Via the New York Times:
Sometime around 9:30 a.m. on weekdays, Itzhak Beery enters a second-floor office in Greenwich Village to preside over his piece of the material world. It is an advertising agency, the latest he has owned in a 30-year career. Five computers await him, each thrumming with software for graphic design. Shelves hold the awards he has won.
On Sunday mornings, though, Mr. Beery returns to cover all the practical apparatus with sheets. From a cabinet, he withdraws volcanic stones, candles, finger cymbals, bottles of rum and cologne, each with symbolic value. He arranges these on a red cloth, and lays beside them a carton of eggs and bunches of red and white carnations.
Such are the instruments of the shaman of Sullivan Street….
Oh dear.
Read the whole thing.
As a gay man, I have a bit of a soft spot for shamanism, since in many cultures it was a role for the same-sex attracted, on the basis that they were people “between”.