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points by convict 18 hours ago | 0 comments

They are selling a $4,444 5 day music production retreat: https://sonidoselva.com/5-day-production-retreat

I think that's an easy conclusion to come to, but the top level page of the site seems to push a different conclusion: "...On this path, we recognize and honor the indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta — the Kogui, Arhuaco, Wiwa and Kankuamo — as ancestral guardians of the territory and living source of the wisdom that inspires and underpins our work."

[–] analognoise 17 hours ago

You’d have to be very naive to think the “thing” they were pushing was the “recognition and honor of the indigenous people” and NOT the $4500 music production retreat.

[–] nstents 16 hours ago

I meant to be saying that the Kogui were not the ones pushing the music production retreat, but it was a third party, the creators of the site, doing so.

My apologies for having allowed a different interpretation in my previous comment.

[–] analognoise 15 hours ago

Nah my bad, I should have considered that as a possible interpretation and I failed to. Have an excellent day!

[–] PaulHoule 17 hours ago

So? Lots of organizations do retreats with a similar cost, though certainly that kind of pricing put events out of reach of most people.

At the top page of that site I saw a lot of pictures which reminded me a little of the "Witch Camp" gatherings that the Reclaiming movement puts on which are an education in ritual that costs a fraction of what the above organization charges but these are non-profit gatherings run by very lefty people.

[–] ChickeNES 16 hours ago

It’s kinda amazing how many different variants of the Ancient Aliens scam exist.

[–] PaulHoule 16 hours ago

Well, when I do see Mormon missionaries coming I do tell them my story about how "After Quetzalcōātl came to teach Americans how to grow corn he went to teach people in the Middle East about spirituality" and that "He's really a dinosaur, and that impact 66 million years ago was no accident but an engineered collision of a space colony off the Yucatan peninsula (like what happens in Gundam!), the remaining dinosaurs live in large space habitats out in the Oort Cloud."

That is a joke of course and is much as humor is a part of my practice [1] I don't believe or or expect anyone else to believe it.

Overall I believe in ritual as a technology, that the things people say about religion are fiction but the the things they do are real. I led a small group of students to what I realized later was the highest spot on our campus and we did a simple ritual and experienced immense joy in simply pulling something off in a group and more later when it primed me to see something really sacred in watching the moon rise over an unspeakably profane commercial strip.

My green witch wife would totally say witchcraft is about manifesting your dreams and to me the esbat rituals for the new and full moon are about making and keeping commitments, Steven Covey kind of stuff, really applied psychology. [2]

[1] ... introducing a crude hammer as "a ritual tool my wife gave me on condition that we can only call it 'the hammer of whammer', my wife says that ritual tools gain powers through being used and... this has been used, it has a legendary origin story which I've been sworn to secrecy about"

[2] ... and those of you who say I digress too much are wrong this time, modern pagan practices are very much modeled after the nearly universal practices that your (more or less distant) ancestors practiced in their village before the Empire [3] showed up with its soldiers and scribes

[3] ... the Romans, the Shang, the British, the contemporary world system, what they have in common is that they send in stormtroopers and blow up your planet if you try to resist