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The Emerald explores the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, and imagination. Brought to life through the wise, wild, and humorous vision of Joshua Michael Schrei — a teacher and lifelong student of the cosmologies and mythologies of the world — the podcast draws from a deep well of poetry, lore, and mythos to challenge conventional narratives on politics and public discourse, meditation and mindfulness, art, science, literature, and more. At the heart of the podcast is the premise that the imaginative, poetic, animate heart of human experience — elucidated by so many cultures over so many thousands of years — is missing in modern discourse and is urgently needed at a time when humanity is facing unprecedented problems. The Emerald advocates for an imaginative vision of human life and human discourse as it questions deep underlying assumptions about societal progress.
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2In 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...
In recent years, the practice of 'mindfulness' has become ubiquitous. Mindfulness has outgrown its traditional Buddhist roots and now permeates modern wellness and optimization culture, finding its way into corporate boardrooms, therapist's toolkits, and an ever-increasing number of calmness apps. Yet modern iterations of mindfulness practice often live removed from their original context. The forest ecology from which mindfulness grew was animate and alive, and what we call mindfulness...
Practices of guardianship — invoking guardian deities, enlisting spirit help, clearing spaces of questionable energies, and establishing boundaries around ritual, communal, and personal space — are common to animate traditions across the world. In many traditions, guardianship is absolutely central as we navigate a world of forces, not all of which are traditionally seen as beneficial. So traditional practitioners — even as they commune with the natural world — also draw clear boundaries, sen...
The story of human ritual and cultural tradition is one of depth and deep connection to land, to place, and to processes and protocols that remain steady across generations. But it's also a story of constant mutation, assimilation, and re-expression. There is a fluidity to culture and tradition that is not always acknowledged in modern discourse. Religious scholars will tell us that all traditions are — to one degree or another — syncretic, and when we lift the lid off of traditions and look ...
In the modern world, words like 'law' and 'order' carry with them a good deal of sociocultural baggage, and are often associated with restriction, burden, and arbitrarily imposed rules. Yet historically, tradition after tradition sees an innate, artful order to the natural world and views the Law of the Land as something vibrant and alive, present in the breath and in the waters and in the endless cycling of the clouds. In this living vision of Law, nature unfolds along particular patterns an...
In times of global upheaval, ecological destruction, and societal inequity, justice can seem very far away. Justice in the modern world is often viewed as a contract, an agreement forged between human beings rather than something inherent to the natural world. And yet, for many cultures and traditions, justice is seen as a living presence, as the actual dynamic flow of cause and effect that serves to keep a larger natural balance. Tradition after tradition speaks of the larger law of the cosm...
Across the globe, the arrival of 'civilization' brought with it the persecution of the seer, the shaman, and the visionary. Why? Perhaps it is because civilization, with its narratives of individual agency and control, its relentless emphasis on forward progress, its commitment to the removal of mystery from daily life, and its encouragement of numbness over feeling, is fundamentally at odds with the seer's sensitivities and alignment to larger forces beyond human control. So modernity ...
Across cultures and traditions, there have always been those that speak with the dead, hear voices, enter states of oracular trance, and receive visions of what is to come. Such sensitivity, traditionally, is common. It's common to have premonitions that come to pass, to have dream experiences that translate into day-to-day life, and to be in continual felt dialogue with ancestors, with the dead, and with a larger world of animate forces. For most of human history, the people that received su...
There is... a sound. Many, through the ages, have heard it. It echoes in the world all around us, it reverberates in songs of joy and lament, it vibrates in the names of the gods and goddesses themselves. Across the world, tradition after tradition describes a sound that is the source of all sound, a sound that can be heard if we practice attuning ourselves to it. So the Indian yogi follows the sound OM to its source, the Brazilian Umbanda practitioner rides a thread of vibration to the great...
Modern discussions on healing individual minds, cultural wounds, and painful societal histories now revolve around the word ‘trauma.’ Yet addressing trauma is nothing new — traditional cultures across the globe have historically had their own forms of trauma work, without ever labeling it trauma work. For many cultures for many years, cathartic ritual practice that bypasses the conditioned mind has served multiple purposes as it regrows and re-patterns brains and bodies and communities. These...
The rise of Artificial Intelligence has generated a rush of conversation about benefits and risks, about sentience and intelligence, and about the need for ethics and regulatory measures. Yet it may be that the only way to truly understand the implications of AI — the powers, the potential consequences, and the protocols for dealing with world-altering technologies — is to speak mythically. With the rise of AI, we are entering an era whose only corollary is the stuff of fairy tales and myths....
In the myths and fairytales, everything teems with sentience and agency... Everything is alive. There are talking trees and singing stones and hedges that move of their own will. Mirrors speak. Swords dance. There are flying carpets and far-seeing spyglasses and cloaks and boots that leap by themselves. This pervasive insistence in the old stories that absolutely everything is alive — that everything has eyes — butts up against modern rationality and therefore gets marginalized as childish 'f...
For 98% of human history — over 10,000 generations — our ancestors lived, breathed, and interacted with a world that they saw and felt to be animate — imbued with life force, inhabited by and permeated with beings with which we exist in ongoing relation. This animate vision was the water in which we swam, it was consciousness in its natural dwelling place, the normative way of seeing the world and our place in it. It wasn’t a theory, a philosophy, or an idea. It wasn’t, actually, an "-ism." I...
Báyò Akómoláfé is an author, celebrated speaker, teacher, and self-styled trans-public intellectual whose vocation goes beyond justice and speaking truth to power to opening up other spaces of power-with. In this episode of The Emerald, Báyò joins Josh for a deep-dive discussion into how the Western psychological vision shapes modernity, and the need to expand into alternative stories of what 'being' means. Says Báyò: "Psychology is complicit in the creation of Western modernity. It is ...
Once upon a time, psychologist James Hillman spoke of anima, the breath of life, the soul of the world, as something that had to be rescued by psychologists from theologians. Now, with pop-psychology vernacular inundating all aspects of life, it may be time for the breath of life to be rescued all over again. The New York Times recently released an article entitled 'The Problem with Letting Therapy Speak Invade Everything.' Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe writes of the need to 'decenter Western ps...
Human beings adorn. Scientists now say that the earliest adornments date back over 160,000 years. Why is adornment so universal? It is easy to see adornment as simply an indication of status, wealth, and identity. But adornment is also more than this. The word 'adorn' and 'ornament' relate directly to the word 'order,' to the pattern of the cosmos. And so to adorn has also been associated with aligning to a greater pattern, a pattern evident in the harmonic structures of nature and expressed ...
Birds in myth are messengers, deliverers of prophecy, and instigators of journeys. But birds are much more than this. Human neurobiology is deeply linked to birds, who, through the arcing patterns of their flight, their hypnotic songs, and their high, piercing calls, awakened human sense faculties, taught us to look up in wonder, and therefore gave us the ability to soar into imaginal spaces. Somatically, we ideate, journey, and soar because of our coevolution with birds. So we find the influ...
Modern embodiment discourse has arisen as a reaction to the Western world's fraught history with bodies. In a world of deep fracture from the natural world, the current emphasis on embodiment serves to help reclaim a relationship with ecology and with the sacredness of the immediate. But what does 'embodiment' really mean? For some, embodiment is synonymous with wellness. For others, embodiment is related to ongoing personal processing. Often, traditional cultures are held up as example...
Death is universal, an undeniable fact of existence that every single one of our ancestors faced, just as we will. So mythic traditions around the world are full of stories of death. Many initiatory rituals directly enact death, taking the initiate through a process of dying while alive. For Ancient Egyptians and Tibetan Tantrikas, death was not something to run from, but something to actively embrace, as acolytes regularly plunged into the intermediary state. Yet modern culture tries to run ...
Human beings need ecstatic trance. Trance states have played a vital and necessary role in human culture and in the shaping of human history, causing some anthropologists to label the attainment of these states the 'main need' of the 'ceremonial animal' that is the human being. Trance states traditionally help communities reinforce shared bonds, establish values, gain insight into the nature of reality, establish reciprocal relation with the natural world, and even heal. Yet in the modern wor...
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Trickster doesn't eat the meat. No he foregoes this sacred sustenance he gives as sacrifice.Hermes as Trickster is the Youngest Brother of Apollo who comes looking for his Cattle; who me? a one day old babe in Mother Maya's cavr crib? Hermes reapportions sacrifice, he wants the Gods to know he too is divine...Hungry, Hermes is hungry but not for meat; he wants to his seat with Divinity and so he plays music a musical treat; Apollo forgets about his Cattle and Meat; so sweet the music of a cheat.
Hear then a Trickster here within andcwhatva fantastic talk that calls out to us, the listener, to question this broadcast of trickster themes. So I will say read Mythical Trickster Figures edited by Hynes & Doty. Robert Pelton on West African Tricksters...I spent many years with a trickster deity known as Mam the Ancestral Grandfather; MaXimon the Knotted One; the story of a Wooden Man made by Ancient Men controled by Ancient Women's spinning thread to weave magical cloth...Trickster never ends
Ensouled Language by Stephen Harrold Brunner took me on a book seatch that led me deep into my ancient past as a child of Littleton-Denver-Boulder as a book buyer in the same bookstores spoken of here. How magical the singing of these sung song mythic stories are reminding us to answer all that calls; otherwise we are not in the game...myth is play, play is game in this new form of myth making that is soul-making all the way...Blessed are those who happen across this unique storytelling genius!
Master Podcaster sets subtle sound steps down to shape the seed syllables of sonorous strides on this ingenious journey of Sound writ BIG; here, now this story-path begins flowing forth aa Science Devotees speaking of Divinity sounding out as thunder-lightning songs igniting sound and echoes of sound; the hum, strum mum of Mom; soft settled silent sort of song sung to calm, to ease, the infant babe. Fathers tell as they sing to Ma-Mother sweet sung songs calling out to come along; a story song.
"He came by the Path of Vengeance; He arrived by the Path of Feathers there in the Grassy Place; there amongst Alders along Edges of Spruse He arrived by the Path of Feather; Hunters, Gatherers repeat their words to form Images to shape Sacred Speech molding and modeling supple souls coming forth into being through Mythistory not invoked throigh rhyming verse but thru repetition of sound; repetition of imaged; repetition of thought; Josh tells It this way; enchantment of thought images of soul..
FIRE. Heart Heat of ceremony; Fire Ceremony or Flower Kotzi’j in Maya K’iche' Language or Word-Tzij; Tzij to Ignite to Burn to Say-Tzij the Truth-Tzij...Fire Flower Gift of Sacrifice Xukulem Mejlem; to Kneel, to Humble Oneself before the Circular Altar of Sacrifice; to Burn the Gifts given as Burnt Sacrifice; Pom-Copal; Sugar Bloks of Panela; Round slabs of sugary cacao; candela; Palito-Crystal Amber- Estaraque; Torch-Pine Ocote to Burn the Fire hot; to spin whirling about the Fire
Anima Mundi: Awakening the Soul of the World....published in Sufi Journak, Issue 67, Autumn 2005. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Do you love the genius use of music to make the transformation from one idea to another? I do. I had to work very hard to speak Maya languages here in Guatemala. First Spanish and Portuguese were learned because we learn language to speak with and understand other human beings in their world. This should not make me special. I am not special as Tyson says, I am just trying to participate in these Americas. Love is the only way so let us love ourselves today to love Others today and tomorrow...
Jade Adornment; Woven Embroidered adornment; Emerald Green Adornment to adorn divinity at death calling forth rebirth to life; K'iche Maya Popol Wuj speaksof the Hero Twins reassembling the Bones of their Fathers in Xibalba after sacrificing the Lords of Death to open their path of return to the Face of the Earth as Maize...The Hero Twins are said to ADORN the Bones of their Fathers beside the Sacrificial Ballcourt of SacSacrificeand so Maya today continue to adorn all they wish to make sacred..
Moon in Maya Mythology is experienced thru the month as the lifecycle of a Woman; born in the West out of the Darkness formed by the Falling Sun; Moon thus rises to quickly fall as the Eyelash of baby girl; each night Moon Ik' embodies Moon Maiden Blood Moon as IxKik' Daughter of Blood Gatherer One if the Many Lords of Death of Xibalba Place of Freight; Place of Initiatory Fear created by trial, test, ordeal...IxKik' forms consciousness as she stands up against her being sacrificed; consciousnes
Ancient Culture like K'iche Maya of Highand Guatemala live in the same Sacred Space as their Mesoamerican Myth of Maize sprouts up to grow into Maya K'iche speaking people. No, their Ancestral Story of the Maize Twins who transform into Sun and Moon of the Age of the Maize People is a Magical Myth no longer told yet its metaphors live in the words, word play, and pun made in their ancuent language spoken...Popol Wuj here on the Emerald to illucidate mythic maya images; soul sustenance word forms
Great love, respect for tge Emerald; Joshua, Yexuwa, Yod Hey Vav Hey; the Voice of Transluscent Greed Jade; Etrrnal Return to the Future Today en la Esmeralda; here along 285 on our way North and South; East West; Integral remembrance of the Mother-Father; for it is the Enveloped Mothering we Receive from our Father that we find the courage to do the next right thing to open our destiny of becoming a precious jewel; a divine human being. And it is all right here even though we live so far away..
Again. Inventive genius; the voice calling one to initiation; humility is the path of initiation, melted down to be re-formed, re-shaped by the path of change; for transformation...a young person came to the house to learn the way of initiation; sounds exotic; yet folks who do not enjoy being humbled to the path never find it; come lets gather litter and hunt down the trash; we long for attention to show all we can do to prove our powers of mystical sorcery yet there is trash waiting for us...
El Camino...We drove in West Texas and East New Mexico in a black El Camino..as an infant I was visited in my crib in the bright moon night; wandering souls on the whirling winds of la Comancheria...animate life carried me to live with the Maya in their animate sky-earth sung to life thru divine descendants who sang, who sing to piedras sagradas, sacred stones.Great Obsidian Rocks Rex Abaj GREEN STONE Jade the Maya cherished Emerald; Yamanik transluscent transcendemt eternal green seed...love
This is what we need to listen to instead of all the love and light...This is really real...we live in an inhabited world but we are so forceful in our relationship with life on earth that we can not connect with the Guardians and Keepers; Care-takers and Protectors from Ancient Ancestral Ages in the Sky-Earth where we have come to live out our lives waking to the future of our communal past...we humans are on the move in an Animate World shocked into silence by our unbelievable arrogance...
I love this Podcas, the Emerald or Yamanik in Maya K'iche...the Jade of all Transluscent Jade...Eternal Life through the Eternnal Return of the Infinite Eternal Soul...I simply wish to add one book authored by Morrison Berman and titled Wandering God: a study of Nomadic Spirituality...this is a book that speaks of the Earth as the Matriarch's Sacred Place and Divine Space of the wandering nomadic soul...and a song sung by Jimmy Cliff known to me as By the Rivers of Babylon...Thank you Josh
I began wandering in ernst when my father was killed in an accident. I sang the Rivers of Babylon everywhere I went wandering through the Southwest...California...Mexico...Guatemala and Costa Rica...always weeping singing by the rivers of babylon where I sat down...eventually my life led to meeting Martin Prechtel who taught me the singing of Traditional Maya Tijax-Obsidian Blade Songs from Santiago Atitlan...Martin evented a new way of playing and singing Traditional Maya song..Tyson & Martin
Here then is spoken genius; hear them speak a new language telling transforms of ancient forms of talking about life as We and Us who were made and modeled into believing we were Individuals Individuating our singular selves; no longer rooted to place or people: P & P. Here then we hear them integrate thrier thoughtt voices with the Modern Ways of Becoming Human Beings in Our Sky-Earth...listen as tthese two brilliant beings Integrate their Integral experiences of Animate Souls in genius ways.
We live in an Animate World Anima Mundi yet our society and its culture created a religion called Science that disallows our experiencing life as an experience with life and death and rebirth as an experience of Anima Mundi...The Ensouled World communicates with us through our senses, feelings, intuition, and intellect yet we chatise our selves for seekings forms of speech that shape our communication with the Soul and Spirit of Life on Earth as our experience with Kosmos; these words free us..
How is it we do not respond to this Genius Voice calling us to reveal revelatory revelation...Three and One Half Decades ago...35 years ago I was called to live just outside a Maya Village that was saved from the Military by 13 Martyrs who were inspired by a Visionary Priest who was Martyred by the Military to be made a Santo por el Pueblo y el Vaticano. I still live as a fringe outlier of this Maya City enthused by una Profeta Super Poderosa. Yet women are the Seers of all that was; is and will