グラハム ハンコック - スーパーナチュラル

I grew up in England in the deep countryside of Devon, spending my childhood traversing the two very different coexisting realities of the harsh and synthetic virtual worlds of video games, and the soft, gentle, inviting world that mother nature generously provides to nurture and cradle us in her organic embrace.



Due to the incredibly fortunate position I was born into, I have been able to travel all over the world, visiting ancient sites, monuments and locations. The highlights of all my travels have always been the majestic, archaic and powerful gifts from the ancients that we have been granted with to protect, learn from, utilise and understand. I've seen Machu Picchu, climbed the great pyramid, visited Angkor, dived in Yonaguni, and explored with interest the commonalities that arise among them, giving clue to the lost knowledge that these surviving structures represent.

However, precious gifts from our ancestors still remain, in their fragile states, in forms other than stone or material constructs. In both South Africa and Peru, I was able to connect with the preserved remains of an ancient and mysterious heritage - one that birthed the seeds of culture from which we sprang, and one that has carried the collective body of knowledge from our first ancestors to the space-age explorers balanced at the edge of time, as we find ourselves now. This heritage is Shamanic culture, knowledge and understanding. Despite the divorce and severance we have made from our ancestral roots, shamanism still exists in its trampled, meek and yet immensely powerful form, providing a glimmer of hope to a culture that upholds a lifestyle robbed of meaning and respect.

My introduction to Shamanism took place on a trip to South Africa in 2004. My father was researching for his latest book, Supernatural, exploring the ancient cave art abundant in the region:


The cave art itself is extremely special, and represents ancient exploration into altered states of consciousness, and the knowledge that can be brought back from them (more about that in a later update). But while in South Africa, we were invited to join an extremely rare and special event of two twins - male and female - in the final part of their shamanic initiation ceremony. The final stage of their initiation involved them being confined inside a tiny grass hut on the bank of a river, far from civilization for a week. During the week in the hut, they said that all the animals of the river came and visited them in their hut - the insects, the snakes, the fish, the otters, and especially the River People - mermaids. The River Spirits told the two twins that they were going to take the brother with them, that he would become a water spirit. We arrived into a spectacular scene with the air literally alive with magic. The divine is present in everything everywhere at all moments, but never in my life have I felt its presence more so than on the bank of that river at that moment, as the shamans emerged from their grass hut. Immediately they were led into the river by the high priestess for a Zulu shamanic baptism amidst an electrically charged atmosphere, fuelled by arcane chanting, singing and dancing. When they emerged from the river, they stood before a big fire and received their pronouncement to confirm that they had passed the initiation and were now shamans, complete and whole. I was standing 5 feet away from them, and saw the sister was announced first, then the brother. At the exact moment the brother was confirmed and initiated, he died. Literally he collapsed, and was dead before he hit the floor. But there was very little surprise - everyone there knew he would be taken by the River People because they had already said they were going to do that. So this initiation ceremony provided me with my own initiation into the world of shamanism, and the magic that exists all around us, despite our conditioned blindness to it.



Two years later I found myself in the Amazon jungle, right in the middle of what is left of a 10,000 year old tradition of Ayahuasca Shamanism, which we shall explore in much more detail at a later date. Through engaging in the ancient shamanic ceremonies and traditions, I was made to realise how diseased our modern, capitalist culture has become. Over millennia, our ancestors carefully cultivated respect, communication and a relationship with nature and the spirit world that surrounds and maintains us, but in our arrogance and greed we have entirely lost this connection. And in losing this connection, we have lost all respect for our planet and our environment - the very hand that feeds us.



We are living on a planet in peril. Apart from anything else (such as the widespread destruction of the natural world, global warming, escalating resource wars etc) the Amazon - literally the lungs of every animal life form on the planet - will be a desert in 20 years if our attitude does not suddenly take a drastic change. So apart from my own feelings and intuitions, from a view of the world around us and the violative attitude we maintain in pursuit of greed and material gain it appears obvious and clear that "business as usual is no longer an option". It is my earnest wish to see humans evolve into the guardian caretakers of this planet, away from the rapacious, violent, greedy and selfish image that history projects on to us. Nobody in the world knows what the future holds for us. Some have some clues, insights and feelings, and I believe strongly that the Mayans were on the mark when they pointed out 2012 as being the turning point for human kind. It is my feeling that if we haven't sorted ourselves out by then, the force of the divine will sort things out for us.



This is where Shamanism re-enters the scene. Shamanic spirituality is referred to as 'animistic' - meaning that life, consciousness and spirit is attributed to everything around us. Every rock, every river, every tree and flower has spirit. The sun, the sky, the moon, the stars and the very earth beneath our feet are all sentient beings. With all sentient beings - whether it be a stranger in the street, or the street itself - it is necessary to acknowledge and respect them. In the same way that you would never stop a man in the street, beat him up and steal all his possessions, equally we must not engender and inflict rapacious and destructive behaviour on our planet - this is, afterall, the only planet we have to live on.



In this vast universe, the only thing that can save us from ourselves is ourselves. We've divorced ourselves from our spiritual roots, and consequently also our respect for the world beneath our feet. World governments condone widespread destruction, labelling it 'economic progress'. Shamanism, and the respect and admiration for our surroundings that it embodies, appears now to be the only thing that can reverse our disasterous progress on the path to destruction that we have chosen. Fortunately, this neo-shamanic and neo-archaic awakening IS happening. In my short life I have seen many unlikely people wake up to the reality of our situation. Many people are becoming aware of the divine beauty and preciousness that is the gift of life, how terrible it is that we are laying waste to it, and the consequences that will become of this waste. I've witnessed many people who've emerged from a life of hedonistic pursuit to become neo-shamanic entities, working in their own way to bring love and light to the world and make it a better place. It is my hope that as we accelerate through space-time towards the destiny that awaits us, more and more people will wake up and abandon old and destructive ways, and embrace a new paradigm of love and respect - one that, like a faded childhood memory, we once had, but have now all but forgotten.