I had purchased the 2-volume tape set on Credo Mutwa through the David Icke site. Icke is a bit of a crackpot, but his lack of sensitivity to what others think of him seems to propel him to put ideas out there that no one else would dare to. I’ve watched only the first tape, there’s so much material but it’s fascinating. The connection between Africa and possible ancient alien encounters is an intereting one, like the Dogon people of Mali.

when you return you will be cast out as if you have a different smell upon you.

Hence, why the Platonic Philosopher is rejected by the masses when he returns to the cave, UNLESS he has learned to adapt to multiple “realities”, and exert the proper “smells” to be accepted within the framework of the ever-evolving matrix (without allowing those “smells” to influence his or her own enlightened perspective).

If your new insights are clothed in this motley garb, there’s no way to relate them without sounding crazy.

Yeah that’s precisely what I was after. Especially I think if something happens to you and you weren’t previously prepared for it, and/or you suddenly have to explain something crazy in a short span of time. All of a sudden, you become like a mythological vaccuum cleaner, which to you is worthwhile but to everybody else you’re just sucking up garbage.

But apparently Mutwa really is a well-respected sangoma. LOL! I bet he doesn’t see Icke in the context of western culture,

Wow, that’s a really great point. I hadn’t thought about it like that. Icke probably seems totally normal to somebody raised in a shamanic culture. Wow… this whole thing really opened a lot of doors for me.

And yet both men are doing the same thing: they are drawing from the lore of the cultures which they were raised in, in order to explain paranormal phenomena and weird experiences.

A great failing of mainstream American culture is that it fails to provide an ontological framework for “shamanic” experiences. So that when a person is beset by one, there is no way to make sense of it and you just pull from whatever mythology you have at hand (in my case it was a mishmash of Christianity, and various artifacts of popular culture, e.g. Lord of the Rings, the Matrix, Fight Club, popular music, etc.) If your new insights are clothed in this motley garb, there’s no way to relate them without sounding crazy.

Philip K. Dick did a good job of integrating his existing beliefs (Christianity) with a truly novel and robust allegory (VALIS). The more I read of his stuff the more awed I am by the mythology he created/discovered.

Yes I am suspicious of the Icke connection as well. But apparently Mutwa really is a well-respected sangoma. LOL! I bet he doesn’t see Icke in the context of western culture, eg, the fact that Icke posed naked on the cover of his own book “I am Free I am Me” may not seem silly to him.

Then again, why does it seem silly to me? Icke ain’t a genius but there is something admirable about his extreme lack of inhibitions.

‘you think this is easier for me than for you, becuase i wear a gourd on my penis? everytime i make one of these journeys, i know it may be the last time, because the shamanic vision is so challenging to who i am..’

the process of becoming a shaman takes you to the edge of death, sanity, bankrupcy and whatever else we cling to in life and if you survive you can guide others.

Somehow this reminds me of Fight Club, the whole process of hitting rock bottom, losing everything important, losing his sanity, burning his hand with acid, etc. Kind of interesting if you look at “Tyler Durden” as like a modern shaman, with fighting being the only ritual.

Interesting take on an interesting movie.