The Mystery Project

Art ~ Magic ~ Mysticism

Why We Need Urban Shamans

by Amanda on July 26, 2013, no comments

We need more shamans in Los Angeles. In all the cities across America. Shamans and mystics are important because they are interpreters of microclimates within our communities. Shamans cultivate their own personal relationships with the divine, with the fundamental principles of life. Their ability to find meaning within the mysteries of the universe, rather than […]

Weird Music: Saint Judee Sill

by Amanda on July 13, 2013, no comments

Sill’s biography strewn with tragedy: family deaths, drug addiction, horrible accidents, poverty, maybe prostitution. She died in 1979, 34 years old, drug overdose. But in this turbulent life of hers she managed to be in communion with beauty, and to create from all life’s sorrows and trouble these artifacts of exultation. Sad stories are built […]

Shamanic Cinema: Ben Russell’s River Rites

by Amanda on July 6, 2013, no comments

“The real skill of the practitioner [of magic] lies not in skilled concealment but in the skilled revelation of skilled concealment. Magic is efficacious not despite the trick but on account of its exposure.” — Michael Taussig, from the essay Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism: Another Theory of Magic River Rites exposes three realms of existence, […]

Poet as Medium

by admin on July 4, 2013, no comments

Phantasia For Elvira Shatayev (leader of a women’s climbing team, all of whom died in a storm on Lenin Peak, August 1974. Later, Shatayev’s husband found and buried the bodies.) The cold felt cold until our blood grew colder then the wind died down and we slept If in this sleep I speak it’s with […]