A Witch Falls in Love with Husserl and Papaya Leaves

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 Oakley Harrington will be waxing lyrically, and lunarly, at the October Gallery on Tuesday, 29^th September. Please join us 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

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.

Spiritual Emergency: Mental health coming out of parapsychology

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

Image: Pablo Amaringo

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

Bard medicine: Psychedelic plant poetry blossoms in London

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.

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

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

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.

In pursuit of the Imagination

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, 30^th June, as part of the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series.

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

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.

Entheogens and Ecology: How green are psychedelic plants?

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

Psychedelic human origins and the war on drugs

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

The Songlines of Wildness

Where is wildness and wilderness these days?

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