#transformational festivals

The Bloom - NEW WAYS OF THE SACRED Episode III

Episode Three of the original Bloom web series investigates how Mythos, Ritual and The Sacred are explored at transformational festivals. Directed by Jeet-Kei Leung and co-produced by Akira Chan. Edited by Drew Martinez

what a topic! I could go on and on for hours about this. if everyone just wanted to get fucked up then it really wouldn’t be a problem. these places are powerful aesthetic containers for powerful transformational (drug-induced) experiences and that’s perfectly okay. but everything else about them is corrupt, predatory, and hypocritical. they all talk a big game about ecological awareness, but they all sell tons of meat and many leave the grounds a garbage heap. vendors both legitimate and illegitimate are basically there to prey on kids in open, vulnerable states of mind. they cost a ton of money, and make people feel like they’re missing out on some kind of essential personal growth experience if they don’t participate. it’s all very cliquish and exclusionary, as if they’re trying to protect something sacrosanct. but there’s no ‘there’ there. they’re not the gatekeepers to any hidden, special wisdom. it’s just a bunch of empty, tired new age metaphysics.

for example: lightning in a bottle held a flat earth panel this year

a trip into the sights unseen,

the untested waters

there’s a deluge in the bayou

and there’s an ark called utopia

come on board, kindred spirits

we have enough food for everyone

There are philosophical trends in certain dominant strands of New Age thinking that are deeply conservative/regressive. There is an emphasis on traditional gender roles that is packaged as a celebration of some kind of divine dipole of the holy feminine/masculine. The way this manifests in actual communities is not in the “we all embody both aspects” kind of way, but in a “men are this way and women are this way” kind of way. In the modern world, we understand that the traditional gender binary is a bankrupt concept held in place by an artificial power structure. Wrapping an idea up in spiritual language doesn’t make it any less empty. It leads to all kinds of weird behaviors. Example: At one of the festivals I’ve been to, they held a “sacred fire” throughout the gathering. In order to sit at the fire, women had to cover themselves from shoulder to foot, so that the environment would remain “spiritually pure and focused” for everyone (read: the men) at all times. WTF!? I hope you see how obviously stupid and backwards this is. 

Meanwhile, so many of these circles are about free love and polyamory as central tenets, creating an atmosphere that pressures women into acquiescing to social scenes that they wouldn’t otherwise acquiesce to. I personally know of two popular photographers in the scene who have been outed as sexual predators by dozens of women. These women were angled into bad situations couched by the perpetrators as “healing” experiences. And when all of this comes to light, many men in the community advocated “reconciliation” and “reintegration.” WTdoubleF!? No. No. No. Even now, some of my friends still stay connected with one of those guys. 

There’s too much of this. Too much.