Attempting to unravel some of the mycelial-like myths and mysteries that pop up in the mush surrounding the magic mushroom, Dr Andy Letcher will be deconstructing the cultural history constructed around fungal cultures this month at the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series. See you all down the rabbit hole on Tuesday, 24th November at the October Gallery for a reinvigorating mycophilic gathering in true salon style.
(Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). – email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk
RSVP so that we can anticipate numbers – Please book in advance by credit card to guarantee a place or pay on the door.
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
For those who have encountered magic mushrooms, the psilocybin experience is like an ancient codex whose glyphs are at once baffling and clear. To make sense of it, each person must perform an act of translation or interpretation by which the strange is rendered familiar. But how should this be done? In the post-war period alone an original psychological framework has given way to that of mysticism, itself replaced in turn by the language of shamanism.
In this talk, Andy Letcher will encourage us to move away from the mushroom experience itself – the usual province of trip-lit –, to a consideration of how it has been interpreted throughout history. For, contrary to received wisdom, very few cultures have decoded the mushroom as we do. Along the way he will ask whether magic mushrooms bring genuine transcendence, or if the experiences they occasion forever bound by culture.
Andy Letcher is a freelance writer, academic lecturer and folk musician living in Oxford, UK. He lectures at Oxford Brookes University and Bath Spa University on subjects as diverse as neo-Paganism, shamanism, and theory in the Study of Religion. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom and Mad Thoughts on Mushrooms: Discourse and Power in the Study of Psychedelic Consciousness, published in the journal Anthropology of Consciousness. Known for his iconoclastic style, and with doctorates in both Ecology and the Study of Religion, he challenges us to question received wisdom about psychedelics and psychedelic history. A prolific song-writer, tunesmith and exponent of English Bagpipes, he fronts psych-folk band, Telling the Bees.
Many moderns will have you believe that urban sprawls are far safer than sparse deserts in terms of intra-species violence, and yet indigenous peoples, hunter gathers and shamanic tribes have long been held to offer wisdom on how to live harmoniously with Nature and one’s neighbours. What’s the reality of our so-called civilization in a war-torn age?
My good friend over at Dreamflesh, the writer, raconteur and cerebrally named Gyrus, is launching his new book exploring these very themes, War and the Noble Savage, and will simultaneously be pondering on the podium at the October Gallery on Tuesday 27th October, provoking us to consider our primal nature past, present and future.Please join us at the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series for this event and every last Tuesday of the month for wine, wit and some wanging on in true salon style.
(Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). – email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk
RSVP so that we can anticipate numbers – Please book in advance by credit card to guarantee a place or pay on the door.
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series presents:
War, Ecology and the Noble Savage – with Gyrus
Over the past couple of decades there's been a wave of revisionism, in academia and popular books, attempting to upend the hoary old idealization of the Noble Savage. From Steven Pinker's suggestion that the world today is, relatively speaking, more peaceful than it's ever been, to Steven LeBlanc's claim that no indigenous culture has ever lived sustainably, the idea that civilization itself is the source of all our ills has taken a battering.
Having just ploughed through much of the recent literature to satisfy his own curiosity, Gyrus has written a new work analyzing this recent debate, and tonight hopes to guide you through this thicket of polemics, false ideals, and dodgy statistics. Starting with a fresh look at the roots of this ideological battle in the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes, we'll go through the behind-the-scenes stories of recent scholarship.
Is the murder rate among the !Kung, the "harmless people", really higher than that of New York? Is conservation something that only the modern world has practiced? What can we actually know about the 94% of our species' existence spent as hunter-gatherers? And will Gyrus give answers, or just ask more questions? Come along and find out...
Gyrus is an independent publisher, free range scholar, and freelance web developer. In the 1990s he edited and published the rather acclaimed journal Towards 2012, and while doing so grew pretty bored of the whole 2012 thing. He may have to u-turn on this quite soon in order to cash in. His main interests are prehistoric art and culture, altered states, occultism, and everything in-between. He recently published his first collection of essays, Archaeologies of Consciousness, and abandoned the rather acclaimed journal Dreamflesh after one issue to focus on "a book". He gets by pretty well in London.
Academic interest in the odd, anomalous and outright paranormal seems to be continually growing. Hannah Gilbert, doctoral student at the Anomalous Experiences Research Unit, University of York, has organised a one-day conference entitled Exploring the Extraordinary, to be held on Halloween, of course. The entire day is spookily inexpensive at just £15 (£10 for concessions) and can be booked though Hannah (heg104 AT York.ac .uk). The line up too looks good, with two talks on drugs and the paranormal alone, I’ll be giving one of them (the talks) as usual, so hope to see you there.
Exploring the Extraordinary
10am-5pm, 31st October, 2009
W222, Wentworth College, Heslington Road, University of York
Cyberpsychics: Subjective experiences of psychic readings on the internet Tamlyn Ryan, University of York
Discarnate entities and dimethyltryptamine (DMT): Psychopharmacology, phenomenology and ontology
David Luke, University of Greenwich
Spirits and spirits: Seeing ghosts under the influence Paul Cowdell, University of Hertfordshire
Ambassadors of spirit Tony Hegarty, Liverpool John Moores University
Science, pseudoscience and the demarcation problem
Ian Kidd, University of Durham
Reproducing anomalous experiences in the laboratory: A review of some recent research developments in parapsychology Chris Roe, University of Northampton
Art: L’Ange by Gérard Quenum; Photo: Jonathan Greet
After a short summer break rather more akin to a long dark wintery teatime of the soul, the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series is back to savour the histories, mysteries and myth stories of our small universe, both inner and outer. Exploring the mossy interface between mind and Nature in a way that only a practicing witch, ex-academic and director of London’s funkiest occult bookshop can, Dr Christina OakleyHarrington will be waxing lyrically, and lunarly, at the October Gallery on Tuesday, 29th September. Please join us for wine, wit and some wanging on in true salon style.
(Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). – email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk
RSVP so that we can anticipate numbers – Please book in advance by credit card to guarantee a place or pay on the door.
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
A Witch Falls in Love with Husserl and Papaya Leaves: Pagan Gods under a Full Moon (Mind the Compost Heap)
This is a night of tales, reminiscences and reflections on three intersecting cultures in Britain today, and a few of the most challenging ideas run through them: the ecology movement, the consciousness / entheogen subculture, and the community of European Wicca. These three communities share some values: the sacredness of Nature as a living, sentient being; the value of alternative perspectives; and an appreciation of experience of the material word in its sensuous glory. The differences are less obvious, but run deep, and tonight's speaker considers these. There are so many imponderables, it can be overwhelming. Questions seem to outnumber answers, and the over-confident hardly inspire certainty in those who value nuanced insight.
How can today's European witches, reciting Shelley in BBC accents in the elegant Sussex downs, claim anything in common with Balinese medicine men? How can taking drugs make you believe you can heal others? Can you speak of The Feminine Principle and not, actually, objectify women? What difference does ritual really make (or is it just self-indulgent). What difference does recycling make, when people are dying of loneliness? Awkward questions with no easy answers show us the rough edges of these various paradigms. If anyone can see us out of this morass, she suggests, it is people like David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous, and the indications in Husserl's philosophy. And some good food and drumming. Maybe. Tonight's talk is a lecture, a stream of consciousness, a standup routine, a one-woman show.
Christina Oakley Harrington is a Wiccan priestess who has been intimately involved with modern paganism for over half her life. She was raised in West Africa and in a closed society which largely excluded Westerners in Southeast Asia. She has lived in the West since her teens. Her mother lives in the deep countryside, does organic gardening, was a pioneer in healing with vitamins and alternative health in the 1960s, and can forage for natural food. Christina herself lives in London, drinks too much coffee, struggles to identify recycling categories. She has, however, been known to recite Shelley to the blowing winds on the Sussex downs. She has a PhD in medieval history, is a former university lecturer, and is the founding director of the legendary Treadwell's Bookshop in Covent Garden.
Several years ago I read about Stan Grof's notion of genuine paranormal phenomena and other seemingly "mad" experiences occurring as a part of natural psychological healing crisis, which he and Christina Grof termed a Spiritual Emergency. Since then I have been wondering why there isn't a more visible network of professionals in the UK exploring Grof's ideas seriously or investigating mental health issues within a shamanic self-healing framework where exceptional human experiences aren’t merely ignored out-of-hand or derided as only delusory - though, obviously, in some cases they are just that.
Plugging what I perceive as an intellectual gap, it's reassuring, then, to see that Dr. Christina Simmonds-Moore and The Parapsychology Research Group at Liverpool Hope University are hosting the First Conference on Health, Mental Health and Exceptional Human Experience, for just one day, on Monday, 7th September, 2009. I’m certain it will be a fascinating event, so why not be a part of it? The speakers are:
Dr. John Gruzelier - The mind-body connection and healing
Dr. David Luke - Altered states of consciousness, mental imagery and healing
Dr. Ginette Nachman - The interface between placebo effects and non-local aspects of healing/consciousness
Dr. Carl Williams & Dr Di Dutton - A phenomenological exploration of energy healing
Dr. Eve Binks - Religious belief as a moderator of mental health
Dr. Stefan Schmidt - Meditation, exceptional experiences and mental health
Dr. Nicola Holt - Creativity, anomalous experiences and mental health
Dr. Christine Simmonds-Moore - Manipulating anomalous experiences for mental health and transcendence
Mrs. Isobel Clarke - Exceptional experiences from the clinical perspective
Dr. Martina Belz - Clinical psychology of exceptional human experiences in practice
Dr Eberhard Bauer - Counselling people with unusual experiences
Dr Ian Tierney - Clinical psychology of exceptional human experiences in the UK
The infectious weirdness of the association between DMT, Death, and the God of a Thousand Eyes that I can't stop talking or writing about appears to be a meme mutating into some unexpected mediums. Glass artistAgelos Papadakis based one of his latest exhibition pieces on the Disembodied Eyes article behind this DMT lecture, and then generously reinvigorated my recent rant in Edinburgh with some otherworldly projections. Occult wordsmith Duncan Barford, over at The Baptist's Head, also appears to have been inspired by the mutli-eyed mind-blowing muse. He's inked a curiously Cthulhoid short story fusing the parapsychopharmacology research with a juicy zombie plot to make for a strangely compelling and only minimally fictitious horror epic in miniature. Lovecraft would love it! The snippets below from The Guardian of the Threshold dangle nicely in the mind, methinks....
The Armed Response Unit has just been. I counted seventeen head-shots, but I don't think they finished the job. Usually it's quiet afterwards, but as soon as the van left the bodies were hammering on the gates again and making that moaning noise…
The absence of DMT from the living dead indicated at the very least that they had somehow bypassed the normal process of dying. It might one day lead to an understanding of why they were still walking around.Read more...
Image - Zombies storm London and take over world - www.nowpublic.com
Due to some fortuity and randomness the entheogencia poet, author and performer, Dale Pendell, happens to be gracing our shores next week and has agreed at the last minute to come and give a talk on Wednesday 22nd July for the increasingly ad hoc Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series. Being moved by the Muse in the moment (and possibly also due to the on-the-hoof spontaneousness in arranging this event) there is no accompanying blurb for Dale’s talk, but rest assured having read some of his books and seen him speak and perform I expect we are in for a shamanarchic, poethnobotanical delight of some strange and wonderful variety.
RSVP so that we can anticipate numbers – Please book in advance by credit card to guarantee a place or pay on the door.
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
Imagination and Fire: New Work and Conversation with Dale Pendell
Dale Pendell is the author of the award-winning Pharmako trilogy on shamanic ethnobotany (Pharmako/Gnosis, Pharmako/Poeia, and Pharmako/Dynamis), Inspired Madness, a book about Burning Man, and Walking with Nobby, a book of conversations with the philosopher Norman O. Brown. Works in progress include The Great Bay, a futuristic novel of a post-collapse society, and Stealing Fire, a new book of poems.
He and his wife Laura and a familiar cat live in the foothills of the Sierra in California, where they grow pine and oak trees, along with some manzanita. Their performance group, Oracular Madness, most recently appeared at Burning Man. http://dalependell.com
Having been dabbling recently with the notion of species connectedness as the intersection between psychedelics and ecology, it is both timely and encouraging to have Dr Robert Wallis come and discuss Animism from the perspective of anthropology and archaeology, last Tuesday of the month as usual - 28th July, 2009. The ongoing Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series running at the October Gallery also appears to have taken on a life of its own and so Dr Wallis’ talk fits in beautifully with the warp and the weft of our crooked path through shamanism, psychedelics, magic, wildness, petroglyphs and sacred geographies. Hope to see you there!
RSVP so that we can anticipate numbers – Please book in advance by credit card to guarantee a place or pay on the door.
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
Animism, Ancestors and Adjusted Styles of Communication: Hidden Art in Irish Passage Tombs
Studies of prehistoric art tend to objectify this ‘material’ evidence in a process of disenchantment which has limited interpretative scope. This talk will draw on the theorising of ‘new animism’ in anthropology and religious studies which moves beyond the problematic attribution of spirit to matter and anthropomorphism in the work of Tylor and in other Victorian imaginations of religion, to consider animist ontologies as those which conceive of a world which is filled with persons, only some of whom are human. I argue that this relational approach enables new, re-enchanting insights into Neolithic art in the passage tombs of the Boyne Valley in Ireland, the study of which has tended towards an anthropocentric concept of ‘the social’ and neurotheological analysis of altered states of consciousness. Animist ontologies effectively disrupt the subject/object dichotomy of Western thought, challenge reductionist neurotheology, and offer an extended understanding of agency and personhood. I focus particularly on ‘hidden art’ to demonstrate how a variety of animist ontologies (from animist-totemist to totemist-animist) may have operated at the Neolithic/Bronze Age transition.
Dr Robert J. Wallis is Associate Professor of Visual Culture and Director of the MA in Art History at Richmond University, London, and a Research Fellow in Archaeology at the University of Southampton. His research interests consider indigenous and prehistoric art in shamanistic/animic communities, and the re-presentation of the past in the present by contemporary pagans and neo-shamans. He is author of Shamans / neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans, and co-author of the Historical Dictionary of Shamanism and co-editor of Permeability of Boundaries: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Art, Religion and Folklore and, most recently, Antiquaries and Archaists: The Past in the Past, the Past in the Present. He is currently working on a monograph on art and shamanism.
Having survived and seriously enjoyed the high weirdness, droning music, wild visuals, riveting talks and fascinating films of the (oddly timed) Equinox Occult Festival this weekend I managed to poach the acclaimed writer Erik Davis to come and talk at the October Gallery. The author of cult classic TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Information Age, Erik will be taking the audience on an eloquent journey through the liminal zones of consciousness in pursuit of the imagination. Who knows what will happen if we get there. Tuesday, 30th June, as part of the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series.
RSVP so that we can anticipate numbers – Please book in advance by credit card to guarantee a place or pay on the door.
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
Erik Davis - Imagination is what you are!
One of the most vital aspects of human consciousness is the dimension of the imagination, a broad domain that can be said to include the overlapping worlds of dream, fantasy, creative visualization, hallucination, and the spectres and phantasms of the paranormal. Any genuine engagement with spirituality and religious experience must take the imagination seriously. This is also true of any attempt to engage nature on a holistic level, for it is through the imagination that nature speaks, and the wilderness without can touch the wildness within. In this talk, Erik Davis will explore different theories and practices of the imagination, and will relate them to visionary experience, magic, dreams, and our ordinary engagement with “reality.” An engaging and entertaining speaker, Davis will follow his talk with a discussion.
Erik Davis is the author of the cult classic TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Information Age, also The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape, and a critical volume on Led Zeppelin’s fourth album. A frequent lecturer at universities and festivals alike, Davis has contributed articles and essays to scores of books and publications, and posts regularly at www.techgnosis.com. He lives in San Francisco with his wife.
Given the fact that we are fast descending into the biggest wave of mass extinction in 65 million years (almost certainly most of it man made) its encouraging to see that the latest issue of the Bulletin of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is dedicated to the vital and lively relationship between psychedelics and ecology.
Ordinarily reserved for psychedelic research news, this 72-page special issue of the MAPS Bulletin has a great crop of refreshing and refoliating articles ranging from an interview with the recently deceased founder of the Deep Ecology Movement, Arne Naess (who was inspired to create the movement through his own LSD experience), to a retrospective by Harvard psychedelic psychologist, Ralph Metzner, on consciousness expansion and the birth of the 1960's green countercultre. Other contributors to this great journal, available free online, include Kat Harrison, Stanley Krippner, Greg Sams, Jeremy Narby, Dennis McKenna, Dale Pendell, John Allen, Daniel Pinchbeck, and (me of course) David Luke, along with other writers and some spectatular artwork.
"...I think that the bottom line on the evolutionary scale is that these plants are teachers... These plants are trying to teach our species about nature, and about how we fit into that. " Dennis McKenna
Interesting (perhaps even unbelievable) developments in US drug policy this week coincide nicely with this month's speaker at the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series at the October Gallery in Bloomsbury, London. Obama's newly appointed "drugs czar", Gil Kerlikowske, under the official title of Director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy has this week called for an end to the fruitless and martial rhetoric of the unwinnable "War on Drugs", calling instead for a greater focus on treatment and prevention rather than incarceration.
Kerlikowske said "We are not at war with people in this country". With over a million people currently serving as "prisoners of war" (on drugs) in the US, this comes as refreshing news and could be the single greatest human rights maneuver so far this millennium. (Thanks to Prof. Thomas Roberts for the link to the New York Times article)
Auspiciously timed then, Graham Hancock's talk (Tuesday, 26th June) will transport us back in time to more psychoactively civilized and liberal millennia to speculate about the psychedelic origins of humanity.
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL (Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). Please RSVP as space is very limited, email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
Supernatural: Did psychedelic experiences make our ancestors human?
Modern technological societies value only the alert, problem-solving state of consciousness, and have demonised trance states brought on by the consumption of psychedelic drugs. But in his book Supernatural, the background to his talk at the October Gallery, Graham Hancock presents staggering new information that experiences induced by plant hallucinogens may have played a vital role in the evolution of our species – opening our ancestors to supernatural realms and making us truly human for the first time. It all happened very recently.
Less than 50,000 years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as ‘the greatest riddle in human history’, all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. In his lecture, Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious ‘before-and-after moment’ and to discover the truth about the influences that shaped the modern human mind. His quest takes him on a journey of adventure and detection from the stunningly beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain and Italy to remote rock shelters in the mountains of South Africa where he finds a treasure trove of extraordinary Stone Age art.
He uncovers clues that lead him to travel to the depths of the Amazon rainforest to drink the powerful plant hallucinogen Ayahuasca with Indian shamans, whose paintings contain images of ‘supernatural beings’ identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves and rock shelters. And Western laboratory volunteers placed experimentally under the influence of hallucinogens such as mescaline, psilocybin and LSD also report visionary encounters with exactly the same beings. Scientists at the cutting edge of consciousness research have begun to consider the possibility that such hallucinations may be real perceptions of other ‘dimensions’.
Could it be that the human brain is not just a generator of consciousness, but also a receiver of consciousness, and could the ‘supernaturals’ first depicted in the painted caves and rock shelters be the ancient teachers of mankind? This new approach strongly suggests that human evolution is not just the ‘blind’, ‘meaningless’ process that Darwin identified, but something else, more purposive and intelligent, that we have barely even begun to understand. By criminalising and demonising the consumption of psychedelic drugs it may even be that our societies are blocking off the next vital step in the evolution of our species.
Graham Hancock is the author and coauthor of a number of best-selling investigations of historical mysteries, including Fingerprints of the Gods, Supernatural, The Sign and the Seal, Keeper of Genesis, Heaven's Mirror, The Mars Mystery, and Underworld. His books have been translated into 27 languages and have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. www.grahamhancock.com
A Harakmbut elder in his nineties talks about his memory of the first missionaries arriving to his part of the Peruvian jungle, "No one wanted to go to school, and anyway after the missionaries came, our children died. We learned things, though: we learned money and Spanish and work. We learned that we had to work for money for needs we didn't have before, matches, salt and sugar. Why were we civilized? For what were we civilized? To be taught that we needed sugar and oil and money and clothes and food from the markets, more and more."
The quote comes from acclaimed writer Jay Griffiths' book "Wild", which she will be talking about this month, April 28th, at the October Gallery.
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL (Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). Please RSVP as space is very limited, email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
The Songlines of Wildness
Jay Griffiths will talk about her book, “Wild: An Elemental Journey” which describes her journeys to wildernesses of earth and ice, water, fire and air. This book is the result of a seven-year odyssey among Native people, listening to their philosophies; meeting cannibals; anchoring a boat to an iceberg where polar bears slept; joining Inuit hunters on a whale hunt; drinking shamanic medicine with Amazonian healers; visiting sea gypsies and journeying to the freedom fighters of West Papua.
She will discuss the songlines of the earth, the paths in the Papuan highlands remembered in song, and the ethereal music of shamans, as well as the songlines of Aboriginal Australia. The talk will explore the words and meanings which shape ideas of wildness and it will illustrate the anarchic nature of wildness, as well as the kindness of what is wild, both in nature and the human mind. The talk will also explore some of the political resonances of wilderness and the corporate invasions of indigenous lands, arguing for the essential freedoms, and the necessary wildness of the human spirit, everywhere.
Jay Griffiths is the author of two works of non-fiction “Wild: An Elemental Journey” and “Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time”. She has also written a long short story, “Anarchipelago” based on the road protest movement of the 1990s. She is the winner of many awards, including the Orion prize and the Barnes and Noble award for the best first-time author. She lives in Wales.
Photo. Unknown man, unkown photographer - Papua New Guinea
It’s relatively well known that in 1924 the German psychophysiologist Prof. Hans Berger named the electroencephalograph (EEG) and was the first person to use it on humans, thereby identifying some of the different brain waves (e.g., alpha rhythms). What is not so well known is that Berger had switched from studying astronomy to studying psychology in the early 1890’s after he had a near fatal accident during which his sister apparently telepathically knew that he was in danger, and she forced her father to send Berger a telegram to check he was alright. Consequently, Berger developed the EEG to study the electromagnetic signals emitted from the brain that he believed carried the telepathic transmissions between minds.
Continuing with this tradition, the oldest continuous running organisation established to scientifically study the mind (predating any psychology bodies still in existence), the Society for Psychical Research, a body dedicated to paranormal research, is this month holding a lecture day on psi and the brain. Lectures, among several, include one on near-death psi experiences in the absence of any brain activity by Dr. Peter Fenwick, and another on the speculated psychedelic neurochemistry of psi by Dr. David Luke (yes me again). Should be a good day out.
10am – 5pm Saturday, April 25th
PSI AND BRAIN
Chair: Prof. Bernard Carr
Speakers: Dr. Peter Fenwick, Adrian Ryan, Dr. David Luke, Dr. Ian Baker and Robert Charman
What are the implications of psi for the relationship between mind and brain? Can some psychic interactions be explained by or associated with particular brain processes? If so, what physical or chemical effects on the brain are likely to trigger or accompany such interactions and what is the relationship between the brains of the people interacting? What sort of psi experiences would seem to transcend a brain-based explanation altogether?
In this Study Day, five leading experts will address these questions, placing particular emphasis on geomagnetic and neurochemical effects, EEG correlations during psychic healing and ESP experiments, and the apparent independence of the brain of near-death experiences. The meeting will end with a general discussion with audience participation.
St Philip's Church, Earls Court Rd, London W8, 10am-5pm.
Cost: Members £30 / Non-Members £35. / Students, Over 60s or Unwaged: £2 discount.
Tea, coffee and biscuits will be served, but bring your own lunch.
Advance booking is recommended, as space is limited (Tel/Fax: 0207 9378984)
Last week saw another great evening of ranting and decanting at the Old Gloucester Street Salon, sipping wine amidst stunning artwork and listening to Paul Devereux lead us down some very tangible spiritual paths on his beautifully illustrated talk about "Shamanic Landscapes".
This month, Tuesday 31st March, at the October Gallery we have one of the greatest lateral thinking scientists of our time, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, coming to talk to us about "Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature." Rupert will be giving us some fresh insights from the updated reissue of his fascinating yet shocking book "A New Science of Life", which when it was first published in the early '80s it received a review from the senior editor of the leading science journal, Nature, under the title "A book for burning?", clearly indicating an open-minded and scientifically objective reaction to new ideas.
The editor in question, John Maddox, later commented that Sheldrake was a scientific heretic as much as Galileo was a religious heretic for the pope, thereby rather absurdly condemning his own dogmatism. But Sheldrake's approach to his own rather radical ideas about the organisation of life and the location of memory is scientific and Sheldrake has been extremely vocal about trying to get scientists to test his claims, but like those who refused to look into Galileo's telescope, Sheldrake's radical hypotheses have been tested by merely a few scientists other than himself. Ex research fellow at the Royal Society, the bastion of establishment science, Rupert's most recent attempts to verify his theories have adopted a particularly parapsychological methodology and he has published numerous positive findings on his experiments into household psychic abilities such as telephone telepathy and the sense of being glared at. A definite treat.
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL (Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). Please RSVP as space is very limited, email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
A New Science of Life: Morphic Resssonance and the Habits of Nature
According to Rupert Sheldrake's hypothesis of formative causation, all self-organizing systems, including crystals, animals and societies contain an inherent memory, given by a process called morphic resonance from previous similar systems. All human beings draw upon a collective human memory, and in turn contribute to it. Even individual memory depends on morphic resonance rather than on physical memory traces stored within the brain. This radical hypothesis implies that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits, and evolution, like human life, depends on an interplay between habit and creativity.
Not content with having lived to the ripe old age of 102 before he died last year, the inventor of LSD, Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann, has reportedly announced that he is still going strong in the after life. I’ve been studying the paranormal effects of psychedelics for quite some time, but this is probably the biggest claim yet to be made for the astonishing capabilities of LSD. According to an article posted on a mediumistic circle's blog, psychedelic explorer Lucius Werthmueller travelled 400km to a séance to try and communicate with Dr. Hofmann around about the time of the late chemist’s birthday. Lucias was one of the organisers of the two recent World Psychedelic Forum conferences, which attracted over 2,000 scientific psychedelic researchers, therapists and other delegates to Basel, Switzerland for the event, and he had been a friend of Dr. Hofmann for 25 years.
During the séance it appeared as though no contact was going to be made and that Werthmueller would leave empty handed but, on the contrary, after hearing two loud raps Lucias found a wax object had “somehow softly” been placed into his hand. Inspecting the object (what is known as an “apport” in psychical research) it was found to contain a thimble with a small paper note inside on which was inscribed, “Lucius, look and beware of this wonderful nature. It lives. I live. Albert.”
As can be seen from the short video of the event, Werthmueller announced his astonishment at the message and indicated that that was just the kind of thing that Albert would write. Throughout his very long life, Dr. Hofmann (as highlighted in a new bulletin devoted to psychedelics and ecology) had always been a serious lover of nature, had had a mystical experience of nature as a child, and had been quite vocal on humanity’s ecological imperatives (so certainly the information supposedly provided by Albert was not unknown to anyone who cared to represent him… I hasten to add wearing my sceptical hat). Perhaps more impressively, the text appeared to be written in Albert’s hand and was even signed with a signature closely resembling Dr.Hofmann’s own, but perhaps only an expert graphologist can comment any further on this.
Watching the video of the séance group opening the apport I was surprised at how early the opener managed to identify a thimble inside it, whilst it was still mostly obscured, but it should be said that neither was this “sitter group” unfamiliar with the appearance of such cryptic objects at their meetings, so it may have been easily identified due to its familiarity. What is clear is that fraud cannot be ruled out, nor yet proved, and the case remains a very curious anecdote. Having lived to 102, invented LSD, discovered the chemical structure of psilocybin and psilocin (the active ingredients in certain “magic mushrooms”) and invented and discovered numerous other useful chemical compounds, perhaps Albert Hofmann is now capable of some really quite astonishing feats. I wouldn’t rule it out either. One thing is for sure, Hofmannhad long had an interest in the paranormal in relation to psychedelic substances.
A very similar case occurred, but perhaps one that is more convincing because of its accidental nature, shortly after the death of the psychedelic researcher Dr. Walter Pahnke. Best known for his infamous Good Friday experiment that practically proved that psychedelics do give rise to genuine, meaningful and long lasting mystical experiences, Pahnke had managed to obtain a PhD, an MD, a psychiatry residency, and a Masters in Divinity, ALL from Harvard, before dying in a scuba diving accident at the tender age of 40. Less well known, Pahnke had also attempted psychic experiments with participants on LSD but was unsuccessful.
During an LSD psychotherapy session with pioneering therapist Dr. Stan Grof, the late Pahnke’s wife had an apparent encounter with the spirit of Walter Pahnke and he told her that he had a book located in a particular place in their attic that he wished her to retrieve and give back to a friend of his. Quite amazingly, after the LSD therapy session Pahnke’s wife located the lost book, of course, and returned it to the late doctor’s friend. Somehow, as an anecdote of psychedelic spirits apparently communicating from beyond, I find this account rather more feasible than the Hofmann one (…if only he had given us the chemical formula to a new wonder drug instead of a postcard message…), but we’re only likely to find out the absolute truth when we all have our own permanent paranormal experience at the end of this life. Happy travels.
Having a conversation with a professor of social psychology the other day concerning the two recent papers about voodoo neuroscience (voodoo neuroscience & snake oil), I was told something like, “At its best neuroimaging can tell us something interesting things about human psychology and the brain, but at its worst its nothing more than high-tech phrenology. I think the best thing it could do however, would be to locate the part of the brain that makes neuroscientists die-hard reductionists and then have it surgically removed”. Interesting food for thought, but only if you like the taste of brains! Material reductionists, however, would have us all believe that we are deluded zombies devoid of any free will and real consciousness anyway, so perhaps they would be happy with brains on the menu after all? For anyone taking offence, remember science is a method not a belief.
This month, Tuesday 24th February, at the October Gallery we are lucky enough to have Paul Devereux come and speak about "Shamanic Landscapes" in a beautifully illustrated talk. Paul has authored oodles of great books, most recently "Mind Before Matter: Visions of a New Science of Consciousness" and a reissue of "The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia", and he has been one of the most active people in the field for many years chipping away at the bejeweled coalface of Earth Mysteries research.
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL (Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). Please RSVP as space is very limited, email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
Shamanic Landscapes
Did the ancient American Indian soul leave its mark on the land? In this profusely illustrated presentation, Paul Devereux will argue that it did by exploring a range of sacred geographies scattered through the Americas. From the Nazca lines to many other "lines", from the spirit paths of the Kogi Indians to the giant ground drawings of California and Arizona, to the vision quest places of the old shamans, to the strange "place where God sits" in Canada. And more. A unique travelogue that traces an interior journey.
Paul Devereux's main areas of interest are archaeo-acoustics (study of sound at ancient places), ancient and traditional lifeways, the anthropology and archaeology of consciousness, sacred sites and landscapes, general consciousness studies including psi phenomena, unusual geophysical events, and what are loosely termed 'earth mysteries'. This is work he has been involved with at a 'front line' level for almost four decades. Paul has published oodles of books, most recently The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia, and Mind Before Matter: Visions of a New Science of Consciousness.
In collaboration with Dr. Slawek Wojtowicz, Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna, and Dr. Ede Frecska; Dr.Rick Strassman's new book Inner Paths to Outer Space is the natural sequel to his first book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, in which Strassman documented his extraordinary medical research administering the potent endogenous psychedelic neurochemical, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), to human volunteers. After receiving intravenous injections of DMT, Strassman’s participants reported a range of exceptional phenomena from entity encounters and alien abduction-like experiences to near-death like experiences. Inner Paths considers the DMT-induced entity encounters and alien abduction-like experiences from Strassman’s research in further depth, particularly in the contexts of quantum physics, science fiction and shamanism, proposing that access to alien worlds in outer space occurs in the inner space of the psyche. A full review of the book appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
On the topic of Voodoo, there's a salty-looking exhibition just started in London last week entitled Voodoo: Hoochie choochie and the creative spirit. It's on until April, so mooch your vévé feet down to Regent Street...
The exhibition features those artists, writers and musicians who acknowledge the need to reach a heightened or 'altered state' in order to create their work. We look at the mystery of the creative act; not the inexplicable 'spark', aka inspiration, but the fire; the non-doing before the doing, the summoning up of elemental spirits from within, or without, during the preparation of some visual or musical work, some theory or idea. This welling-up or 'possession', this 'fever in the heart of man', this spirit, this spell, might sometimes be referred to as Voodoo.
Following up on an older post on the pseudoscientific appeal of neuroscience (Brain imaging: Old snake oil in new bottles?) an article due for publication in Perspectives on Psychological Science demonstrates how numerous brain imaging researchers have been fudging the books to show very strong relationships between personality correlates and specific-brain region activity. Given the already enormous complexity of the cortex, etc. and the intractable difficulty mapping the mind to the brain, it doesn’t help matters when social neuroscientists and the like just conveniently report only the most significant relationships in their studies and ignore the huge bin full of unrelated data they’ve collected.
Such selective reporting, which appears to be rife in social neuroscience according to this new research by Harold Pashler and his team at MIT and the University of California, violates principles of probability and grossly distorts what can be understood about neuropsychology, thereby painting a far brighter and clearer image of personality in the brain than the genuinely muddy picture we really have. Honing in on particular correlations is all well and good in voodoo, which works based on acausal associative principles, but in science this kind of misreporting is just mumbo jumbo. Perhaps neuroscience isn't actually any more scientific than magic, but at least voodoo sticks to its principles!
Thanks to the BPS Research Digest Blog...
Do you do Voodoo?
They are beloved by prestigious journals and the popular press, but many recent social neuroscience studies are profoundly flawed, according to a devastating critique - Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience - in press at Perspectives on Psychological Science (PDF).
The studies in question have tended to claim astonishingly high correlations between localised areas of brain activity and specific psychological measures. For example, in 2003, Naomi Eisenberger at the University of California and her colleagues published a paper purporting to show that levels of self-reported rejection correlated at r=.88 (1.0 would be a perfect correlation) with levels of activity in the anterior cingulate cortex.
According to Hal Pashler and his band of methodological whistle-blowers, if Eisenberg's study and others like it were accurate, this "would be a milestone in understanding of brain-behaviour linkages, full of promise for potential diagnostic and therapeutic spin-offs." Unfortunately, Pashler's group argue that the findings from many of these recent studies are virtually meaningless. (Read more…)
Following up on the sold-out lecture on "shamanism through the ages" that was given by Pablo Friedlander at the October Gallery at the end of November, the series of lectures on Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness we are organising continues this year, every last Tuesday of the month. Next up on 27th January is Dr. David Luke (yeah, I had to take the slot to get things started) who will be giving a talk entitled "Death, and the God of a thousand eyes". I´ll be there, obviously.
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL (Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). Please RSVP as space is very limited, email: rentals AT octobergallery.co.uk
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
This talk discusses both the scientific and the mystical understanding of people's experiences of visionary encounters with discarnate beings. In all times and places people have had profoundly real experiences of deities, demons, angels, elves, aliens, and ghosts. Sometimes these occur when a person is in altered state – dreaming, on drugs, or is near death. The connection between the altered state and the 'visitation' is explored in a vivid illustrated talk, which takes a personal tour through folklore, mythology, neurochemistry, magic, shamanism, the Luciferian witch cult, brain anatomy, Tibetan demonology, the pineal gland, art, the Reg Veda, psychoactive toads and a cauldron full of other odd ingredients. A lively slide lecture format followed by discussion.
Dr. David Luke lectures in psychology at several London universities and is a writer and researcher with a special interest in parapsychology and altered states of consciousness. He has studied paranormal phenomena and techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Hackney.
Well much like the myth of Santa Claus being based upon the shamanic use of the psychedelic mushrooms, Christmas has generously provided us with the announcement of the first official UK research project into the use of psychedelic mushrooms with humans since prohibition. After a long hiatus of about 40 years, official human research with psychedelics is about to resume in the UK following a collaboration between a leading London research institute (presently undisclosed to deter negative media) and the Beckley Foundation of Oxford, a leading drug policy think tank and foundation for the research of consciousness and its altered states.
Certain types of magic mushrooms such as Psilocybe semilanceata (known as the 'liberty cap'), in which the chemical psilocybin is found, grow naturally in the UK, one of the country’s few indigenous psychoactive plants. Yet the consumption of dried mushrooms in the UK has been illegal for decades and, tying up a loophole in the law, the picking and consumption of fresh psilocybin-containing mushrooms was made illegal in 2005.
Resuming the scientific psychedelic research that was stopped by prohibition virtually the world over in the late 1960s, the Beckley Foundation (logo pictured above) has initiated a research project at a leading London academic institution into the potentially beneficial effects of psilocybin on psychophysiology and consciousness.
The project is entitled “A study investigating changes in blood flow and remote memory access brought about by psilocybin” and aims to investigate the reported effects that psilocybin has in helping people access forgotten memories, which, along with the profound mystical experiences that can be occasioned with psilocybin may have great potential in helping people in psychotherapy, particularly for resolving trauma-related anxiety disorders, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
In their Christmas newsletter the Beckley Foundation wrote “This study will investigate, with the latest brain imaging technology, both the changes in cerebral blood flow brought about by psilocybin and how psilocybin affects regional activation and emotional responses. In so doing, this study will help inform the psychotherapeutic applications for this fascinating and important compound.”
At Christmas time it is always worthwhile pondering the origins of certain myths, such as our dear old philanthropic friend Santa Claus. Over the years similarities have been made between Santa’s antics and the activities of Siberian shamans, who consume the red and white-spotted psychedelic mushroom, Amanita muscaria, for 'magical' purposes.
For instance it is known that reindeer eat the mushroom and that eating the flesh or even drinking the urine (the liver transforms the mushrooms’ ibotenic acid into the even more psychoactive muscimol) of such ‘flying’ reindeer can give rise to 'profound' changes in consciousness. So not only do the reindeer fly, but with their help so can the Siberian shaman. One of the roles of the shaman is to bring back wisdom and healing from the other side (the underworld or the upperworld), and these can be considered as 'gifts' for the health of the community. So why does Santa wear that silly red and white outfit, and why is he helped by elves? Surely there can’t be anything shamanic about old Santa,... can there?
Beautifully weaving together all the various tales of parapsychology, anthropology, archaeology, altered states, belief, magic and culture that thread this blog together like the tails of the snakes in the mudusa's hair, the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness is next year bringing together all my favourite stories for its annual conference.
Set in the idyllic setting of the entrance to Columbia Gorge in Portland, Oregon, the theme for April's conference of 'Bridging Nature and Human Nature' mingles ecopsychology with parapsychology, anthropology with folklore, mythology with dreaming, psychedelics with species-connectedness, and a wealth of other healthy confluences all into one happy pot. Still accepting submitted papers until January 9th, the meeting runs from April 1-5th and looks set to be unique. I certainly hope to go, so I hope to see you there.
1. The History and Future of Ecopsychology 2. Bateson, Postmodernism and Shamanism 3. Entheogens and the Legacy of Albert Hofmann 4. Cross-Cultural Inquiries of Eco-Dreaming and Eco-Anthropology 5. Mind/body Approaches to Biomedicine and Medical Anthropology 6. Psi and Species-Connectedness 7. Mythology, Folklore 8. Poetry and Ecocriticism 9. Landscapes of Consciousness and Paleolithic Cave Art 10. Ethnomethodology.
Seems it's psychedelic season in London after all, and all with a nice parapsychological twist. Next month at my favourite London boookshop, Treadwells, Dr. Ornellla Corazza will be giving a talk on her PhD research on ketamine and near-death experiences. I won't be there, unfortunately, because I'll be in Ecuador doing my own parapsychopharmacological research, but I was lucky enough to catch a similar talk by Ornella back at the beginning of last year, which I wrote a review of for the Paranormal Review.
10 December 2008 (Wednesday) Near Death Experiences Exploring the Mind-Body Connection Ornella Corazza (SOAS) £5.00 in advance 7.15 for 7.30 start
In this illustrated slide lecture, Dr Ornella Corazza will share the fruits of her groundbreaking research on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). Along with the reports and studies of NDEs, she refers to accounts of sessions with the powerful dissociative drug, ketamine, and draws from contemporary Japanese philosophies of embodiment to argue against the traditional "survivalist" interpretation of NDEs and offers us a new perspective on what human life is and also what it can be.
Ornella Corazza, PhD, is a NDE researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. In 2004-5 she was a member of the 21st Century Centre of Excellence Program on the Construction of Death and Life at the University of Tokyo. She teaches on the Lampeter MA on The Body: Eastern and Western Perspectives. Academic publications include Remember (2006), on ritual practices in North-East Italy. Her latest is Near-Death Experiences: Exploring the Mind-Body Connection (2008). She lives and works in London.
