We don’t wear patches on our clothes announcing who we are like the one percenters. Those often hairy, tattooed leather toughs on motorcycles proudly announce to the world their disdain for the ninety-nine percent law-abiding majority with a patch sewn on their garments for the world to see and fear. 

  Although admittedly some of us on occasion have a penchant for rather flamboyant clothes and mannerisms. 

  Anyway, I’m not even sure of the percentage, for we are a scattered unaffiliated often dispirited bunch. And the truth is many of us crash and burn from an early age, resorting in our alienation, confusion and misery to alcohol, drugs, and madness. 

  The reality is few of us genuine three percenters actually get to the other side, make it through the tough times so to speak, so again I’m merely pulling the number three out of my hat based on guesswork. 

  What am I talking about? 

  Well, for thousands and thousands of years humanity lived in a great many smaller communities scattered about the planet. Now and then within these communal groups adolescents of a certain age would fall sick. They would experience a psycho-spiritual event and their worried parents would call in the Shamanic medicine-man. Now the sickness might be physical and suitably treated using herbs and whatever else might be part of their tradition. But occasionally it was something more and after diagnosis and treatment the Shamanic medicine-man would announce to the mystified parents that the boy no longer belonged in the mainstream educational system, whatever that might be. 

  From that point on the boy was enrolled in the three percenters and would thenceforth study under the guidance of the Shamanic medicine-man tradition passed down from generation to generation from the deep wells of the past. 

  Tragically for our downtrodden and even persecuted three percent guild—and for society at large I’d add—that’s all gone today. The Brotherhood of Shamanic-Type Practitioners has been completely stamped out, erased, banished and even extirpated. In short, it’s gone. Sure, a few wishful thinking souls harking back to a dead past don outlandish costumes at times and perform clownish pantomimes, but without a tradition to underpin them they simply haven’t done the necessary work to reconnect to the source.

  Hence the tendency towards crashing and burning. 

  And hence the Omphalos Cafe. 

Thoughts on a world emptied of meaning? Doesn’t mean we cannot have fun with it at omphaloscafe@gmail.com!