The Emerald Turns Two
Reflections of gratitude, some info on ongoing study opportunities, and a little bit about the long-term vision as The Emerald turns two years old.
The Emerald: Currents and Trends Through a Mythic Lens
Founded in May of 2019, The Emerald podcast explores the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, music, and imagination. Brought to life through the wise, wild, and humorous vision of Joshua Michael Schrei, The Emerald 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.
As likely to source from the Wu Tang Clan as the ancient Indian Vedas, and featuring guests such as anthropologist and award-winning author Wade Davis, philosopher Bayo Akomolafe, award-winning author Ann Wroe, noted indigenous author Tyson Yunkaporta and more, The Emerald offers a green glint of wonder in a world that needs to be reacquainted with its own beating heart.
Tyson Yunkaporta on Pattern, Kinship, and Story in a World of Decontextualized Minds
In his book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, author, teacher, artist and Apalech clan member Tyson Yunkaporta presents a model of five minds — kinship mind, story mind, ancestor mind, pattern mind, and dreaming mind —…
Semele, Kundalini, and the Path of Interiorized Lightning
Stories of lightning and lightning-bearers pervade global mythology. With so many tales of mighty gods who punish mortals with lightning it can be easy to view the presence of lightning in the myths as simply a metaphor for power or…
Trickster Jumps Sides: Disruption and the Anatomy of Culture
Tricksters and culture disruptors populate global mythology. From Loki to Coyote to Èṣù and Hermes, they bend rules, cross boundaries, commit deliberate and unintentional offenses and generally mess with established orders. Yet they are often seen as indispensable to these…
The Many Voices of Water, Part 2: Imagining Water Beyond Lines
With the announcement that water futures have begun trading on the stock market, it’s time to take a deeper look at our relationship with water. Water challenges us to ask how we are in relationship to something that is both…
How Trance States Shape the World
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…
The Many Voices of Water, Part 1: Oceans of Melancholy and Bliss
Water is life — all life on planet earth depends on it. So it is no surprise that in the mythic visions of all peoples, water teems with personhood and agency and speaks with many voices. The Ancient Greek world…
Give the Drummer Some: Trance, Danger, and Rapture in the Oldest Instrument of All
The link between music and trance is so deep that many ethnomusicologists will say that every single culture on the planet has some form of musically-driven trance tradition. Right at the heart of these traditions sits the drum. Far from…
When Exactly Was the Age of Reason?
Telling people to ‘just listen to reason’ or ‘just look at the facts’ in a post-fact world mired in addictive consumption is akin to telling an addict ‘just stop using.’ Well intentioned, but not ultimately addressing the root of the…
Animism is Normative Consciousness
For 98% of human history, 99.9% of our ancestors lived, breathed, and interacted with a world that they saw and felt to be animate. Imbued with lifeforce. Inhabited by and permeated with forces, with which we exist in ongoing relation.…
Giving Thanks
Spontaneous expressions of gratitude on this Thanksgiving Day, and a look at the role that gratitude plays in consciousness, community, and cosmos.
Seeking the Luminous in an Age of Manufactured Light
Light, within nature, has always drawn us in, held our attention, and revealed marvels through its variegated displays. Coleridge said that the “eye is to light like lover to the beloved.” Light and human attention share a very deep relationship.…
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