The Ojai Foundation Presents
Visionary Practice: Ritual and Reshaping Consciousness
With Erik Davis, Dale Pendell, David Presti & Laura Pendell
Friday June 13 through Sunday June 15, 2008
$435 full fee (includes retreat, lodging & all meals)
$385 camping fee (includes retreat, campsite & all meals)
$345 commuter fee (includes retreat & all meals)
To register please call: 1-805-646-8343 ext. 111
Traditional spiritual disciplines usually involve a daily practice. Shamanic and visionary traditions often involve “extraordinary” practice. Both approaches use ritual to shape and contain deep changes in consciousness. In this weekend workshop, we will explore both traditional rites of practice and celebration, as well as contemporary improvisations. What does ritual have to do with theater, or belief, or the structure of the mind? How do we receive rituals from tradition, and how do we create and perform out own?
Formal and informal group discussions will be supplemented by optional hands-on workshops in ritual artisanship such as mask-making. On Saturday evening we will assemble as a council of spirits and create our own spontaneous ritual to “Call Back the Condors” using words, songs, chants, dance, gesture—a gift form the heart to the great birds who eat death and are the endangered native inhabitants of the sanctuary lands just above Ojai.
Leading this weekend of exploration with interactive speaking and doing will be:
Erik Davis, cultural critical and author of The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape and Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information
Dale Pendell, visionary poet and researcher, and author of the award-winning Pharmako trilogy (Pharmako/Poeia, Pharmako/Dynamis & Pharmako/Gnosis) a literary history of plant medicines
David Presti, neurobiologist whose popular UC Berkeley classes include “Brain, Mind and Behavior”; recipient of the university’s 2006 Golden Apple Award for Outstanding Teaching
Laura Pendell, book artist, poet, journal-keeper and co-founder of the improv music and performance group Oracular Madness
The Ojai Foundation
9739 Ojai-Santa Paula Road
Ojai CA 93023
805-646-8343
www.ojaifoundation.org