Join a Multivocal Investigation: The Ancient Spirituality of Cyprus
- Have you ever wanted to be part of an Indiana Jones movie?
- Do you find yourself tuning in to ancient spirituality when you visit certain places?
No, we won’t be digging up anything (at least not that way). In my Research project done as part of my degree (BA in Archaeology and Ancient History) at Leicester University, I want modelled (to use the NLP term) the ancient rituals of Aphrodite-Kypris, to make sense of them for our time. While you holiday in this magical world and experience our blend of NLP and Spirituality, we invite you to tune into the chants and drums of Europe’s oldest spirituality. Share your experience, and help us understand how the message of Earth’s eternal Love reveals itself to you in the very place from which that message, spread out under so many names: Wanassa, Kypris, Aphrodite, Asherah, Astarte, Ishtar, Isis, Mary. North of here at the 9,000 year-old archaeological site of Çatalhöyük in southern Turkey, Archaeologist Ian Hodder experimented with an archaeological “Multi-vocality” where people’s lived experience of the site helps us understand how humans in ancient times may have also interacted with it. The aim is to create an archaeology that is not just dissociated theory. He approached understanding of the past by inviting many voices into a chorus and he says “Some come to the site for a spiritual experience in a place they believe a Goddess was once worshipped, some want to do rituals, some have a political interest in how gender relations were configured differently in the past, some bring crystals and drums, some are ecofeminists…” (interviewed by New Zealand archaeologist Kathryn Rountree, 2007, p. 16). Whatever your experience, it is through human voices that we understand the human past.
Research Study shows Integration Training Week Induces
Profound Altered State of Consciousness (ASC)
In 2024, as part of Richard Bolstad’s degree in Archaeology and Ancient History, he studied the 7 day Integration training run by Transformations International in Paphos, Cyprus. His aim was to simulate the internal experience of pilgrims attending the sanctuary of Aphrodite Kypris in Palaepaphos during the Archaic Age (750-500 BCE) and evaluate this using a well established research tool. This experience included use of massage and inhalation of essential oils (Cinnamon, Myrrh, Frankincense, etc), Shamanic nature rituals and journeys with drumming, Chi-Kung-like body posture and movements, ecstatic dance and chanting, and trance-work. The effect of these processes had been studied in Crete by archaeologists such as Christine Morris (Morris and Peatfield, 2001) – the Minoan cult there had many overlaps with ancient Cypriot cult activity. We had course participants fill out the 32 question “Hoods Mysticism Scale” and answer several open questions about their experiences over the week. The scale gives an assessment of how profoundly different from normal consciousness the people’s experience was, where the result is expressed as a ratio (a ratio of 1.000 would mean that the person had experienced the most profoundly “altered state” of consciousness imaginable, and 0.200 would mean they had a complete lack of such experiences). The ratios from the “normal” population over their lifetime were 0.683 for men and 0.746 for women, meaning that most people have had some times when they felt at one with everything, or when they felt a sense of awe or bliss etc. (Hood, 1975). When this well researched scale is used with people who have just had a psilocybin (hallucinogenic) experience, the ratio resulting from their experience is 0.875 (Griffiths et alia, 2006:277). In our study the ratio was 0.894, which is to say, attending Integration was, for these 12 people, at least as profound on average as taking a psychedelic drug. The one technique most strongly associate with this state in the research was “Transcendence”. This is confirmed by many of the comments about their experience in response to the open questions, where people said, for example:
- “totally freeing, I lost the sense of time/awareness, was totally one with the universe.”
- “overwhelming sense of emotion generated from initial connection to love. Compassion and connection, tears flowed, can’t describe the feeling, words are not enough.”
- “I feel I have had a quantum shift in personal awareness and spiritual connection.”
Two months after the training, one participant posted this comment on social media, unsolicited: “I’m walking, talking, breathing, sleeping (etc.) the incredible, noticeable, benefits and it’s only been a couple of months! Busting up and through my negatively leaning preconceptions due to my trust in your science/history/fact-based teaching styles led to me having a deeply profound, completely Transformational experience. Yes, there is room/space for everything without stepping into the kind of charlatan ‘woo’ that can commonly seep into these practices. Thank you.”
A detailed report on the research study is published in the book “In The Sanctuary of the Ancient Goddess” (Richard Bolstad with Julia Kurusheva, 2025), available from Amazon as paperback, eBook and audible audiobook.
Book The Training This Year!
Bibliography:
- Bolstad, R., 2025, University of Leicester, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Undergraduate Dissertation “What were the components of ritual practice at the Archaic Age Sanctuary of Aphrodite in Palaepaphos, and what biopsychosocial effects might they have induced in participants?”
- Griffiths, R.R., Richards, W.A., McCann, U., and Jesse, R.. 2006, “Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance”. Psychopharmacology 187, p. 268–283 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5
- Hood, R. W., Jr. (1975). The construction and preliminary validation of a measure of reported mystical experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 14, 29-41.
- Morris, C. and Peatfield, A. 2001, “Feeling Through The Body: Gesture in Cretan bronze Age Religion” p. 105-120 in Hamilakis, Y., Pluciennik, M. and Tarlow, S. eds. Thinking Through The Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, ISBN: 978-1-4613-5198-6
- Rountree, K. 2007, “Archaeologists and Goddess Feminists at Çatalhöyük: An Experiment in Multivocality” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion , Fall, 2007, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall, 2007), pp. 7-26