Consciousness Cafe - Entheogens and Psychedelic Cultural Transmissions

Thanks to Bruce Eisner for heads up on a discussion of psilocybin mushrooms, mysticism and religion in the Huffington Post. Professor of Policy Studies at the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research Mark Kleiman discusses the acclaimed Hopkins 2006 study into religious or mystical experiences had by psilocybin users (look HERE for the html version) (see the MAPS links on the study, go to "July 11, 2006"). Kleiman notes that the researchers, despite overwhelmingly positive responses to the study, are still struggling to find funding for further research. "But neither those comments, nor the extraordinarily high score — in the top 7.4% of all submissions — peer reviewers gave a follow-up proposal was enough to persuade the current NIDA Director to support that additional work, so the team is now scrambling to find enough funding to keep itself together. "

Categories: psychedelic, psilocybin, mushrooms, entheogens, Hopkins

More enlightened public policy from British Columbia:

Sam Sullivan, the mayor of Vancouver, is asking Canada's federal government for a legal exemption to the country's drug laws so the city can implement a drug substitution treatment program. The program would target 700 people struggling with drug addiction.

Drug Policy Alliance article HERE.

Categories: psychedelic, Canada, Vancouver, drug policy, addiction

Up to February 14th donations of $300 and higher will be matched by an Erowid supporter, effectively doubling them. A total of $3,000 is available in matching funds.

More info HERE.

Categories: psychedelic, Erowid

Thanks to Arthur Magazine for this info:

Saturday, January 27 at 8PM
Arthur Magazine and Drag City presents…
Trinie Dalton and Steve Krakow

Ms. Dalton, author of Wide Eyed (Akashic Books) and co-editor of the wonderfully weird Dear New Girl or Whatever Your Name Is (McSweeney’s) will read from her yet-to-be-finished novel. Her writing has appeared in Arthur, LA Weekly, Bomb, Nerve.com, Purple, and The Believer. When not playing guitar hero for reals in Plastic Crimewave Sound, Mr. Krakow writes, edits and draws the mind-expanding psychedelic pop hurricane called Galactic Zoo Dossier. Together, they will have an amicable chat about zines, weird Americas old and new, and other subcultural curiosities.

Trinie Dalton & Plastic Crimewave Steve Krakow
Saturday, January 27th, 8pm, FREE
Quimby’s Bookstore
1854 West North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622
www.quimbys.com

Categories: chicago

Amanda Schaffer has written a pro-MDMA piece in SLATE this week, titled "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been: Ecstasy, the new prescription drug?" Good quotes from the article:

This year, the drug MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, could take a step toward medical respectability. Researchers in South Carolina have begun experimenting with MDMA for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder. At Harvard, a long-awaited pilot study will begin on whether the drug can help relieve anxiety and pain in terminal cancer patients in connection with psychotherapy. And studies will also start in Switzerland and Israel, where a former chief psychiatrist of the Israel Defense Forces will oversee work with people whose PTSD stems from terrorism or war. . . . It's too soon to say what these trials will yield. But if all goes well, MDMA could help some patients, and also help build acceptance for parallel work on the potential therapeutic effects of psilocybin (found in 'shrooms) or even LSD. Even at this late date, it's possible to imagine for psychiatry a small psychedelic renaissance.

Categories: psychedelic, MDMA, research, ecstasy

Thanks to Bruce Eisner for telling us about this review in Reason magazine of Daniel Pinchbeck's 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.

(since this post appeared Pinchbeck has mirrored this discussion to his Amazon plog)

The review focuses on several areas of Pinchbeck's thought that have concerned me for some time:

1. Pinchbeck's millenarian belief in redemptive apocalypse
2. his soteriological belief in an immaterial "consciousness shift"
3. his distrust of modernity and technology (which lead him to reject Viridian-style engineering and bioremediation approaches of the planet's climate problems, and dismiss transhumanist optimism about the future), and Pinchbeck's accompanying romanticization of aboriginal societies and magical modes of thought (at the expense of rational/analytical cognition).
   
4. his revisionist critique of capitalism as essentially rapacious
5. Pinchbeck's seemingly transcendentalist perspective that only by transcending the evils of this world, by shaking capitalist modernity off our back, can the world somehow be saved.
   
6. An accompanying underlying nihilism that suggests that perhaps Pinchbeck does not want the world to be saved. Perhaps he believes that the Earth is just a staging area for our souls as we evolve to "higher" planes of existence. Perhaps he believes that our world must be "purged" of civilization in order for us to pass beyond the Kali Yuga. I am not sure. He appears to have a strong belief via his personal interest in occultism in other nonphysical realms of existence, which may be superordinate to our own. This is suggestive of "another world" more akin to the Christian heaven or Mormon Celestial Kingdom, where everything will be made right in death. In my opinion this is a tempting and dangerous idea which moves Pinchbeck closer to the apocalyptic radical Luddites of our dawning age.

((At the same time I would like to applaud Pinchbeck for being such a public and outspoken champion of entheogens - the idea that psychedelic plants and chemicals are gateways to the divine. He wears an affable and agreeable countenance in his public appearances, and has been accessible and never aloof. He did not ask for the title of psychedelic guru that Rolling Stone magazine hung on him, though it was perhaps inevitable when we consider his intense self-promotion.

I have the greatest respect for him as a committed and devoted father; as an intellectual who has made great sacrifices to pursue his craft; and I find him to be an entertaining writer and story-teller.

My enduring interest, however, is in portraying psychedelic culture as life-affirming, not world-negating; a culture, not always a subculture, capable of taking a seat in mainstream society. I want to see psychedelic culture empowered as a mature and acknowledged healer, no longer the guilty and ostracized child of the American counterculture. I feel that Pinchbeck is not taking us in that direction. ))

Now excerpts from the REASON review itself:

Did you know that the ancient Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl'the all-encompassing plumed serpent whose return has been prophesied for centuries'has decided to weigh in on politics? Here's an excerpt from his message for the world of mortal men: “The global capitalist system that is currently devouring your planetary resources will soon self-destruct, leaving many of you bereft.

Quetzalcoatl has chosen to speak through the curious medium of Daniel Pinchbeck, 40, a former editor of the Manhattan lit-journal Open City. Pinchbeck has had a glowing reputation in hipster circles since his 2002 book Breaking Open the Head, a travelogue and treatise on exotic psychedelics, which transformed him into the 21st century's chief pop guru on the meaning and significance of altered states - a thought leader whose musings, no matter how offbeat, are considered worthy of review in publications as mainstream as The New York Times.

... [Pinchbeck's] general sense of dread and dissatisfaction regarding capitalist modernity existed before his spiritual journey. Those sentiments are in fact nearly universal in the post-'60s counterculture for which he is a spokesman. Indeed, they're pretty common in mainstream intellectual culture as well; few literary intellectuals under 40 do not share them to some degree, though most refrain from claiming they learned them from a supernatural serpent with feathers.

Pinchbeck knows you'll think he's a bit of a freak for saying that he did just that. He openly acknowledges that seeing oneself at the center of a great cosmic drama is normally written off as a sign of mental illness. With that on the table, the reader can either give up or go along for the ride. Despite the zaniness, it's a ride worth taking, partly for the wild entertainment value but also because the book is a document with genuine sociopolitical relevance. Beneath the nutty metaphysical musings, 2012 is an engaging take on contemporary eco-politics, pretty much the hottest topic around in this year of awful summer heat and the Second Coming of Al Gore.

... In Pinchbeck's reading, that end is approaching via planetary death caused by capitalist excess. Modernity, Pinchbeck argues, is inherently doomed and deserves to be doomed for playing into the detestable human urges of atomistic individualism and ugly greed; it has led to global warming, irreversible and tragic forest depletion, and a rapidly hastening loss of all the resources on which life depends.

2012 is more interesting than the typical doom-laden environmental policy document because Pinchbeck delivers his eco-political message in the form of a syncretic mad masterpiece, a colorful mash-up of the alien-archaeology fabulist Erich Von Däniken, the purveyor of fabricated Amerindian wisdom Carlos Castaneda, the psychedelic theorist Terrence McKenna, and the robed mystics behind the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, who prophesied a shift in planetary consciousness to a higher level. Pinchbeck thinks almost all the phenomena he discusses'including the calendar (our Gregorian one, for reasons this reader found very hard to understand, is held responsible for a lot of our spiritual/cultural crises), his trips on the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, and various ancient cultures' prophecies' suggest a rapidly approaching apocalypse.

... anyone reading 2012 should also contemplate the computer-world guru Ray Kurzweil's vision of the singularity, an idea moving along in a countercultural universe parallel and very close to Pinchbeck's. It's a vision that, while not designed as such, is in direct competition with Pinchbeck's. Kurzweil believes our increasing control of machinery, computer intelligence, biology, and the material world at the smallest levels puts us on the cusp of an earthly near-paradise in which we will have highly advanced control over both matter and mind without destroying the earth or even using very much of it. . . . whether or not its wildest extrapolations come true, Kurzweil's vision of a technological rescue from environmental and human limits seems more plausible than either Pinchbeck's apocalypse or his alternative Quetzalcoatl ex machina of a sudden shift in planetary consciousness.
...
What is more likely than either the Pinchbeck or Kurzweil visions of a planet utterly changed is that 2012 will pass into 2013 with the world a little bit different and a lot the same. But the kind of slow, gradual betterment in overall human well-being'the sort that has swept the Western world in the last century'lacks that shot of emotional drama that human beings crave. Some of us don't fear a vivid, certain end to the world we know; for various psychological reasons, some of them quite creepy, we want it. In an essay written after 2012 came out in June, Pinchbeck acknowledged this about a certain element in his own fan base: "A lot of people in the radical and progressive cultural realm, on some level, are actively looking forward to the destruction of the present system and then a truly horrendous and volatile passage before we potentially come out the other side." Pinchbeck means that as a criticism, but it's no surprise that such people would find his book attractive: He frequently sounds just like them.

Put another way, he frequently sounds like that other apocalyptic tribe, the Christian fundamentalists. His book lays into fundamentalism early on, but both he and the religious right are offering variations on the same ancient mentality'the one that's always finding new reasons everyone else deserves to get it good and hard.

More Pinchbeck posts in this blog:
http://www.consciousnesscafe.org/2007/01/ayahuasca-monologues.html
http://www.consciousnesscafe.org/2007/01/more-pinchbeck.html
http://www.consciousnesscafe.org/2006/12/daniel-pinchbeck-on-colbert-report.html
http://www.consciousnesscafe.org/2007/01/another-pinchbeck-podcast.html

All Pinchbeck posts in Consciousness Cafe can always be found here in del.icio.us

Categories: psychedelic, Pinchbeck

Fascinating overview in the UK's The Independent about the role that the Moon plays in human behavior.

Thanks for the referral from Strange Attractor.

Here are some good quotes:

Having carried out new research and reviewed 50 other studies, scientists suggest that doctors and the police even need to prepare for how their work rate will increase at different points in the lunar cycle. Among the findings examined by the researchers were studies that showed GP consultations go up during a full moon, according to Leeds University. Appointments rise by 3.6 per cent, which works out at around three extra patients for each surgery. The researchers did not speculate on the nature of the moon-related problems or why they happened, but said that "it does not seem to be related to anxiety and depression".

Gout and asthma attacks peak during new and full moons, according to work carried out at the Slovak Institute of Preventive and Clinical Medicine in Bratislava, where attacks over a 22-year period were monitored.

Data from 140,000 births in New York City showed small but systematic variations in births over a period of 29.53 days - the length of the lunar cycle - with peak fertility in the last quarter. "The timing of the fertility peak in the third quarter suggests that the period of decreasing illumination immediately after the full moon may precipitate ovulation.''

A study in Florida of murders and aggravated assaults showed clusters of attacks around the full moon. A second study of three police areas found the incidence of crimes committed on full-moon days was much higher than on all other days. And a four-year study into car accidents found that the lowest number happened during the full-moon day, while the highest number was two days before the full moon. Accidents were more frequent during the waxing than the waning phase.

Another study of some 800 patients with urinary retention admitted to hospital over a period of three years found higher retention during the new moon compared with other phases of the cycle. Interestingly, patients didn't show any other daily, monthly or seasonal rhythms in their retention problems.

Even what we eat and drink is affected by the lunar cycle, according to a study at Georgia State University. Researchers looked at lunar variations in nutrient intakes and the meal patterns of 694 adults. They concluded: "A small but significant lunar rhythm of nutrient intake was observed with an 8 per cent increase in meal size and a 26 per cent decrease in alcohol intake at the time of the full moon relative to the new moon.''

Categories: lunar, Moon

This interrogation of Timothy Leary during the Chicago Seven Trial (which began in September 1969) is still very interesting and often amusing. Some excerpts specifically regarding psychedelics:

MR. KUNSTLER: Dr. Leary, have you been the author of any publications?

THE WITNESS: Yes, I have written two books on experimental clinical psychology and about twenty scientific articles in this field. I have written six books and over fifty scientific articles on the effects of psychedelic drugs on human psychology and human consciousness.

MR. KUNSTLER: Doctor, can you explain what a psychedelic drug is?

THE WITNESS: I will try. Psychedelic drugs are drugs which speed up thinking, which broaden the consciousness, which produce religious experiences or creative experiences, or philosophic experiences in the person who takes them.
These psychedelic drugs, of course, are the opposite of the nonpsychedelic drugs like heroin, or alcohol, and barbiturates which slow down thinking, as opposed to psychedelic drugs which expand and accelerate the consciousness.

. . .

MR. KUNSTLER: Even better.
All right, Dr. Leary, when did you first meet Abbie Hoffman?

THE WITNESS: The first time I met Mr. Hoffman was at the LSD Shrine and Rescue Center in New York City. That would be November or December of 1966.
MR. KUNSTLER: Now, lest there be any confusion, what does LSD stand for?

THE WITNESS: It was the League of Spiritual Discovery. That was a religion incorporated in the State of New York and we had a rescue center in New York
where hundreds of people taking drugs could be rehabilitated.

. . .

MR. FORAN: Dr. Leary, will you name the drugs that you said speeded up thinking?

THE WITNESS: Yes, psychedelic or mind-expanding drugs include LSD, mescaline, peyote, marijuana, and I could go on. There is a list of perhaps thirty or forty chemical compounds and natural vines and herbs. Do you want more?

MR. FORAN: No, that is enough.
. . .

Categories: psychedelic, Leary, Chicago, Chicago Seven

Check out The Ayahuasca Monologues: Tales of the Spirit Vine on Souldish. This New York City event on January 25th features. . .

Five dynamic storytellers will describe their visionary experiences with ayahuasca, the renowned sacred brew of the Amazon. For centuries, shamans have drunk this powerful concoction to heal illness, obtain mystical insights, contact spirit guides, and explore magical worlds. Hear of experiences both miraculous and terrifying when Westerners access ayahuasca's incredible gifts. Q & A session to follow. Proceeds benefit Souldish.com.

Featuring:
Daniel Pinchbeck - author of Breaking Open The Head: Psychedelics and Contemporary Shamanism and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl
Jamye Waxman - sexplorer, Playgirl advice columnist, 'Sex and Spirit' podcaster
Nat Bletter ethnobotanist
Bill Kennedy actor/storyteller and ayahuasca guardian
Jonathan Phillips founder of the NYC Gnostics, executive editor of Souldish.com

(more on Pinchbeck in this blog:)

http://www.consciousnesscafe.org/2007/01/more-pinchbeck.html
http://www.consciousnesscafe.org/2006/12/daniel-pinchbeck-on-colbert-report.html
http://www.consciousnesscafe.org/2007/01/another-pinchbeck-podcast.html



Categories: psychedelic, ayahuasca, New York City, Pinchbeck


And here is the rest of it.

Check out this excellent Spanish-language site on Mexico drug policy, run by Ricardo Sala. (thanks to the referral from Andrew)

A related site of interest is Takiwasi, Centro de Rehabilitación de Toxicómanos y de Investigación de Medicinas Tradicionales, founded 1992 in Tarapoto, Peru. According to MAPS " Attempting to cure drug addiction by the ritual use of ayahuasca, a plant beverage with psychotropic effects, might appear to be crazy or at least very daring. When Takiwasi (Center for the Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts and for Research of Traditional Medicines) was born in September 1992 in Tarapoto, Peru, the idea of the founders was to investigate and use in a systematic way the Amazonian healers' shamanistic knowledge to cure drug addicts. This applied research has now been underway for three and a half years seeking an efficient, low cost and culturally adapted alternative therapy. The initial results are encouraging."


Categories: psychedelic, ayahuasca, Mexico, drug policy, addiction

Cary Grant speaks, in his autobiography, about his years of LSD therapy beginning in 1956:

In 1932 the practice of psychiatry was little known or respected. The public seemed to regard it, just as I probably did, with skepticism. For years I absurdly treated subjects with which I was unfamiliar, or sports in which I was not proficient, or books which I should have read but didn’t, with disdain. But by 1956, lacking the foundation of early spiritual training and suspecting that there was more happiness available than I seemed able to grasp, I had grown much more tolerant of, and receptive to, the knowledge of others. Other searchers, other sharers. Humanitarians in all fields of endeavor. At the age of 53, after three unsuccessful marriages, either something was wrong with me or, obviously, with the whole sociological and moralistic concepts of our civilization.

Now, I believe in caring for my health; and I trust you do too. Physical health is a product of, and dependent upon, mental health — one nurtures and nourishes the other. And so, together with a group of other interested Californians — doctors, writers, scientists and artists — and the encouragement of Betsy, who was interested herself, I underwent a series of controlled experiments with Lysergic Acid, a hallucinogenic chemical or drug known as LSD 25. . . .

Categories: psychedelic, celebrity, LSD


Experiment is perhaps a misleading word; to most people it signifies patronization and objectivity. For my part I anxiously awaited their personal benefits that could be derived from the experiences, and was quite willing to be less than objective. Any man who experiments with something that cannot benefit himself, or add to his happiness, and that of his fellow man in turn, is a fool and a menace to society. I’ve heard that a man here and there died during LSD25 sessions; but then I’ve heard that men died during poker games and while watching horse racing; but that didn’t seem to stop such occupations. Those men might have died anywhere while doing anything. Men have also died testing airplanes and parachutes, vaccines and common cold cures. In attempting to traverse the next step into progress and knowledge, men have always died. But there is a difference between the man who knows what he’s about with a high-powered airplane, and an idiot who puts wings on a bicycle and takes off from the edge of Niagra Falls.

LSD 25 is a psychic energizer and the exact opposite in reaction to the addictive drugs and opiates. Indeed, Seconal, or similar sedative, is usually given as an antidote, to quell and offset the effects of LSD 25, if necessary. The action of the chemical releases the subconscious so that it becomes apparent to yourself. So that you can see what transpires in the depth of you mind — and what goes on there you wouldn’t believe, ladies and gentlemen — and learn which misconceptions, guilts and fears, with their resultant repressions, inhibitions and insecurities, have formed the pattern for your past behavior. A successively recurring pattern since childhood.

The feeling is that of an unmarshaling of the thoughts as you’ve customarily associated them. The lessening of conscious control, similar to the mental process which takes place when we dream. For example, when you’re asleep and your mind no longer concerned with matters and activities of the day, your subconscious often brings itself to your attention by dreaming. With conscious controls relaxed, those thoughts buried deep inside begin to come to the surface in the form of dreams. These dreams, since they appear to us in symbolic guise, are fantasies and, if you will accept the reasoning, could be classified as hallucinations. Such fantasies, or hallucinations, are inside every one of us, waiting to be released, aired and understood. Dreams are really the emotions that we find ourselves reluctant to examine, think about, or meditate upon, while conscious.

Under the effect of LSD 25, these dreams or hallucinations, if you wish, are speeded up, and interpreted, when properly conducted ba a psychiatrically orientated doctor who sits quietly by, awaiting whatever communication one cares to make — the revealing of a hidden memory seen again from an older, more mature viewpoint, or the dawning of new enlightenment. Then, if the doctor is as skilled as mine was, he carefully proffers a word or key, that can lead to the next release, the next step toward fuller understanding.

The shock of each revelation brings with it an anguish of sadness for what was not known before in the wasted years of ignorance and, at the same time, an ecstasy of joy at being freed from the shackles of such ignorance.

One becomes a battleground of old and new beliefs. Of nightmares beyond description. I passed through changing seas of horrifying and happy sights, through a montage of intense hate and love, a mosaic of past impressions assembling and reassembling; through terrifying depths of dark despair replaced by glorious heavenlike religious symbolisms. Session after session. Week after week.

I learned may things in the quiet of that small room. I learned to accept the responsibility for my own actions, and to blame myself and no one else for circumstances of my own creating. I learned that no one else was keeping me unhappy but me; that I could whip myself better than any other guy in the joint.

I learned that all clichés prove true; which is, of course, the reason for their repetition, even when the meaning has been forgotten by the constant usage.

I learned that everything is, or becomes, its own opposite. A theory I can sometimes apply, but would find difficult to convey.

I learned that my dear parents, products of their parents, could know no better than they knew, and began to remember them only ofr the most useful, the best, the wisest of their teachings. They gave me my life and body, the promising combination of the two, and my initial strength; they endowed me with an inquisitive mind. They taught me to feed myself, to walk, to bathe myself and to clothe myself; and I shall think of them always with love now, not only for what the did know but, even, for what the didn’t know.

For a slow learner, I learned a great deal — and the result of it all was rebirth. A new assessment of life and myself in it. An immeasurably beneficial cleansing of so many needless fears and guilts, and a release of the tensions that had been the result of them. Not a cleansing and release of them all, certainly, for that would be the absolute — the innocence of the newly born baby with an unformed ego still close to God — and I cannot experience the absolute until I have unreservedly returned to the comfort of God.

In life there is no end to getting well. Perhaps death itself is the end to getting well. Or, if you prefer to think as I do, the beginning of being well.

I have heard and now believe it to be so, that drowning men in the last seconds of life relive the whole of it again; probably in order to cleanse themselves before meeting the great Maker, just as our religions instruct; and everyone is accustomed to the phenomenon of elderly people remembering their childhood with extraordinary clarity, yet forgetting what went on only yesterday. We call it second childhood, but it is undoubtedly the same process, undergone at a slower pace, as that experienced by the drowning man.

LSD 25 is no longer obtainable in America. Orthodox psychiatrists using the slower customary methods resisted its usage, and it’s unlikely that it will be reintroduced unless some brave, venturesome and respected psychiatrist publicly speaks out in its favor. Meanwhile, the authorities have banned its use; at least for therapeutic purpose. Although how men can be authorities on something they’ve never tried mystifies me. However, in the hands o f thrill-seekers it could, like whiskey and the automobile, be exceedingly dangerous. I suppose all new methods, new theories, new inventions go through the filter of trial and error, acceptance and rejection. Past the inevitable parade of scoffers and stone-throwers.

Yes, it takes a long time for happiness to break through either to the individual or nations. It will take just as long as people themselves continue to confound it. You’ll find that nowadays they put you away for singing and dancing in the street. “Here now, let’s have none of that happiness, my boy. You cut that out; waking up the neighbors!” “Those darn neighbors need waking up, I can tell you, constable!”

I suppose if a healthy youngster walked along a street in a bathing suit to allow his or her youthful pores a little more oxygen from the meager amount obtainable in our smog-infested cities, he or she would be arrested. “Here now, none of that trying to keep a healthy body in this city. Go to the beach!” “In which direction , officer? This is Kansas City.” Even bare feet and a rare acquaintance with the earth beneath them would be sufficient to disassociate you from the association of your embarrassed associates. Civilization! Oh, brother! And you, too, sister!

I have made over 60 pictures and lived in Hollywood for more than 30 years. Thirty years spent in the stimulating company of hard-working, excitable, dedicated, loving, serious, honest, good people. Casts and crews. I recognize and respect them. I know their faults and their insecurities. I hope they know and forgive mine. Thirty years ago my hair was black and wavy. Today it’s gray and bristly. But today people in cars, stopped alongside me at a traffic light, smile at me!

I feel fine. Alone. But fine. My mother is quite elderly. My wives have divorced me, and I await a woman with the best qualities of each. I will endow her with those qualities because they will be in my own point of view.

As a philosopher once said, “You cannot judge the day until the night.” Since it is for me evening, or at least teatime, I can now look back and assess the day. It’s been a glorious adventure up to here — even the saddest parts — and I look forward to seeing the rest of the film. Just as I did in 1932 when I sat in that Paramount Studio office. I took up the pen and wrote for the first time “Cary Grant.” And that’s who, it seems, I am. Well, as some profound fellow said, “I’d be a nut to go through all that again, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.” And that goes for this autobiography.

R.U. Sirius last week interviewed Dr. James E. Ketchum, author of the book Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten. As Sirius details it, ". . . at Army Chemical Center at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, psychiatrist James S. Ketchum was testing LSD, BZ and other psychedelic and deliriant compounds on fully informed volunteers for the U.S. military . . . his fascinating self-published memoir, Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten, . . . boasts charts, graphs and experimental reports — a veritable goldmine of information for those who are interested in psychedelics, deliriants, or chemical warfare."

Read the R.U. Sirius interview with Dr. Ketchum and listen to his interview.

Categories: psychedelic, Ketchum, military, chemical warfare

Actor Brad Pitt writes in Esquire,

The Drug War
I'll agree that drugs are harmful, but we spend $40 billion a year on the drug war and $8 billion a year incarcerating people, 25 percent of whom are in there for drugs. If someone wants to do drugs, as long as it doesn't affect anyone else in a violent manner, as long as he or she isn't corrupting minors or driving under the influence or endangering others, shouldn't a person have that right? I know the drug war is a can't-miss political issue that no one wants to touch. It's the big pink elephant no one wants to talk about. Think of all the other things we could do with the money.

For an interesting perspective on the whole issue, I recommend the book Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, by Peter McWilliams.

Categories: psychedelic, drug, drug policy, prohibition, Brad Pitt

Daniel Pinchbeck appears today in a Washington Post list of "IN's" and OUT's":

OUT: "Going to Burning Man"
IN: "Reading Daniel Pinchbeck"

The following debate between Daniel Pinchbeck and media pundit Doug Rushkoff took place in a New York city bookstore around October 2006:
Pinchbeck's debate with Doug Rushkoff Part 1
Pinchbeck's debate with Doug Rushkoff Part 2
Pinchbeck's debate with Doug Rushkoff Part 3
Pinchbeck's debate with Doug Rushkoff Part 4

Doug Rushkoff comments on the debate.

Categories: psychedelic, Pinchbeck, Rushkoff

This excellent book, published 2005, features wonderful interviews with Ram Dass, Betty Eisner, James Fadiman, Peter Furst, Stanislav Grof, Albert Hofmann, Laura Huxley, Sasha and Ann Shulgin, Huston Smith and Myron Stolaroff.

Categories: psychedelic, entheogens, book,, Ram Dass, Grof, Shulgin, Sasha, Albert Hofmann, Huston Smith, Stolaroff, Fadiman

Here is a new, post-Colbert Report (January 6 2007) Nearthwort Obtain podcast with Daniel Pinchbeck.

If you like Pinchbeck podcasts, you should also check out this one from October 2006 produced by Viking Youth.

See also these Consciousness Cafe posts re: Pinchbeck:
Daniel Pinchbeck on COLBERT REPORT
Psychedelic Celebrity List

Categories: psychedelic, Pinchbeck

Strangely enough, on Albert Hofmann's 101st birthday Robert Anton Wilson has passed from this world. January 11, 2007.



Updates:
RAW Memorial links from Bruce Eisner's blog.

Categories: psychedelic, Robert Anton Wilson

This is an amazing display by the Addiction Research Unit of Department of Psychology/University at Buffalo. "Many of the substances prohibited today were legally available in the past. This small exposition contains samples of the many psychoactive medicines widely available during the late-19th century through the mid-20th century. "

Categories: psychedelic, drug policy, history

Albert Hofmann, inventor of LSD, turns 101 today!



Comments about Hofmann's birthday on Boing Boing. (thanks to Bruce S. for heads up)

Other related posts:
Robert Anton Wilson passes away, on Hofmann's birthday

Categories: psychedelic, LSD

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran suggests in Edge 1.8.07 that mirror neurons may be responsible for our sense of self-awareness.

Many neuroscientists believe that mirror neurons are key to understanding the human ability to imitate behavior, which writers such as Susan Blackmore believe may be the source of human culture and the mechanism behind meme replication.

Background: Ramachandran was a presenter at the psychedelic conference Mind States IV in Berkeley / 2003. At that conference he spoke about synesthesia as a possible component to human creativity and art. (see his 2003 Scientific American article).

Categories: mirror neurons, self-awareness, neuroscience

azure writes:

In a discussion tonight, a young man had compared terence's death to the
death of dm turner, then implied that terence somehow caused his illness
and 'deserved' what had happened to him. After listening to a tirade on
how terence had never offered anything of value to this community, and how
his ideas were all nonsense, I wrote the below; it's all poorly referenced
etc, so... I'll keep my posts on this sort of thing to more of a minimum
in the future, but wanted to share it with this list...I had been going
through some of the older videos of terence, and had commented that it was
nice to see images of him in 'prime form,' I feel alot of gratitude for
what he offered, in his own inimitable and crazy way:

Categories: psychedelic, philosophy


It is a mysterious impulse in the heart of a human being that compels her
to tend to things unseen. What, in the innermost of our species, caused
the first of our agricultural ancestors to plant in the ground small
seeds from the flowers and fruits of gathered plants? It is strange
enough that the human mind should apprehend that a flower lie within the
simple germ of a seed, but how much stranger that our species should
realize that the germ of the flower need be concealed from sight in order
to bloom. Yet because we know the flower is there, we do our tending day
in and out, until a miracle occurs.

Truly, the workings of nature are wondrous and miraculous in the
absolute sense of the word, for they spontaneously proceed from a
certain quality of being. In the literature of alchemy we find
numerous references to the 'nature of the natures,' as in the
Tractatus aureus Hermetis, 'O mightiest nature of the natures, who
containest and seperatest the midmost of the natures, who comest with
the light and art born with the light, who has given birth to the
misty darkness, who art the mother of all beings!' It is a foregone
assumption in any serious exploration of the nature of being, that we
cultivate a quality of awareness that attends to it's very self, that
is the 'nature of the natures.' Not only is there a centerring, there
is a multiplication and resolution of the primordial chaos that
allows us to apprehend nature as such. The mystical literatures of
alchemy and Buddhism often clothe themselves in such redundant
metaphors that blend into one another and so become translucent. For
it is through the planting of an invisible seed that we become aware
of our own unconscious selves. Naturally, our tendency is to focus on
what we can see, as in science. But, what of that within us which
cannot yet be seen? What of the original nature of language?

Of the names given to the sacred mushrooms of the indigenous
mesoamerican people, one name in particular stands out as
exceptionally revealing. Of this name, Gordon Wasson says, 'the
sacred mushrooms are nti xi tho, an arresting expression. The initial
expression syllable is a particle expressing endearment and respect.
The rest of the word means 'what leaps forth.' I have already
rendered the whole: 'the dear little tykes that leap forth.' (pg. 45,
The Wondrous Mushroom) Of this nature of the natures, Maria Sabina
further expounds, 'The little things [sacred mushrooms] are the ones
that speak. If I say, 'I am the woman who alone came down, who alone
was born,' it is the little things that speak. And they say so
because they sprout by themselves. No one sows them. They sprout
because God so wills. That is why I say: I am the woman who can be
pulled up, because the little things can be pulled up...' (pg. 46,
The Wondrous Mushroom)

In these numerous references to the immaculate conception of the
'little tykes,' 'little dear ones,' we begin to understand the
function of nature in the spiritual development of our species. For if
mushrooms excel at anything, it is symbiosis as a guiding principle of
social organization, or what Buddhism terms interdependent
originations. Thus the Mckenna brothers, in embodying the voice of the
mushroom observe, 'The mycelial body is as fragile as a spider's web
but the collective hypermind and memory is a vast historical archive
of the career of evolving intelligence on many worlds in our spiral
star swarm.' ... 'Since it is not easy for you to recognize other
varieties of intelligence around you, your most advanced theories of
politics and society have advanced only so far as the notion of
collectivism. But beyond the cohesion of the members of a species into
a single social organism there lie richer and even more baroque
evolutionary possibilities. Symbiosis is one of these.' Certainly,
this passage again touches on that mysterious impulse in our species
which compelled us to enter into a relationship with some invisible,
subterranean seed that sprung from the darkness. Let me venture a
suggestion and simply say that any truly transformative relationship
bears two distinct marks: it is something we enter into by virtue of
grace alone, and is also something organic and dynamic in it's nature,
naturally speaking. This holds true for any of the so-called prophetic
'mystery traditions,' whether Tarot, Alchemy, I Ching, Mayan
Calendrics. The naturalness of this inwardly maintained--and thereby
eternal--relatedness effectively extinguishes the seeming solidity of
what is generally considered 'real,' by dissolving the division
between self and other. To this effect, the Christian mystic Hildegard
von Bingen notes, 'Since my childhood I have always seen a light in my
soul, but not with the outer eyes, nor through the thoughts of my
heart; neither do the five outer senses take part in this vision...The
light I perceive is not of a local kind, but is much brighter than the
cloud which supports the sun...I cannot recognize any sort of form in
this light, although I sometimes see in it another light that is known
to me as the living light...'

This quality of relating to our own being, this 'nature of the natures,'
is truly beyond the domain of science and rationalism, for it is not
something that can be disproven. This nature of the natures, which is our
relationship with ourselves, our community, the ecospheres of the planet,
the planet itself, the solar system, the galaxy and universe, manifests of
itself as mercy and spontaneously creative joy and ecstasy. Nonetheless,
and I see this as nothing short of miraculous, we can enter into a
relationship with these harbingers of intergalactic intelligence, and
through a sort of skillful artistry, bring the seed of revelation down
into our daily lives and plant it in the people who are receptive to it's
message. Jung comments, 'In the end it will come to pass that this
earthly, spagyric foetus clothes itself with heavenly nature by its
ascent, and by its descent visibly puts on the nature of the centre of the
earth, but nonetheless the nature of the heavenly centre which it acquired
by the ascent is secretly preserved.' (Alchemical Studies, pg. 150) To
someone who has not made the descent into ascension, the ideas born of an
authentic contact with intergalactic intelligence can seem utterly insane
and irrational, as is the case with those theories born of the Mckenna
brothers infamous 'Experiment at La Chorrera.' Such ideas are best planted
in the hearts of children, as bedtime stories or fantastic tales of
mythology. Then as we grow older, we can come to know that the
psychological and spiritual truths of childhood may in fact have more
relevance to the quality in which we relate to our own lives, than
scientific and rational 'truths,' however noble and useful they may be. As
in childhood the impulse comes from a certain irrational centerring in the
species, 'The midpoint of the centre is fire. On it is modelled the
simplest and most perfect form, which is the circle. The point is most
akin to the nature of light, and light is a simulacrum Dei.' (Alchemical
Studies, pg. 151)

So gather again around the fire, for here we aarrive at the rejected
and worthless pebble of the plant and fungal teacher teachers, the
lumen naturae. Surely there is no enlightenment to be found in a humble
mushroom! How quick people are to discount phenomenon like elves, like
shapeshifting, nymphs and pixies of the forest; radical theories of the
end of time and the dawning of a new age in the astral origins of the
human species. Perhaps Empedocles said it best in his inimitable way,
'I know that truth is with the words I will be saying. But, for humans,
the rush of assurance towards the seat of their awareness has become so
very troublesome: so undesired.'

azure writes:

I have recently been thinking more about a peculiar experience that
arose for me some years ago under the effect of 20grams of icaro's T.
Peruvianus. Since this subject of cactus has arisen on list, perhaps
the time is right for sharing...so gather around the fire! Don't
worry, it's a short one.

The experience proceeded in typical fashion for perhaps the first two
hours, at which point a sort of prelinguistic phenomenon began to
manifest. In many of my psychedelic forays, there is a large globular
being that I will apprehend whose motion--on many levels--represents
a sort of synaesthetic whirlwind, encompassing all of the senses. On
initial inspection, this being produces a sort of 'noise,' which is
entirely incomprehensible. The trick seems to be, that underneath the
noise are a series of harmonics from whistling whispers of crisp wind
up through basso profundums of suffusing tones. These tones encompass
the capacity of 'listening' within our organism. At a deep level, I
have come to entertain the notion that these resonant phenomenon are
part of the heritage of what it is to be creative.

Categories: psychedelic, trip Report


So, this night, I am listening to these tones with the whole of my sensation, and the amorphous voice begins to resolve itself.
Suddenly, specific voices and patterns and realms of vision are
being seen. First I perceive an aryan-germanic voice, which is using
it's 'hands' to reach into the physical body and is dividing up the
various organs according to their functions and names. The words are
incomprehensible, something like babble, but the finesse of motion
and gesture and naming strikes me as a beautiful symphony of the
simple delight of consciousness: breathing in, I am aware of my
body; breathing out, I calm my body.

And the symphony continues through the language, as the language
itself transports me to a victorian ballroom, and I begin to
feel--however vaguely--the language in it's rhythms and flavors, it's
meanings and nuances, is but an extravagant attempt to conceal or
sexual organs. Perhaps...perhaps not, and the dance continues.

So, I'm sitting in the ballroom, and I open my eyes and look up at
the lamp lighting the room in which I'm now sitting. Here it gets
strange, for here there be wildthings. As I'm sitting underneath the
lamp, there is a surge of taste that comes up in my mouth: the taste
of DMT. My field of vision goes red, and in that precise instant,
sitting in the room...the lamp above me, lighting my space, BLOWS OUT
in sparks and heat, and the room is entirely dark.

'If therefore the light within thee be darkness, how great that
darkness.'

Now let me turn the page, because there is something in my heart. I
remember the day I met my fiance, when I first saw her...there was a
halo of light around her, and I saw through her being into the past of
her people, the dine. The vast planes of the desert, the smell of sage
wafting through the air as dust colors the horizon, and the sun. That
light in the space above me, reflecting off each and every earthen
surface.

Over the years, I have come to see that this tapestry in my life
called 'woman,' or the 'feminine,' who is my fiance, is what the
alchemist's called the lumen naturae...light of nature. Dogen speaks
of the 'moon in a dewdrop,' which is a reflection of a reflection of
that which comes from the stars: the light of God as reflected in a
man...lumen naturae. We are from the stars, beings of light.

Indeed when one inspects the theosophy of the christian faith in it's
current inception, the attitude of prohibition makes perfect sense.
Something like DMT represents this latent and shining divine in matter
and nature, which in fact permeates our entire being like an endless
tapestry of silk. The divinity of Christ, in it's current conception,
denies the dense corporeality of earthly necessity: it is like false
diamond. At a fundamental level, it seems nothing more than an
ellaborate denial of the light of nature.

But there is that moment of turning, when the light of God goes
out...what, in that moment, remains?

I am always struck, in reading alchemical and buddhist literature,
the numbers of synonyms that are drawn out in describing psychic
events. Both forms of literature invariably activate the unconscious
on reading. Over time, I have come to feel that these synonyms and
their teachers do something astonishing: they veil the divine. How is
that one can become many? It is like listening to the sound of
rushing water, that which 'broods over the waters' and divines their
composition...like solid earth, which receives all things into it,
like fire which consumes all that it touches, like air/aither...to
which all vapours return.

So the sun sets for me again, that light in the space above me, and a
gentle smile grows on my lips from the place of sitting...for the
earth is my mother.

Moon in a dewdrop indeed!

Dr. Tom Roberts has a new book coming out, June 2007:

Psychedelic Medicine [Two Volumes] New Evidence for Hallucinogenic Substances as Treatments

From the Amazon page:

Book Description
Psychedelic substances present in nature have been used by humans across hundreds of years to produce mind-altering changes in thought, mood, and perception - changes we do not experience otherwise except rarely in dreams, religious exaltation, or psychosis. U.S. scientists were studying the practical and therapeutic uses for hallucinogens, including LSD and mescaline, in the 1950s and 1960s supplied by large manufacturers including Sandoz. But the government took steps to ban all human consumption of hallucinogens, and thus the research. By 1970s, all human testing was stopped. Medical concerns were not the issue, the ban was moved by social concerns, not the least of which were created by legendary researcher Timothy Leary, a psychologist who advocated free use of hallucinogens by all who desired. Nationwide, however, a cadre of scholars and researchers has persisted in pushing the federal government to again allow human testing. And the moratorium has been lifted. The DFA has begun approving hallucinogenic research using human subjects. In these groundbreaking volumes, top researchers explain the testing and research underway to use - under the guidance of a trained provider - psychedelic substances for better physical and mental health. Experts including physicians and psychiatrists at some of the most respected medical schools in the nation, show how psychedelics may alleviate symptoms or spur cures for disorders from AIDS to arthritis to post traumatic stress disorder. Spiritual uses are also addressed and the perceived benefits described. Medical and legal issues for therapeutic uses are also presented. The psychedelic drugs explained in these pages for potential health use include: LSD Ayahuasca Psyilocybin Peyote MDMA/Ecstasy Marijauana Appendices list a sample of sites where medical research with pscychedelics is underway, and describe prominent advocates and organizations pushing to further this research.

About the Authors
MICHAEL J. WINKELMAN is former Head of Sociocultural Anthropology and current Associate Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. He has served as President of the Anthropology of Consciousness section of the American Anthropological Association, and was founding President of its Anthropology of Religion section. His PhD was completed at the University of California at Irvine and his Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He has reserched shamanism across 30 years. His book, Shamanism (Bergin & Garvey, 2000) was reviewed as "brilliant."

THOMAS B. ROBERTS is Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology in the Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations at Northern Illinois University. He is a Founding Member of MAPS, the Mutlidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. As part of his retirement activities, he spent the fall of 2006 as a Visiting Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Department of Psychiatry and Human Sciences' Behavioral Biology Research Center, chairing a weekly staff development discussion about psychedelics. He has taught Foundations of Psychedelic Studies, now an Honors Program Seminar, at NIU since 1982. Roberts' PhD in Educational Administration and Psychology is from Stanford University.

Links:

Book's page with original publisher, Praeger


Categories: psychedelic, entheogens, therapy

Date: Tue Jan 09 13:46:55 PST 2007

Sender: "Daniel Siebert"

*******************************
THE SALVIA DIVINORUM OBSERVER
*******************************
Tuesday, January 9, 2007 / volume 5 number 1
*******************************
The Salvia divinorum Research and Information Center (SDRIC)
http://sagewisdom.org

___________________________________________________

TWO NEW PAPERS ADDED TO THE SDRIC WEBSITE

Neo-clerodane Diterpenes from the Hallucinogenic Sage Salvia divinorum.
Authors: Shirota O, Nagamatsu K, Sekita S.
Journal: Journal of Natural Products. 69(12): 1782-1786 (2006).
Available in PDF format at: http://sagewisdom.org/shirotaetal.pdf

8-epi-Salvinorin B: Crystal Structure and Affinity at the Kappa Opioid
Receptor.
Authors: Munro TA, Duncan KK, Staples RJ, Xu W, Liu-Chen LY, Beguin C,
Carlezon WA Jr, Cohen BM.
Journal: Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. Epub ahead of print (2007).
Available in PDF format at:
http://bjoc.beilstein-journals.org/content/pdf/1860-5397-3-1.pdf

Categories: psychedelic, salvia, salvia Divinorum, entheogens

Thanks to Bruce Eisner's blog and teleomorph's Entheogenic Reformation, I found this excellent collection of psychedelic, entheogenic and consciousness videos. Some of the subjects include: Alan Watts, Alex Grey, Cannabis, Carl Jung, Dalai Lama, Daniel Pinchbeck, Deepak Chopra, Derren Brown, Douglas Rushkoff, Edgar Cayce, Entheogens, Fractals, H.P. Lovecraft, Hunter S. Thompson, Joe Rogan, Joseph Campbell, Ken Wilber, Burning Man, LSD, Mark Pesce, Mushroom Cultivation, Neurolinguistic Programming, Nostradamus, Osho, Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, Shamanism, Stanislav Grof, Stanford Prison Experiment, String Theory, Terence McKenna, Timothy Leary, Wayne Dyer, William S. Burroughs

Categories: psychedelic, video, entheogens

Many people learned to cultivate the psilocybin mushroom from the Fanaticus website run by Robert McPherson. The PF TEK developed by McPherson, initially published September 1991 in High Times magazine, represented a revolution in psilocybin mushroom cultivation. As Perfect Fungi Europe writes, "It is now the established growing technique of the world . . . " When the DEA shut down Fanaticus in 2003, the website was down for a long time. We are delighted to announce that Perfect Fungi Europe has acquired the fanaticus domain, and has brought the website back with all the old psilocybin mushroom cultivation tek. They have added many new resources at the same time.

As a small added note, Fanaticus only developed the first easy technique to grow psilocybin mushrooms. Most people believe the psilocybin revolution itself was started by Terence and Dennis McKenna by their 1978 publication of Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Growers Guide.



Categories: psychedelic, psilocybin, mushrooms

The Washington Post broke the news last week that Barack Obama wrote an obscure memoir eleven years ago in which he admitted to being a marijuana and cocaine user during his youth.

Megan Farrington, writer of the Drug Policy Alliance column D'Alliance, speculates whether the revelation concerning his drug use will push Obama toward a stronger psychoactives prohibition stance than he might otherwise take.

Categories: psychedelic, drug, policy, obama, chicago, marijuana, cocaine

THC Comedy Tour comes to Chicago's Metro on Friday, January 12, 2007

9pm / 3730 N. Clark Street, Chicago
18+ / $13 tickets / 773-549-0203 / The Metro

From a NORML mailing:

The THC Comedy Tour is a one-of-a-kind event featuring alternative standup comedy, sketches, videos, music, and more than a few special surprises. The ultimate in counter-culture comedy, the THC Comedy Tour delivers a night of performances that are funny even if you're not totally baked. Since the show's debut in 2005, it has played to sold-out crowds nationwide and been called a "Top Comedy Pick" by the Los Angeles Times, "Completely Recommended" by the LA Weekly, and "One of the best times I've ever had" by a first-time crowd member.

Performing at the shows will be:

DOUG BENSON
(High Times' Stoner of the Year, co-creator of the Marijuana-Logues, a regular on VH-1's "Best Week Ever")

AL MADRIGAL
(from Cheech Marin & Friends Tour, Comedy Central, opens for Dave Chappelle)

JAY PHILLIPS
(Def Comedy Jam, BET's Comic View)

Plus, we'll have live music, giveaways, and a whole lot more.

. . .

Tickets are on sale now. We expect to sell out so we recommend buying in advance.

Categories: psychedelic, marijuana, comedy, chicago

Stephen Colbert is really on a drug policy roll. Three weeks ago he had psychedelic author Daniel Pinchbeck on the Colbert Report, a spot that was by most accounts a favorable portrayal of the 21st century psychedelic community. TONIGHT 2007.01.08 Colbert will have on "drug" legalization advocate Ethan Nadelmann, head of the leading drug reform organization Drug Policy Alliance. The Colbert Report will air at 10:30 PM Central time.

POST-SHOW UPDATE:

The interview here on YouTube
The interview Part 1 on Comedy Central video
The interview Part 2 on Comedy Central video

Discussion on the DPA forum

Sample comments from the Forum discussion:

Shappy85 wrote:

I felt like Ethan came off as uninformed about the program and many of his salient points were drowned out because the conversation essentially disolved into a screaming match. Also, he botched the Soros question. Didn't he have PR people to prep him for the interview? What happened?

Round one: Stephen wins.

Seconded, but I don't think it's so much about Colbert winning than Ethan losing. Colbert seems to try to set every guest up to "win" by providing his ridiculous counterpoints. Unfortunately, Ethan came off like a loud fool and blew a great opportunity by trying to "act" or whatever the hell that performance he gave was.
He looked like the occasional guest that goes on The Colbert Report that doesn't know Colbert's tongue is planted firmly in his cheek. Anyone who regulary watches the show knows what I mean. Every once in a while there's a guest that takes him at face value and either argues like a damn fool, or worse- seems to think that Colbert really is some dummy neocon talking head and agrees just a little too wholeheartedly with some crazy thing Colbert says.

Ustaath writes:
I have to agree that Nadelmann did not come across in a highly favorable light, but overall did not do too badly. I am unsure whether he did not "get" Colbert or instead was just trying too hard to out-sarcasm Colbert by going even more over the edge. Colbert is cool. He did not have to treat Colbert like a real talking head neocon.

Categories: psychedelic, drug, Colbert, policy, legalization

This is an amazing story about how jinn, the Islamic world's version of faerie folk / elves, play a role in al-Qaeda and the ongoing Middle Eastern chaos. I have been giving increasing thought to these entities, what Clifford Pickover (in Drugs, Sex, Einstein and Elves ) calls intraterrestrials; to the possibility that if panprotopsychism is correct, there may be entire hierarchies of primitive sentience that underlie the structure we perceive at our scope of existence.

Excerpt from the article: "But to more scholarly clerics jinn are little more than an energy, a pulse form of quantum physics perhaps, alive at the margins of sleep
or madness, and more often in the whispering of a single unwelcome thought. An extension of this electric description of jinn is that they are not beings at all but thoughts that were in the world before the existence of man. "

And here is an accompanying quote by Yeats, from Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry:

Are they "the gods of the earth"? Perhaps! Many poets, and all mystic and occult writers, in all ages and countries, have declared that behind the visible are chains on chains of conscious beings, who are not of heaven but of the earth, who have no inherent form but change according to their whim, or the mind that sees them. You cannot lift your hand without influencing and being influenced by hoards. The visible world is merely their skin. In dreams we go amongst them, and play with them, and combat with them. They are, perhaps, human souls in the crucible--these creatures of whim.

Note the phrase "chains on chains of conscious beings": how similar this is to Indra's Web.

Jinn

Born of fire
Dec 19th 2006 | QARDHO
From The Economist print edition


Our correspondent travels to Somalia and Afghanistan in search of jinn

THERE is a cleft in a stone hill outside Qardho, in northern Somalia, which even the hardest gunmen and frankincense merchants avoid. In the cool dark, out of the bleached sunshine, there is a pit, a kind of Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, which is said to swirl down into the world of jinn. Locals say jinn—genies, that is—fade in and out above the pit. Sometimes they shift into forms of ostriches and run out over the desert scrub.

The Bible holds that God created angels and then made man in his own image. The Koran states that Allah fashioned angels from light and then made jinn from smokeless fire. Man was formed later, out of clay. Jinn disappointed Allah, not least by climbing to the highest vaults of the sky and eavesdropping on the angels. Yet Allah did not annihilate them. No flood closed over their heads. Jinn were willed into existence, like man, to worship Allah and were preserved on earth for that purpose, living in a parallel world, set at such an angle that jinn can see men, but men cannot see jinn.

Categories: psychedelic, elves, jinn


Less educated Muslims remain fearful of jinn. Hardly a week passes in the Muslim world without a strange story concerning them. Often the tales are foolish and melancholy. In August, for instance, Muslims in the Kikandwa district of central Uganda grew feverish over reports of jinn haunting and raping women in the district. So when a young woman stumbled out of the forest one day, unkempt and deranged, she was denounced as a jinn. Villagers beat her almost to death. Police finished the job with six bullets at close range. The young woman called out for her children in her last moments. An investigation revealed her to be from a neighbouring district. She had spent days without food or water, searching for her missing husband. Editorials in Ugandan newspapers called on the government formally to deny the existence of jinn.

That would be divisive. Although a few Islamic scholars have over the ages denied the existence of jinn, the consensus is that good Muslims should believe in them. Some Islamic jurists consider marriage between jinn and humans to be lawful. There is a similar provision for the inheritance of jinn property. Sex during menstruation is an invitation to jinn and can result in a woman bearing a jinn child. According to the Koran, the Prophet Muhammad preached to bands of jinn. Some converted to Islam. This is how jinn describe their condition in the Koran:

And among us [jinn] there are righteous folk and among us there are those far from that. We are sects, having different rules. And we know that we cannot escape from Allah in the earth, nor can we escape by flight. And when we heard the guidance [of the Koran], we believed therein, and who so believeth in his Lord, he feareth neither loss nor oppression. And there are among us some who have surrendered to Allah and there are among us some who are unjust.

In Somalia and Afghanistan clerics matter-of-factly described to your correspondent the range of jinn they had encountered, from the saintly to the demonic; those that can fly, those that crawl, plodding jinn, invisible jinn, gul with vampiric tendencies (from which the English word ghoul is taken), and shape-shifters recognisable in human form because their feet are turned backwards. Occasionally the clerics fell into a trance. Afterwards they claimed their apparently bare rooms had filled with jinn seeking favours or release from amulet charms.

A parallel universe

Although Somalia and Afghanistan have different religious traditions (Somalia being more relaxed), jinn belief is strong in both countries. War-ravaged, with similarly rudimentary education systems, both have a tradition of shrines venerating local saints where women can pray. Women are supposed to be more open to jinn, particularly illiterate rural women: by some accounts education is a noise, a roaring of thought, which jinn cannot bear. Sometimes women turn supposed jinn possession to their own advantage and become fortune-tellers. Among the most popular questions asked of such women is: “Will my husband take a second wife?” The shrines are often little more than a carved niche in a rock, with colourful prayer flags tied to nearby trees. Jinn are said to be attracted to the ancient geography of shrines, many of which predate Islam; as some have it, the shrines were attracted to the jinn.

Islam teaches that jinn resemble men in many ways: they have free will, are mortal, face judgment and fill hell together. Jinn and men marry, have children, eat, play, sleep and husband their own animals. Islamic scholars are in disagreement over whether jinn are physical or insubstantial in their bodies. Some clerics have described jinn as bestial, giant, hideous, hairy, ursine. Supposed yeti sightings in Pakistan's Chitral are believed by locals to be of jinn. These kinds of jinn can be killed with date or plum stones fired from a sling.


Hardly a week passes in the Muslim world without a strange story concerning them. Often the tales are foolish and melancholy

But to more scholarly clerics jinn are little more than an energy, a pulse form of quantum physics perhaps, alive at the margins of sleep or madness, and more often in the whispering of a single unwelcome thought. An extension of this electric description of jinn is that they are not beings at all but thoughts that were in the world before the existence of man. Jinn reflect the sensibilities of those imagining them, just as in Assyrian times they were taken to be the spirits responsible for manias, who melted into the light at dawn.

When a donkey brays

The English word genie, from an unrelated French root, is now too soft and gooey with Disney's Aladdin to catch the acid qualities attributed to jinn. Sepideh Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, a specialist on Afghanistan who has undertaken anthropological research on jinn belief, reckons she may once have been in the presence of jinn. She was riding with others in the Afghan province of Badakhshan. It was towards dusk. They came down into a valley forested at the bottom. The horses tensed. “Suddenly from out of the trees I felt myself being watched by non-human entities.” A cold fear overcame her, “the fear of losing the faculty of reason”. A Kabul cleric describes this sort of feeling as a shock at the existence of otherness. Animals sense it also: when a donkey brays, it is said to be seeing a jinn.

Unbelieving jinn, those who resisted the Koran, are shaytan, demons, “firewood for hell”. Many Muslims see the devil as a jinn. Some reckon the snake in the Garden of Eden was a shape-shifting jinn. All this may yet play a part in the war on terrorism. Factions in Somalia and Afghanistan have accused their enemies of being backed not only by the CIA but by malevolent jinn. One theory in Afghanistan holds that the mujahideen, “two-legged wolves”, scared the jinn out into the world, causing disharmony. It is jinn, they say, who whisper into the ears of suicide-bombers.

Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, a Pakistani cleric connected with a jihadist group, Jamaat al-Fuqra, has given warning to America that its missiles will be misdirected by jinn. It was all very different in the days of King Solomon, who was said to have had control over jinn and used them as masons in building the temple in Jerusalem. The Jewish influence over jinn is strong. It is probably no coincidence that the inscription on Aladdin's lamp, which bound the jinn, was engraved with Hebraic characters. Believers in abduction by aliens like to think jinn are aliens; some of the more confrontational Muslim clerics dismiss claimed apparations of the Virgin Mary as the work of jinn.


The jinn demanded a cigarette, then another, and then it became impatient and swallowed lighted cigarettes whole

The story of Ahmed Shah Masoud, the commander of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, clearly shows up the link between jinn and myth-making. Masoud resisted the Soviet Union and the Taliban from his base in the Panjshir valley until he was assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives on September 9th 2001. According to local legend, Muslim jinn were on his side. One of his fighters was said to have slain a dragon in a mountain lake during the Soviet occupation and to have brought the dragon's jewel to Masoud, with the help of Muslim jinn. In murdering Masoud, some Panjshiris say, Osama bin Laden declared war on Muslim jinn also. This is obvious, they say, from Mr bin Laden's insistence on division and violence.

Your correspondent spent a night with Masoud's former bodyguards in the Panjshir. The men were employed to look after Masoud's tomb. His office was locked. The bodyguards sat cross-legged on the floor of a room opposite. A kerosene lantern flickered. Machineguns were propped against the bed-rolls. A few men went outside. The first winter snow was falling on the jagged peaks that towered up on all sides. It was fiercely cold. A dog limped below, ears flat, tail between its legs. It whimpered. The men looked at the dog. “The jinn is still here,” one said. “Bismillah,” responded the others. They pointed out jinn settlements just below the snow-line on the mountain slopes. Inside, over plates of mutton and grey rice, tea, snuff and Korean cigarettes, they told the story of how the cook had been possessed by a jinn the week before. He was a devout man, they said, a non-smoker and illiterate. “He fell ill. When he recovered, he found he could speak and write in many languages. The jinn that was in him was well-travelled but also pushy. It demanded a cigarette, then another, and then it became impatient and swallowed lighted cigarettes whole.”

In Somalia, the port of Bossaso is famous for its sorcerers. Some of its ruling class claim to have intermarried with jinn long ago. On a recent visit your correspondent was taken to a metal shed at the edge of a slum where jinn were supposed to be banished from taking human form. The air inside the shed was thick with frankincense. There was a man cloaked in red cloth kneeling on the ground. A jinn was in him, a sorceress running the ceremony said, and indeed the man wore an eerie expression, as though a part of him was obscured. Young men jumped up and down around him, chanting and beating drums. The gunmen accompanying your correspondent were too scared to step into the shed. Later, walking away from the shed in hot sunshine, one of the gunmen insisted that he could see a jinn scavenging for bones in the dirt. There did not appear to be anything there.

Paintings by visionary artist Robert Treece are currently on display at the Dulcenea Gallery, 1431 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, Illinois.

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