Documentary - Shamans of The Global Village
Indigenous people across the globe have used sacred plant medicines for millennia to heal, illuminate and connect them to the web of life. From ayahuasca and San Pedro in South America, psilocybin mushrooms and Salvia Divinorum in Mexico, Peyote in North America, Kambo in Brazil, Iboga in Africa, and DMT-acacias in Australia, etc., each of these psychoactive medicines needs a healer to connect them to their patients: the shaman.
This investigative-adventure documentary show will examine not just these shamanic medicines but also the shamans that wield them. Shamans of the Global Village focuses on both indigenous and Western men and women learning to become shamans, what drives them, what their backgrounds are, and why the role of the shaman is vital in the 21st century. If, as Marshall McLuhan said, we are now a “global village”, then we need our own healers that understand the deep power and sacredness these plant medicines can reveal.
Throughout the series journalist Rak Razam will interview and sit in ceremony, experiencing healing medicine ceremonies with Western shamans across the globe, in countries where these plants are legal. Razam will show how the modern shamanic resurgence is being passed on from indigenous tribes to these new wave medicine people working in the Global Village, in the cities and the jungles of the 21st century. The series will focus on personalities, not just medicines, to bring alive the role of the shaman in the modern world and each episode will centre on a single medicinal plant.
The pilot episode, which gets its European premiere at Raindance, features Dr. Octavio Rettig (above) & The Sonoran Desert Toad.
Doctor Octavio Rettig is a medical surgeon from the University of Guadalajara specialising in treating addictions. He has been working for over 15 years with traditional medicinal plants recognised as sacred plants or power plants within Mesoamerican cultures. He is a spokesman for the message of the councils of elders of indigenous communities in northern Mexico. He has been entrusted by the Seri tribe to communicate their message and spread their traditions and understanding. Dr. Rettig’s sessions incorporate ancient healing chants with the experience of the Sonoran Desert Toad (which contains 5-MeO-DMT). He has worked with the toad medicine for over seven years, during which he has given over 3,500 sessions treating serious cases of addiction to strong synthetic drugs like crystal meth (methamphetamine), and crack cocaine, achieving a high success rate with his patients, providing them with a new way of understanding life.
Watch the trailer below and book tickets for the Raindance screening and Q & A Panel on 23 September at 18:30 to 20:30 here.
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