...
Ayahuasca and the Sunshine of Love
Ayahuasca and the Sunshine of Love The following is an overview of the direction I see the great serpentine river that is ayahuasca moving in the times we are living in. Though this river has wound back and forth thru both fertile and blighted landscapes in...