The Great Elf Debate

Six hundred fractal thank yous to everyone (yep, 600 folk) who made it along to Canterbury at the beginning of April for the extraordinary Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness extravaganza, Breaking Convention. After a sleepless few days chipping away at the coalface of the new neurochemical renaissance there emerged a number of legendary quotes, cries of an epic and historic weekend, oodles of inspired blog reviews and even the odd manifesto manifesting online - all of which have been assembled here for your delight.

Attempting to bring as many of the departed Breakeros back together again, the ECC salon will now resume this Tuesday 19th April (tomorrow) at the October Gallery, Bloomsbury, London, in an effort to bridge the hyperdimensional divide between Kent's Breaking Convention and Daimonic Imagination with The Great Elf Debate, which will be led, widdershins, by Dr David Luke with help from friends. Elves, induced by DMT or otherwise, are of course a hot topic on Psychopraxis.

The Great Elf Debate

Dr David Luke + friends + you

Tuesday, 19^th April, 2011

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

Please RSVP on Facebook (afraid so) so that we can anticipate numbers – Please pay on the door.

Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available

A few saucy comments and mischievous taunts and counter-taunts to get the ball rolling on the ontology of elves and then over to the good people of the floor to take the debate on a merry dance. We'll throw in some DMT, mushrooms, aliens and preying mantises into the faerie ring for good measure and then probe the audience for some thoughts on imps, piskies, gnomes, self-transforming machine elves and possible pro bono proctologists. Representatives from the Social Constructivist quad and from Tir Na Nog will be on hand to stir the pot.

Dr David Luke directs and curates the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series at the October Gallery, which occasionally zoops off in new and interesting co-creative directions like the Breaking Convention. He has often considered taking McKenna up on his elfin call for creating an embassy for the invisible but is really just too busy being a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich, the President of the Parapsychological Association, a Research Associate of the Beckley Foundation, a guest lecturer on the transpersonal masters at the University of Northampton, and an explorer of lost pirate utopias. He hasn't written a single book but promises to finish editing the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness anthology very soon.

Consciousness, creativity and the quest for human happiness

Well at least I have an excuse now for my general lack of content here at psychopraxis recently. For the last few months I’ve been a busy cyber-elf helping source articles for the new edge cutting blog and website on consciousness, creativity and culture – Brainwaving.com

Established and created by the UK’s leading charitable foundation for research into altered states of consciousness and drug policy, the Beckley Foundation, the excellent (imho) new site features hard-hitting articles, films and documentaries on everything from parapsychology and ecology to drug policy, politics, the internet and the future of reality itself. Check it out.

According to the Beckley Foundation’s founder and director, Amanda Feilding… “Our world is changing fast, to adapt successfully we must have our wits about us. We must both maximise our access to the most useful and interesting information and optimise our consciousness, loosening the mind in the quest for better solutions. The Beckley Foundation was set up to investigate consciousness and its full range of altered states. It has a strictly academic, scientific approach to consciousness, how better to understand it and thus how to manipulate it in the quest for enhancing human happiness. The purpose of the new site Brainwaving.com is to expand the Beckley’s reach, to be an Exchange, thereby covering new areas not currently included in the scientific approach of the Beckley Foundation, and reaching new audiences, particularly the young.

The website will be an exchange of interesting information and ideas with the purpose of exploring love, creativity and the quest for human happiness. It will aim to be entertaining and illuminating. We expect it to evolve as it goes along. We see it as an information exchange for people interested in consciousness, evolution and a better world. We hope that with the collaboration of friends and fellow travellers, we will bring together a stimulating train of knowledge and ideas.

Around the world, there are many millions of people who are looking for commonsense solutions to the urgent problems facing humanity. But to see these solutions, we must free ourselves from the constricting shackles of redundant concepts. Brainwaving.com aims to provide a platform on which new ideas can be explored. It can be seen as an intellectual Go-board, an evolving web for the exchange of fresh thoughts at the frontiers of our cultural outreach.”

Taking the mush out of mushrooms: Forthcoming Letcher lecture

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, 24^th November at the October Gallery for a reinvigorating mycophilic gathering in true salon style.

Making Sense of Magic Mushrooms

Dr Andy Letcher

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

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.

Shamanimism

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!

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

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.

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

Santa rides 'high' on (mushroom) clouds

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?

more!

Are we being kept in the dark about the nocturnal chemistry of the pineal?

It was 50 years ago this week that news broke from Yale that they had isolated a new hormone from the pineal gland, which they did not know the function of but which lightened the shade of skin when tested in frogs. They called it “melatonin”. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) was found to be endogenous (made in the body) and yet, largely because DMT is a legally controlled psychoactive substance and has been seriously under-investigated as a consequence, it still remains essentially hypothetical that it also created within the pineal gland. I gave a talk a couple of nights ago about the extraordinary experiential effects of taking DMT and the possible ontology of the entities commonly encountered with this substance, be they elves, aliens, demons, gods or angels.

The talk was sold out and people were turned away (although another talk has been planned), but the people who were present, some of whom were mental health professionals, were very curious to know what research was being done into the role of DMT in mediating mental health. DMT having once been a contender for potentially explaining the occurrence of certain mental disorders I was loathe to admit that, since the 1970s, prohibition has curtailed practically all psychedelic research with humans (although the tide is now turning) and virtually no studies have been done into the position of DMT in mediating mental health. However, the recent discovery of trace amine receptors in the brain for which DMT shows greater affinity for than does serotonin – its more common neuro-amine cousin – has lead to a paper in Medical Hypotheses by Michael Jacob and David Presti speculating on the role of DMT in mediating mental health and may lead to a resurgence of interest in this simple yet extremely potent endogenous chemical. Psychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia have been linked to irregular levels of trace amines.

Also appearing in Medical Hypotheses, but 20 years ago, was a proposal by Jayce Callaway that, at night, serotonin becomes converted into DMT by the pineal gland and plays a central role in activating dreams. Are we being kept in the dark about our own nocturnal chemistry? Currently, although the role of melatonin in the regulation of circadian patterns is now far more understood than it was 50 years ago, the function and even the very presence of DMT in the pineal gland remains a mystery that threatens to challenge much of what we understand about consciousness, and yet remains actively ignored as a topic of legitimate scientific research because of its taboo status. Currently there are at least two very important questions that need answering about DMT. Why should substances that activate extremely potent mystical-type experiences be naturally occurring in the human brain, and why if they are present in our own brain are they placed in the most punitive legal category for controlled substances, thereby making everybody criminals?

References and links:

Callaway, J. C. (1988). A proposed mechanism for the visions of dream sleep. Medical Hypotheses, 26, 119-24.

Jacob, M. S., & Presti, D. E. (2005). Endogenous psychoactive tryptamines reconsidered: An anxiolytic role for dimethyltryptamine. Medical Hypotheses, 64, 930-937.

DMT elves and higher-dimensional space

Coming back to the endless and unresolved issue of DMT entities, I thought it only reasonable to make mention of one of the seminal articles on the topic. Originally published in Psychedelic Monographs and Essays #6 in 1993, the article by Peter Meyer entitled “Apparent Communication with Discarnate Entities Induced by Dimethyltryptamine” puts forward a discussion of DMT entities, including elves, that accepts their existence at face value. Advancing on the proposal by Evans-Wentz that elves occupy “…a supernormal state of consciousness into which men and women may enter temporarily in dreams, trances, or in various ecstatic conditions”, Meyers suggests that “…the faerie world studied by Evans-Wentz and the space into which one may enter under the influence of DMT are parts of a common higher-dimensional space which transcends and encompasses consensus reality as understood at present”. As such, for Meyer, the DMT elves are real denizens of hyperspace. The entire article, later revised by Meyer, is well worth a read.

DMT elves not fond of maths apparently

In further consideration of the Rodriguez paper on how to test the reality of DMT entities, it would be instructive to consider James Kent’s essay on The Case Against DMT Elves. Rodriguez suggests that we can ask the entities to give up some information that we don’t already know, in this case the answer to a maths problem, and the entity can then tell someone else on DMT later. Trouble is, according to Kent (who has tried something similar himself), the DMT entities are not so keen on helping out, which doesn't seem very sporting…

…the more I experimented with DMT the more I found that the "elves" were merely machinations of my own mind. While under the influence I found I could think them into existence, and then think them right out of existence simply by willing it so. Sometimes I could not produce elves, and my mind would wander through all sorts of magnificent and amazing creations, but the times that I did see elves I tried very hard to press them into giving up some non-transient feature that would confirm at least a rudimentary "autonomous existence" beyond my own imagination. Of course, I could not. Whenever I tried to pull any information out of the entities regarding themselves, the data that was given up was always relevant only to me. The elves could not give me any piece of data I did not already know, nor could their existence be sustained under any kind of prolonged scrutiny. Like a dream, once you realize you are dreaming you are actually slipping into wakefulness and the dream fades. So it is with the elves as well. When you try to shine a light of reason on them they dissolve like shadows.

More of… The Case Against DMT Elves

Asking DMT entities to solve maths homework... not as weird as it sounds?

Following on from the trialogue on the ontology of Discarnate Entities by Sheldrake, McKenna and Abrams, I thought it topical to put up a link to a recent paper in the Journal of Scientific Exploration that proposes a methodology for studying the reality of DMT entity encounters. For those who don’t know, DMT is an extremely potent psychedelic substance that is found naturally in the human brain and which, if consumed, quite often gives rise to the meeting of extraordinary entities. Although these meetings generally take place in one’s “mind space” (whatever that is) they are of such an ineffable and numinous nature that many people tend to be convinced of the reality of the seemingly sentient beings that they meet, often causing considerable turbulence to one’s sense of what reality really is.

Grossly simplified, the admirable article by Marko Rodriguez proposes obtaining from the entities solutions to complex mathematics puzzles that the DMT experient does not know. Regrettably, this ingenious method for testing the independent existence of entities encountered on DMT is subject to a number of flaws, not least of which are the huge assumptions involved in expecting our supposed hyper-intelligent beings actually having the desire to cooperate and make themselves proven (let alone the DMT experient’s capability to ask them). The most crippling problem for his test, however, is what is known as the "super-psi hypothesis"; an issue long proved difficult to surmount in parapsychological attempts to validate the existence of discarnate entities considered spirits of the dead, e.g. those apparently communicating via trance mediums.

The problem is that, because clairvoyance, telepathy and precognition (collectively called psi) have no theoretical (or even apparent) limits, it always remains a possibility that any information provided by ostensibly discarnate entities may actually be due to the “super” psi of the person (e.g., the medium) receiving the information. One of the most cogent articles on the super-psi hypothesis in relation to survival after death comes from Prof. Stephen Braude and also appeared in the Journal of Scientific Exploration several years earlier in 1992. Anyway here’s the abstract of the Rodriguez paper and a link to the full pdf.

A Methodology for Studying Various Interpretations of the N,N-dimethyltryptamine-Induced Alternate Reality

N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, is an endogenous psychoactive chemical that has been shown through repeated human subject experimentation to provide the subject with a perception of an ‘alternate reality’. When administered a sufficient DMT dose, subjects have reported the presence of intelligent beings that do not appear to be the projections of their subconscious in the Freudian sense. Furthermore, and of particular interest to this article, many subjects believe that the percieved alternate reality is persistent in that it exists irrespective of their subjective momentary perception. Past research into the DMT-induced alternate reality comes solely from subject testimonies and to date, no analysis has been conducted to understand the objective aspects of these extraordinary subjective claims. This article provides a methodology for studying the nature of the DMT-induced alternate reality by means of various simple information theory experiments. These experiments can be used to test which of the presented interpretations of the DMT-induced alternate reality appears most plausible.

Trialogue on discarnate entities

Concordant with a talk I gave a couple of weeks ago about DMT and discarnate entities, Rupert Sheldrake (just for a change) has just announced the online release of the ninth in the series of trialogues between Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham and, well, Rupert Sheldrake of course. The three heavy weight thinkers conduct one of their classic brain-offs and rap about entities in all their glorious (dis) incarnations, be they angelic or psychedelic. Mckenna's call for an embassy for the invisible has a certain appeal...

Are disincarnate and non-human entities mental projections or non-physical, autonomous entities? What can we learn from them? Their variety and persistence in human history. Early modern science and angelic communication. The shamanic model. The aversion to the irrational in Christianity and science. The need to analyze the entities’ messages. A mathematical model of body, soul and spirit. Entities as inhabitants of the spiritual domain of the logos. The evolution of their multifarious representations. The dogma of purgatory. Contacting these entities through dreams and psychedelics. The deepest layers of the faery tradition. Metaphors of light? Entities as artificers and their use of language. Is the world soul behind these entities?

Part one of two