Entheogen" -2005 Sundance Documentary Movie

1 rating since posting on Wednesday, February 2, 2005
Entheogen" -2005 Sundance Documentary Movie
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(submitted by vidourle )

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Eye
Eye
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Entheogen: 21st Century Initiation Rite
PARK CITY, UT
26 January 05

On Wednesday evening, at the mid-point of this year?s Sundance Film Festival, the ancestral initiation rite was reborn as some five hundred cultural creatives gathered at Club Suede for the premiere of a trailer for the forthcoming documentary Entheogen: Awakening the God Within. [insert hyperlink for cmp].

An admixture of DJ sets, biomedical discussions, and visionary art, the event was a unique offering in the Pantheon of experiences offered to the festival crowd. Interspersed amidst sets by local DJ Eye-Awaken and live vocal performances by VortexExperience, Dr?s John Halpern and Charles Grob discussed their ground-breaking research into the clinical benefits of the psychotropic drugs MDMA and Psilocybin for the treatment of advanced stage cancer patients and post-traumatic stress disorder. Their research is the first of its kind to be sanctioned by the FDA since the implementation of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

The culminating experience of the evening began when Dr. David Ulansey, historian of religion, spoke about the current mass-extinction [www.massextinction.net] during his talk on the history of initiatory rites of passage. As he spoke, the crowd that had gathered to dance the night away sat on the floor in concentric circles about the stage, taking in the somber possibility that fully half of species will be extinct within fifty years unless the human species radically transforms itself and its relationship to the biosphere.

While in other contexts such an announcement would be received as the ultimate party vibe-killer, it was the perfect set-up for the premiere of the trailer for Entheogen, as it is the film?s purpose to present the possibility that such a radical transformation is taking place within the human species as it awakens to the god within. The trailer itself presented a documentary array of archival footage from tribal initiation rites, time-lapse photography of organic processes, and interviews with leading scholars about the necessity of such rites of passage. Set to the pulsing rhythm of house music and extraordinarily mixed into a seamless kaleidoscopic sensory journey by Matyas of Realityengine, the film captures the psychedelic experience and places it into its current cultural context better than any this reviewer has before seen.

According to Dr. Ulansey, ?For a shamanic initiation to be effective, there needs to be a real possibility of failure?of death or serious injury for the initiate.? After hearing about the real possibility of the collapse of the biosphere, and being catapulted into transformational possibility by the ten-minute featurette, it would seem that the Entheogen premiere was truly a powerful initiatory event. After the featurette premiere, the crowd was collectively rebirthed into the realms of possible experience awaiting a radically transformed culture by the visionary artist Alex Grey, who presented a slideshow of his life?s work accompanied by a narrative of his extraordinary journeys into altered states of consciousness. He left us all feeling the possibility of the potential to heal the collective psyche. DJ Dimitri of Spunrecords UK then took to the stage and wove a soundscape that kept those assembled embraced in the possibility of hope for the duration of the evening.

As we reflect on the ways in which 21st century human beings seek initiatory rites of passage, from seeking the knife-edge between life and death through extreme sports to using entheogenic substances in rave culture, Critical Mass Productions invites us to view our place in history in a larger context. At a time when it seems that the human species is perhaps unconsciously seeking a collective death-rebirth experience through the collapse of the biosphere or the war on Terrorism, this film is bringing together a unique group of people in order to co-create a 21st Century Mystery School to explore the possibility for radical transformation. This reviewer feels blessed to have participated in this extraordinary event.



www.maps.org
www.massextinction.net
www.realityengine.org
www.alexgrey.com - Eye , posted 02/05/05
vido...
vidourle
offline 170
*****
Just Say Know.. "ec stasis"
Enjoy this trailer for a new movie entitled Entheogen which is opening at a Sundance festival this week in Utah. This trailer to the film It is very nicely edited by RealityEngine.org -especially when the psytrance starts.

www.maps.org/avarchive/i...ntheogen.mov

and more info about the film here:

www.maps.org/sys/nq.pl

Another Excellent Source of Information:

harkless.org/steve/writi...Ecstasy.html

"For millennia humans have been dancing in the wilderness in ritual and in ceremonial rites of passage. In many cultures such as the Bushmen of the Kalahari, we can find techniques of trance dancing, which elevate them into ecstatic, altered states of consciousness. When the Bushmen enter this state, it is reported that such an incredible rush of energy surges through their bodies that they cannot help but fall to the ground. This has been compared to the kundalini rising- the dormant energy at the base of the spine that can be awakened through certain yogic techniques.

The word ecstasy has its roots in Greek, ec stasis- to be outside of oneself. In ancient Greece there were temples in which the rites of attaining ecstasy were performed, often with the help of the Soma. The term Soma is found in the writings of many ancient peoples from Greece to India; the ingredients are mysterious yet it was apparently some kind of psychoactive tea, possibly mushroom tea.

The urge to dance and to enter altered states of consciousness is in fact part of a natural process. From the dawning of human culture, there have existed the 'rites of passage'. These rites are imprinted in the human psyche and contain psychic energy patterns, that is to say in Jungian terms -the archetypes of the collective unconscious. These archetypal rites of passage represent an important and sacred time, the coming into adulthood of an adolescent boy or girl. The primary and essential pattern is threefold." - vidourle , posted 02/02/05

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