The Experiments of Sacred Ecstatics
Every Sacred Ecstatics Guild season we perform a new series of “mystical experiments” that are sent down the visionary dream pipeline. These numinous-soaked creative practices amplify sacred emotion, inspire spontaneous body motion, and stir up the sacred vibration – helping us live with more daily spiritual cooking and less reflective looking.
Each experiment brings a one-of-a-kind practice that hosts the four directions of ecstatic living: spiritual heat, ecstatic wisdom, creative intervention, and absurd play. Experiments may involve a combination of incantation, making or procuring an object or image, and performing an atypical movement. You may be asked to place something under your pillow at night, sprinkle something around your home, say something holy to a glass of water, carry a word in your pocket, or use an imaginary paintbrush to alter the color of your altar.
If you have read our book, Sacred Ecstatics: The Recipe for Setting Your Soul on Fire, you’ll recall that each chapter ends with an experimental prescription for action, each one building on the one that came before. Speaking of which, have you obtained your matchbox, yet? It’s the one that will become your spiritual suitcase and mini altar containing a single match, one tiny stone, a piece of thread, and a mystery object of your choosing. You’ll need it so that later you can lay it upon some Kalahari sand which you’ll sprinkle in your shoes to change the way you walk through the world.
We never know what the experiments will be until we dream them. They always come wrapped in a particular teaching that gives them mojo potency. A new experiment is launched the beginning of each month, with a variation or two added later. Experiments are designed so they can be done individually, but they can also involve other people. Guild members with children have invited them to participate, and those who are couples often do them together.
Arrival of the Altar
During the 2019-2020 Guild season, we began by mystically planting three seeds (a vegetable, fruit, and flower). After that, an altar was dreamed with two divine ears and three spiritual mothers from our main lineages. The seeds were added to the altar, and later three spools of mystical thread, a “Mayan eraser,” a sacred broom, double Tesla prayer coils, and numerous other additions. These altars became our primary gateway for reaching across to the other side with special prayer lines, songs, and movements. (The full story of that season’s experiments will eventually be published in a book.)
Here is an image Hillary drew of that altar in its early stage of development:
The 2020-2021 Season
The current Guild season began with a dream of procuring a special ceramic bowl, the number 222, and the word “piezo,” referring to piezoelectricity. These elements, along with three maps from our main lineages and three prayer lines, formed the beginning of our new altar. As additional visions and experiments come down, elements of them are added.
Many Guild members find it useful to weave the experiments throughout their day to keep their life room vaster and the spiritual temperature warmer, while the physical altar serves as a home base and focusing reminder of the mysteries currently in play. For some of the recent visionary stirrings at work in our Guild right now, visit our newsletter.
-The Keeneys, January 5, 2021.