We live in turbulent times. Change could be its currency and the ability to flex the jackpot. With realistic insight, we can argue that our world is one big war zone. Different nations, different races, different generations, different views and perspectives are pitted against each other.
It is a struggle for territory, for power, for status, for dubious certainties and uncertain truth, for all sorts of things. If we believe that the outer world is a reflection of the inner, we might catch a sad whiff of the decaying heart of our society. But as long as we breathe, as long as we walk the earth, we can choose what we pay attention to. Whether we want it or not, whether we are conscious of it or not, peace or the desire for peace is inscribed in many layers of individual and collective existence - from our relationship to ourselves, to interpersonal relationships, to the relationships between nations, races, or religions, to the relationship between humans and nature and the environment in which they live. It is up to us to seek ways to cultivate, step by step, what we want to be inscribed in our reality.
Celebrating the phases of the sun
Many indigenous peoples and tribes still maintain celebrations that respond to the movements of nature, rather than the empty modern consumerist traditions with which today's Western society would like to tempt them. Natural phenomena stood to our ancestors as an imaginary axis for measuring time and the flow of the year, with at least eight phases of the sun to celebrate. One of the major holidays is the autumnal equinox, which this year fell on Sunday afternoon, September 22, 2024. On this day, the sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west. The day is as long as the night. In earlier times, even in our territory, people visited important cult places on such days, performed various rituals and celebrated the phases of the sun by dancing, singing, playing, praying and other common activities.
Interest in reviving old traditions and celebrations that are in harmony with nature has been growing in recent years, as have efforts to deepen our relationship with the living world around us and to find ways to live in symbiosis with it.
One of the actors in this field is the Alopé Association, which opens a space for representatives of all races, religions and spiritual orientations to listen to each other and share ancestral wisdom and contemporary knowledge.
And so, as part of this year's equinox, the members of the association organized an unusual gathering of people who could be called shamans and healers, wisdom bearers who have been handed ancient knowledge and traditional ways to share their perspectives with each other, applying age-old approaches and techniques to a ritual aimed at cultivating inner and outer peace. This gathering took place in Podhradie, a picturesque village located in the center of our country, at the foot of the hill that houses the ruins of Lichnice Castle. The ritual itself then found its place on the hill, in the embrace of the ruins of Lichnice.
Synchronicity precedes the meeting
One of the founders of Alopé - Jan Bím, a guide of outer and inner landscapes, facilitator of circular communication and lecturer of meditations, mentioned several times: 'The whole meeting was guided by synchronicity'. But what does that mean?
According to Carl Gustav Jung, "synchronicity" is a label for non-causal but meaningful connections. In this case, a sequence of successive events that, although not directed, meaningfully brought the original idea to fruition.
At a public lecture organized by the Sarava Foundation, which took place the day after the autumnal equinox and brought the themes and knowledge gleaned from the ritual to the space of the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University, Jan Bím shared the escapade of events associated with the organization of this five-day "session", which was attended by about twenty people from six countries. In total, there were two Mayan elders, priests Lucia Raymundo Lopez and Juan Leon Meija from Guatemala, Siberian shaman Ludmila, and four other initiated shamans in the Siberian (Tuvan) tradition - Grit Einsiedel (Germany), Torsten Petzold (Germany), Tomas Hyndrak (France/Czech Republic), Turaj Bölükbasi (Turkey). In addition to the members of the Alopé association, there were also translators from different languages, a filmmaker and a cook.
Ritual of the autumn equinox - the path to peace
Connecting practitioners from different cultures has been a challenge in some ways. The ideas and expectations associated with the conduct of ritual to adhere to the customs of a given tradition can eventually interfere with efforts to connect approaches and imaginatively relax into a process that is happening in the background anyway.
Participants gathered at the site as early as Thursday. Friday's day was dedicated to sitting down, connecting, sharing and preparing. Saturday was then devoted to purification rituals, which built on each other seamlessly without any plan. However, no one knew until the last moment exactly what would happen on Sunday. It was clear, however, that Saturday's program would lay the building blocks for it. There was a consensus among all that if spiritual work was to be done, it was essential that all be purified first.
It started with a purification according to the Siberian - Tuva - tradition, which was led by the shaman Ludmila together with the other shamans mentioned above. In this tradition it is customary that the one who performs spiritual work is dressed in a special garment, a cloak, to which he himself adds various attributes as an expression of gratitude for the support in the work done. These attributes (various ornaments, fringes, etc.) serve, among other things, to protect the shaman in the practice of spiritual work. During the purification process, various instruments were used, such as fumigators, a shamanic drum, the sound of various bells and chimes, and singing and dancing. One of the tools they all had was a whip, which, according to the beliefs of this teaching, can drive away evil spirits. We all felt its power when we took a few lashes with the whip during the cleansing. As part of the final blessing phase, we also received a message from each shaman. A message addressed to our hearts.
After the ritual in the Tuvan tradition was over, the Mayan priests Nana Lucia and Tata Juan took their turn. Their work is very much connected to the element of fire, which they both speak to, bring offerings to, share prayers with, and approach literally as an ally. Nana Lucia explained that in order to perform a ritual that strengthens and promotes peace, it is important to first establish peace within oneself. She took the words and, as a guide to the landscapes within, led us through a meditation through the chambers of our own castle. This gave us the opportunity to properly clean up and make peace with ourselves, with our ancestors and family, with nature and the world around us. Then came the commitment - a pledge of the kind of person we want to be, how we want to continue to contribute to the improvement of our collective quality of life and overall well-being. How we ourselves can play a part in ensuring that the state of "Mother Earth" does not deteriorate, how we ourselves can become the change we so desperately need to see in the world.
But is it not a centuries-old truth that our world begins and ends with ourselves?
Saturday's cleansing touched the consciousness of those involved so deeply that Sunday's ritual seemed more like the completion of work that had already been done. The old Czech proverb "Sweep before your own threshold" seems to apply several times in terms of peace - peace is not just a feeling, but the result of its daily cultivation in individual reflection. After we had the opportunity to do our individual Saturday "cleaning", we then quietly observed the completion of the equinox ritual in peace.
A spark for the world
We could see it as a little experiment - connecting people with different roots, shining light into different corners of their being and collective consciousness, so that what is needed happens in the background and they share what they have learned so far, enriching each other. Then, in a joint ritual, they affirm the new knowledge, blending the inner and the outer and planting the seed for further work.
The theme of peace was present in many aspects that together wove the tapestry of the Autumn Equinox ritual, from respect and reverence for different approaches to work, to symbolic objects, to the sharing of insights that imaginatively ignited the spark for the next steps for all participants.
Nana Lucia subsequently conducted a reconciliation meditation at the Faculty of Arts and so for all who would like to take a moment to be at peace and contribute to the collective one, a recording of the event can be found on the website www.aktivace-potencialu.cz.
The article was written by Eva César and published in the November issue of Psychology Today.
