Heaven, Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Lake, Thunder, and Mountain.

Summoning the 8-pointed Star: Heaven, Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Lake, Thunder, and Mountain.

 Ritual performance. Invisibledrum Collective. Duration: 60’. Place: Kunsthall Trondheim .

#1 Program: Summoning the 8-pointed Star.
2nd Symposium on Spiritual Technologies – Ethnobotany within Witch Trials and the Capitalization of Health. 8–10 April 2021

In sacred space, we ask for permission to open the archives and traumatic memory held in the Norwegian trials of witchcraft. Through ritualization of the space, and by invoking pharmacopoeia (healing medicine) we embody and re-imagine herbcraft and the practice of magic today. This performance honours the beliefs, knowledge, and skills of oracles, seers, magicians, healers, midwives, and wise women. It calls for the return of medicine women and men. 

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“The symposium was opened on April 8th with a ritual performance held by the Invisibledrum team (Soares, Fonfara, Solberg, Ullevålseter); a ritual that summoned the water’s memory, the fire’s desire, the salts protection, the milk sweetness, and the seeds’ potential.  It was a powerful moment that was emotional to many,- a prayer for authentic connection and sustainable knowledge, healing, and holistic health. For many in the public, this was the first physical meeting in a very long time, due to the pandemic, and the energies that emanated from the 4 artists somehow reset the audience and seems to have opened the gates of empathic understanding towards the topics that proceeded.
The ritual work prepares understanding when dealing with violent past, such as the capitalization of health and a history of torture. 

The format of ritual deepens into a statement for the decolonized body and its liberation from Cartesian dualism, the West’s downfall in separation from nature.  The ritual work is made for the water, the fire, the earth, and the air, from an animist approach to the matter and co-living species; union.  The ritual dimension sustains the myth of the archetypal beyond the present moment. In this way, ritual anchors the participants both to the present and to the subtle sacred dimension beyond humans.”

By Jessica Ullevålseter

Report: Ethnobotany within Witch Trials and the Capitalization of Health. 2nd symposium of Spiritual Technologies 8-11 April 20