Dreams of Toraja
Dreams of Toraja
death / dreams / ritual
death / dreams / ritual
a psychomagical procession by and of Mantas Varnas
a psychomagical procession by and of Mantas Varnas
Dreams of Toraja is a psychomagical process, exploring the trinity of death, dreams, and ritual. Inspired by the lands of Tana Toraja in Sulawesi, Indonesia - a place of intricate rites around life and death, ancestral reverence, and the animist spirit beneath Christian and Muslim layers - the work weaves live instruments with traditional sounds, field recordings of ceremonies, and the raw atmosphere of the land through the prism of a futuristic dreamscape.
My exploration of Torajan culture catalysed a deep journey into my first memories, uncontrollable lucid dreams, and experiences with plant medicine which tuned into a flow of collective ancestral symbolism. The project traces the intimate thresholds of life and death, weaving the memory of Tana Toraja’s rites with personal visions, the serpent as life force, and the ongoing dialogue between the individual and the collective. It is an invitation for listeners to sync with the flow of ancestral currents and the symbolic language of the subconscious through the mix of ancient and futuristic soundscape, alongside a deep dive into my personal mythos.
*Psychomagic, a term & practice created by Alejandro Jodorowsky, is a transformative procession where psychology, magic, art, and ritual merge into a single current of symbolic healing. It speaks in the language of the unconscious — through gesture, image, and metaphor — guiding one through a living journey of integration. Rather than explaining or analyzing, it acts: transforming emotion into expression, memory into offering, and inner conflict into embodied art.
BEGIN THE SONIC JOURNEY
THROUGH DEATH, DREAMS & RITUAL
Dreams of Toraja is a psychomagical process, exploring the trinity of death, dreams, and ritual. Inspired by the lands of Tana Toraja in Sulawesi, Indonesia - a place of intricate rites around life and death, ancestral reverence, and the animist spirit beneath Christian and Muslim layers - the work weaves live instruments with traditional sounds, field recordings of ceremonies, and the raw atmosphere of the land through the prism of a futuristic dreamscape.
My exploration of Torajan culture catalysed a deep journey into my first memories, uncontrollable lucid dreams, and experiences with plant medicine which tuned into a flow of collective ancestral symbolism. The project traces the intimate thresholds of life and death, weaving the memory of Tana Toraja’s rites with personal visions, the serpent as life force, and the ongoing dialogue between the individual and the collective. It is an invitation for listeners to sync with the flow of ancestral currents and the symbolic language of the subconscious through the mix of ancient and futuristic soundscape, alongside a deep dive into my personal mythos.
*Psychomagic, a term & practice created by Alejandro Jodorowsky, is a transformative procession where psychology, magic, art, and ritual merge into a single current of symbolic healing. It speaks in the language of the unconscious — through gesture, image, and metaphor — guiding one through a living journey of integration. Rather than explaining or analyzing, it acts: transforming emotion into expression, memory into offering, and inner conflict into embodied art.
BEGIN THE SONIC JOURNEY
THROUGH DEATH, DREAMS & RITUAL
Tana Toraja
Sulawesi, Indonesia
In Tana Toraja, the relationship with death is not distant but profoundly intimate, forming the very fabric of social and spiritual life. Death is regarded as an inevitable part of life, a transformation, a passage into the ancestral realm where the departed continue to shape the living. Elaborate funerary rituals, some of the most intricate in the world, unfold over days or weeks, where music, chants, and offerings of animal sacrifice guide the soul through the unseen.
Ritual permeates existence - from the construction of tong’konan ancestral houses to the Ma’nene ceremony, when the dead are exhumed, redressed, and welcomed once more among the living. In Toraja, life and death interlace in a dream continuum, dissolving the duality between the sacred and the mundane. The people live with an awareness that mortality is not an interruption of life, but its deepest expression - a mystical intimacy where the real and surreal are inseparable.
In Tana Toraja, the relationship with death is not distant but profoundly intimate, forming the very fabric of social and spiritual life. Death is regarded as an inevitable part of life, a transformation, a passage into the ancestral realm where the departed continue to shape the living. Elaborate funerary rituals, some of the most intricate in the world, unfold over days or weeks, where music, chants, and offerings of animal sacrifice guide the soul through the unseen.
Ritual permeates existence - from the construction of tong’konan ancestral houses to the Ma’nene ceremony, when the dead are exhumed, redressed, and welcomed once more among the living. In Toraja, life and death interlace in a dream continuum, dissolving the duality between the sacred and the mundane. The people live with an awareness that mortality is not an interruption of life, but its deepest expression - a mystical intimacy where the real and surreal are inseparable.
Tong'konan ancestral house fitted with sacrificed buffalo horns
Tong'konan ancestral house fitted with sacrificed buffalo horns
Rambu Solo'
Rambu Solo'
Funeral ceremony, a sacred rite that honors the dead and guides their soul to Puya, the afterlife. It unites the community through music, dance, and ritual offerings, transforming grief into a collective expression of respect, gratitude, and continuity of life.
Funeral ceremony, a sacred rite that honors the dead and guides their soul to Puya, the afterlife. It unites the community through music, dance, and ritual offerings, transforming grief into a collective expression of respect, gratitude, and continuity of life.
Ma’nene
Ma’nene
Ritual of ancestor reverence, where families carefully exhume, clean, and redress the preserved bodies of their deceased relatives. It reflects the Torajan belief in an enduring connection between the living and the dead, celebrating memory, respect, and the continuity of life across generations.
Ritual of ancestor reverence, where families carefully exhume, clean, and redress the preserved bodies of their deceased relatives. It reflects the Torajan belief in an enduring connection between the living and the dead, celebrating memory, respect, and the continuity of life across generations.
Tomakula (Toma Kula’) is the person who has passed yet not considered dead until the proper funeral rites are completed, until then, they are regarded as being ill and continue to be part of the household. This marks the transitional period between life and death in Torajan tradition. Family members bring them rice and speak to them daily, maintaining the bond between the living and the spirit as it prepares for its journey. This period reflects the Torajan understanding of death as a gradual passage, not a sudden end.
Tomakula (Toma Kula’) is the person who has passed yet not considered dead until the proper funeral rites are completed, until then, they are regarded as being ill and continue to be part of the household. This marks the transitional period between life and death in Torajan tradition. Family members bring them rice and speak to them daily, maintaining the bond between the living and the spirit as it prepares for its journey. This period reflects the Torajan understanding of death as a gradual passage, not a sudden end.
Burial sites are vital cultural and spiritual landmarks. They serve as places of remembrance, honoring those who have passed and preserving their memory for future generations. Beyond their spiritual significance, burial sites offer insight into historical practices, social structures, and beliefs.
Burial sites are vital cultural and spiritual landmarks. They serve as places of remembrance, honoring those who have passed and preserving their memory for future generations. Beyond their spiritual significance, burial sites offer insight into historical practices, social structures, and beliefs.
Dreams, too, are understood as portals of communication with ancestors and spirits,
where the boundaries of waking and sleeping blur into a shared cosmology.
Dreams, too, are understood as portals of communication with ancestors and spirits, where
the boundaries of waking and sleeping blur
into a shared cosmology.
Dreams, too, are understood as portals of communication with ancestors and spirits,
where the boundaries of waking and sleeping blur into a shared cosmology.
Dreams, too, are understood as portals of communication with ancestors and spirits, where
the boundaries of waking and sleeping blur
into a shared cosmology.
Alchemy of the Self
Alchemy of the Self
Alchemy of the Self
psychomagic
Personal Mythos & Initiation
My own journey into this current began with my earliest memory of this life: a childhood accident at 3 years old, smashing my forehead against a metal roadblock. Blood poured, the world tilted, and a scar remained - a threshold marking the first touch of mortality.
While completing the music of Dreams of Toraja, I drew a comic of this memory: a serpent rushes toward me, transforms into an older version of myself wearing a human skull and feathers, and gifts me its life force, transmits the serpent - a continuity, renewal, and creative energy.
When I turned 15, lucid dreams widened the portal. For half a year, every night I was conscious in dreams I could not control, falling, dying, waking, dying again - a relentless cycle of thresholds between life and death. Each night, I returned, carrying the understanding that every moment is both a death and a waking.
Years later, plant medicine ceremonies deepened this thread. The serpent curled up my spine, tender and alive, reconnecting me to that first wound, to my own drawn mythos, and to the collective stream. Guided by the plants, I glimpsed the continuity of spirit lifetimes, the memory of all past and future - the injury not as loss but as initiation, and the serpent as the gift allowing creation to continue.
Personal Mythos & Initiation
My own journey into this current began with my earliest memory of this life: a childhood accident at 3 years old, smashing my forehead against a metal roadblock. Blood poured, the world tilted, and a scar remained - a threshold marking the first touch of mortality.
While completing the music of Dreams of Toraja, I drew a comic of this memory: a serpent rushes toward me, transforms into an older version of myself wearing a human skull and feathers, and gifts me its life force, transmits the serpent - a continuity, renewal, and creative energy.
When I turned 15, lucid dreams widened the portal. For half a year, every night I was conscious in dreams I could not control, falling, dying, waking, dying again - a relentless cycle of thresholds between life and death. Each night, I returned, carrying the understanding that every moment is both a death and a waking.
Years later, plant medicine ceremonies deepened this thread. The serpent curled up my spine, tender and alive, reconnecting me to that first wound, to my own drawn mythos, and to the collective stream. Guided by the plants, I glimpsed the continuity of spirit lifetimes, the memory of all past and future - the injury not as loss but as initiation, and the serpent as the gift allowing creation to continue.
Psychomagical Creation & Synthesis
As Dreams of Toraja was shaped from my experience, becoming a pillar of my crossing into the collective, I found myself emerging from it - shedding the old, facing death, and embracing the flow of life force. The album is the sound of personal myth entwining with collective currents, the first wound, shadowed lucid dreams, serpent energy, and ancestral resonance. Symbols rose from the subconscious and found form in sound, field recordings, and futuristic soundscapes. The personal revealed itself inseparable from the collective. In tuning our inner pulse with its current, the patterns of memory, ritual, and ancestral symbolism start to reveal themselves as living forces - shaping, guiding, and resonating through our expression.
This is an invitation: to enter a portal where death, dreams, and ritual converge, where the mythos of one meets the collective, and where sound becomes the vessel of psychomagical transformation. Dreams of Toraja is not only to be heard - it is to be experienced, lived, and synchronized with.
Psychomagical Creation & Synthesis
As Dreams of Toraja was shaped from my experience, becoming a pillar of my crossing into the collective, I found myself emerging from it - shedding the old, facing death, and embracing the flow of life force. The album is the sound of personal myth entwining with collective currents, the first wound, shadowed lucid dreams, serpent energy, and ancestral resonance. Symbols rose from the subconscious and found form in sound, field recordings, and futuristic soundscapes. The personal revealed itself inseparable from the collective. In tuning our inner pulse with its current, the patterns of memory, ritual, and ancestral symbolism start to reveal themselves as living forces - shaping, guiding, and resonating through our expression.
This is an invitation: to enter a portal where death, dreams, and ritual converge, where the mythos of one meets the collective, and where sound becomes the vessel of psychomagical transformation. Dreams of Toraja is not only to be heard - it is to be experienced, lived, and synchronized with.
Live Performance
Live Performance
Excerpt from audio visual performance @ Kaunas, Lithuania, 2022
Excerpt from audio visual performance @ Kaunas, Lithuania, 2022
Dreams of Toraja live performance unfolds as a ritual of sound and vision - a psychomagical dialogue between life and death, dream and awakening. Performed in collaboration with Victor Sitära (Mexico), and Ines Deru (Indonesia), the piece immerses the audience in a continuum of ancestral resonance and futuristic sonic atmospheres. Layering live electronics, vocals, percussion, and traditional instruments from Toraja such as the suling lembang bamboo flute and bamboo jaw-harp, the performance bridges distant temporalities - animating the mythic root, and the digital into a single breathing field.
Our trio weaves textures that shift between meditative trance and eruptive catharsis, invoking the serpent as a symbol of transformation and remembrance. Each act unfolds like a ceremony - a process of entering, dissolving, and re-emerging through sound. The visuals, drawn from Mantas’ personal archive of dreams, drawings, and ritual footage, intertwine with the music as living memory - projections of the personal subconscious entering the collective eye.
Dreams of Toraja live performance unfolds as a ritual of sound and vision - a psychomagical dialogue between life and death, dream and awakening. Performed in collaboration with Victor Sitära (Mexico), and Ines Deru (Indonesia), the piece immerses the audience in a continuum of ancestral resonance and futuristic sonic atmospheres. Layering live electronics, vocals, percussion, and traditional instruments from Toraja such as the suling lembang bamboo flute and bamboo jaw-harp, the performance bridges distant temporalities - animating the mythic root, and the digital into a single breathing field.
Our trio weaves textures that shift between meditative trance and eruptive catharsis, invoking the serpent as a symbol of transformation and remembrance. Each act unfolds like a ceremony - a process of entering, dissolving, and re-emerging through sound. The visuals, drawn from Mantas’ personal archive of dreams, drawings, and ritual footage, intertwine with the music as living memory - projections of the personal subconscious entering the collective eye.
Dreams of Toraja becomes a living psychomagical rite - an alchemical convergence where sound, vision, and myth meet to reconfigure perception. The audience is invited not merely to witness but to participate in remembrance, to move within the current of ancestral flow, and to sense the continuity between the audible and the invisible.
Mantas Varnas - electronics, vocals, suling lembang flute, jaw-harp, percussion, guitar, visuals
Victor Sitära - electronics, sitar
Ines Deru - electronics, vocals, percussion
Mantas Varnas - electronics, vocals, suling lembang flute, jaw-harp, percussion, guitar, visuals
Victor Sitära - electronics, sitar
Ines Deru - electronics, vocals, percussion
Artist Statement
Mantas Varnas
I am a multidisciplinary artist delving into alchemical processes whilst creating integral art that bridges the gap between the physical and metaphysical planes. My practice unfolds as psychomagical processions and sonic journeys, blending sound, ritual, and visual expression to open new perceptual spaces.
Rooted in ancient futurism, music as wholeness, and practice of mysticism, I travel the world, engaging with diverse cultures, finding symbolism, tradition, and the underlying resonant threads that harmonize human expression across space memory. Psychedelic exploration, alchemy, and immersive experiences through traditional methods & audiovisual technology are central to my practice, guiding participants to perceive, feel, and co-create in spaces that transmit memories of the ever-present dance of the personal & collective.
Through my work and travels, I organize interdisciplinary events, festivals, gatherings to build global bridges between creatives and art communities - fostering a shared vision of progressive interconnectedness within an ancient-futurist perspective. Where ancient wisdoms meet futurist vision.
E-mail: varnas.lore@gmail.com
Artist Statement
Mantas Varnas
I am a multidisciplinary artist delving into alchemical processes whilst creating integral art that bridges the gap between the physical and metaphysical planes. My practice unfolds as psychomagical processions and sonic journeys, blending sound, ritual, and visual expression to open new perceptual spaces.
Rooted in ancient futurism, music as wholeness, and practice of mysticism, I travel the world, engaging with diverse cultures, finding symbolism, tradition, and the underlying resonant threads that harmonize human expression across space memory. Psychedelic exploration, alchemy, and immersive experiences through traditional methods & audiovisual technology are central to my practice, guiding participants to perceive, feel, and co-create in spaces that transmit memories of the ever-present dance of the personal & collective.
Through my work and travels, I organize interdisciplinary events, festivals, gatherings to build global bridges between creatives and art communities - fostering a shared vision of progressive interconnectedness within an ancient-futurist perspective. Where ancient wisdoms meet futurist vision.
E-mail: varnas.lore@gmail.com
Artist Statement
Mantas Varnas
I am a multidisciplinary artist delving into alchemical processes whilst creating integral art that bridges the gap between the physical and metaphysical planes. My practice unfolds as psychomagical processions and sonic journeys, blending sound, ritual, and visual expression to open new perceptual spaces.
Rooted in ancient futurism, music as wholeness, and practice of mysticism, I travel the world, engaging with diverse cultures, finding symbolism, tradition, and the underlying resonant threads that harmonize human expression across space memory. Psychedelic exploration, alchemy, and immersive experiences through traditional methods & audiovisual technology are central to my practice, guiding participants to perceive, feel, and co-create in spaces that transmit memories of the ever-present dance of the personal & collective.
Through my work and travels, I organize interdisciplinary events, festivals, gatherings to build global bridges between creatives and art communities - fostering a shared vision of progressive interconnectedness within an ancient-futurist perspective. Where ancient wisdoms meet futurist vision.
e-mail: varnas.lore@gmail.com