Today on The Emerald. How did paleolithic and neolithic peoples see the world? What if, as an increasing number of anthropologists now think, they had access to a trance state — a vision-space — that is all but missing from the modern mind? A state that we don’t miss or see as vitally important because it’s like a relative we never knew we had. Gone out of mind and memory. 

Join Josh for this look at the human relationship with trance and imagination and how these essential states of consciousness have shaped the human mind and history. Explore lucid visions of theriomorphic beings from Siberia, Indian philosophies of the role imagination plays in the shaping of the cosmos, and Tantric practices that were designed to harness imagination as a living force that was ultimately considered more real that mundane reality itself.

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In this inaugural episode of The Emerald we take a look at some of the more mythic implications of the 2019 Notre Dame fire, the place that buildings hold in human consciousness and myth, as well as the little-known history of the cathedral which involves a popular goddess of the ancient world. 

Architecture can tell many stories — at its best, it reflects a synchronous relationship between human beings and nature. The great temples and mosques of the world are designed to convey the proportions of sacred geometry that are found throughout nature, and many are built on former sites of nature spirit worship. Notre Dame is no different. There is strong evidence that Notre Dame is built on a former site of worship of the mother goddess Isis.

Of course, architecture can also tell a very different story — that of power, class divide, and the human preoccupation with size.  

In the Tantric traditions, external architecture is seen as but a poor reflections of a deeper architecture that lives latent in the human mind, an architecture which is revealed and shaped through meditation. 

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