In the Betwixt series, I talk a lot about Nature Spirit Allies. For many seekers, these allies are engaged through work with fetishes, or power items, as has become the phrase-of-the-day.

To watch an Apichatpong Werasethakul film is to be lulled into a dream state. His latest film, Cemetery of Splendour, which premiered at Cannes this week, immerses you in a surreal, and yet real, world on the line of wakefulness and sleep.

Despite our best strides in incorporating a shamanistic worldview, we still look upon such bare demands as archaic or outmoded. By our keen intellect, we see ourselves as somehow beyond that base need.