Vicious savages or progessive primitives?

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 27^th 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.

October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL

(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.

DMT and Death meme mutates into zombies

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 artist Agelos 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

“Hofmann’s alive!” – LSD Chemist talks from beyond

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, Hofmann had 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.

Photograph: Dean Chamberlain - www.deanchamberlain.com

Thanks to Andreas for the link

Inner paths to outer space

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.

Death, and the God of a thousand eyes

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.

Thanks to Alex Grey for the image

The beyond within: Ketamine and the near-death experience (NDE)

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.

Day of the Dead

Brace yourselves for a night of magic, ancestor veneration, voodoo, visionary art and music, brought to you by those titans of weirdness and bastions of peculiarity - Strange Attractor, Dreamflesh and Liminal Nation. Themed talks on altered states, magic, death and the archaeology of consciousness by Gyrus, Donal Ruane and Dr David Luke, and Voodoo shamanigans by Stephen Grasso. Raagnagrok All Stars will be providing sonic succor and sustenance. Saturday, 1st November, 7pm till late at the Horse Hospital, London. It's likely to sell out so reserve a place, below the flyer, by flying to the place below...

Day of the Dead

Goodbye Mum!

I hope the show is just as good on the other side...

Is it goodbye or is it welcome back?
Eternity makes love to hapless time
We just stand still while racing down the track
At once something here, at once just sublime
At once a mother, a daughter, a wife
All sunrise, all moonlight, all day, all night
All of everything that becomes a life
Breathing out pure love, breathing in delight
Assembled from the dust of infinite stars
Merely composed of everything that shines
Everything of our gods is also ours
We’re the grapes when we drink the finest wines
Death is the life that living cannot lack
Is it goodbye or is it welcome back?