We watched Midsommar, a horror film about a cult, after a day of retreat and practice together and explored the themes of community, toxic cultures, the risks of collective hypnosis and, of course, love as the antidote to all these things.

For this episode we watched IT - a classic from Joost's childhood that has visited him in many nightmares since. 

Engaging with it as if the movie is a dream or imaginal practice opens up discussions about alternate realities, loneliness, empowerment of the feminine life-force energy and separation as a fuel for individuation and ultimately connection

We watch Aniara with Odile Strik, in which a spaceship carrying settlers to Mars is knocked off course, causing the consumption-obsessed passengers to consider their place in the universe.

We explore how the different themes impacted us and open up the topics of emptiness, meaning and who we'd like to get stuck in space with.

For this episode we watched Event Horizon. We discuss how it evokes and resonates with experiences of the depths of hell.

We also recorded a shared meditative journey where we travelled into the void together, which you can listen to at the end. 

Here's a link with instructions forshared journeying if you'd like to explore that topic more.

We watch the very dream-like Upstream Color, which evoked conversations about interconnection and how the imaginal and shamanic realms intersect with human connection.

In the first episode of Nouveau Shamanic Cinema we watch 'Mandy' starring Nicolas Cage, whom Rosa is fascinated by and who we named the podcast after – "Cage said that, at a certain point in his career, he realized that he had developed his own method of acting, which he described as 'Nouveau Shamanic'."

Mandy has been described as a 'primal, psychedelic rage-scream of a movie', in which Cage goes on a wild revenge-killing spree against a religious cult.

This evokes discussions on dark imaginal practice, narcissism in spirituality and what happens when you fuck with people who know what really matters in life.