Welcome to the Spirit House of New Orleans
A Musical Invitation to Enter the Whirling (Recorded Live!)
Greetings Everyone,
In early March, Guild members from all over the world joined us for three days of deep fried soul-cooking in New Orleans. It was a true fire station party, and by the end we were all spiritually tuned and well-fed with holy musical bread.
Good news: we audio recorded the whole thing and are sharing an excerpt with you below!
Listen and find yourself transported to the Spirit House. The doorway to another world is open. As you cross the threshold, remember to step high, stoop low, and leave your dignity outside.[1] Please place your shoes by the door and drop your past in the compost. You won’t need any elaborate knowing, fancy insight, or sharpened hindsight. However, we do encourage you to bring a deep longing for jubilation, the desire to catch a non-subtle vibration, and any wild hidden corners of your imagination still untouched by the clutter of modern times. Don’t forget to silence your phones and turn off your narrating mind.
We hope you packed your spiritual suitcase! We’ll be traveling to the original home of creation on railroad tracks made of song. Here the spirit thrives amidst the changing and healing is unhindered by naming, framing, and taming.
On your way to take your seat, please pause and pay your respects to our Refrigerator of Saints. They are the healers, singers, poets, preachers, scientists, writers, musicians, artists, composers, and rascals we have met in dream during the last nine seasons of Sacred Ecstatics:
Each of these luminous ambassadors of creation were sent through vision to strengthen our rope to mystery and bring us a practical teaching. The holiest among them show us how to enter the big room, ignite a spiritual fire, and recreate the world through mystical action and creative invention. Here inside the Spirit House we never pray alone: whenever the days get dreary or we’re feeling weary, we just think of the saints, and this rekindles our passion to keep going.
Now that you’re inside, take a moment to close your inner eyes and concentrate on feeling a longing for these saints, especially those who know how to quench your thirst for mystery, doctor your heart, and spiritually cook your soul. Sense their arrival and bow to these ancestors who left behind spiritual tracks for us to follow. Communion with the saints helps us better meet and greet those who are physically present around us. Strong relations with these occupants of heaven are what sanctify our relations on earth.
It’s now time to begin. Climb aboard this musical track and join us on a journey to the Spirit Lands. Do more than passively listen; we’re here to wake up our emotion and get our bodies in motion! Let the tones, rhythms, and words tune the strings of your Spineway Steinway and light a fire in your bones. Welcome to the Spirit House of New Orleans, which is also Charles Henry’s Parisian laboratory for conjuring the mystical white light, a Kalahari dance ground where we come to feel pulled by the ropes of creation, a mezcal spirit distillery in First Creation Oaxaca, and a Chapel of Extreme Love. All aboard! The whirling is waiting to pull you into the changing…
‘Til next time,
Hillary & Brad
P.S.
For more info about the Guild and to join us next season, click here.
[1] These words were on the sign hanging above the door of the Dill Pickle Club (1917-1935), Chicago’s famous anarchist and avant-garde artists’ hangout. It still exists on the other side of the veil, and we are members (see our report in the book, Climbing the Rope to God: Visionary Testimony and Teaching, 2019). There we met Polish sculptor, painter, and Sacred Ecstatics saint, Stanislav Szukalski, whose picture and art you can see on our fridge in the lower left corner.