Land of the Rising Sun

A Closing Ceremony At Biohacker Summit Turned The Body Toward Earth, Sky, And Memory

At the Biohacker Summit in Helsinki on Tuesday, 2 July 2024, the Closing Ceremony presentation, Land of the Rising Sun, unfolded less like a conventional send-off and more like a ritual of orientation. In a gathering often defined by performance metrics, optimization, and the future-facing language of human enhancement, this moment asked something older of its audience: to stand, to turn, to breathe, and to remember where life was thought to come from.

Presented by the Closing Ceremony performers Mikko Heikinpoika, Magdalena Vaskilintu, The Zen Samurai, Ken Mai, Yogetsu Akasaka, and Imre Peemot, the ceremony guided participants through a sequence that aligned the cardinal directions with elemental forces, ancestry, the cosmos, and the body itself. It was a spiritual cartography rendered through gesture.

Beginning In The East

The ritual opened with an invitation to rise together.

“I would like to ask everyone to stand up. We’re going to open the directions together. Starting from the east.”

The east was named as the place of the rising sun, of spring, of youth, of beginnings. In that framing, direction was not simply geography. It became metaphor, season, and emotional register all at once. To face east was to orient the self toward renewal.

The language was spare, but the symbolism was expansive. The rising sun stood for emergence, a first light that carried with it the energy of possibility.

Water In The South, Fire In The West

From the east, the ceremony moved southward, invoking water as both element and life-source.

“Facing the south, the place of water and the life-giving energy of water.”

The progression continued west, where sunset became an occasion not for closure alone, but for reverence.

“Turning to the west, the direction where the sun sets, we honor the element of fire and the life-giving force of grandfather Sun.”

That phrase, “grandfather Sun,” gave the ritual one of its most resonant turns. Nature here was not abstract system but kin. Fire was not merely energy. It was inheritance, warmth, and relation.

North As Ancestors, Earth As Body

The north was invoked as the place of lineage.

“Turning to the north, the place of our ancestors, we honor the element of the earth and our body.”

In that moment, the ceremony collapsed the distance between ancestry and embodiment. The earth was not only ground beneath the feet. It was the substance of the body itself, a reminder that identity, memory, and physical existence were inseparable.

This was one of the ritual’s most striking movements: each turn tied an external direction to an internal truth. Water became vitality. Fire became continuity. Earth became flesh.

From The Horizontal World To The Vertical Cosmos

Only after tracing the horizon did the ceremony shift upward and downward, extending its symbolic map beyond the four directions.

“Putting our hands towards the sky, we breathe in the star nations, galaxies, and the universe.”

Then came the descent.

“Lowering ourselves to the earth, we put our hands to the earth, our first mother.”

The structure mattered. The ritual began with the compass and ended with the cosmos and the soil, moving from orientation in space to orientation in existence. Above lay the “star nations,” galaxies, and the universe. Below lay the “first mother,” the earth itself. Between them stood the human body, breathing, turning, receiving.

Chants That Sealed The Moment

Throughout the ceremony, short vocalizations and rhythmic utterances punctuated the transitions: “Sam,” “Sa,” “Ra,” “Shakur.” These chants did not function as explanation. They worked as cadence, sealing each directional movement with sound and giving the ceremony a pulse that language alone could not carry.

In a summit setting, where speech often aimed to persuade or instruct, these mantric fragments did something else. They centered attention. They slowed the room. They made the body part of the meaning.

A Ritual Of Gratitude In A Technological Age

What Land of the Rising Sun offered at Biohacker Summit was not a thesis but a practice. Its lessons were simple and quietly radical: gratitude for the natural forces that sustain life, awareness of ancestry, mindfulness through breath and posture, and a widening of perspective from the self to the universe.

The ceremony suggested that grounding was not the opposite of aspiration. It was its prerequisite.

In Helsinki, at the close of a summit dedicated to shaping the human future, the Closing Ceremony performers turned the audience toward something more elemental. East for beginning. South for water. West for fire. North for ancestors. Sky for cosmic belonging. Earth for origin.

It was a closing act that, fittingly, began by opening the directions.

Frequently asked questions

What was the Land of the Rising Sun ceremony?

The closing ceremony of the Biohacker Summit in Helsinki on 2 July 2024. Rather than a conventional send-off, it unfolded as a ritual of orientation, asking the audience to stand, turn, breathe and remember where life comes from.

What do the directions represent?

The ceremony opened the directions in turn: east to begin, south as the place of water and life-giving energy, west for fire, and north as the place of ancestors, honouring the element of the earth and the body. Only then did it extend upward and downward.

What role did the chants play?

Short vocalizations such as Sam, Sa, Ra and Shakur punctuated the transitions. They did not function as explanation but as cadence, sealing each directional movement with sound and giving the ceremony a pulse that language alone could not carry.

About the event

This recap is part of the Biohacker Summit 2024 Helsinki series, recorded in Helsinki on 2 and 3 July 2024. Read the summary of the whole event or join the next edition, HOLOLIFE Summit 2026 Amsterdam, on 14 and 15 November 2026.