Countdown

 

Merry Christmas

 

Check

 

Christmas songs in my head

 

Waahoo doris, waahoo doris

I almost walk around drunk to this one

Christmas presents, check

 

Joyology to the World!

 

I love it!

I love it!

I love it!

For the bums

 

Christmas tree, check

 

Christmas card, check

 

A new tradition for me

How did I not know about either of these?!!

 

Open your portal

 with ecstatic trance!

Next time you go to your local art museum, make sure to stop by the ancient statues and make some notes on the postures.  You never know if one of those postures will open a portal into the spirit world.  Ecstatic trance was founded by Felicitas Goodman, an anthropologist originally interested in the intonations of speaking in tongues when in trance.  She wanted to know if there was some type of language in what appears to be gibberish.  Later, she made some type of a connection between the ancient statues postures and its use for a portal into the spirit realm for either healing or divinitory work.  She tried it on volunteer students and noticed that there were similar effects or themes with certain postures.  She also added rattling to to the ritual for better affect.  She set up the Cuyamungue institute in New Mexico, where you can try to experience ecstatic trance for yourself.  One of her students, Belinda Gore, has a tarot deck of different postures for different experiences.  Dr. Goodman also got interested in a true case of demonic possession of Anneliese Michel and wrote the book about it.  Check out this Yoga Journal article for a few postures. 

An ecstatic trance practitioner

Ecstatic example

Ecstatic Goodman

Ecstatic Jimmy

Francis Picabia

Never heard of him.  He was a Dadaist, then he renounced it for Surrealism.  He does multieyes and multimouths, I didn't realize there was such a thing when I was working on them.  Now, I'm considering doing a study on Picabia's work and get back to it, at least until the next shiny thing catches my eye.  Wiki