Return To The Source

Return to the Source was a London-based Goa Trance music collective and record label.

RTTS (as it became known) first emerged in the early 1990s alongside the musical genre of Goa Trance and it's successor Psychedelic Trance. RTTS produced a number of compilation albums of both upbeat Trance and more downtempo Ambient music, as well and organising many Trance club nights or "parties" of which a significant number were held at the Brixton Academy venue in London, UK.

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The following text was written by Return to the Source founder Chris Decker and is quoted from the liner notes of the Return to the Source "Deep Trance & Ritual Beats" Double Album compilation, released in 1995:

"Where do you go when you close your eyes on the dancefloor? Return To The Source rolls back the centuries to trace a line from the strobes and drum machines of the 20th Century to the pagan fire and lost rituals of our ancestors. Let's go back in time..."

"The all-night internal linkdance ritual is a memory that runs deep within us all, a memory that takes us back to an internal linktime when people had respect for our great mother earth and each other. A time when we came together to dance as one tribe united in spirit. We understood the cycles of nature and the powers of the elements. We danced around great fires, we chanted and we drummed, invoking the great spirit to empower ourselves and our community."

"Then one day a new force began to take control and these great rites of empowerment were suppressed. Our sacred sites where we once danced all night into ecstatic trance had been taken over by a new order of worship; forcing us to sit down in cold silence and listen, not move. The new forces were strong. They released a Papal Decree (an early draft of the CJB) which forbade all rituals. They smashed our temples and burnt our healers. They put the fire goddess in chains and burnt her at stake."

"They worked hard to eradicate the memory of the dance ritual but it remained a seed deep within us all, to emerge one day in a new age, the age of technology. The time when humanity would wake up from its long slumber, once again to unite in the all-night dance ritual."

"Gradually the spirit of the people would return as they recognized the sacred power of trance, once again opening up the channels to the Great Spirit. They would join together as one new tribe, 'The Rainbow Tribe': all colours, all races, all as one. The temples may have changed but the sacred earth they dance upon is still the same."

"At Return To The Source it is our vision to bring back the dance ritual. A ritual is a sacred act with focused intention. Our intention is to create a modern day temple, a positive space created with love, where we can join as one tribe to journey deep into trance just as our ancestors did long ago. We view the dancefloor as a sacred space, a place to connect with our power."

"To create this sacred space we use backdrops and totemic decor painted by the visionary artsists Zag. An energy grid is set up using quartz crystals place at specific points in the building, with a larger crystal hanging over a seven-pointed star. This star, drawn n the centre of the dancefloor, is an ancient symbol for grounding cosmic energy into the physical plane (Australian Aborigines take days to create symbols in the sand on which they dance during ceremonies to awaken the symbols.)"

"Just before opening the doors and letting Return To The Source begin, our Shamanic friends sprinkle Chalice Well water through the venue and burn sage which the American Indians use to cleanse energy. These ancient, sacred acts give us positive energy, empower our intention and open the dancefloor up to the possibilities of the dance as ritual... to its source."

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External Links:

* [http://www.global-trance.co.uk/fr_index.html?/Return_to_the_Source.html Global Trance's RTTS resource]
* [http://fusionanomaly.net/returntothesource.html Fusion Anomaly's Return to the Source resource]
* [http://www.noiselabs.com/rtts.html a contemporary description of a RTTS event in New York, USA]