Niles Heckman’s new documentary takes a fresh look at modern shamans.

Click here for Shamans of the Global Village website

Click here for Forum Discussion

 

Niles-Heckman-Skeptiko

Alex Tsakiris: [00:00:00] So I know you’ve heard about this, I mean everyone’s heard about this.

Audio Clip: [00:00:04] So what happened the first time that you smoked the Medicine ? I just felt this white light, this dissolution of my self.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:00:14] It’s like a cultural meme on The Simpsons, the toad and – Fractals, and sacred geometry and energy- But did you know it’s frickin real – In connection with my breath?

Audio Clip: [00:00:31] Okay, right, I want to show you the product of the College of the Medicine of this year. This is what the natives and us have collect so far, and I want to explain you the process of how we collect and do the medicine. So that looks like a lot of medicine. This is a lot of medicine. This has been collect of maybe 1000 of toads. 1000 toads. Maybe around 10 days.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:04] On today’s show, which is long, long overdue and I have to apologize to Niles and Rak for taking so long to get this out. Especially since their documentary film series Shamans of the Global Village is so truly, truly amazing, remarkable stuff that I really hope you go watch. Here’s a clip from an interview with Niles. What do you think of that science of entheogens?

Niles Heckman: [00:01:33] Each of the different entheogens has kind of a different flavor to them. So it’s been spoken of, for example, but like psilocybin mushrooms are very like cosmic and alien and then the other type of DMT which we highlight, which you mentioned as the white light in Episode One is very much like this kind of hay drawn of hyperspace that merges into the guy in you know Godhead type dynamic of fusing back into the light. And then other met indigenous medicines such as like peyote and the cacti have a very kind of masculine desert energy to them and it’s probably several things of what you hit on there. One is probably like the history and the genealogy of your people, where your people come from, what you resonate with in terms of which medicine maybe your ancestors practice with.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:02:22] Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host Alex Tsakiris and today we welcome Niles Heckman to Skeptiko. Niles is a truly amazing filmmaker, documentarian and a photographer, and a bunch of other stuff. You’re gonna see in a minute the stunningly beautiful documentary series he’s done, Shamans of the Global Village. He’s also a blogger of podcaster, communicator and I’m popping up his website here. But there’s so many interesting things to talk about. He likes to put it in this category of ageless wisdom. Some people are calling and theologians the topic that we might pigeonhole it into. But there’s all kinds of stuff related to this that I think are just particularly interesting and really respect that deeply intellectual way. He’s taking this, trying to tie it with other things and contrasting it with what some people in the occult community are saying and all that and I really appreciate it, that the broad perspective that he seems to be bringing all this. So Niles, it’s really cool to have you on,