Empathogeneration

by Dimka Drewczynski
It Is So Beautiful`
by About Yellow
Content
Editor - Rob Dickins
Creative Director - Thomas Connolly
Cover Illustration - Edmond Griffth-Jones
Cinema High
by Ana Iugulescu
On the Nature of the Psilocybe-Folk
by Jack Hunter
Book Review: Erin
by Roger Keen
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An Experience of Dematerialization on Woodrose Seeds
by Mark A. Schroll
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Enter: A New Religious Era
by Thomas B. Roberts
Holy Mountain or Holey Mountain?
by David Luke
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Psypressuk: 00001
Editorial
by Rob Dickins
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The Psychedelic Press UK (www.psypressuk.com) began life almost four
years ago as a book review website for drug and psychedelic literature.
Since then the site has evolved to include articles, interviews and festivals
from across that vast multiplicity that is psychedelic culture. So it is now,
with tentative steps, that we`ve networked out of the virtual and into the
print world with the publication of this magazine.
A rhizome of drugs, writing and culture, PsypressUK aims to
draw the many diverse and interesting threads of our movement into a
format that is equally accessible to trippers in the feld and researchers in
psychedelic studies. By drawing on the emergent bubbles of experience
from the grassroots and the observations of socio-political windows from
above, this magazine intends not only to record these changing psychedelic
times but also invigorate and generate mind-manifestations anew.
The writers, who have been kind enough to send us their words,
represent a range of countries, ages and perspectives. The one major
combining force however, and that which lies at the heart of the psychedelic
experience, is the seeker; the psychonaut. It is hoped that their opinions,
their wisdom and their positions can enlighten your own path as we all, in
our own manner, seek to sail our minds.
This edition is a tester to see if there exists enough psychonauts
with an appetite for knowledge out there. So, if you enjoy this magazine
and would be interested in reading future editions, then please have a look
at the back cover, where you can fnd an address to contact us. All your
thoughts, from comment to article submission, are most welcome.
Finally, there are several articles with references in this edition
and all references can be found at: http://psypressuk.com/2012/01/17/
psypressuk-magazine-references/
On the Nature of the Psilocybe-Folk
Psychedelic Psychoid Persons
by Jack Hunter
The very frst time I consumed liberty cap mushrooms (Psilocybe semilanceata), I
caught glimpse of an intangible, weirdly organic, world that overlay our own. As I
looked into that strange place my perception was inundated with spiraling, earthy
forms and twisting geometric motifs that faded in and out of my consciousness.
The strangest thing I saw on that weird autumn night, however, was a procession
of small, two-dimensional, goblin-like creatures in the grain of a wooden chest of
drawers. They were dark and organic with long pointed noses and elfn ears. At the
time I called them fairies. In the midst of the whirling, impersonal, fractal chaos these
entities seemed to be moving along the grain with deliberate intent. The creatures
regarded me with indifference when they noticed that I was staring, and continued on
with their procession. Their apparent agency differentiated them from the seething
psychedelic patterns that surrounded them, and suggested that they were something
more than simple hallucinations. But if they were not simple hallucinations then what
were they?
Encounters with apparently sentient entities while under the infuence of
psychoactive substances are well documented in the psychedelic literature. Terence
McKenna, in his 1975 book The Invisible Landscape, described his encounters with
weird insectoid entities during an ayahuasca trip in the Amazon jungle. Countless
people have recorded their experiences of a distinctively feminine presence while
smoking Salvia divinorum. Rick Strassman`s 2001 book DMT: The Spirit Molecule
contains numerous references to meetings with insect-like and extraterrestrial beings
during DMT trips under laboratory conditions. In his autobiographical book Cosmic
Trigger, Robert Anton Wilson described an encounter with a dancing man with warty
green skin and pointy ears` following a peyote trip, likening it to Carlos Castaneda`s
peyote encounter with the spirit Mescalito, as described in The Teachings of Don
Juan. More recently parapsychologist David Luke has described numerous meetings
with thousand eyed` sentient beings after smoking DMT. Hundreds of other examples
could easily be cited, but for the time being these cases will suffce in demonstrating
that psychedelic entity encounters are far from uncommon.
Now, let us return to the question we began with: If these entities are not
simple hallucinations then what are they? Robert Anton Wilson invoked Carl Jung`s
notion of the archetype in an effort to interpret his encounter with Greenskin.`
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Jungian archetypes are conceived as symbolically meaningful complexes emerging
from the collective unconscious. It is tempting, when thinking about the unconscious,
to conclude that anything that has its foundations in it must consequently possess
no form of independent reality, but this is not necessarily the case. Jung`s notion of
the unconscious was far more expansive than we might at frst imagine, he wrote
a psychological truth is... just as good and respectable a thing as a physical truth
[because] no one knows what psyche` is, and one knows just as little how far into
nature psyche` extends.` Jung developed the concept of the psychoid,` which he
considered to exist both inside the unconscious mind and outside in the objective
world as a sort of transcendent entity. It could be that the entities encountered during
psychedelic experiences partake of a psychoid nature, requiring our perception and
engagement to become tangible, and yet also possessing an external and independent
nature of their own.
This notion accords well with the model of consciousness proposed by the
early psychical researcher F.W.H. Myers, who held that consciousness consists of at
least two streams, which he termed subliminal and supraliminal. The supraliminal
stream is the one we experience as our everyday consciousness and awareness, while
the subliminal stream is usually imperceptible to our conscious experience. On certain
occasions, however, aspects of the subliminal can cross the threshold and enter into
our supraliminal consciousness, in the context of altered states of consciousness,
for example. For Myers our conscious awareness operates somewhat like a lens
focusing only on a narrow stream of our total consciousness, and so altered states of
consciousness can, from Myers` perspective, be thought of as movements of the lens
to different aspects of consciousness. Like Jung`s notion of the unconscious, Myers`
subliminal mind was not restricted to the psyche of the individual but also included
the possibility of external, independent, infuences that are not always available to
our experience, but that could be visible to consciousness if the lens of awareness
was directed towards them. Could psilocybin mushrooms, and other psychedelic
substances, provide a means for a refocusing of the lens of awareness, directing
conscious experience towards subliminal psychoid entities?
It used to be taken for granted, as a working hypothesis, that the unusual
experiences associated with the ingestion of psychedelic substances were a result of
over-stimulation of the brain, resulting in sensory overload and heightened sensory
experiences. The most recent neurophysiological research conducted on the effects
of psilocybin (being the active psychedelic component present in magic mushrooms),
on the brain, however, seem to challenge this assumption. A recent study monitored
the effects of psilocybin on the brain using fMRI scanning technology and revealed
that, rather than promoting increased activity, psilocybin appears to reduce the blood-
fow to certain areas of the brain. Psilocybin is not, therefore, exciting the brain,
but is shutting down certain functions. Yet, despite this decrease in brain activity,
conscious sensory experience is seemingly expanded. The potential implications of
this are enormous, if speculative. This data could be taken as supportive of the notion
that the brain is a kind of reducing valve for consciousness, analogous to Myers`
lens of experience, which narrows our experience of consciousness. Consequently,
when the activity of the brain is limited by the effects of psilocybin our conscious
experience is expanded. This is very similar to Henri Bergson`s notion of the brain as
a flter for consciousness, fltering out aspects of consciousness that might otherwise
get in the way of our basic survival needs. This idea was further expanded upon by
the psychedelic pioneer Aldous Huxley who suggested, in his book The Doors of
Perception (1954), that in order to make biological survival possible, Mind at Large
has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system.`
What Bergson and Huxley are essentially suggesting is that in order to cope with
the survival pressures that come with existing as three-dimensional physical entities,
our consciousness needs to be focused on only a very narrow band of reality. If we
were constantly aware of the whole of reality we wouldn`t stand a chance as physical
organisms trying to survive in a predatory physical world.
So, where does this get us in terms of thinking about the ontology of the fairies`
I saw in my bemushroomed state, or of the various other entities encountered by
human beings during the psychedelic experience? Not particularly far, unfortunately,
though it does present us with a useful model, accompanied by some good evidence,
that can accommodate such encounters. This should be seen as a springboard for
further inquiry. We have a potentially workable model of consciousness that does
not exclude the possibility of external infuences, the next step is to attempt to verify
whether or not these entities are indeed independent, or whether they represent
aspects of our own consciousness made to appear independent. This is not going to
be an easy task, though it is, I feel, an important one.
Jack Hunter is an PhD (Candidate) in Social Anthropology at the University of Bristol, UK. His
research looks at contemporary trance mediumship in Bristol, and focuses on themes of personhood,
performance, altered states of consciousness, and anomalous experience. He is the founder and
editor of the peer-reviewed journal Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to
the Paranormal.' In 2010 he received the Eileen J. Garrett scholarship from the Parapsychology
Foundation, and in 2011 he received the Schmeidler award from the Parapsychological Association.
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Empathogeneration
by Dimka Drewczynski
Empathy transcends personal boundaries; bridging from one`s own into that of
another`s. It is to understand and share another`s perceptions as if they were one`s
own. It is humane, although it is not restricted to humanity alone and the capacity
to identify with another`s state of being is an evolutionarily ancient phenomenon.
Kin selection is an evolutionary strategy that enhances an organism`s reproductive
success even at the cost of its own survival and reproduction. These behaviours help
the genetic relative pass their empathogenetic material to offspring that is not one`s
own. Prosocial behaviours like these have been observed far down the evolutionary
tree to even insects.
The lack of ability to empathise with others is also shared throughout the
animal kingdom. Although deliberate suffering imposed on others, not to ensure
survival, but to increase wealth or status is relegated solely to us. The narcissist
or psychopath is indifferent to other`s suffering, lacking a basic social conscience.
He speaks to the victims with a common accent, wears their same face, but shares
none of their emotion. He preys on the system spreading greed, fear and isolation.
Anxiety, depression, aggression and stress swell, turning society from a communal
network to a collection of alienated individual units.
Empathogen compounds belonging to the phenethylamine class of alkaloids
can reproduce the feeling of compassion for others. This class of compounds has many
members, like MDMA (aka ecstasy), which can be categorized as psychedelic and/
or stimulants. These compounds take advantage of the underlying neurobiological
machinery of empathy by targeting brain regions essential for empathy, the cortico-
limbic structures, and increasing the release of neurochemicals like dopamine,
serotonin and oxytocin.
The psychedelic experience itself can elicit empathy in other ways.
Consciousness acquires a different perspective; things once overlooked, or taken for
granted, become highlighted. The lattice becomes apparent. Hallucinations form
constants like chessboards, honeycombs and spider webs; they speak to a higher
connection, not to just our own kind, or other animals, but to everything living and
non-living.
I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may
choose not to fnd access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there
inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability.' - A. Shulgin
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Our connectedness does not merely lie in the common genes of our fellow
man, or shared evolutionary ancestry with other animals, plants and fungi, but in the
fundamental, physical make-up of our bodies, brains and minds. Thermodynamics
clearly describe matter as being neither created nor destroyed, merely rearranged
in one form or another. Our actual physical presence is the product of our past and
present. The atoms that provide the backbone of our physical being were once that
of ancient invertebrates. The molecular cycle of the air we breathe and food we
consume moves between biotic and abiotic modalities. The symbiotic relationship
with plants and animals extends to our non-living surroundings like the clouds and
mineral reservoirs.
The ability to empathise is contingent on the ability to understand another`s
state-of-being. Understanding that there is no us, nor them, just simply life, is the frst
step to endowing respect for existence itself. An individual is but a node in a universal
network. It may take a different perspective, or consciousness to see it, but the lattice
is always there. To be humane would be to not only empathise with others but with
everything. We have gradually become pieces separated from the whole, divided by
classifying, cutting and partitioning. Only by connecting all the parts together can we
become whole.
Dimka Drewczynski has a BSc Honours in Biological Psychology. His research focused on serotonin,
schizophrenia and hallucination, and on endorphins, opiates and salvia. He is currently fnishing
his MSc in Neuroscience, doing research on the effects of antidepressants and physical exercise on
hippocampal neurogenesis and also on sex differences in learning strategies and immediate early
gene activation. My main felds of interest are ethnobotany, altered states of consciousness and the
hallucinogenic experience itself.
illustration by Edmond Griffth-Jones
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'It is so beautiful`
The role of psychedelics in post-apartheid South Africa
by About Yellow
It`s a big fat continent this, bloated like a tic and it ain`t my home this burning lump
of land but I like it well enough and, damn, sometimes I even love it, this Africa. And
it`s an interesting place in terms of drugs because this is the cradle of humanity, where
we all hark back to. And there are Bushmen and Sangomas high and wise with the
medicines of the land, the Bufane, Malpitta and Khat. And there are cities and towns
and suburbias dull with the monotone of Christianity and daytime TV, and other cities
exploding out of their own ribcages with the exuberance of mushrooms and alcohol.
And there is also, undeniably, a race division at play and it`s that which concerns me
here. Why for example, are psychedelics seen mainly as white culture drugs and what
role could they have in breaking down unhealthy dynamics between individuals?
It`s hard to talk in general because there are so many perspectives and worlds
even within a few miles or apartment strata of each other. So here`s a subjective
narrative about Ernest, the Malawian bloke, who laboured on a farm where I worked
just outside of Cape Town. Sometimes we shared a joint together but only when the
white Afrikaans family who owned the farm were away. Not that they didn`t like weed,
far from it, these where full-moon-mediation hippies and smoked with me often. But
there`s an invisible graphene curtain between owner and labourer, a division that is
almost always also a white/black division. It is in fact hard to differentiate these two
intimate elements of the South Africans political and personal landscape. Class and
race are very closely linked and in many examples the dynamic between individuals
seems assignable to class inequalities and expectations more than anything else.
Often people are cognitively non-racial in their thinking or attitudes but none the less
play out ingrained behaviour patterns based on the roles of employer and employee,
family and maid, farmer and labourer.
So it isn`t necessarily easy to break down people`s fear of over-stepped
boundaries. Ernest had, for a short time, insisted on calling me madam` for example.
We were doing very similar work and being payed roughly the same amount but I was
a traveler with my own money and an English middle-class background, education
and confdence. We were negotiating a class/cultural difference over and above a
racial one. For better or worse it was also largely me that dictated the terms of
that negotiation. I rejected his version of us in favour of my own more comfortable
one when I suggested he drop the madam` and call me by my name. Being able
to be high together was an important part of that new relationship. The sharing of
work or food are two of the things that most successfully bring about co-operation
and appreciation, even if that is through nothing more than necessity. But it is
through shared emotional experiences (be them spiritual, transcendental or purely
recreational) that real understanding and even love can be born.
It should have been a great opportunity to get to know each other better
when Ernest found my mushrooms one night and asked if we could take them. But
at that point it was a strange formal closeness between us, full of clumsy disregarded
etiquettes and language diffculties and he had never heard of any drug beyond the
black ash weed you get in the townships. I tried my best to explain what they were
and how they might effect him. I couldn`t talk about the sixties or the nineties or
any of the literature or flms. Instead I mimed fying and contoured my face into
something like peace and smiled. That`s what these mushrooms in this bag make you
feel, I was saying. He was confused but up for it. The guy drinks almost to destruction
and is up for anything. Young, reckless and pushing at life, I think it`s why we were
friends, our point of reference in each other. But I said no to taking the mushrooms.
Christ, it was late already and we had to be up at 6am for work. I also said no again
to taking them at the weekend and the question begins to haunt me; was I saying
no to taking them with him at all and, if so, why? It feels like the uncomfortable
answer might have something to do with my being protective. I don`t want to be the
women who introduced alcohol to the native Americans and, hell, Ernest ain`t got a
background, or friendship group, or cultural experience for something like this. He
lives in a tin shanty with a stick under his bed to scare off the prostitutes who come
singing at his door like mermaids after dark. Set and setting are not that idyllic at his
end of town.
It had been many weeks of inward raging watching Ernest and my host mother
on the farm. It`d been yes madam, yes madam` all day long for too many days. He is
treated like a kid but acts like one too. That`s the bit of this whole race relation thing
people forget to mention, that it`s a dynamic played out by two people at a time. And
it`s no good the white Afrikaans lady or the black man alone pushing for change. She
has to change her role along with him if that long held comfort blanket of madam is to
be dropped. So I hated them both at times. Ernest, bowing himself out of respect with
every fawning subjugation. And she, rainbow warrior star child and self modelled
hippie with all the one-love tripped up trappings and concepts, keeping that man a
school boy.
But there was I withholding the drugs from him, teacher like. Sure I was
simply performing the role he had helped put me in by asking permission to take
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them rather than assuming his right. But that ain`t really an excuse. So in the end, that
was my decision, I gave them to him on my last day at the place. And I gave him my
mobile number too and I said call me afterwards, I want to know all about it`. It was
his responsibility now.
Thirty-six hours after I left the glaring, too bright, Eastern Cape I get a call.
It`s the Middle of the night and I`m in a feld. Darkness. And it`s Ernest talking slow
and loud because his English ain`t so good on the phone and our signal is weak.
Hello my love,` he says. It is so beautiful.` And that was it. The line broke up and he
few away. But I was no longer madam`, he had granted me the title of love` and I
revelled in it.
So what`s my point here? Well I guess I`m questioning why a drug that can
have such a beautiful effect remains exclusively part of white drug culture, while the
crack and the crystal meth and the mandrax are associated with the black world. It
does feel like an easy situation to draw a conspiracy out of. Rumours and evidence
abound that the apartheid era government in South Africa introduced mandrax to
the black population of Cape Town, in order to keep them conveniently doped and
pliant. Other drugs, of course, are not so desirable to governments. It was the hippies
that led the anti-Vietnam protests and LSD, with its propensity to free the mind of
establishment ideas, which was held to have a central part in that. Is it an instinctual
fear of the liberated black man that holds white culture back from sharing her drugs? I
don`t know. What I do know is that class and cultural differences are deeply ingrained
into drug culture and the seat of all a psychedelic taker`s references are western, even
if the drugs they take are not. And like a work of literature, or a painting, a drug is
embedded in the historical and cultural context of its author, reader and user.
So to my mind there is a role for psychedelics in helping to transform
South Africa`s many cultural landscapes but only in so far as they can help us all
individually to break the personal dynamics and roles we all live within, to make
us more consciously aware of our performance and how we might reconstruct our
relationships with each other. Be that with our parents, our lovers or the colleagues
that call us madam`.
About Yellow is a twenty-something, Cambridge English Lit graduate and gardener who exiled herself
from Britain, in favour of Berlin. She has written a couple of plays and performs poetry. and also has a
rarely updated blog (www.aboutyellow.blogpot.com). Her addiction is to youth and our generation. Life
is currently a farm in Botswana where she is learning to keep bees and crow cacti.
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Enter: A New Religion
by Thomas B. Roberts
How could a psychedelic experience affect someone? 'The complete and utter loss
of self. The sense of unity was awesome. I now truly do believe in God as an
ultimate reality. If this happened regularly then how might wider society change?
'Even hard-core materialists, positively oriented scientists, skeptics and cynics, and
uncompromising atheists and antireligious crusaders such as Marxist philosophers
suddenly became interested in a spiritual search after they confronted these levels in
themselves. Then what if religious studies programmes, divinity schools, seminaries,
religious orders, and similar religious educational institutions could teach their
students to know this? 'I understood why spiritual seekers were instructed to look
within . My understanding of mystical teaching, both Eastern and Western, Hindu,
Buddhist, Christian, and Suf alike, took a quantum leap. And this happened fairly
regularly? '.thirty-three percent of the volunteers rated the psilocybin experience
as being the single most spiritually signifcant experience of his or her life, with
an additional 38% rating it to be among the top fve most spiritually signifcant
experiences.
These things have happened, and in spite of a begrudging society, others like
them are happening to thousands of people. They are not happening in churches or
during religious services. At religious educational institutions they occur only extra-
curricularly but, in some scientifc research laboratories, they occur regularly. These
four questions and their respective answers point to a spiritual transition we are going
through. This new stage of religious development is a transition from our current
era of word-based religion to a new era of experience-based religion, one whose
foundation is an intense, personal experience of the sacred. And psychedelics assist
this.
The frst quotation is from a volunteer in a study of psilocybin at the Johns
Hopkins Medical Institute`s Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit. In the second
quotation, Stanislav Grof summarizes one of the effects that occurs during LSD
psychotherapy when his patients were born again having re-experienced their own
births. In the third quotation, psychotherapist Frances Vaughan described her own
LSD-based experience done when LSD was legal. And the fourth quotation highlights
part of the data from a 14-month follow-up of the Johns Hopkins psilocybin study.
These four reports all concern mystical experiences elicited by psychedelics:
used this way, however, psychedelics are called entheogens. Entheogens contribute
to a wider approach to religion called neurotheology. As the title from a 2006 article
in The Lancet Neurology reported: 'Hallucinogen Research Inspires Neurotheology.
Neurotheology asks: What is going on in people`s brains when they have spiritual
experiences? As the Johns Hopkins study illustrates, entheogens move religious
studies` and neurotheology`s frontiers from being merely descriptive to becoming
experimental.
Psychedelic neurotheology makes it possible to study the mystical root
of religion. Christianity and the World Religions states the centrality of mystical
experiences compactly:
Rather then rely on archeology; the mists of ambiguous history, and
theological conjecture, entheogens make it possible to test the credibility of this idea
experimentally. The two ideas (1) psychedelics can produce mystical experiences,
and (2) mystical experiences are a taproot of religions combine to lead us to a huge
and powerful idea with unknown impact: (3) we are entering a new religious era
based on spiritual experience rather than sacred words.
Five hundred years ago, moveable type and the printing press democratized
access to religious texts. Then, the Reformation and the Counter Reformation
followed. People could read religious texts themselves and general literacy and public
education became important. And, as texts became written in the vernacular, people
increasingly thought of themselves as, say, French speakers or German speakers;
they tended to read books in their respective languages and interpreted religious
texts through the lenses of their native languages. This identifcation with a language
group contributed to the rise of language-based nationalism. The growing importance
of words nourished reason, science, and the Enlightenment. This poses the question:
Will the entheogenic reformation give birth to a new enlightenment?
While older religious observances of the prior period continued, new word-
centered activities such as reading texts and interpreting them overlay and overcame
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Indeed, isn't religion, above all-before it is doctrine and morality, rites
and institutions-religious experience. Under the inuence of Protestant
theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher in nineteenth century Europe and
philosopher-psychologist William James in early twentieth-century
America, many Westerners have come out in support of the priority of
religious experience. And isn't religious experience in its highest form
mystical experience, as in India, where it seems more at home than
anywhere else? (Kung 1986, 168)
the older religion-as-rite era. New interpretations resulted and new churches fourished.
Most importantly, text became an increasingly powerful source of religious ideas and
a standard for judging them. Over time, the locus of Western religious activity shifted
from rites to reading, from observances to Bible, from participation to verbalization.
Religious writer and former nun Karen Armstrong marks the change this way:
We need only look at our current religions to see how accurate she is. In
contrast to pre-1500, we approach religion verbally - through words, texts, speaking,
beliefs, sermons, catechisms, creeds, dogmas, doctrines, theology etc.- all these are
expressions in words. This overemphasis on words shows up today in the way we
describe religions - as sets of wordy beliefs. To us, thoughts (cognitive processes)
form religion. If we ask someone about his or her religion, we expect to hear about
beliefs not what rituals that person performs. The older rites certainly remain but lie
obscured beneath a 500-year blizzard of words.
As the title of Psychedelic Mind's Chapter 3-The Experience that Alters All
Others-implies, religion is one of the all-others that mystical experience alters. Its
traits of self-transcendence, unity, noetic objectivity, elevated mood, and sacredness
contribute to this shift, and now, thanks to psychedelics and other psychotechnologies
of self-transcendence such as meditation, today`s spread of mystical experiences
is parallel to the spread of the written word 500 years ago. Today, entheogens
democratize access to primary religious experience.
Just as the 1500s word-based reformation evolved into today`s religious,
social, and political world, will today`s experience-based reformation nourish its own
distinctive kind of future? It is too early to be clear about what to expect but this article
spots some leads. As a result of mystical experiences, people become less I-me-mine
oriented and consider others, the environment, and even the cosmos in their values.
Fame, pride, and greed recede in their motivation. 'What would be the impact, if the
reported positive behavior changes also turned out to be real? Asks Mark Kleiman
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The success of the reformers was due in large part to the invention of the
printing press, which not only helped to propagate this new idea but also
changed people's relationship to text. . and this would make theology
more verbose. . Ritual was downgraded. Instead of trying to get beyond
language, Protestants would be encouraged to focus on the precise,
original, and supposedly unchanging word of God in print (Armstrong
2009, 171 & 173).
rhetorically. He is Professor of Public Policy at UCLA, a highly regarded specialist
in drug policy, and author of Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results and Drugs and
Drug Policies: What Everyone Needs to Know. He writes:
Keeping in mind that the effect of psychedelics depend on the current psychological
set of the person taking them and their circumstances, we need to remember the
effects are 'sometimes things and they don`t always happen by any means:
Psychedelics used entheogenically can elicit mystical experiences.
Mystical experiences are the experiential taproot of religions.
Psychedelics democratize mystical (primary religious) experiences.
We are at the frontier of an experience-based religious era.

Children of a future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
A path to God was thought a crime.
(after Wm. Blake)
This article is adapted from The New Religious Era,' Chapter 4 in The Psychedelic Future of the
Mind, Thomas B. Roberts, Inner Traditions, Rochester, VT. Forthcoming February 2013.
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. Stanford, emeritus professor of Educational Psychology, teaches Psychedelic
Studies in the Honors Program at Northern Illinois University. Taught since 1981, it is the world's
frst catalog-listed psychedelics course. Major publications include Spiritual Growth with Entheogens,
Psychedelic Medicine (2 vols.), Psychedelic Horizons, and The Psychedelic Future of the Mind
(forthcoming 2013). He originated the celebration of Bicycle Day. Homepage: http://niu.academia.edu/
ThomasRoberts
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We might witness, within a few years, the fulfllment of Moses's prayer:
Would that all my people were prophets!' People unafraid to die might act
differently than the currently accepted norm. Just how much enlightenment
can our current social order absorb? We may be on the road to fnd out.
(Kleiman 2011)
Rob Dickins is well known as a guru of psychedelia and an avid participant in the
British festival scene and here, in his frst novel, he blends the two ingredients in a
startlingly original and creative fusion. Erin takes place over the span of the Solpsycle
Gathering; a medium-scale festival with a strong New Age ambience. Lije and his
group of mates move somnambulantly through festy space-time, bearing the chaotic,
fractured perceptions of non-stop partying. Enter the beautiful and enigmatic Erin,
who manifests to Lije as a psychonautic guide, leading him through extravagant
mushroom and salvia trips in an odyssey of self discovery.
At frst Lije is entranced: A fower appeared before my eyes and began to
blossom. It blossomed in fractals, geometrically, as petals beget petals beget petals
beget petals; the slow turn of a planetary arc.` But the path is a tricky one and, deeper
into the trip, an insidious imp appears who lures Lije into bad places. For indeed,
beneath it all, a dreadful truth lurks, and somehow Lije must come to terms with it.
The word paintings of altered states are right up there with the best and Rob`s
freeform, lyrical style ideally suits the nature of such experience. He`s particularly
good on the fast-shifting and overlapping effects of multiple substance use, with
mushrooms, MDMA, LSD and salvia all playing a part, and not forgetting spliffs
and cider! The rushes, the exuberant highs and the sudden nosedives into paranoia
all surge through the reader in a dizzying accelerated compression. And the various
textures of festival life, with the mud, the discomfort, the sometimes bullying guards
and the music, are all superbly rendered.
Erin then is no mere documentary record but a sophisticated multi-levelled
psychodrama, where Lije`s battles with his inner demons, set against the richly
hallucinated backdrop of Solpsycle, come to resemble some fn de sicle Technicolor
Greek myth. It`s a psy-novel for the high-tech age, in which the wide array of
substances available and the composite polymorphous nature of their effects refect
our zeitgeist, just as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas encapsulated the souring of
the hippy dream back in the early 1970s. Erin is a marvellous debut, and a book that
anyone who wants to sample a slice of today`s psychedelic culture should read.
Erin is due to be published this coming Autumn.
Roger Keen is a writer, flmmaker, critic and author of the trip-lit memoir The Mad Artist: Psychonautic
Adventures in the 1970s.
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Book Review: Erin
by Roger Keen
illustration by Ana Iugulescu
Drugs and flms. Two of our favourite escapist methods. And when the two come
together, a whole other world of meaning emerges. But is this preference for drug
flms congruent for drug afcionados and those who love flms but hate drugs? The
following article is a summary of a study I conducted in 2010, in which I have tried
to explore the way drug flm audiences relate to these flms through their experience
of drug use or non-use.
As drugs have always been such a sensitive issue, they became extremely
suitable subjects for on-screen representation from the beginning of cinema: From
Thomas Edison`s 1894 Chinese Opium Den kinetoscope, to the subsequent marijuana
scare flms of the 30s. Then the heroin downward spiral` flms of the 50s, followed
by the psychedelic LSD flms of the 60s. And while the 80s saw the return of the
more sombre narratives of crack use and traffcking, today we have moved on to a
more nuanced treatment of drug use. In this time, drug cinema has come a very long
way.
However, there is only a handful of studies concerning drug narratives and
drug use in flms, and although drug flms` are still not an autonomous genre per se,
the topic has fascinated flm-makers and flm lovers alike.
This was intended to be a cross-disciplinary study halfway between flm
audience research and psychedelic cultural studies. The aim was to investigate to
what extent drug users and non-users manifest overlapping patterns of preference
towards drug flms. I researched several message boards and forums concerned with
both drugs and flms, focusing on three fairly recent mainstream productions that
explicitly deal with drugtaking and the intoxicated` experience, in order to assure
that there is a suffcient amount of online debate around the flms: Trainspotting
(1996), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and Requiem for a Dream (2001).
Incidentally, all three flms were adaptations of novels informed by their authors`
personal experiences with drugs. Moreover, they all showcase a wide variety of drugs
being used, from stimulants to psychedelics and depressants, which sparked various
online discussions. I chose to research online forums in their natural environment,
so as not to interfere in the natural fow of the discussion or risk to bias the posters`
opinions (I have chosen to use the term poster` for the people in my sample who
posted online, in order to differentiate them from the sub-group of drug users`).
Cinema High
drug flms and their viewers
by Ana Iugulescu
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I tried to identify patterns of preference within each of the three flms,
and integrate them into a wider framework. However, this was only a pioneering
endeavour - due to the scarcity of previous research in the feld - that aimed to shed
light on how the reception of these flms relates to the wider context of viewers`
drug use. For each flm, I divided the posts by taste (lovers vs. haters) and by drug
use (users vs. non-users), which made it easier to code attitudes and preference by
category.
First of all, I wanted to highlight how members of the two communities see
each other; I came across instances of reciprocal dismissal, when non-users rejected
users because of their drug use and users rejected non-users on the basis of their
abstinence. Overall, the two categories were mostly intolerant towards each other.
Moreover, drug users tended to relate their flms of choice to their drug
habit more often than non-users explained their preference in spite of their refusal
of drug use. In contrast to the many drugtakers who put the flms in perspective to
their substance use, there were only a handful of instances of non-drugtakers who
explicitly admitted to not having taken drugs and still enjoyed the flms.
An interesting vernacular on the drug-using forums was the avoidance of self-
incrimination through the abbreviation SWIM (someone who isn`t me); posters use
this phrase when describing their drug experiences in order to avoid giving factual
information about themselves and shun legal action. This was a measure implemented
by moderators in order to keep up the appearance of licit discussions.
Another common feature among drug users was a more diverse substance-
related vocabulary. Especially in relation to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
users employed several terms and phrases belonging to the drug subculture slang:
'tripping, 'psychedelics, 'shrooming, 'tabs, 'acid, 'permafried, 'baked,
'blitzed, 'messed up, 'stoned, 'pot, 'dope, 'smack, 'skag. Such phrases and
terms function as an indicator of complicity between users within the forums, acting
as a sort of badge` by which drug users can acknowledge one another. The terms
are cues suggesting certain posters belong to the wider drug-using community and,
subsequently, to certain drug subcultures (in this case, members of the psychedelic,
cannabis or heroin using communities). On the other hand, the inappropriate use of
the word 'addict or 'drug served to identify non-users. Thus, vernacular phrases
were sometimes more eloquent than the online community they appeared in (i.e. drug
users posting in forums unrelated to drug use or vice versa). For non-users there was
generally little differentiation between a drug user and an addict in terms of socially
acceptable behaviour: one could either be a non-user (therefore clean`) or a hopeless
addict`.
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After analysing the comments surrounding each of the three flms, I found
particular aspects that were very eloquent in terms of reception and general awareness
about drug use within the two communities. One striking feature in the case of
Requiem for a Dream was the fact that it acted as a deterrent for both users and non-
users. Moreover, drug-using communities had a hierarchy of drugs, amongst which
heroin usually stood out and ranked highest (in terms of addictive potential).
One aspect viewers repeatedly mentioned as relevant to their appreciation
of the flm was realism; there was an obvious segregation between the realism`
perceived by drugtakers and non-users: whereas non-users evaluated it in terms of
the likelihood of the plot happening in real life, for drug users realism translated
into the accuracy of the depiction of drug use and the characters` lives. Drug-savvy
posters picked up on the misrepresentation of drug effects on screen (pupils dilating
instead of constricting after using heroin), which may indicate that this flm was not
intended for drugtaking audiences. However, for non-using audiences, the depiction
of generic` drug-induced reactions worked to dramatise the scenario of drug use
and deter nave viewers from drug use. In addition, the director`s admitted lack of
experience with drugs was the reason for a few drug users` revolt, who expressed
their disappointment with the flm.
At the other end of the spectrum, Trainspotting avoided the 'downward
spiral narrative, and it managed to convey the anti-drug message successfully
without being preachy`. Although both categories of posters admitted that there was
an underlying 'drugs are bad message, they identifed it differently: for drug users
the message was 'addiction is garbage, whereas for non-users it came down to 'say
no to drugs. The underlying assumption here was that for sensible users, moderate
drug use was acceptable as long as it didn`t lead to addiction; on the other hand, for
non-users any amount of drug use was to be avoided at any cost.
Among drugtaking Trainspotting fans, a revealing occurrence was the
association of drug representations with their own drug use. This partly revealed some
of their expectations and attitudes towards the flm. Having had personal knowledge
of drugs, these posters could make legitimate claims about accuracy and experience
allegiance to the characters to a greater degree than non-users.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas seemed to gather a more exclusive drug-
using audience, which boasted a vast knowledge of psychedelic substances and their
effects, appreciating the flm for its own intrinsic psychoactive potential; one of the
most appraised qualities of the flm was its trip-like structure and its quality of being
enjoyable while on psychoactive substances. Some users agreed that the flm seemed
to 'make more sense when experienced on drugs.
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Among posters who did not enjoy it, the most common complaint was
actually the heavy drug use and the general psychedelic atmosphere of the flm. Non-
users disliked the excessive drugtaking, but surprisingly, even for some users the
binging easily became excessive and overwhelming.
After centuries of drug use and decades of depicting it on screen, drugtaking
still bears a considerable social stigma and divides viewers` taste, confrming that the
same age-old anti-drug ideology still prevails. Drug flms have proven to be a very
fertile ground to gauge the segregation between drugtakers and non-users and reveal
the wider framework that each group subscribes to when appreciating a drug flm.
Whether it is in support of or opposition to drug use, posters refer to drug flms to
sustain their respective standpoints.
With all the debate surrounding drug flms, and the long and winding history
they share, the prospect of drug cinema` becoming an autonomous genre in its
own right is a viable possibility, albeit a controversial one. One can only hope that
substance use will continue to fuel both appreciation and discussion around drug
flms, to enrich our intoxicated viewing sensibilities.
Ana Iugulescu is a 24 year-young graphic designer and Film Studies graduate who is
in an open relationship with flms and psychoactives - currently working part-time in
consciousness expansion and exploring inner space. Open to creative collaborations,
projects or initiatives that make the world a happier place; drop a line at: ana.
iugulescu@gmail.com
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An Experience of Dematerialization
On Woodrose Seeds
by Mark A. Schroll
I have previously written about other experiences of expanded states of consciousness,
the cultural signifcance of the psychedelic experience, and about a near-death
experience; along with the need to expand our current scientifc paradigm to
understand transpersonal experience. Therefore when I say the focus of this article is
the most bizarre and unexplainable that I have ever encountered, this is not without a
foundation in exploring a variety of anomalous phenomena. Moreover, I too would
have a diffcult time believing this experience if it was related to me by an informant
due to its fantastic claims.
In 1977 during my frst experience taking Hawaiian Baby Woodrose Seeds I
had an encounter that I have rarely told prior to writing this article. For those of us
unfamiliar with Hawaiian Baby Woodrose Seeds, Christian Ratsch tells us:
A chemist friend of mine prepared the seeds by crushing the seed pulp and
putting it into gelatin caps. Both of us ingested eight capsules and then waited for
the onset of this experience, spending this time discussing aspects of transpersonal
psychology and psychedelic experience. Both of us at the time had been reading
various books by Alan Watts. Gradually we began to notice the effects of the
Woodrose Seeds. During the mild phase of this experience I was able to visualize
auras. I did not know what aura`s were at this time in my life (and/or I was just
learning about them, so their existence was not something that I had previously given
much consideration.) Consequently I thought it very strange to see the left side of
my friend`s body dissolved into a feld of glowing white light. This seeing of aura`s
could probably be explained away as an over stimulation of the optic nerves similar
to the experience of snow blindness. However, this would not explain how only the
The woodrose is a member of the family of the Morning Glory. . . . Today,
we can only guess whether the indigenous Huna religion used the plant in
a cultic or magical context. . . . The seeds of the woodrose contain 0.3%
lysergic acid amide and ergoline. . . . As little as two grams of seeds produces
hallucinogenic effects not unlike LSD, which persist for 8 hours or more.
The seeds must be ground prior to ingestion, for if swallowed whole poor
digestion and absorption will vitiate the effects (Ratsch, 1992, 191-192).
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left side of his body was glowing and not the rest of his body, nor other parts of the
room. And/or this seems to be a very rare case of only part of the optic nerve being
overstimulated to produce the visual illusion of an aura of white light around the left
side of my friend`s body, when I was still able to see the rest of his body, and the room
that we were in without any kind of alternation.
But the really weird and unexplainable thing that happened later in this
Woodrose experience was when I felt sure I could tip back in a folding chair, that
the chair would fold up, and I would be standing next to it. Someone else who had
stopped to visit during this Woodrose experience said he would bet me $100.00 if
I could do this. Likewise, there were nine other witnesses (including my chemist
friend), who had stopped to visit; none of whom were in the same altered state that we
were in. I said to the visitor who bet me, sure, I am totally confdent that I can do this,
and I will match your bet. I then tipped back in my chair, and I am not exactly sure
what happened, but as the chair folded up I found myself standing about one meter
or so away from where I had been sitting. The chair was lying on the foor. One of
the witnesses` said, 'Wow, you dematerialized. All I know is I had not folded up
in the chair. I do not remember leaping out of it, which by itself would seem to defy
gravity, and/or require agility that I do not have. I then asked the visitor who had bet
me $100.00 to pay up. He replied that he wanted to see me do it again to make sure it
was not some kind of a trick. I replied that I did not know how I did it the frst time.
Furthermore I was not going to risk trying to do it a second time as my feeling of
certainty had passed. He never paid me the $100.00, yet he did not insist that I pay
him. Explaining this experience-beyond the phenomenological recollection of it I
have given here-is something that exceeds the limits of this article. I therefore leave
it up to the reader to draw your own conclusions.
Mark A. Schroll, Ph.D., serves on Paranthropology's Board and is a frequent contributor to this journal.
Research Adjunct Faculty, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, California, and Co-Editor-
In-Chief, Restoration Earth: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Nature and Civilization. He
is Co-Founder of the International Association for Transpersonal Ecosophy
Holy Mountain or Holey Mountain?
by David Luke
When the multi-billion dollar investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008
starting the current economic decline - the biggest ever US bankruptcy case and
the frst of the mighty dominoes to lose dominion - the echo of a Hopi prophecy`
lingered in the air, little more than a whisper in the breeze. Back in the 1960s Peabody
Coal had insisted on extracting all they could of the several billion tons of coal from
the sacred Black Mesa, but when Hopi elders objected to the exploitation of their
holy mountain, their lawyer and one of the elders disappeared, and documents were
essentially forged to permit Peabody to desacralize the most divine and, unfortunately,
the largest coal reserve in the USA. The Hopi objected, to no avail, but announced that
if the unsanctifed act occurred then not only would Peabody go under, but that a wide
reaching catastrophe would ensue. At the turn of the millennium, Lehman Brothers
bought Peabody Coal, amidst outcries from Hopi elders, and then shortly after imploded
in the bedrock of its own greed, loosening up other capitalist monoliths for the greatest
fnancial landslide since the 1930s Great Depression. While it may have more to do
with subprime mortgages than subterranean machinations, the Hopi prediction rang
clear and true for those with ears to hear, but was drowned out in the cacophony of
despair that erupted across the globe as stock markets went into meltdown. The Hopi
had the last word, sure enough, but there`s no proft for prophets in this equation either
- everybody looses, and an icy chill stops up the blood of humanity a little more, as our
species burns coal instead of karma.
It`s said that any civilisation that cannot learn from its history is destined to
repeat itself. Some way south of the Hopi nation the so-called Huichol 'indians live
safely cradled between four states in the remote mountains of western Mexico. A truly
unique people, the Huichol were never infltrated by outsiders in almost 500 years
since the Spanish conquest, but instead fed from their ancestral lands in the desert of
San Luis Potos and headed for the mountains far away towards the setting sun. Hiding
out in the dry and dusty highlands and adopting a veneer of Christianity, over the years
they held strong against conquistadors, missionaries, slavers, settlers, ranchers, and the
murderous Catholic fundamentalists, Los Cristeros. For half a millennium they have
remained true to their shamanic pagan origins, embarking on a month-long journey
each year, walking back to their original habitat, the desert of Wirikuta, to harvest their
true sacrament, the psychedelic peyote cactus, which is venerated in an organic holy
trinity along with the maize and the deer. Like the Hopi, the Huichol take peyote for
its extraordinary shamanic properties, such as aiding prophecy and communing with
Nature, but the Huichol have been doing it for much much longer.
Stalwart to their tradition of harmony with nature, the Huichol also pay homage
on their annual pilgrimage to their ancient holy mountain in the eastern desert, El
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Quemado. Like the Black Mesa, El Quemado is both spiritually endowed and minerally
rich, loaded as it is with over a billion dollars worth of silver, enough to make modern
men mad with greed in the glint of its terrestrial moonlight. Like Peabody Coal, the
Canadian First Majestic Silver Corp wish to extract the precious minerals therein to
plate their own pockets and rob another indigenous group of their rightful spiritual
topography, and in the process level over 6,000 hectares of unique virgin wilderness
with dynamite and cyanide, destroying endemic fora and fauna in the process. The
peyote plant, known to have been used by indigenous people in the region for at least
5,000 years, is one of these threatened plants, and if it gets obliterated for the sake of the
developed world`s rapacity, then so does the spirit of the world`s oldest, most culturally
intact psychedelic community. And if we let this geocultural genocide happen, then
the extraordinary mystery tradition that resisted 500-years of conquest may die with
it - a unique psycho-phyto magico-spiritual cultural cosmology, probably as old as
civilisation itself.
But if so, then so what? Having only just started seriously researching
psychedelics some 60 years ago, during the last 40 of which they were prohibited to
mainstream science and medicine, we are only now in the modern world starting to
discover` the incredible healing qualities of these plants and substances, which are
potentially capable of curing a whole swathe of 21st century ills - divorce from Nature
and our own nature being chief among them.
I count myself incredibly privileged to have been able to spend time living
with the Huichol for their week-long religious festival. I was overwhelmed by a people
who, to a man, a woman, an elder, a child, have pure open hearts, extreme honesty,
zero bullshit, a genuine spiritual focus, utter reverence for Nature, and who exist in a
permanent and instantly tangible magical reality. I fasted, I danced, I processed and I
ate peyote with them, I met their Gods, I gave libations, I prayed and I wept for a people
so true of spirit and clear in intent, and I wept even more for all the poor souls of the
modern world who value money more than nature. The Huichol`s truth is beauty, and a
thing of beauty is a joy forever. If this holy mountain falls then the world becomes so
much more an ugly place - forever. We cannot let this destruction happen: No amount
of sadness can reverse the damage of greed, nor tears rebuild a mountain. No amount
of shopping malls can bring back a killed off culture. The fate of the Huichol way of
life and of humanity`s ancient psychedelic rights, rites and heritage hang by a stick of
dynamite from the empty heart of capitalism. Must it be said. Occupy Quemado!
David Luke, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology, and Director of the Ecology, Cosmos and
Consciousness lecture series at the October Gallery, Bloomsbury, London: https://www.facebook.com/
groups/150573348303481/