10-11 February 2018, Merizzo (Massa, Italy), Healing Carnival: Mediterranean Shamanism with Franco Santoro.
In this workshop we refer to the Mediterranean shamanic traditions, combining Christian and Pagan elements, with particular regard to the mysteries of Carnival. We employ astroshamanic dance, theatre, touch and rituals aimed at soul retrieval and liberation. Participants can take their own costumes and masks, employ ours or make theirs here.
Carnival is associated with the month of February (from the Latin februa, “tools of purification”), which was a period of cleansing and purification, acted out through the provisional suspension of the social order.
During this time the reality was upside down and people could let go of their ordinary roles, taking on alternative identities and… body-swapping. It was a celebration of the mysteries of the multidimensional realms, with human beings shape-shifting into any form they liked and possibly entities from other worlds and times sliding into this earth and taking up human shapes.
Despite the separation from other dimensions and the loss of the capacity to shape-shift, which followed in more recent times, the original awareness is still currently preserved by the custom of wearing masks and costumes at Carnival. Persona comes from the Greek πρόσωπον (prósōpon), i.e. mask. The personality is a theatrical fiction, a mask. It takes time to create certain masks, especially if they are manufactured by artists, whereas other masks are cheap and can be found in supermarkets. Yet they are all masks. We can wear an attractive, seducing, luminous, ugly or depressive mask. Whatever the case at a certain stage it will get old and wear out, or we may even lose it. Hence it is useful to learn to wear other masks, or even better to learn who is behind the mask. For more details on Carnival please click here.