Alchemists' Guild

Graham Hancock on the Joe Rogan Video Blog

2011-10-10T09:41:00.000-05:00

Terrence McKenna and Rupert Sheldrake

2011-09-24T09:25:00.004-05:00

Great discussion about our holographic universe.

Chapel Perilous Releases New Album

2011-05-28T15:00:00.003-05:00

Chapel Perilous has made their 2010 release "Near Birth Experience" available for free listen and download. There are rumors of a new album landing this summer!

Bucky Fuller

2011-03-07T12:27:00.001-06:00

This is a great film about Mr. Bucky Fuller!

Inequality in America

2011-02-23T01:36:00.002-06:00

Richard Feynman Thinks Out Loud

2009-12-16T10:46:00.005-06:00

"It is fun to imagine jiggling atoms! Mr. Feynman tell me more."

siriusfnord's new work

2009-10-13T10:59:00.000-05:00

Thumb Print of God

2009-07-30T09:53:00.004-05:00

"You know at once that this is not a mess." ...Alan Watts

A Fractal Theory of the Origin and Meaning of the Universe
Excerpt and Adaptation From R.C.L.'s book: Laws of Wisdom

All of reality, from the smallest microcosmic sub-atomic particle, to the largest galactic cluster, seems to follow the same basic fractal structures - structures based on number and dimensions. Looking at the big picture of nature, we see an evolution of consciousness, from small systems or entities of consciousness, to progressively larger and more complex consciousness. There seems to be a basic drive which compels all conscious entities on an upward spiral of ever expanding consciousness, and coherent intelligence. We all seem to have an innate need to evolve to ever more expansive and integrated fields of consciousness, to ever larger coherent databases of processed information. Conscious beings are like fractals evolving to ever greater scales of magnitude. Along the way we follow the same basic patterns, but at each stage there are some unique variations. This variety adds spice to life, spice which can easily lead to confusing chaos, to an over load of data, if you do not know the underlying patterns, the basic laws. But if you know what to look for, the key fractal structures, you can look beyond the millions of trees and start to see the forest, the unity behind the great diversity of nature.

Looking at the big picture you can see how evolution follows in a general way the eight basic structures inherent in all conscious fractals: the three realms and the four functions, plus awareness. In Nature this takes the form of the three scales of the cosmos (the microcosmos, mesocosmos and macrocosmos) and the five dimensions (awareness underneath consciousness is the zero dimension, plus the first, second, third and fourth dimension).

DIMENSIONS MICROCOSM MESOCOSM MACROCOSM

ENERGY INFORMATION MASS

SPACE NUMBER TIME

______________________________________________

0 Quanta God Universe

1 Photon Man Galaxy

2 Electron Animal Sun

3 Atom Plant Earth

4 Molecule Mineral Moon

Try and understand this over all concept of evolution by first considering the left column, then the right column, and only then the middle column. The left column is spatial, the right column is temporal. Both go downwards as the descending rays of creation. The middle is the ascending ray of negentropy.

The left spatial ray of creation shows the involution of diminishing energy on a microcosmic scale controlled primarily by electromagnetism. Energy becomes more involved with matter and self organizes itself into ever larger and more constricted systems. Going from the zero to the fourth dimension energy becomes more symmetrical, diminished and predictable taking on the characteristics of solid matter. The microcosmic world is unfathomably small, and is only visible to Man with microscopes, if at all.

The right temporal ray of creation goes down showing the dependency and interconnectedness of matter controlled primarily by gravity. The macrocosm pertains to size scales much larger than Man. The middle mesocosmic column goes up as the counterpointal ascending ray to the microcosm and macrocosm. It shows the evolution of life forms of increasing complexity of Self Organization and decreasing symmetry. It pertains to information, number and the word. The mesocosm is the size scale of the world of Man.

The quantum of action which begins the left spatial column has infinite potentiality and energy, but no extension. (Yes, I know there is no "particle" named quanta!) The first full step in the involution of energy into form is the Photon which has about a billion electron volts of energy. It can travel in any direction, which can never be predicted, but it is submitted to the velocity of light, 186,000 miles per second. There is only one kind of Photon; it has unit spin and no charge.

Next are the Electrons, which come in pairs with opposite spin, and the other nuclear particles. While the exact position of an electron can never be predicted, even when it is trapped in an atom, its directions of travel are constricted by the shells of the atoms and by relations between the nuclear particles. The nuclear particles have half-spin and are charged either positively, negatively or neutral. The nuclear particles have more symmetry and less freedom than the Photon.

The next step in the scale is the atom; it has a nucleus and seven shells. The fractal recursion with the seven states of consciousness and awareness is obvious. The hydrogen atom has about 10 electron volts of energy. There are around a hundred kinds of atoms with various kinds of chemical properties. Again the atoms have more symmetry and less freedom than the nuclear particles.

The final step in involution is the molecule which on an average has about 1/25th of an electron volt of energy and comes in three forms: metal, salt and crystal. It has total symmetry but comes in countless variety with many kinds of properties.

The molecular level is where the direction turns and life originates and begins an evolutionary trek backwards to less and less symmetry and more freedom. But where did all of the energy come from in the first place to begin the process of matter and then life?

Current scientific understanding of the origin of the material Universe in time is called the "Big Bang" theory. It is the creation story of the "Myth of Science," the dominant belief system of modern culture. The Big Bang cosmology is remarkably similar to the ancient Hindu origin myth known as the "Breath of Brahman." Under the Big Bang theory the current space-time Universe was created in a unfathomably large explosion which occurred about 15 billion years ago. At the moment of origin all of the Universe, all matter and energy, existed together in total order and symmetry, called by scientists the "Great Singularity." Then the Universe exploded in the Big Bang, or exhalation of the breath of Brahman, and all started moving away from each other as the directions and time began. The Great Singularity began to break up. Space and the different elements began to be formed. With this first breath a countervailing rhythm of arithmetic expansion and geometric contraction began.

We are still in the early stages of the expansion of the Universe where all Galaxies are receding from each other at the speed of light. This is the exhalation of Brahman. Expansion occurs as arithmetical electromagnetic growth. At the same time the force of contraction grows with the geometrical growth of gravitation.

Under one theory the expansion of matter and energy away from the center explosion point is preceded by black spheres. Where they meet, the Galaxies originate fractally. Billions of galaxies have been and will continue to be formed as the Universe expands. Within each galaxy billions of stars then form. In one such galactic arm, the Milky Way, our star the Sun is located. Around the stars planets are then formed and orbit the star. At this time it is not known whether all stars have planets, or only some, but it is known that many planets circulate around our star. The third planet from the Sun is our Earth. Most of the planets in turn have their own smaller bodies, or moons, which circulate around them. We have a single Moon which revolves around the Earth. This macrocosmic expansion process takes trillions of years, as billions of galaxies, stars, planets and moons are formed.

Eventually the force of gravitational contraction will equal that of electromagnetic expansion, the maximum size of the Universe will be reached, and the creative process wherein new galaxies, stars, planets and moons are formed will finally come to an end. The equilibrium point is the pause between the exhalation and inhalation of the Cosmic Breath. After that the geometric force will begin to exceed the arithmetical, the direction will reverse, and the Universe will begin contracting; the inhalation of the breath of Brahman will begin. As all matter and energy converges, Black Holes will be created with greater frequency, and ultimately the entire Universe will be drawn together again into a single point, a vast black hole into which all space-time will inhale. This final Omega Point, the end, may in turn produce another Big Bang wherein Brahman takes a new breath and a new Universe is formed. If the law of fractal recursiveness holds true, the new Universe will repeat certain basic forms, but it will do so with new and unique variations and differences.

Illustration of the Big Bang Theory

Microcosm and macrocosm are not causes, but parameters of evolution. The world of Man between the macrocosm and microcosm is called the mesocosm. This is the digital field of Information and Number. Here living consciousness evolves into progressively higher levels of complex Self Organization, higher and more sophisticated information systems. It proceeds from the mineral world, to plant, animal, Man, up to the Great Singularity, the subject of the Universe, God - the Ultimate Mainframe. These are stages of expanding integration of consciousness into individual being, expanding coherences of data. The stages parallel the involution of energy according to the dimensions.

The ability to organize, to make sense of data and information, comes from within the conscious being itself. It is not imposed on the being from outside forces, and so scientists call this the Self Organizing principle or Auto Poiesis. Although the inherent ability to self organize is not predetermined, or governed by outside forces, at each level its evolution seems to follow the patterns of one of the four chaotic attractors.

# Point like Attractor - Crystal.
# Circuit/Cycle Attractor - Plant.
# Torus Attractor - Animal.
# Strange Attractor - Man.

The four attractors create cosmos out of chaos; "God" is both their origin and aim. The quantum after reaching the molecular stage is a parcel of God which thereafter incarnates as a separate self organized entity on the Mesocosmic level. In that sense we are all Information, intelligent bits of data, organizing and reorganizing, in and out of cyberspace!

Self organized consciousness evolves upward on the mesocosm. Starting in the crystal form, viruses and the genetic code, an ascension begins of greater degrees of conscious integration - more and more intelligent Information. Entities organize themselves into ever more complicated and ornate systems. The life forms evolve and adapt and bring coherence to larger systems in new ways as the creation of the Universe continues, and the information processing advances. With each stage of the evolutionary ladder of self organization one direction of symmetry is lost and one level of freedom is gained.

4. The crystal has complete symmetry. The Point Attractors allow the energy in inorganic molecules to self organize as organic molecules, to cross the bridge from the microcosm of lifeless molecules and energy, to the mesocosm of living crystals. With crystals, both organic and inorganic, everything is attracted to a single point, all line up in perfect order. All three axes, up and down, right and left, front and behind are the same; the molecules are in perfect symmetric order. The microcosmical geometric structure is balanced by the Moon, the weather it produces, and the four states of matter: solid, fluid, gaseous or fire. At the crystalline level the essential code controlling all further life formation is created, the DNA/RNA life structure. Life then uses these crystalline forms of amino acids to grow in size by cellular division, by scaling and multiplication. It preserves the essential data of the life forms and passes the information down through the generations

3. The plant looses one symmetry: the vertical, up/down symmetry. The cycle attractors allow the simplest crystalline life forms to self organize to a higher form of consciousness where greater freedom is possible and more information can be processed. The top of the plants, the crown, differs from the roots, and the two are connected by the stem. Now only the left and right and front and back axes of a plant remain symmetrical. This is called radial or cylindrical symmetry: two axes of symmetry. Trees alternate between seed and gestalt, with the axis of all plant life pointing to the earth, and its energy received directly from the Sun through photosynthesis. There is a vertical flow back and forth, from the leaves to the roots and visa versa, according to the cycle attractor.

2. Under the influence of the Torus attractors the next stage in the evolutionary ladder, the animal, was reached. The animal has again freed itself of another symmetry, the front/back symmetry, with front as nourishment and back as excrements. The front and rear of animals are different, as are the top and bottom, but the right and left of animals remains symmetrical. This is bilateral symmetry with one axis of symmetry. The animals feed on plants and each other, and are directed by the four drives: nourishment, fear, aggression and reproduction in the double frame of survival and species instinct. Animals follow the Torus attractor, they engage in complex behaviors and information processing, and are dependent upon each other and the environment in multileveled ecological systems.

1. Around 11,000 years ago the first Neolithic Man evolved from Paleolithic animal Man. From that time on we have had the potential to shed the last right-left symmetry by taming the Strange attractors.

Since the human life stage is relatively new, it is not surprising that we are still born with the animals right-left axis of symmetry and must strive to attain true Humanity. Although there are some differences in the symmetry of the human face, overall we are as left-right symmetrical as the other animals. But with our neocortex abilities, our capacities of language and number, we can self organize out of this last constraint. This is now beginning to happen on a global scale. Human kind is moving into a digital culture. We are learning to feed on Information itself, shifting the focus of our economies from agriculture and industry, to the coherent processing and communication of Information.

One of the keys to continued creative self organization is the coherent application of chance to ride the strange attractors. In this way we can use both the brains we are born with, the left and right hemispheres of the neocortex. The left hemisphere, turned to the cosmos and structure is digital, linear. The right hemisphere, turned towards chaos and chance has its origin in the nine numerals, the archetypes of fractal scaling. Each should be allowed to develop fully, to be different and totally asymmetrical. When the right brain is as strong as the left, a higher identity is created - new levels of information are processed and assimilated into our being. The higher self follows the Strange attractors, epitomized by Mandelbrot set, and also corresponding to the musical octave and the Tao symbol.

Most of us are still right left symmetrical because our left brain so totally dominates the right. We have to shift our emphasis from cosmos to chaos, from left brain dominance, to right brain balance. Then the right is not just an imitation of the left, it is different, unique. The entirely new vistas of data open up to us. The last symmetry is gone and the two asymmetrical sides can then cohere in a new singularity.

Right brain coherence comes through receptivity to the workings of the Strange attractors, to constrained chance. In the moments when this is realized, when we are in a coherent flow with the unpredictable turbulence of the World, we have attained the birthright of Man. We have realized the potential to self organize to a higher stage of evolution. As a whole being, in touch with both sides of ourself and others, we transcend the left-right animal symmetry. With two fully developed, yet distinctly different brains, we are autonomous, asymmetrical, truly free from outside manipulation. We have attained a higher inner coherence, a self organization in the midst of chaos. We surf the tidal wave of information - with comprehension, not fear. To animal man we seem like Strange attractors indeed. On the surface, and in the moment, our actions may appear haphazard and foolhardy, but over time the wisdom and beauty of the Human Man will be apparent to all. The beauty of the Information Age will shine!

0. The highest stage, beyond even the higher Man, is merger with God, the Great Singularity beyond name and form, as the real subject of Being, through synchronicity, love, and illumination: reaching the eternal moment - the infinite.

The five stages correspond to the dimensions (0-4) and mind layers:

4 Sleep Mineral Molecule

3 Dream Plant Atom

2 Reflection Animal Electron

1 Waking Man Photon

0 Awareness God Quanta

Zero dimension Awareness makes possible integration of the four dimensions and the four states of consciousness. It allows Man to enter the fourth dimension and gives him access to the fractal forces of the Strange attractors.

By moving from the left to the right brain in regression you can relive past lives, past evolution, back to the origin of the Universe in the Great Singularity, and the exploding force of the primal Fire-Quanta. This regression back to the original primal Quanta is one way to get in touch with the source of Self-Organization, the Power of CHI. When you have tapped your inner powers, your CHI, by opening yourself to your entire brain, both right and left, you will have the energy and force needed to maintain coherence in the fractal chaos of the fourth dimension. This is the key to riding the flood waves of information, instead of being drowned by it. CHI provides you with the processing power and speed you need to deal with reality, and the continual flood of new information which it brings.

Lest you think all this is radical and new, think again. Although the scientific information is new, the basic insights are ancient. A very old aphorism, popularized about a hundred years ago by the German philosopher Schelling, said it all:

God sleeps in the Minerals,
Dreams in the Plants,
Thinks in the Animals,
And Awakes in Man.

So, awaken, fellow Internet surfer! Dive into the turbulent waters of the Strange Attractor, and self organize to a higher level of Information processing.

The First Key

2009-07-05T23:09:00.002-05:00

ENOCHIAN TEMPLES: ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST ENOCHIAN KEY

(The following section fits into the "Symbols and Visualiza-
tions" section of Enochian Temples at point 3. It was delet-
ed from the published version to save space.)

The first Enochian Key or Call is a recapitulation of the steps by
which the creator of the system brought it into being. The Key follows
the same macrocosmic-to-microcosmic progression used in the example
consecration ritual, but then supplements this with a response from
the microcosm directed at the macrocosm. Note that the description of
the downward current contains seven significant phrases, suggesting
the planets and sun, the macrocosm, while the description of the
response contains five significant phrases, suggesting the four
elements and elemental spirit, the microcosm.

The Downward Current

1. Definition of context.

"I reign over you, saith the God of Justice, in power exalted above
the firmaments of wrath." The "firmaments of wrath" are the regions of
activity within which creation takes place. The god declares his full
control over the act of creation, and that as the creator he is
outside the realm in which the act of creation occurs.

2. Definition of the limits and qualities of the creation.

"In Whose hands the Sun is as a sword, and the Moon as a through-
thrusting fire." An elegant equation, defining the parameters of the
creation. The god declares dominion over planetary forces (Sun-Moon)
and elemental forces (fire-air). He also declares control over the two
types of dualities: those in which one pole is projective and the
other responsive (Sun-Moon) and over those in which two forces of
similar polarity are balanced (fire-air). Within the area of creation,
the positive pole is attributed to the element of swords, Air, and the
anti-positive pole is attributed to the element of Fire. This is
reflected in the precedence followed by the elements throughout the
Tablets and Calls: Air first, then Water, Earth, and Fire.

3. Gathering of the energies to be used.

"Which measureth your garments in the midst of my vestures..." The
word translated here as "garments" is used uniformly to mean "cre-
ation" or "being" elsewhere in the Keys. Another word is used for
"garments" in the next sentence of this same Key. Another word is also
used for "midst" further on in this Key. So the translation here is
questionable. A magickal image given to define this phrase shows the
scene through the god's eyes as he pulls endless threads of living
light out of a lamen on his chest.

4. Organization of the energies.

"...and trussed you together as the palms of my hands." The magickal
image continues by showing the god gathering the fibers of light into
a bundle or cable. The god concentrates the energies within the area
of work in preparation for shaping.

5. Preparation of the material basis to which the energies are at-
tached.

"Whose seats I garnished with the fire of gathering, which beautified
your garments with admiration." Having generated the positive or
spiritual pole of the creation, the god now looks to the anti-positive
or material pole. The "seats" are the squares of the tablets in their
two-dimensional form. The god embodies a part of his will in the
Tablets, defining the order and place to which the spiritual energies
will be attracted and attached. When the energies are attached to the
Tablets, the pattern of will embodied in the Tablets extends back
along their path to the positive pole, conditioning all the percep-
tible expressions (the "garments") of the energies.

6. Definition of the modes of activity of the creation.

"To whom I made a law to govern the holy ones," The word translated as
"holy ones" appears to derive from the same root as the enochian words
for "fire", suggesting that the holy ones are those who possess the
spiritual will. The god specifies the manner in which his creation
will respond to the mages and adepts.

7. Definition of the purpose of the the activity.

"and delivered you a rod with the ark of knowledge." The spirits of
the Tablets are given authority over the dispensation of the god's
knowledge, including the power to initiate.

Returning Current

8. The energies respond to the creative will.

"Moreover, you lifted up your voices and sware obedience and faith..."
The connection between the two poles having been made, and the condi-
tions of their interaction being set, the angels of the creation voice
their response to the god, swearing to continue to follow the god's
will.

9. And affirm the success of the act of creation.

"...to him that liveth and triumpheth," The spirits of the Tablets
affirm the existence of their creator by saying that he lives, and
affirm the success of the act of creation by saying that he triumphs.

10. They affirm that the creator himself exists outside the realm of
creation...

"whose beginning is not, nor end can not be," The spirits affirm that
the god exists entirely outside the creation's sphere of activity.
This phrase echoes the line beginning "In whose hands the Sun is..."
from a viewpoint inside the god's creation.

11. ...that his will is the source of their existence,

"Which shineth as a flame in the midst of your palace..." Flame echoes
the "fire of gathering", and the palace is the Great Tablet. The
spirits affirm that they continue to reflect the god's creative will.

12. and that he continues to regulate all of their activities.

"and reigneth among you as the balance of righteousness and truth."
The god is the "god of justice", corresponding to Libra, the balances.
Righteousness and Truth are Saturn and Jupiter, who in turn are
contraction and expansion, stability and change, authority and respon-
sibility, and numerous other complementary pairs. The god reconciles
all opposites. The terms also echo the rod (active) and the ark of
knowledge (receptive) of an earlier phrase. It is also to be noted
that in Achad's Tree, Jupiter and Saturn are attributed to the paths
leading respectively to Chokmah and Binah from Kether. Their balance
is the path of Shin, connecting Kether with Tiphereth. Shin, Fire, is
the "flame in the midst of your palace", and the beam of light in the
center of the Temple.

The echoing of the god's statements by the spirits of the tablets also
suggests that the conditions the god laid on the creation as a whole
are reflected in miniature within the creation. It shall be shown that
this is the case with the Tablets as we proceed.

Concluding phrases

"Move, therefor, show yourselves!
"Open the mysteries of your creation!
"For I am the servant of your god,
"A true worshiper of the Highest!"

In the remainder of the Key, the magician using it calls upon the
spirits to respond to him fully and openly. The word translated here
as "servant" might be better rendered as "minister" or "represent-
ative". The magician asserts that he has a right to demand a response
from the spirits because his acts are in accord with the will of their
creator.

BY BENJAMIN ROWE

Copyright 1988, 1992 by Benjamin Rowe

-oOo-

Cyclic cents in interval

2009-07-02T21:06:00.003-05:00

OK, here we go. All the intervals are in cents (1200 cents=1 octave, or
on the Equal Tempered Scale, 100 cents=1 semitone).

You can work out the frequencies yourself with a few logs..

Interval name Cyclic cents in interval
Unison 0
Cent 1
Skhisma 2
Diaskhisma 20
Comma of Didymus 22
Pythagorean Comma 24
Septimal Comma 27
Small Diesis 28
Great Diesis 42
Quartertone 50
Small Semitone 70
Meantone Small Semitone 76
Subminor Second 85
Limma 90
Larger Limma 92
Equal Semitone 100

well, we just got to a semitone!!
And there's more..

Just Diatonic Semitone 112
Apotome 114
Meantone Great Semitone 117
Great Limma 134
Minor Tone 182
Mean Tone 193
Equal Tone 200
Major Tone 204
Supersecond 231
Pentatone 240
Subminor Third 267
Pythagorean Minor Third 294
Equal Minor Third 300
Just Minor Third 316
Superminor Third 336
Zalzal's /wosta/ 355
Equal Major Third 400
Pythagorean Major Third 408
Supermajor Third 435
Just Fourth 498
Equal Fourth 500
Meantone Fourth 503
Just Tritone 590
Equal Tritone 600
Pythagorean Tritone 612

Don't the possibilities just open up before you?

Here's the cent intervals for a pentatonic Javan scale, called
the Pelog. There are five others.

Pelog 0 446 575 687 1098 1200

More information...
http://www.dolmetsch.com/intervalcalculator.htm

New glass by sirius.fnord

2009-04-16T19:46:00.000-05:00

Check out the crazy sirius.fnord is dishin'.

One of a kind glass art. Reasonably priced.

2007-01-19T20:07:00.000-06:00

The Stuart Davis Show - Episode 6

Robert Anton Wilson leaves his body...

2007-01-13T12:06:00.000-06:00

Wavy Gravy once asked a Zen Roshi, "What happens after death?"

The Roshi replied, "I don't know."

Wavy protested, "But you're a Zen Master!"

"Yes," the Roshi admitted, "but I'm not a dead Zen Master."

India

2007-01-01T05:36:00.000-06:00

Where have galactic Phil, Kevin and Keepitkiller Lily been? The answer is India. I must say that in India it is rather evident what the lifestyle of those living with less than 1% of the world's wealth is like. Fortunately they have a lot of spiritual wealth over there. Seeing the lack of material goods definitely made me a little grossed out by my lifestyle, not to mention the average American lifestyle. I realized that I feel pretty entitled to most things that I want to obtain. Recently we sold our car, with the idea that we could give a little up in the name of Mother Earth and our own health. In India I realized just how little we had given up. We stayed at an ashram that was built to suit westerners, with modern plumbing and the like. From what I gathered, the people to do the plumbing hadn't really seen a sink before. This could be a gross simplification, but maybe that is just me thinking it is impossible to have never seen a sink.
I really enjoyed how quiet and simple things were in India. I didn't check use my phone, computers, or watch TV. Granted I had the privilege of living in "American" style housing.
It's just funny that we have so much trouble giving up any of our luxuries (many we don't even own--car loans, ed. loans, etc.) but even our most basic version of American lifestyle is pretty sweet. Now if I can just remember that.

40% of world's wealth owned by 1% of population

2006-12-05T19:17:00.000-06:00

The richest one per cent of the world's population owns 40 per cent of the total household wealth, while the bottom half of the world makes do with barely one per cent, according to a research report released Tuesday.

The study, which further underlined the continuing disparity between rich and poor, is by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research, part of the United Nations University.

'Income inequality has been rising for the past 20 to 25 years and we think that is true for inequality in the distribution of wealth.'-Canadian economist James Davies, an author of the report

It took more than $500,000 US to be among the richest one per cent of adults in the world, according to the report. The richest 10 per cent of adults needed $61,000 US in assets.

In contrast, 50 per cent of adults owned barely one per cent of the household wealth.

Wealth was defined as the value of physical and financial assets minus debts. The study differentiates between wealth and income. The authors note that "many people in high-income countries — somewhat paradoxically — are among the poorest people in the world in terms of household wealth" because they have large debts.

The bulk of the wealthiest adults (almost 90 per cent) are concentrated in North America, Europe and Japan, the researchers said. For example, North America accounts for only six per cent of adults, but held 34 per cent of the globe's household wealth.

"Income inequality has been rising for the past 20 to 25 years, and we think that is true for inequality in the distribution of wealth," said James Davies, one of the report's authors and a professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario in London.

"There is a whole group of problems in developing countries that make it difficult for people to build up assets, which are important, since life is so precarious," Davies said.

Having assets worth just above $2,200 US would be enough to put an adult into the top half of the world's wealth distribution.

Canadians averaged $70,916 US in assets

Canada's net worth per capita came in at $70,916 US, putting it just ahead of Denmark.

Average net worth in the United States amounted to $143,867 per person in 2000, while it reached $180,837 in Japan.

At the bottom end of the scale were Ethiopia with per-capita wealth of $193 and Congo at $180.

Global household wealth amounted to $125 trillion in 2000, roughly three times the value of total global production, or $20,500 per person.

Hawking says man should colonize other star systems to avoid extinction

2006-12-02T10:01:00.000-06:00

'

LONDON: It's time humans moved out of the solar system and colonized other star systems, says theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, as otherwise there is a threat of extinction to the human species.

Life on earth could be wiped out by a nuclear holocaust or an asteroid striking the planet, he warned. Once man spreads out into the space and establish colonies, the future is safe for humanity, the wheel-chair bound scientist told BBC Radio just before he received the Royal Society's Copley Medal, the top science award in the U.K., Thursday.

There are no planets in the solar system that is similar to earth and hence man should spread his wings beyond the sun and its planets into another star system, he said, adding the present system of rockets and space vehicles are incapable of such an odyssey. Technologies like "warp drives" mentioned in futuristic TV programs like Star Trek, where travel at the speed of light is visualized, too may not be practical, he said. On the other hand, concepts like matter/anti-matter annihilation for propulsion could become helpful, he added.

Saying disasters like a nuclear war or an asteroid hitting the earth can "wipe us all out," he predicted once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe. This will require identifying hospitable planets in other star systems and traveling to these planets. If the chemical fuel rockets, which were used in rockets that propelled the spaceships that took man to moon, the journeys to planets in other star systems will require 50,000 years and more of time, he said.

Explaining the matter/anti-matter propulsion, he said when matter and anti-matter meet up, they disappear in a burst of radiation. If this is beamed out of the back of a spaceship, it could drive it forward. This could give a speed just below the speed of light, which will mean man can reach a new star system in about six years. "It would take a lot of energy to accelerate to near the speed of light," he said.

Hawking, 64, author of several books outlining what the future holds, is a cripple because of a rare motor neuron disease. He can communicate only with the aid of a computerized voice synthesizer.

Saying he is not afraid of death, but is not in a hurry to die, Hawking said one of his desires is to go into space. "My next goal is to go into space. Maybe Richard Branson will help me," he said in reference to the space travel programs for 'tourists,' floated by the British entrepreneur's Virgin group via Virgin Galactic.

Maya Teased Ears Through Architecture

2006-12-01T10:02:00.000-06:00

Nov. 27, 2006 — Some ancient civilizations may have had an ear — not just an eye — for architecture. Two recent studies suggest early builders intentionally added unusual, and often psychedelic, sound effects to their structures.

Some of the most striking examples are at the 1,100-year-old Maya Great Ball Court at Chichen Itza, Mexico, according to David Lubman, who will present findings at the upcoming Fourth Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan in Hawaii.

Lubman studied the court's acoustic elements, including two "whispering galleries" that allow visitors to hear whispers from 460 feet away.

The feature could have once allowed a king or priest to address crowds of up to 3,000 outside without a microphone, Lubman explained.

The sound effects may have also held spiritual significance to players taking part in a bizarre game on the court.

In the Maya competition, players were fully padded and threw around a hard, rubber ball. They deflected the ball with their hips and a device at their chest known as a ball deflector.

The unusual acoustics on the court likely added an eerie ambiance to the play. The effect was perhaps appropriate, considering the competition's losers were sometimes sacrificed after a defeat, according to Lubman.

"Players on the ball court would hear voices but see no one," he explained. "This would seem supernatural to pre-scientific listeners... . According to the K'iche' Maya myth called the 'Popol Vuh,' the noises of the ball court play evoked the Lords of the Underworld."

A single ball striking the court would have echoed four times per second, Lubman found.

"I suspect that the flutter echoes sounded like the rattles of a menacing rattlesnake," he said. "(They) must have added an exciting aural element to the deadly drama of the ballgame."

The echoes were made possible by massive, smooth stone walls carefully positioned to reflect sound, similar to today's band shells. The walls at the court are 270 feet long and 28 feet tall.

The whispering galleries work by pushing sound waves along the playing field. The effect is similar to that produced by speaking through a long tube, which conserves sound energy and reduces losses.

Historical Maya writings paint a fuller picture of the games once played on the court, telling of hallucinogenic drugs that may have further heightened the auditory illusions. Fragrant incense has also been unearthed at the site.

Chris Scarre, a professor of archaeology at Durham University in England, recently conducted a survey of acoustical features in ancient structures. He told Discovery News that Lubman's research is "convincing and exciting."

In addition to Mesoamerican structures, Scarre said sound effects can be heard in Paleolithic caves and various European structures, including St. Paul's Cathedral in London, which has a whispering gallery.

"We do not know in detail how (the more ancient) sites were used, and the challenge is to discover a methodology that enables us to construct a convincing argument," Scarre said, adding that he hopes the research "brings sound, music and hearing back into archaeological discussion."

I like Ted Andrews

2006-11-28T14:46:00.000-06:00

Ted Andrews, (here's some more info,) writes about connecting with animals. He also writes about some other stuff, you know, like faeries and spirits. While some of the subject matters and most of the book covers make me a little scared, (sci-fi cover syndrome,) I really enjoy his work and it rings true with my experiences. If you're into animals, birds, bugs, shape-shifting, the animal medicine cards, shamanism, or the like, and you haven't checked him out, you should.

Santa Clauses on strike on "Buy Nothing Day"

2006-11-26T08:53:00.000-06:00

A group of Santa Clauses were on strike on one of Vienna's main shopping avenues in honor of "Buy Nothing Day," an international initiative to counter consumerist attitudes ahead of the Christmas season.

"Today is Buy Nothing Day, allow yourself a break," ten Santas, in full garb with red felt jackets and fake beards, told shoppers on Vienna's Mariahilferstrasse.

"People are rushing by and do not have a relaxed look on their face at all. I am doing much better," said one Father Christmas, lounging in a deckchair.

Instead of the usual presents, the "striking" Santa Clauses doled out advice about environmentally safe washing products and energy-saving lamps, and encouraged people to spend time with their families rather than just buy expensive gifts.

The jolly old men's offer to cut in half the credit cards of passing shoppers did not have any takers however: "Nobody has been that radical yet," said Heinz Hoegelsberger, who organized the event.

"Buy Nothing Day" is held every year on the day after the American Thanksgiving, when people in the US traditionally head for the shops.

2006-11-25T19:19:00.000-06:00

How Cocaine is Made

Curious? Check this out first...

Mushroom Growing Made Easy

2006-11-23T22:25:00.000-06:00


Video guide to cultivating mushrooms

Tree of Life

2006-11-20T18:46:00.000-06:00

"This tree is from an analysis of small subunit rRNA sequences sampled from about 3,000 species from throughout the Tree of Life. The species were chosen based on their availability, but we attempted to include most of the major groups, sampled very roughly in proportion to the number of known species in each group (although many groups remain over- or under-represented). The number of species represented is approximately the square-root of the number of species thought to exist on Earth (i.e., three thousand out of an estimated nine million species), or about 0.18% of the 1.7 million species that have been formally described and named."

Study: Human Hands Emit Light

2006-11-17T07:35:00.000-06:00

Human hands glow, but fingernails release the most light, according to a recent study that found all parts of the hand emit detectable levels of light.
The findings support prior research that suggested most living things, including plants, release light. Since disease and illness appear to affect the strength and pattern of the glow, the discovery might lead to less-invasive ways of diagnosing patients.

Mitsuo Hiramatsu, a scientist at the Central Research Laboratory at Hamamatsu Photonics in Japan, who led the research, told Discovery News that the hands are not the only parts of the body that shine light by releasing photons, or tiny, energized increments of light.

"Not only the hands, but also the forehead and bottoms of our feet emit photons," Hiramatsu said, and added that in terms of hands "the presence of photons means that our hands are producing light all of the time."

The light is invisible to the naked eye, so Hiramatsu and his team used a powerful photon counter to "see"it.

The detector found that fingernails release 60 photons, fingers release 40 and the palms are the dimmest of all, with 20 photons measured.

The findings are published in the current Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology.

Hiramatsu is not certain why fingernails light up more than the other parts of the hand, but he said, "It may be because of the optical window property of fingernails," meaning that the fingernail works somewhat like a prism to scatter light.

To find out what might be creating the light in the first place, he and colleague Kimitsugu Nakamura had test subjects hold plastic bottles full of hot or cold water before their hand photons were measured. The researchers also pumped nitrogen or oxygen gas into the dark box where the individuals placed their hands as they were being analyzed.

Warm temperatures increased the release of photons, as did the introduction of oxygen. Rubbing mineral oil over the hands also heightened light levels.

Based on those results, the scientists theorize the light "is a kind of chemiluminescence," a luminescence based on chemical reactions, such as those that make fireflies glow. The researchers believe 40 percent of the light results from the chemical reaction that constantly occurs as our hand skin reacts with oxygen.

Since mineral oil, which permeates into the skin, heightens the light, they also now think 60 percent of the glow may result from chemical reactions that take place inside the skin.

Fritz-Albert Popp, a leading world expert on biologically related photons at The International Institute of Biophysics in Germany, agrees with the findings and was not surprised by them.

Popp told Discovery News, "One may find clear correlations to kind and degree (type and severity) of diseases."

Popp and his team believe the light from the forehead and the hands pulses out with the same basic rhythms, but that these pulses become irregular in unhealthy people. A study he conducted on a muscular sclerosis patient seemed to validate the theory.

Both he and Hiramatsu hope future studies will reveal more about human photon emissions, which could lead to medical diagnosis applications.

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Global Orgasm to change the World

2006-11-16T09:12:00.000-06:00

a tiny fragment of Enochian knowledge...

2006-11-13T09:44:00.000-06:00

In the year of 1581 through the extraordinary efforts of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelly, the secrets that were lost with the patriarch of the Bible known as Enoch were returned to those who thirst for the knowledge of Light. Dee kept close records of their intensive work. Although some of Dee's work has been lost, much of it is to be found in Sloane Documents 3188, 3189, 3191, 3677, and 3679. These documents are to be found at the British Museum in London.

One of the most important breakthroughs in the rediscovery of these lost secrets was an entirely new language. This language contained its own grammar and syntax. It is an Angelic language often referred to as "Enochian."

Dee and Kelly used great care and effort when receiving the lost knowledge of Enoch. The dictating Angel was the Great Angel Ave. Many hours were spent bringing forth the information by Dee and Kelly. Often times sessions would last 8 to 10 hours a day. Some of the material was actually dictated backwards by the Angel so as not to invoke dangerous forces of power.

The beginnings of Enochian Magic were coming into place, but the information was just information. It was not a system of any usable value. Thus, for the most part, it remained dormant, undefined and unusable. Then, over 200 years later, this body of raw knowledge that Dee & Kelly painstakingly uncovered was given form and life by the genius of S.L. MacGregor Mathers. Under the tutelage of Mathers, the Second (Inner) Order of the Golden Dawn began working the most powerful system of magic the world has or may ever see.

Years later in Chicago, a disgruntled Paul Foster Case (after being expelled from the order by Moina Mathers) ,would lead a quiet crusade to convince fellow students that Enochian Magic was "volatile and dangerous." Case would even go so far as to have it sliced and diced out of all Inner Order Teachings of a group he founded called the "Builders of the Adytum." Others would follow in Case's footsteps, claiming Enochian was too dangerous.

Without entering into the debate on the "dangers" of Enochian Magic, when used with caution and in accordance with Second Order Teachings, it is not only safe, it is utterly effective in the physical world, and illuminating in the area of Spiritual development!

THE ENOCHIAN TABLETS

Dee and Kelly were the pioneers who blazed the trail. Along the trail of forgotten and lost knowledge were the Four Watchtowers of the Universe. These Watchtower Tablets were adapted by Mathers to represent the Four Elements of Fire, Water, Air and Earth.

There is a definite hierarchy to each of these tablets. The hierarchy in its highest form is not to be found on the Tablets, but comes from the study of the Qabalah. It is the Divine Name of the Element in Hebrew that first must be intoned and invoked. The reason is that the Hebrew represents the Celestial influence and governance and the Enochian hierarchy represents the Assiac or material governance.

In each tablet there are three Secret Holy Names of God which are extracted from the horizontal cross bar of the central cross of each Tablet. In all there are twelve Holy Names on four Tablets which infer a serious connection and bridge between the Macrocosm and the personal Microcosm of one's own "sphere of sensation."

These Names are invoked during the four Elemental Grade Ceremonies (initiations) by the Hierophant of the Golden Dawn in the Outer. Through the power of the Secret Names the general nature of the element involved in the initiation is filtered through the Tablet into the "Aura" or sphere of sensation of the advancing candidate. The result is the establishment of a magical link and affinity with the element of the Initiation. This serves to empower the candidate in that new elemental powers are now available to him or her.

This process depends on a trained and empowered Hierophant, and can, in fact, be performed in full Temple "astrally" to allow the elemental link to exist for members who live hundreds or even thousands of miles from a Temple.

THE ELEMENTAL KINGS

The Elemental King is extracted from a spiral whirl around the Central Cross to be found on each Tablet. There are four elemental Kings in all, one on each tablet. When the Adept invokes the three Secret Holy Names of God, the King is also automatically activated. In addition, the King may be invoked as a specific force. The King is always invoked when lower elemental forces on the Tablet are to be utilized.

THE SENIORS

There are six Seniors on each of the Four elemental Tablets. This makes a total of 24 Seniors in all. The Seniors follow the King in the Order of Hierarchy. The Seniors are found in the Book of Revelations as the 24 Elders who bow down before the Throne of God.

The Seniors act as a kind of funnel for the specific forces of a particular planet. The King relates to Sol. The planetary forces of the Seniors is configured and transformed within the specific elemental Nature of the Tablets.

In all workings where the King is invoked, so are the Seniors in that

they work in a kind of collaboration with the elemental King. There are rituals such as the Consecration of an Elemental Tool when the power of the Seniors are called upon. This allows the elemental Weapon to receive in the charging phase the Planetary powers through the elemental nature of the planet. Later when needed by a trained Adept, the tool can then project this force for the purpose of magical and alchemical workings.

CALVARY CROSS ANGELS (SEPHIROTIC CROSS)

There are four Sephirotic Crosses on each Tablet. They are often referred to as Calvary Crosses. There is one cross in each sub-element. Thus, on the Fire Tablet, there are four sub-elements of Air, Water, Fire, Earth. There is a cross in each. On a colored depiction of the Tablets these crosses are white, which like the Seniors denote a spiritual nature rather than an elemental one.

There are two angels per cross. One calls forth a serviant angel and the other is used to command the angel. These angels are only invoked when the Adept wishes to work with a specific subservient angel.

KERUBIC SQUARE ANGELS
These angels work under the Angels of the Sephirotic Cross. These Angels help to regulate and balance the forces employed. They may be utilized for pyramid working and other important elemental considerations. They are formed from the first letter in each file above the Calvary Cross and are permutated to provide (4) in total per sub-section.

TABLET OF UNION

The Elemental Tablets are introduced one at a time in the Grade Initiations of the Golden Dawn. There is an important Initiation that is not depicted on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. It is the Portal Initiation. It is attributed to the top point of the pentagram which is Spirit. Thus, in the Portal Initiation of our Order, the Tablet of Union is introduced as it represents the building Spirit or actuating glue between the elements.

The highest name of Spirit in this Tablet is EHNB. This is the purest Spiritual force and is only invoked when some empowering is required from the direct force of spirit. The Tablet of Union is placed on the center Altar to act as the central hub from which the Elemental Tablets are spokes.

CONCLUSION

This only reveals a miniscule amount of information on Enochian Golden Dawn methodology. In fact, much of the body of the Second Order Enochian Work remains unpublished and safely in the hands of the College of Adepti.

Enochian Magic requires a solid and firm foundation in the study of the Qabalah, Geomancy, Tarot, Alchemy, and Astrology. It is not a toy but a powerful system that should be employed with the same caution a prudent person uses who would handle a loaded gun.

The above information is only a tiny fragment of Enochian knowledge. It is not complete, but rather given for the purpose of general understanding. It is vital that to fully actualize Enochian forces and powers, one must transform through Outer Order Grade Initations and beyond. There are some very good books on Enochian out on the market. However, some are extremely incomplete and over-simplified so a to attract more readers and sell more books. These books (many crammed with faulty information) are extremely dangerous in the hands of the novice. If not dangerous, then completely ineffective.

the Key of Solomon

2006-11-12T08:38:00.000-06:00

The Wizard People

2006-11-06T09:17:00.000-06:00

The Cribbage Match

This is one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen... sirius-lee

I strongly recommend downloading the entire program and watching it several times... in a row.

Skull and Bones... the complete list

2006-11-02T07:35:00.000-06:00

Sure, we've all heard of that zainy bunch of Yale alumni who call themselves the skull and bones. Sure, they are taking over the world. But now they are on a list... and they don't like it one bit.

Earth Room

2006-10-29T16:21:00.000-06:00

Elizabeth, Liz and Phoebe Zoe are rocking the front room of the Guild. Their store, the Earth Room, is full of hand made accessories and clothing. Check out the locally made goods: B.A.B.E. jewelry, Phoebe Zoe handknits, Miss Prints and Ty Cobb silkscreen tees, note books by Josh Doster, ceramics by Shumpei Yamaki and art by many!

Fly Awake

2006-10-25T10:04:00.000-05:00

Lily is making really cool art. Check out her web site and blog for her current project "Fly Awake".
Click on image to view video. There is a 15 second sound only lead-in.

Terence McKenna and Rupert Sheldrake speak on Morphogenetic Field Theory.

2006-10-21T08:54:00.000-05:00

A morphogenetic field (a subset of morphic field) is a hypothetical biological (and potentially social) field that contains the information necessary to shape the exact form of a living thing, as part of its epigenetics, and may also shape its behaviour and coordination with other beings (see also morphogenesis). This hypothesis is not accepted by the scientific community, who consider it pseudoscientific.

FNORD

2006-10-20T09:19:00.004-05:00

What to examine occult symbols in Big Media? Check out this site...

"Common Ground" art show by Cody Gieselman and Jessica White

2006-10-18T08:48:00.000-05:00

Superfun art show by Guild memebers Cody and Jessica... Up and running 7-29 October at Arts Iowa City Gallery 103 E. College St. Go check it out.

Jessica has a cool web site with buches of pics of the show and also lots of her own art... www.bittersweetnessandlight.com

And don't forget about Cody's site... www.awkardlyput.com

The Alchemical Process of Transformation by Nigel Hamilton part 1

2006-10-16T09:13:00.000-05:00

The Origins of Alchemy Alchemy traces its roots back to the Egyptian civilisation where it emerged as a practising art and science and an expression of the Egyptian religion. Thus it was that the Egyptian Thoth, the god of mathematics and science, became the inspirational source for the Hellenistic figure of Hermes Trismegistus, who in turn became the model for the medieval Mercurius. The Greeks learned their Alchemy in the fourth century BC, whilst in Egypt. Several Greek philosophers, scientists, and mystics were initiated into the ancient Egyptian mysteries at this time. The Alchemists of the Middle Ages learnt their art from the Arabs in Spain and Southern Italy, who in turn had adopted it from the Greeks. Thus it was that by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries alchemy had already appeared in Western Europe via Sicily and Spain. Typical places of study were at the Universities of Palermo, Toledo, Barcelona, and Segovia. Understanding Transmutation as the Basis of Alchemy. Alchemy is best known for its belief that lead can be transmuted into gold. However, the transmutation of non-precious metals into gold is simply a metaphor for the soul being freed from a "dead, leaden state of mind," to that of realising its own light nature and that is derived from pure spirit. The alchemists believed that the basis of the material world was a Prima Materia, or prime chaotic matter, which might be actuated into existence if impressed by "form." The "forms" arose in the shape of the elements, earth, water, fire, and air. The Alchemists deduced that the limitless varieties of life were created out of the blending of the elements in particular proportions. Aristotle distinguished the four elements from one another by the four qualities of fluidity, dryness, heat and cold. Each element possesses two of these primary qualities. Thus the four possible combinations are:

hot + dry --> fire
hot + fluid (or moist) --> air
cold + fluid --> water
cold + dry --> earth

One of the two qualities predominates in each element. In earth, dryness; in water, cold; in air, fluidity; in fire, heat. Transmutation is thus possible. Any element may be transformed into another through the quality that they have in common. Thus fire can become air through the medium of heat, just as air can become water through the medium of fluidity. Also two elements may become a third element by removing one quality from each. By parting with the dry and cold qualities, fire and water can become air; by parting with the hot and fluid qualities, the same elements can give rise to earth. Consider the simple example of the transmutation process a piece of green wood undergoes when heated. Drops of water form at the cut end of the wood, therefore wood contains water; steam andvapours are then given off, therefore wood contains air; the wood then burns, demonstrating the fire element; and when we see that only ash is left we realise that the wood contains earth. Alchemists viewed other materials, particularly metals, in much the same way, i.e. that a metal owes its specific form of nature to its specific proportioning of the four elements. A modern day review of the psychological states and problems that clients present with also shows the presence of the elements, but in distorted proportions; e.g. an over-stressed mind could be described alchemically as excess fire (hot + dry). Nature tries to intervene by releasing water (tears), thereby relieving the overheated mind which could then "cool off." However, more often than not our will interferes and we block the tears, thereby increasing the stress. A similar theory, derived from the theory of the four elements, was the sulphur-mercury theory. This theory presented the two opposed or contrary elements, fire and water, in a new way. Fire became "sulphur" and water "mercury," the former being composed of the primary qualities of hot and dry, the latter of the primary qualities of cold and moist. In general, sulphur stood for the property of combustibility, or the spirit of fire, and mercury for that of the fusibility or the mineral spirit of metals. When sulphur and mercury united in different proportions and in different degrees of purity, the various metals and minerals took shape, according to the sulphur-mercury theory. If sulphur and mercury were perfectly pure, and if they combined in the most complete equilibrium, the product would be the most perfect of metals, namely gold. Defects in purity and, particularly, in proportion, resulted in the formation of silver, lead, tin, iron, or copper. But, since these inferior metals were essentially composed of the same constituents as gold, the accident of combination might be rectified by suitable treatment and by means of elixirs. Now we do not have to adopt the medieval alchemists' view of the physical world, but instead by interpreting it metaphorically, we can extract two very important a priori postulates which formed the basis of alchemical reasoning: 1. The unity of nature as expressed by the idea of the prima materia from which all bodies were formed and into which they might again be dissolved and 2. The existence of a potent transmuting agent capable of promoting the change of one kind of material into another. This imagined agent became known as the "philosopher's stone," the most famous of all alchemical ideas. If we view the prima materia, the original state of matter, as being the original, pure, raw state of consciousness, from which all states of consciousness emerged, i.e. mineral, vegetable, animal, and human, and if we view the philosopher's stone as the state of illuminated consciousness whilst in the earthly body, then both the above premises become useful to our work in psychotherapy. Now apart from a few of the most enlightened alchemists, most practitioners in medieval times believed that they could literally transform lead into gold. The literature shows that the frustrated would-be goldmakers became entangled in a subterranean labyrinth of fantasies, hallucinations, visions, and dreams. Thus, what appeared to be the greatest mistake of the majority of "alchemical hopefuls" turned out to condition their greatest achievement: in the darkness of their blind alley the "sons of Hermes" had come to discover, through their activated imaginations, the unconscious. Carl Jung discovered that many of the dreams and states of consciousness that his clients reported corresponded remarkably to the descriptions recorded in the alchemical texts. Jung subsequently felt that the knowledge of Alchemy could be used in understanding the process of psychological and spiritual transformation as a tool for use in psychotherapy.

Projection and Unconscious Imagery in Alchemy The work of the alchemist was a slow, laborious one in which free association, projections, and visions of the unconscious occurred not only in their dreams but also whilst staring into their furnaces and working with their equipment. Some examples of this follow: Hoghelande recounts: "They say that different names are given to the stone on account of the wonderful variety of figures that appear in the course of the work, inasmuch as colours often come forth at the same time, just as we sometimes imagine in the clouds or in the fire strange shapes of animals, reptiles or trees. I found similar things in a fragment of a book ascribed to Moses. When the body is dissolved, it is there written, then will appear sometimes two branches, sometimes three or more, sometimes also the shape of reptiles; on occasion it also seems as if a man with a head and all his limbs were seated upon a cathedra." Raymond Lully writes: "You should know, dear son, that the course of nature is turned about, so that without spiritual exaltation you can see certain fugitive spirits condensed in the air in the shape of diverse monsters, beasts, and men, which move like the clouds hither and thither." Finally in Waites' "Introitus apertus" he writes: "The substance of the vessel will exhibit a great variety of forms; it will become liquid and again coagulate a hundred times a day; sometimes it will present the appearance of fishes' eyes and then again of tiny silver trees with twigs and leaves. Whenever you look at it you will have cause for astonishment, particularly when you see it all divides into beautiful but very minute grains of silver, like the ray of the sun. This is the whole tincture..."
These examples show the imaginary nature of psychological and spiritual phenomenon. The practice of alchemy changed profoundly in Europe from the 12th century, when it was first introduced by the Arabs, to the 16th century, when the alchemical laboratories evolved into psychological laboratories and the alchemical work into explorations of the inner universe. The purgations and transformation of metals were translated into symbolic procedures concerned with the purgation and transformation of souls. Thus the meeting between the alchemists and the unconscious had a revolutionary impact on the alchemical work, which by the end of the Middle Ages had begun to develop into a systemised mystical process of transformation, known as the opus alchymicum. However, with the emergence of the rational spirit in the 17th century, the science of chemistry destroyed the basic concepts and theories of alchemy and replaced them with a rational system from which our science of chemistry has arisen. It was not until the 20th century and the emergence of Depth Psychology that the way was paved for Alchemy to re-emerge and take its place as a source of knowledge that could inform and influence the teaching and practice of psychotherapy. The Contribution of Alchemy to Modern Psychotherapy Modern studies of alchemy, the most notable being Jung's "Psychology and Alchemy", have changed our understanding and interpretation of dreams. In 1946 his work on the "Psychology of the Transference Interpreted in Conjunction with a set of Alchemical Illustrations" revealed a very different light on transference in psychotherapy, which until the time of this publication was influenced mainly by the writings of Sigmund Freud, i.e. that transference was simply a phenomenon that reflected the influence of the parent-child relationship. Jung's work on alchemy showed instead that the transference dreams and experiences of his clients were principally concerned with an inner process of individuation. This process does of course acknowledge the importance of the experience of bonding with and separating from the parental figures, but it also goes way beyond this by envisaging life as a continual process of development. Thus the projections of the clients onto the therapist reflect something of their own inner psychic world rather than Freud's view that the client was basically experiencing the therapist as a parent figure. The greatest contribution that alchemy makes to psychotherapy is its understanding of the process of transformation. It is applicable on the one hand to the simple process of undergoing a change in the way we see the world and at the other end of the scale it provides vital background knowledge to the understanding of the process of spiritual transformation. Jung's texts "Alchemical Studies" (1931 - 54) and "Mysterium Coniunctionis" (1956) are classical studies on the subject of Symbolism and Alchemical Process of Transformation.

24-Hour Comic Day: A DAY OF HEROES!

2006-10-10T13:15:00.000-05:00

They gathered with purpose. They squeezed their brians. They shook their sticks.

Chapel Paralis was breached!

They will never be the same...

Talkin' about Tim Leary's LSD experiments

2006-10-08T18:01:00.000-05:00

Alzheimers shot down by THC

2006-10-08T10:15:00.000-05:00

I never thought I would post an article I found on FOX news, but...

What do Barbara Bush and Aleister Crowley have in common?

2006-10-07T09:50:00.000-05:00

AppleSeed Yoga has a NEW web site

2006-09-30T08:31:00.000-05:00

Nancy does it again! How does a yoga rockstar play the internet game? Check out her super-sweet new site. Want to take a class or arrange a private lesson? It is all there for your interaction. Want to check out who helped Nancy with her stylin' moves? Nancy gives props to her peeps with pics. Treat yourself to some Nancy time, in person or on-line. Do it.

www.appleseedyoga.com

Sweet Mother

2006-09-29T08:31:00.000-05:00

from Volume 13, Words of the Mother, p.38 (1920)

When and how did I become conscious of a mission which I was to fulfill on earth? And when and how I met Sri Aurobindo?

These two questions you have asked me and I promised a short reply.

For the knowledge of the mission, it is difficult to say when it came to me. It is as though I were born with it, and following the growth of the mind and brain, the precision and completeness of this consciousness grew also.

Between 11 and 13 a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of God but man's possibility of uniting with Him, of realising Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life divine. This, along with a practical discipline for its fulfillment, was given to me during my body's sleep by several teachers, some of whom I met afterwards on the physical plane.

Later on, as the interior and exterior development proceeded, the spiritual and psychic relation with one of these beings became more and more clear and frequent; and although I knew little of the Indian philosophies and religions at that time I was led to call him Krishna, and henceforth I was aware that it was with him (whom I knew I should meet on earth one day) that the divine work was to be done.

In the year 1910 my husband came alone to Pondicherry where, under very interesting and peculiar circumstances, he made the acquaintance of Sri Aurobindo. Since then we both strongly wished to return to India -- the country which I had always cherished as my true mother-country. And in 1914 this joy was granted to us.

As soon as I saw Sri Aurobindo I recognised in him the well-known being whom I used to call Krishna... And this is enough to explain why I am fully convinced that my place and my work are near him, in India.

from Volume 2, Words of Long Ago, p.166 (Japan, February, 1920)

I belong to no nation, no civilisation, no society, no race, but to the Divine.

I obey no master, no ruler, no law, no social convention, but the Divine.

To Him I have surrendered all, will, life and self; for Him I am ready to give all my blood, drop by drop, if such is His Will, with complete joy; and nothing in His service can be sacrifice, for all is perfect delight.

from Volume 5, Questions and Answers 1953, p.139 (1 July 1953)

The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine centre; in that way he becomes a true individual, master of himself and his destiny. Otherwise, he is a plaything of forces that toss him about like a piece of cork on a river...

It is a rather unpleasant sensation to feel yourself pulled by the strings and made to do things whether you want to or not -- that is quite irrelevant -- but to be compelled to act because something pulls you by the strings, something which you do not even see -- that is exasperating. However, I do not know, but I found it very exasperating, even when I was quite a child. At five, it began to seem to me quite intolerable and I sought for a way so that it might be otherwise -- without people getting a chance to scold me. For I knew nobody who could help me and I did not have the chance that you have, someone who can tell you "This is what you have to do!" There was nobody to tell me that. I had to find it out all by myself. And I found it. I started at five.

from Volume 8, Questions and Answers 1956, p.161 (30 May 1956)

At the beginning of my present earthly existence I came into contact with many people who said that they had a great inner aspiration, an urge towards something deeper and truer, but that they were tied down, subjected, slaves to that brutal necessity of earning their living, and that this weighed them down so much, took up so much of their time and energy that they could not engage in any other activity, inner or outer. I heard this very often, I saw many poor people -- I don't mean poor from the monetary point of view, but poor because they felt imprisoned in a material necessity, narrow and deadening.

I was very young at that time, and I always used to tell myself that if ever I could do it, I would try to create a little world -- oh! quite a small one, but still...a small world where people would be able to live without having to be preoccupied with food and lodging and clothing and the imperative necessities of life, so as to see whether all the energies freed by this certainty of a secure material living would turn spontaneously towards the divine life and the inner realisation.

from Volume 13, Words of the Mother, p.95

My way of seeing is somewhat different. For my consciousness the whole life upon earth, including the human life and all its mentality, is a mass of vibrations, mostly vibrations of falsehood, ignorance and disorder, in which are more and more at work vibrations of Truth and Harmony coming from the higher regions and pushing their way through the resistance. In this vision the ego-sense and the individual assertion and separateness become quite unreal and illusory.

The following quote is from Volume 25, "The Mother", by Sri Aurobindo

p. 49-50

There is one divine Force which acts in the universe and in the individual and is also beyond the individual and the universe. The Mother stands for all these, but she is working here in the body to bring down something not yet expressed in this material world so as to transform life here -- it is so that you should regard her as the Divine Shakti working here for that purpose. She is in the body, but in her whole consciousness she is also identified with all the other aspects of the Divine.

the Search for the Secret Heart by Breanne Hunter

2006-09-21T09:29:00.000-05:00

Breanne Hunter has a new web site featuring pictures from her newest book the Search for the Secret Heart. Totally cool... Take some time and check out what she finished so far, and if you're like me, hard-cross your toes for the next installment.

Mind Fields by Rupert Sheldrake

2006-09-20T09:38:00.000-05:00

==> Explaining telepathy and other phenomena. With SCIENCE!

HAVE YOU EVER felt you were being watched, and turned around to find someone staring at you? Have you ever stared at someone, and found them turn around and look at you? Have you ever thought about someone for no apparent reason, and then that person rang on the telephone? Or telephoned someone who says, "I was just thinking about you!"?

The chances are that you will answer "Yes" to most, if not all, of these questions. These are common experiences. But they are all phenomena that have, until recently, been ignored by science because they just don't fit in. They violate the assumption that the mind is confined to the inside of the head. Yet there is now good experimental evidence for their reality. They imply a much more extensive view of our minds.

Institutional science still takes for granted the assumption that mental activity is nothing but brain activity. Instead, I suggest that our minds extend far beyond our brains: they stretch out through fields that link us to our environment and to each other.

Mental fields are rooted in brains, just as magnetic fields around magnets are rooted in the magnets themselves, or just as the fields of transmission around mobile phones are rooted in the phones and their internal electrical activities. As magnetic fields extend around magnets, and electromagnetic fields around mobile phones, so mental fields extend around brains.

Mental fields help to explain telepathy, the sense of being stared at and other widespread but unexplained abilities. Above all, mental fields underlie normal perception. They are an essential part of vision.

How does vision work?

Are the images of what you see inside your brain? Or are they outside you - just where they seem to be? According to the conventional theory, there is a one-way process: light moves in, but nothing is projected out.

The inward movement of light is familiar enough. As you look at this page, reflected light moves from the page through the electromagnetic field into your eyes. The lenses of your eyes focus the light to form upside-down images on your retinas. This light falling on your retinal rod and cone cells causes electrical changes within them, which trigger off patterned changes in the nerves of the retina. Nerve impulses move up your optic nerves and into the brain, where they give rise to complex patterns of electrical and chemical activity. So far, so good. All these processes can be, and have been, studied in great detail by neurophysiologists and other experts on vision and brain activity.

But then something very mysterious happens. You consciously experience what you are seeing, the page in front of you. You also become conscious of the printed words and their meanings. From the point of view of the standard theory, there is no reason why you should be conscious at all. Brain mechanisms ought to go on just as well without consciousness.

The standard theory of vision applies to all species of animal with image-forming eyes. It does not explain why there should be conscious vision in any animal species, or in people. There is just unconscious, computer-like data-processing by the nervous system.

Then comes a further problem. When you see this page, you do not experience your image of it as being inside your brain, where it is supposed to be. Instead, you experience its image as being located about two feet in front of you. The image is outside your body.

The basic idea I am proposing is so simple that it is hard to grasp. Your image of this page is just where it seems to be, in front of your eyes, not behind your eyes. It is in your mind, but not inside your brain.

Thus vision involves both an inward movement of light, and an outward projection of images. Through mental fields our minds reach out to touch what we are looking at.The sense of being stared at

Sometimes when I look at someone from behind, he or she turns and looks straight at me. And sometimes I suddenly turn around and find someone staring at me. Surveys show that more than 90% of people have had experiences such as these. The sense of being stared at should not occur if attention is all inside the head. But if it stretches out and links us to what we are looking at, then our looking could affect what we look at. Is this just an illusion, or does the sense of being stared at really exist?

This question can be explored through simple experiments that cost nothing. People work in pairs. One person, the subject, sits with his or her back to the other, wearing a blindfold. The other person, the looker, sits behind the subject, and in a random series of trials either looks at the subject's neck, or looks away and thinks of something else. The beginning of each trial is signalled by a mechanical clicker or bleeper. Each trial lasts about ten seconds and the subject guesses out loud "looking" or "not looking". Detailed instructions are given on my website.

More than 100,000 trials have now been carried out, and the results are overwhelmingly positive and hugely significant statistically, with odds against chance of quadrillions to one. The sense of being stared at even works when people are looked at through closed-circuit tv. Animals are also sensitive to being looked at by people, and people by animals. This sensitivity to look is widespread in the animal kingdom and may well have evolved in the context of predator-prey relationships: an animal that sensed when an unseen predator was staring would stand a better chance of surviving than an animal without this sense.

Telepathy

Educated people have been brought up to believe that telepathy does not exist. Like other so-called psychic phenomena, it is dismissed as an illusion. Most people who espouse these negative opinions, as I used to myself, do not do so on the basis of a close examination of the evidence. They do so because there is a taboo against taking psychic powers seriously. This taboo dates back at least as far as the Enlightenment at the end of the eighteenth century. But this is not the place to examine its history. Rather I want to summarise some recent experiments which suggest that telepathy not only exists, but is a normal part of animal communication.

I first became interested in the subject of telepathy some fifteen years ago, and started looking at evidence for telepathy in the animals we know best, namely pets. I soon came across numerous stories from owners of dogs, cats, parrots, horses and other animals which suggested that these animals seemed able to read their minds and intentions.

Through public appeals I have built up a large database of such stories, currently containing more than 3,500 case histories. These stories fall into several categories. For example, many cat owners say that their animals seem to sense when they are planning to take them to the vet, even before they have taken out the carrying basket or given any apparent clue as to their intention. Some people say their dogs know when they are going to be taken for a walk, even when they are in a different room, out of sight or hearing, and when the person is merely thinking about taking them for a walk. Of course, no one finds this behaviour surprising if it happens at a routine time, or if the dogs see the person getting ready to go out, or hear the word "walk". They believe it is telepathic, because it seems to happen in the absence of such clues.

One of the commonest and most testable claims about dogs and cats is that they know when their owners are coming home, in some cases anticipating their arrival by ten minutes or more. In random household surveys in Britain and America, my colleagues and I have found that approximately 50% of dog owners and 30% of cat owners believe that their animals anticipate the arrival of a member of the household. Through hundreds of videotaped experiments, we have shown that dogs react to their owners' intentions to come home even when they are many miles away, even when they return at randomly chosen times, and even when they travel in unfamiliar vehicles such as taxis. Telepathy seems to be the only hypothesis that can account for the facts. (For more details, see my book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals.)

Knowing who's calling

In the course of my research on unexplained powers of animals, I heard of dozens of dogs and cats that seemed to anticipate telephone calls from their owners. For example, when the telephone rings in the household of a noted professor at the University of California at Berkeley, his wife knows when her husband is on the other end of the line because Whiskins, their silver tabby cat, rushes to the telephone and paws at the receiver. "Many times he succeeds in taking it off the hook and makes appreciative miaows that are clearly audible to my husband at the other end," she says. "If someone else telephones, Whiskins takes no notice." The cat responds even when the professor telephones home from field trips in Africa or South America.

I soon realised that I myself had had seemingly telepathic experiences with telephone calls. I had thought for no apparent reason of people who then called shortly afterwards. Almost everyone I talked to about it said they had had experiences like this. Through extensive surveys in several countries we have found that such experiences with telephone calls are the most common kind of apparent telepathy in the modern world.

Is this all a matter of coincidence, and selective memory, whereby people only remember when someone they were thinking about rang, and forget all the times they were wrong? Most sceptics assume that this is the case, but until recently there had never been any scientific research on the subject at all.

I have developed a simple experiment to test for telephone telepathy. Participants receive a call from one of four different callers at a prearranged time, and they themselves select the callers, usually close friends or family members. For each test, the caller is picked at random by the experimenter by throwing a dice. The participant has to say who the caller is before the caller says anything. If people were just guessing, they would be right about one time in four, or 25% of the time.

We have so far conducted more than 800 such trials, and the average success rate is 42%, very significantly above the chance level of 25%, with astronomical odds against this being a chance effect.

We have also carried out a series of trials in which two of the four callers were familiar and the other two were strangers whose names the participants knew, but whom they had not met. With familiar callers, the success rate was 56%, highly significant statistically. With strangers, it was at the chance level, in agreement with the observation that telepathy typically takes place between people who share emotional or social bonds.

In addition, we have found that these effects do not fall off with distance. Some of our participants were from Australia or New Zealand, yet they did just as well when people called them from the other side of the world as with people in the same city.

Extended minds

Laboratory studies by parapsychologists have already provided significant statistical evidence for telepathy (well reviewed by Dean Radin in his book The Conscious Universe, Harper, San Francisco, 1997). But most laboratory research has given rather weak effects, probably because most participants and "senders" were strangers to each other, and telepathy normally depends on social bonds.

The results of telephone telepathy experiments give much stronger and more repeatable effects because they involve people who know each other well. I have also found that there are striking telepathic links between nursing mothers and their babies. Likewise, the telepathic reactions of pets to their owners depend on strong social bonds.

I suggest that these bonds are aspects of the fields that link together members of social groups (which I call morphic fields) and act as channels for the transfer of information between separated members of the group. Telepathy literally means "distant feeling", and typically involves the communication of needs, intentions and distress. Sometimes the telepathic reactions are experienced as feelings, sometimes as visions or the hearing of voices, and sometimes in dreams. Many people and pets have reacted when people they are bonded to have had an accident, or are dying, even if this is happening many miles away.

There is an analogy for this process in quantum physics: if two particles have been part of the same quantum system and are separated in space, they retain a mysterious connectedness. When Einstein first realised this implication of quantum theory, he thought quantum theory must be wrong because it implied what he called a "spooky action at a distance". Experiments have shown that quantum theory is right and Einstein wrong. A change in one separated part of a system can affect another instantaneously. This phenomenon is known as quantum non-locality or non-separability.

Telepathy, like the sense of being stared at, is only paranormal if we define as "normal" the theory that the mind is confined to the brain. But if our minds reach out beyond our brains, just as they seem to, and connect with other minds, just as they seem to, then phenomena like telepathy and the sense of being stared at seem normal. They are not spooky and weird, on the margins of abnormal human psychology, but are part of our biological nature.

Of course, I am not saying that the brain is irrelevant to our understanding of the mind. It is very relevant, and recent advances in brain research have much to tell us. Our minds are centred in our bodies, and in our brains in particular. However, they are not confined to our brains, but extend beyond them. This extension occurs through the fields of the mind, or mental fields, which exist both within and beyond our brains.

The idea of the extended mind makes better sense of our experience than the mind-in-the-brain theory. Above all, it liberates us. We are no longer imprisoned within the narrow compass of our skulls, our minds separated and isolated from each other. We are no longer alienated from our bodies, from our environment and from other people. We are interconnected.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of The Sense of Being Stared at, and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind (Hutchinson, £17.99). www.sheldrake.org

Ken Wilber How to Stage a 2nd=Tier Protest

2006-09-15T09:39:00.000-05:00

How to Stage a 2nd-Tier Protest
this ones for you Eric...

Glass Studio at the Alchemists' Guild

2006-09-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

Fall has come to Iowa... I walked into my workshop this morning and the light was totally different. Soon, we will be lighting the fireplace and making smores.

24-hour COMICS day 2006

2006-09-03T09:10:00.000-05:00

The Alchemists' Guild will be hosting 24-hour Comic Day 2006.

Situation begins 9AM October 7th and situation ends 9AM October 8th... Contestants will be required to complete a full 24 page comic within that time frame. Amenities will be provided. Specific materials should be brought be participants.

Bring your fun pants and your gooey brains - it will be quite the time.

Galactic Phil Collins says, "Neat!"

Buckminster Fuller

2006-09-02T10:43:00.000-05:00

Buckminster Fuller

The little human being is designed to be a success in the unvierse...

Kashi at Serenity October 6-8th

2006-09-02T09:11:00.000-05:00

Kashi will be doing some major Triyoga action at Serenity Center in Cedar Rapids October 6-8th.

Friday 7-10pm free the hips (all levels welcome)
Saturday 12-3pm free the spine (all levels welcome) 4-7pm level 1-2
Sunday 12-3pm level 2-3

Go to Serenity web site for more details...

Art Show Closing this Friday 01 sept 06

2006-08-30T09:18:00.000-05:00

Johnny's month has came and went... Soon he will be riding off into that Strange sunset of his. But not before we can say goodbye. Come to the Alchemists' Guild Friday 01 sept 06 between 7 - 10pm for a Strange bit of celebration...

Shane O'Face has a new blog site....

2006-08-29T09:07:00.000-05:00

Do you want to know what it is like to dance in the stars? Are you in need of a strong snort of reality? Do you have my wrist watch?
Check out Shane's new totally knew cryptic situation. Totally.

It will be moot.

Art-chitecture by Johnny Strange

2006-08-28T21:43:00.000-05:00

Johnny Strange is one crazy bastard... He built a city at the Alchemists' Guild and it is sweet. Come check it out.

Walk around in this super-swank new neighborhood... If you listen, you can actually hear the children cooling off in an open hydrant and playing streetball.

I swear there are folks livin' behind each of those windows. They keep staring at me... Strange.

Psychedelics and Religious Experience by Alan Watts

2006-08-21T08:55:00.000-05:00

The Psychedelic Experience

1. slowing down of time
2. awareness of polarity
3. awareness of relativity
4. awareness of eternal energy
5. Opposition to Psychedelic Drugs
6. danger
7. escape from reality

(Originally appeared in the California Law Review, Vol. 56, No. 1, January 1968, pp. 74-85.) Copyright Alan Watts & California Law Review.

The experiences resulting from the use of psychedelic drugs are often described in religious terms. They are therefore of interest to those like myself who, in the tradition of William James,1 are concerned with the psychology of religion. For more than thirty years I have been studying the causes, the consequences, and the conditions of those peculiar states of consciousness in which the individual discovers himself to be one continuous process with God, with the Universe, with the Ground of Being, or whatever name he may use by cultural conditioning or personal preference for the ultimate and eternal reality. We have no satisfactory and definitive name for experiences of this kind. The terms "religious experience," "mystical experience," and "cosmic consciousness" are all too vague and comprehensive to denote that specific mode of consciousness which, to those who have known it, is as real and overwhelming as falling in love. This article describes such states of consciousness induced by psychedelic drugs, although they are virtually indistinguishable from genuine mystical experience. The article then discusses objections to the use of psychedelic drugs that arise mainly from the opposition between mystical values and the traditional religious and secular values of Western society.

The Psychedelic Experience

The idea of mystical experiences resulting from drug use is not readily accepted in Western societies. Western culture has, historically, a particular fascination with the value and virtue of man as an individual, self-determining, responsible ego, controlling himself and his world by the power of conscious effort and will. Nothing, then, could be more repugnant to this cultural tradition than the notion of spiritual or psychological growth through the use of drugs. A "drugged" person is by definition dimmed in consciousness, fogged in judgment, and deprived of will. But not all psychotropic (consciousness-changing) chemicals are narcotic and soporific, as are alcohol, opiates, and barbiturates. The effects of what are now called psychedelic (mind-manifesting) chemicals differ from those of alcohol as laughter differs from rage, or delight from depression. There is really no analogy between being "high" on LSD and "drunk" on bourbon. True, no one in either state should drive a car, but neither should one drive while reading a book, playing a violin, or making love. Certain creative activities and states of mind demand a concentration and devotion that are simply incompatible with piloting a death-dealing engine along a highway.

I myself have experimented with five of the principal psychedelics: LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin, dimethyl-tryptamine (DMT), and cannabis. I have done so, as William James tried nitrous oxide, to see if they could help me in identifying what might be called the "essential" or "active" ingredients of the mystical experience. For almost all the classical literature on mysticism is vague, not only in describing the experience, but also in showing rational connections between the experience itself and the various traditional methods recommended to induce it: fasting, concentration, breathing exercises, prayers, incantations, and dances. A traditional master of Zen or Yoga, when asked why such-and-such practices lead or predispose one to the mystical experience, always responds, "This is the way my teacher gave it to me. This is the way I found out. If you're seriously interested, try it for yourself." This answer hardly satisfies an impertinent, scientifically minded, and intellectually curious Westerner. It reminds him of archaic medical prescriptions compounding five salamanders, powdered gallows rope, three boiled bats, a scruple of phosphorus, three pinches of henbane, and a dollop of dragon dung dropped when the moon was in Pisces. Maybe it worked, but what was the essential ingredient?

It struck me, therefore, that if any of the psychedelic chemicals would in fact predispose my consciousness to the mystical experience, I could use them as instruments for studying and describing that experience as one uses a microscope for bacteriology, even though the microscope is an "artificial" and "unnatural" contrivance which might be said to "distort" the vision of the naked eye. However, when I was first invited to test the mystical qualities of LSD-25 by Dr. Keith Ditman of the Neuropsychiatric Clinic at UCLA Medical School, I was unwilling to believe that any mere chemical could induce a genuine mystical experience. At most, it might bring about a state of spiritual insight analogous to swimming with water wings. Indeed, my first experiment with LSD-25 was not mystical. It was an intensely interesting aesthetic and intellectual experience that challenged my powers of analysis and careful description to the utmost.

Some months later, in 1959, I tried LSD-25 again with Drs. Sterling Bunnell and Michael Agron, who were then associated with the Langley-Porter Clinic, in San Francisco. In the course of two experiments I was amazed and somewhat embarrassed to find myself going through states of consciousness that corresponded precisely with every description of major mystical experiences that I had ever read.2 Furthermore, they exceeded both in depth and in a peculiar quality of unexpectedness the three "natural and spontaneous" experiences of this kind that had happened to me in previous years.

Through subsequent experimentation with LSD-25 and the other chemicals named above (with the exception of DMT, which I find amusing but relatively uninteresting), I found I could move with ease into the state of "cosmic consciousness," and in due course became less and less dependent on the chemicals themselves for "tuning in" to this particular wave length of experience. Of the five psychedelics tried, I found that LSD-25 and cannabis suited my purposes best. Of these two, the latter—cannabis—which I had to use abroad in countries where it is not outlawed, proved to be the better. It does not induce bizarre alterations of sensory perception, and medical studies indicate that it may not, save in great excess, have the dangerous side effects of LSD.

For the purposes of this study, in describing my experiences with psychedelic drugs I avoid the occasional and incidental bizarre alterations of sense perception that psychedelic chemicals may induce. I am concerned, rather, with the fundamental alterations of the normal, socially induced consciousness of one's own existence and relation to the external world. I am trying to delineate the basic principles of psychedelic awareness. But I must add that I can speak only for myself. The quality of these experiences depends considerably upon one's prior orientation and attitude to life, although the now voluminous descriptive literature of these experiences accords quite remarkably with my own.

Almost invariably, my experiments with psychedelics have had four dominant characteristics. I shall try to explain them-in the expectation that the reader will say, at least of the second and third, "Why, that's obvious! No one needs a drug to see that." Quite so, but every insight has degrees of intensity. There can be obvious-1 and obvious-2, and the latter comes on with shattering clarity, manifesting its implications in every sphere and dimension of our existence.

The first characteristic is a slowing down of time, a concentration in the present. One's normally compulsive concern for the future decreases, and one becomes aware of the enormous importance and interest of what is happening at the moment. Other people, going about their business on the streets, seem to be slightly crazy, failing to realize that the whole point of life is to be fully aware of it as it happens. One therefore relaxes, almost luxuriously, into studying the colors in a glass of water, or in listening to the now highly articulate vibration of every note played on an oboe or sung by a voice.

From the pragmatic standpoint of our culture, such an attitude is very bad for business. It might lead to improvidence, lack of foresight, diminished sales of insurance policies, and abandoned savings accounts. Yet this is just the corrective that our culture needs. No one is more fatuously impractical than the "successful" executive who spends his whole life absorbed in frantic paper work with the objective of retiring in comfort at sixty-five, when it will all be too late. Only those who have cultivated the art of living completely in the present have any use for making plans for the future, for when the plans mature they will be able to enjoy the results. "Tomorrow never comes." I have never yet heard a preacher urging his congregation to practice that section of the Sermon on the Mount which begins, "Be not anxious for the morrow...." The truth is that people who live for the future are, as we say of the insane, "not quite all there"—or here: by over-eagerness they are perpetually missing the point. Foresight is bought at the price of anxiety, and when overused it destroys all its own advantages.

The second characteristic I will call awareness of polarity. This is the vivid realization that states, things, and events that we ordinarily call opposite are interdependent, like back and front, or the poles of a magnet. By polar awareness one sees that things which are explicitly different are implicitly one: self and other, subject and object, left and right, male and female-and then, a little more surprisingly, solid and space, figure and background, pulse and interval, saints and sinners, police and criminals, in-groups and out-groups. Each is definable only in terms of the other, and they go together transactionally, like buying and selling, for there is no sale without a purchase, and no purchase without a sale. As this awareness becomes increasingly intense, you feel that you yourself are polarized with the external universe in such a way that you imply each other. Your push is its pull, and its push is your pull—as when you move the steering wheel of a car. Are you pushing it or pulling it?

At first, this is a very odd sensation, not unlike hearing your own voice played back to you on an electronic system immediately after you have spoken. You become confused, and wait for it to go on! Similarly, you feel that you are something being done by the universe, yet that the universe is equally something being done by you-which is true, at least in the neurological sense that the peculiar structure of our brains translates the sun into light, and air vibrations into sound. Our normal sensation of relationship to the outside world is that sometimes I push it, and sometimes it pushes me. But if the two are actually one, where does action begin and responsibility rest? If the universe is doing me, how can I be sure that, two seconds hence, I will still remember the English language? If I am doing it, how can I be sure that, two seconds hence, my brain will know how to turn the sun into light? From such unfamiliar sensations as these, the psychedelic experience can generate confusion, paranoia, and terror-even though the individual is feeling his relationship to the world exactly as it would be described by a biologist, ecologist, or physicist, for he is feeling himself as the unified field of organism and environment.

The third characteristic, arising from the second, is awareness of relativity. I see that I am a link in an infinite hierarchy of processes and beings, ranging from molecules through bacteria and insects to human beings, and, maybe, to angels and gods-a hierarchy in which every level is in effect the same situation. For example, the poor man worries about money while the rich man worries about his health: the worry is the same, but the difference is in its substance or dimension. I realize that fruit flies must think of themselves as people, because, like ourselves, they find themselves in the middle of their own world-with immeasurably greater things above and smaller things below. To us, they all look alike and seem to have no personality-as do the Chinese when we have not lived among them. Yet fruit flies must see just as many subtle distinctions among themselves as we among ourselves.

From this it is but a short step to the realization that all forms of life and being are simply variations on a single theme: we are all in fact one being doing the same thing in as many different ways as possible. As the French proverb goes, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (the more it varies, the more it is one). I see, further, that feeling threatened by the inevitability of death is really the same experience as feeling alive, and that as all beings are feeling this everywhere, they are all just as much "I" as myself. Yet the "I" feeling, to be felt at all, must always be a sensation relative to the "other"-to something beyond its control and experience. To be at all, it must begin and end. But the intellectual jump that mystical and psychedelic experiences make here is in enabling you to see that all these myriad I-centers are yourself—not, indeed, your personal and superficially conscious ego, but what Hindus call the paramatman, the Self of all selves.3 As the retina enables us to see countless pulses of energy as a single light, so the mystical experience shows us innumerable individuals as a single Self.

The fourth characteristic is awareness of eternal energy, often in the form of intense white light, which seems to be both the current in your nerves and that mysterious e which equals mc2. This may sound like megalomania or delusion of grandeur-but one sees quite clearly that all existence is a single energy, and that this energy is one's own being. Of course there is death as well as life, because energy is a pulsation, and just as waves must have both crests and troughs, the experience of existing must go on and off. Basically, therefore, there is simply nothing to worry about, because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe playing hide-and-seek (off-and-on) with itself. At root, you are the Godhead, for God is all that there is. Quoting Isaiah just a little out of context: "I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light and create the darkness: I make peace, and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things."4 This is the sense of the fundamental tenet of Hinduism, Tat tram asi—"THAT (i.e., "that subtle Being of which this whole universe is composed") art thou."5 A classical case of this experience, from the West, is in Tennyson's Memoirs:

A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me thro' repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true life.6
Obviously, these characteristics of the psychedelic experience, as I have known it, are aspects of a single state of consciousness—for I have been describing the same thing from different angles. The descriptions attempt to convey the reality of the experience, but in doing so they also suggest some of the inconsistencies between such experience and the current values of society.

Opposition to Psychedelic Drugs

Resistance to allowing use of psychedelic drugs originates in both religious and secular values. The difficulty in describing psychedelic experiences in traditional religious terms suggests one ground of opposition. The Westerner must borrow such words as samadhi or moksha from the Hindus, or satori or kensho from the Japanese, to describe the experience of oneness with the universe. We have no appropriate word because our own Jewish and Christian theologies will not accept the idea that man's inmost self can be identical with the Godhead, even though Christians may insist that this was true in the unique instance of Jesus Christ. Jews and Christians think of God in political and monarchical terms, as the supreme governor of the universe, the ultimate boss. Obviously, it is both socially unacceptable and logically preposterous for a particular individual to claim that he, in person, is the omnipotent and omniscient ruler of the world-to be accorded suitable recognition and honor.

Such an imperial and kingly concept of the ultimate reality, however, is neither necessary nor universal. The Hindus and the Chinese have no difficulty in conceiving of an identity of the self and the Godhead. For most Asians, other than Muslims, the Godhead moves and manifests the world in much the same way that a centipede manipulates a hundred legs-spontaneously, without deliberation or calculation. In other words, they conceive the universe by analogy with an organism as distinct from a mechanism. They do not see it as an artifact or construct under the conscious direction of some supreme technician, engineer, or architect.

If, however, in the context of Christian or Jewish tradition, an individual declares himself to be one with God, he must be dubbed blasphemous (subversive) or insane. Such a mystical experience is a clear threat to traditional religious concepts. The Judaeo-Christian tradition has a monarchical image of God, and monarchs, who rule by force, fear nothing more than insubordination. The Church has therefore always been highly suspicious of mystics, because they seem to be insubordinate and to claim equality or, worse, identity with God. For this reason, John Scotus Erigena and Meister Eckhart were condemned as heretics. This was also why the Quakers faced opposition for their doctrine of the Inward Light, and for their refusal to remove hats in church and in court. A few occasional mystics may be all right so long as they watch their language, like St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, who maintained, shall we say, a metaphysical distance of respect between themselves and their heavenly King. Nothing, however, could be more alarming to the ecclesiastical hierarchy than a popular outbreak of mysticism, for this might well amount to setting up a democracy in the kingdom of heaven-and such alarm would be shared equally by Catholics, Jews, and fundamentalist Protestants.

The monarchical image of God, with its implicit distaste for religious insubordination, has a more pervasive impact than many Christians might admit. The thrones of kings have walls immediately behind them, and all who present themselves at court must prostrate themselves or kneel, because this is an awkward position from which to make a sudden attack. It has perhaps never occurred to Christians that when they design a church on the model of a royal court (basilica) and prescribe church ritual, they are implying that God, like a human monarch, is afraid. This is also implied by flattery in prayers:

O Lord our heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, the only Ruler of princes, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth: most heartily we beseech thee with thy favor to behold....7
The Western man who claims consciousness of oneness with God or the universe thus clashes with his society's concept of religion. In most Asian cultures, however, such a man will be congratulated as having penetrated the true secret of life. He has arrived, by chance or by some such discipline as Yoga or Zen meditation, at a state of consciousness in which he experiences directly and vividly what our own scientists know to be true in theory. For the ecologist, the biologist, and the physicist know (but seldom feel) that every organism constitutes a single field of behavior, or process, with its environment. There is no way of separating what any given organism is doing from what its environment is doing, for which reason ecologists speak not of organisms in environments but of organism-environments. Thus the words "I" and "self" should properly mean what the whole universe is doing at this particular "here-and-now" called John Doe.

The kingly concept of God makes identity of self and God, or self and universe, inconceivable in Western religious terms. The difference between Eastern and Western concepts of man and his universe, however, extends beyond strictly religious concepts. The Western scientist may rationally perceive the idea of organism-environment, but he does not ordinarily feel this to be true. By cultural and social conditioning, he has been hypnotized into experiencing himself as an ego-as an isolated center of consciousness and will inside a bag of skin, confronting an external and alien world. We say, "I came into this world." But we did nothing of the kind. We came out of it in just the same way that fruit comes out of trees. Our galaxy, our cosmos, "peoples" in the same way that an apple tree "apples."

Such a vision of the universe clashes with the idea of a monarchical God, with the concept of the separate ego, and even with the secular, atheist/agnostic mentality, which derives its common sense from the mythology of nineteenth-century scientist. According to this view, the universe is a mindless mechanism and man a sort of accidental microorganism infesting a minute globular rock that revolves about an unimportant star on the outer fringe of one of the minor galaxies. This "put-down" theory of man is extremely common among such quasi scientists as sociologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, most of whom are still thinking of the world in terms of Newtonian mechanics, and have never really caught up with the ideas of Einstein and Bohr, Oppenheimer and Schrodinger. Thus to the ordinary institutional-type psychiatrist, any patient who gives the least hint of mystical or religious experience is automatically diagnosed as deranged. From the standpoint of the mechanistic religion, he is a heretic and is given electroshock therapy as an up-to-date form of thumbscrew and rack. And, incidentally, it is just this kind of quasi scientist who, as consultant to government and law-enforcement agencies, dictates official policies on the use of psychedelic chemicals.

Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit—to the "conquest" of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature. The result is that we are eroding and destroying our environment, spreading Los Angelization instead of civilization. This is the major threat overhanging Western, technological culture, and no amount of reasoning or doom-preaching seems to help. We simply do not respond to the prophetic and moralizing techniques of conversion upon which Jews and Christians have always relied. But people have an obscure sense of what is good for them-call it "unconscious self-healing," "survival instinct," "positive growth potential," or what you will. Among the educated young there is therefore a startling and unprecedented interest in the transformation of human consciousness. All over the Western world publishers are selling millions of books dealing with Yoga, Vedanta, Zen Buddhism, and the chemical mysticism of psychedelic drugs, and I have come to believe that the whole "hip" subculture, however misguided in some of its manifestations, is the earnest and responsible effort of young people to correct the self-destroying course of industrial civilization.

The content of the mystical experience is thus inconsistent with both the religious and secular concepts of traditional Western thought. Moreover, mystical experiences often result in attitudes that threaten the authority not only of established churches, but also of secular society. Unafraid of death and deficient in worldly ambition, those who have undergone mystical experiences are impervious to threats and promises. Moreover, their sense of the relativity of good and evil arouses the suspicion that they lack both conscience and respect for law. Use of psychedelics in the United States by a literate bourgeoisie means that an important segment of the population is indifferent to society's traditional rewards and sanctions.

In theory, the existence within our secular society of a group that does not accept conventional values is consistent with our political vision. But one of the great problems of the United States, legally and politically, is that we have never quite had the courage of our convictions. The Republic is founded on the marvelously sane principle that a human community can exist and prosper only on a basis of mutual trust. Metaphysically, the American Revolution was a rejection of the dogma of Original Sin, which is the notion that because you cannot trust yourself or other people, there must be some Superior Authority to keep us all in order. The dogma was rejected because, if it is true that we cannot trust ourselves and others, it follows that we cannot trust the Superior Authority which we ourselves conceive and obey, and that the very idea of our own untrustworthiness is unreliable!

Citizens of the United States believe, or are supposed to believe, that a republic is the best form of government. Yet vast confusion arises from trying to be republican in politics and monarchist in religion. How can a republic be the best form of government if the universe, heaven, and hell are a monarchy?8 Thus, despite the theory of government by consent, based upon mutual trust, the peoples of the United States retain, from the authoritarian backgrounds of their religions or national origins, an utterly naive faith in law as some sort of supernatural and paternalistic power. "There ought to be a law against it!" Our law-enforcement officers are therefore confused, hindered, and bewildered—not to mention corrupted—by being asked to enforce sumptuary laws, often of ecclesiastical origin, that vast numbers of people have no intention of obeying and that, in any case, are immensely difficult or simply impossible to enforce—for example, the barring of anything so undetectable as LSD-25 from international and interstate commerce.

Finally, there are two specific objections to use of psychedelic drugs. First, use of these drugs may be dangerous. However, every worth-while exploration is dangerous—climbing mountains, testing aircraft, rocketing into outer space, skin diving, or collecting botanical specimens in jungles. But if you value knowledge and the actual delight of exploration more than mere duration of uneventful life, you are willing to take the risks. It is not really healthy for monks to practice fasting, and it was hardly hygienic for Jesus to get himself crucified, but these are risks taken in the course of spiritual adventures. Today the adventurous young are taking risks in exploring the psyche, testing their mettle at the task just as, in times past, they have tested it—more violently—in hunting, dueling, hot-rod racing, and playing football. What they need is not prohibitions and policemen, but the most intelligent encouragement and advice that can be found.

Second, drug use may be criticized as an escape from reality. However, this criticism assumes unjustly that the mystical experiences themselves are escapist or unreal. LSD, in particular, is by no means a soft and cushy escape from reality. It can very easily be an experience in which you have to test your soul against all the devils in hell. For me, it has been at times an experience in which I was at once completely lost in the corridors of the mind and yet relating that very lostness to the exact order of logic and language, simultaneously very mad and very sane. But beyond these occasional lost and insane episodes, there are the experiences of the world as a system of total harmony and glory, and the discipline of relating these to the order of logic and language must somehow explain how what William Blake called that "energy which is eternal delight" can consist with the misery and suffering of everyday life.9

The undoubted mystical and religious intent of most users of the psychedelics, even if some of these substances should be proved injurious to physical health, requires that their free and responsible use be exempt from legal restraint in any republic that maintains a constitutional separation of church and state.10 To the extent that mystical experience conforms with the tradition of genuine religious involvement, and to the extent that psychedelics induce that experience, users are entitled to some constitutional protection. Also, to the extent that research in the psychology of religion can utilize such drugs, students of the human mind must be free to use them. Under present laws, I, as an experienced student of the psychology of religion, can no longer pursue research in the field. This is a barbarous restriction of spiritual and intellectual freedom, suggesting that the legal system of the United States is, after all, in tacit alliance with the monarchical theory of the universe, and will, therefore, prohibit and persecute religious ideas and practices based on an organic and unitary vision of the universe.11

Yerba Mate available at the Alchemists' Guild

2006-08-02T10:02:00.000-05:00

The Yerba Mate Tree

The Yerba-Mate (pronounced ma-tay) Plant (Ilex-Paranguariensis) belongs to the acquifoliaceas family, of the always-green type, i.e. that has perennial leaves.

The tree is similar to the laurel, of a gray whitish trunk, 2 to 6 meters tall and about 30 or 40 centimeters in diameter. Its leaves are alternate, of a narrow basis and dented edge, they can be 8 to 10 centimeters wide. The yerba-mate plant grows in wooded, subtropical and warm regions, in red and high lands, up to 400 meters above sea level.

Among these regions we can name The Chaco (Bolivian, Paraguayan and Argentine), the North East Argentine Republic, Misiones and Corrientes,the whole Paraguay Republic, Brazil and some bordering departments of Uruguay with Brazil.

In these places the roots of the plant develop greatly in depth and volume. This explains its production period, which is near to 150 years.

The Word "Mate"

The word " mate" derives from the Quechuas and ancisouth americanican civilization. Their native language is called quichua and today is still spoken in Paraguay and Northern Argentina.

(Picture: these are Shumpei's mate cups also for sale at the Alchemists' Guld)
The word "mati", means glass or recipient for drinking, but it has been generalized as the common name of the fruit of the gourd plant Â–Lagenaria vulgaris- especially the varieties used to prepare and serve the infusion of yerba mate ("poro" and "galleta").

So, with the later proliferation of gourds made of the most varied materials, destined to prepare this infusion the word mate began to be used to refer also to any kind of container. Then, the word "mate" began to name the infusion itself..

According to the way this beverage is prepared, it is known as: "Amargo" (bitter), "verde" (green) or "cimarran": it is the mate without sugar.
"Dulce" (Sweet): prepared with sugar.
"Terere": bitter mate brewed with cold water.
"Cocido" (cooked) or "Yerbeao": prepared like tea.

The brewed mate (bitter or sweet) is a daily inseparable companion of the people, official breakfast drink in the Military, Hospitals, Schools and for the large populations of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia and Peru a basic nutritional tea, substitute of coffee and in some places specially among low income inahabitants from northern Argentina, because of its high nutritional properties, a fundamental food source due its low cost.

The Argentine Mate Language

According to the way or the ingredients used to brew the mate, it is, for the popularcommunicator a comunicator of moods or brewer’s desires towards the one who will drink the mate.

Unsweetened mate: Indifference
Sweet mate: Friendship
Very sweet mate: Talk to my parents
CindifferenceDespise, indiference
Mate with balmcinnamonst
Mate with cinamon: You are in my thoughts
Mate with burnt sugar: I like you
Mate with orange peel: Come for me
Mate with tea: Indifference
Mate with coffee: Forgiven offense
Mate with molasses: I sympathize with your sadness
Mate with milk: Esteem
Very hot mate: I’m so in love with you
Boiling mate: Hate
Tasteless mate: Repulse
Mate with cedran: Agreement
Mate with honey: Marriage
Obstructed mate: Repulse
Foaming mate: True love
Consecutive mates: Ill willstrengthenith Ombao: It is equivalent to streghten the mate
Mate brewed through the bombilla: Dislike

The Yerba Mate Legend

There is an old Guarani Indian legend that relates the origins of the Guarani in the Forests of today Northeast Argentina. According to the legend, the ancestors of the Guarani at one time in the distant past crossed a great and spacious ocean from a far land to settle in the Americas. They found the land both wonderful yet full of dangers; through diligence and effort they subdued the land and inaugurated a new civilization.

The Guarani tribes worked the land and became excellent craftsmen. They looked forward to the coming of a tall, fair-skinned, blue eyed, bearded God (Pa' i Shume) who, according to legend, descended from the skies and expressed his pleasure with the Guarani. He brought religious knowledge and imparted to them certain agricultural practices to be of benefit during times of drought and pestilence as well as on a day-to-day basis.

Significantly, He unlocked the secrets of health and medicine and revealed the healing qualities of native plants. One of the most important of these secrets was how to harvest and prepare the leaves of the Yerba Mate tree. The Mate beverage was meant to ensure health, vitality and longevity.

It was like this: the tribe would clear part of the forest, plant manioc and corn, but after four or five years the soil would be worn out and the tribe had to move on. Tired of such moving, an old Indian refused to go on and preferred to stay where he was. The youngest of his daughters, beautiful Jary, had her heart split: to go on with the tribe's youths, or remain isolated, helping the old man until death would take him to Ivy-Marae's peace. Despite her friends' pleas, she ended up staying with her father.

This love gesture deserved a prize. One day, a unknown shaman arrived at the ranch and asked Jary what she wanted in order to feel happy. The girl did not ask anything. But the old man asked: "I want new forces to go on and take Jary to the tribe that went away". The shaman gave him a very green plant, perfumed with kindness, and told him to plant it, pick the leaves, dry them on fire, grind them, put the pieces in a gourd, add cold or hot water and sip the infusion. "In this new beverage, you will find an healthy company, even in the sad hours of the cruelest solitude." After which he went away. Thus was born and grew the "cai-mini," whence came the cai-y beverage that white people would later adopt under the name of Chimarreo in Brazil and Yerba Mate or Cimarron in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Sipping the green sap, the old man recovered, gained new strengths and was able to resume their long journey toward meeting their kinsmen. They were received with the greatest joy.

And the whole tribe adopted the habit of drinking the green herb, bitter and sweet, that gave strength and courage and would comfort friendships at the sad hours of utmost solitude. Mate became the most common ingredient in household cures of the Guarani, and remains so to this day. In current practice in modern Argentina and Paraguay, Mate tea is made from the leaves steeped in hot water. Actually, a large quantity of ground leaf is first soaked in cold water, then the hot water is added, over and over again, until all the good stuff has been extracted. In between each addition of hot water the tea is ingested through a special wood or metal straw, called a bombilla, that filters out the leafy material. It is also used as a cold beverage.

How to Prepare the mate

1-Make sure that your set of tools for
the mate is complete and perfectly clean and hygienic.

Basic Utensils: Kettle(Pava),Mate and Bombilla,
Sugar Bowl, Spoon.

2-Pour yerba inside the mate until you reach
approximately 3/4 of the mate.

3-Mate could be drunk with or without sugsweetenera,
honey or any other kind of healthy sweetner,
I like it bitter, no sugar, none. Is healthier this way,
but you have to get accustom to it.

4-If you choose to drink it with sugar, add,
one or two teaspoons of sugar.

5-Cover the mouth of the mate with one hand, invert it and shake it for some seconds. The purpose of this procedure is to get the finest particles to remain on the top of the brewing, so that the possibilities for them to pass through the bombilla and block it are dimished.

6-Put the mate again in its original position, taking care of the brewing to remain inclined on
one side.

7-Heat the water (if you want you can add sugar into the kettle). When the water is warm, pour softly a sufficient amount of water into the hollow part of the brewing, so that the total of the yerba gets wet. Let it rest for some seconds

8-Cover the mouth of the bombilla with a napkin and insert the filter end into the hollow part of
the brewing. Uncover only when you have found the definite position of the bombilla. This way you will keep the filter from blocking during this operation.

9-When the water has reached its optimal temperature (before boiling) you can begin to brew, pouring the water softly and adding sugar when you think it necessary (if you have not chosen to sweeten the water.

10-Keep the water at a constant temperature without letting it boil (to use a thermos or our Matermo is highly recommended for this matter). Try not to move the bombilla, but if this were necessary, do it when the mate is empty (without water).

NUTRITION FACTS / DATOS NUTRICIONALES

Serving Size 1 Gourd in 500 ml of water

Tamano de Racion 1 mate en 500ml. de agua

Serving per container / Cantidad por envase (500g./ 1lb.) 10 servings.

Amount per serving / Cantidad por racion.

Calories/Calorias = 12.

Calories from Fat / Calorias de Grasa = 0.

% Daily Value / Valor Diario

Total Fat / Grasa Total 0g. 0%
Saturated Fat / Grasa Saturada 0g. 0%
Cholesterol / Colesterol = 0 0%
Sodium / Sodio 0mg 0%
Potassium/Potasio 62mg. 2%
Total Carbohydrate/Carb 2g 1%
Dietary Fiber / Fibra Dietaria 0g 0%
Protein/Proteinas 1g

VITAMIN A 0%
VITAMIN C 3%
CALCIO/CALCIUM 4%
IRON / HIERRO 6%
NIACIN/NIACINA 0%
PHOSPORUS /FOSFORO 0%

Percent Daily Values are Based on a 2000 Calories Diet.

This Information has been taken from 1lb. of Organic Yerba Mate Tea La Esquina De Las Flores -TRADITIONAL FLAVOR-

Nutritional information varies between brands. Some mate's have as much as 100% of your daily need for iron in one traditionally prepared cup.

William Burroughs gives thanks...

2006-08-02T09:48:00.000-05:00

William S. Burroughs - Thanksgiving Prayer

William Burroughs died on 2 AUG 1997... fnord.

Mother Meera is coming to the United States

2006-07-30T08:17:00.000-05:00

Wow, I always thought I would have to go to Germany to see Mother Meera... Instead, Chicago... August 25-26, 2006

If you do anything crazy this summer, this should be it. Listen man, she unties your soul knots. That is pretty freakin' cool.

I'll be there, but I'll make sure Galactic Phil Collins stays at home... besides, Phil's soul was un-knotted several years from now.

New Daily Comic by Cody G.

2006-07-28T09:31:00.000-05:00

The tenth edition is out and Cody is as hardcore as ever...

Riboflavin. See what I'm saying? Can you handle it?

Cody even unveils her new web site... www.awkwardlyput.com

Find out the crucial details in this zany issue.

Leah R. Mills Recent Works

2006-07-20T17:52:00.000-05:00

Leah Mills has just finished hanging her art show entitled "Recent Works" at the Alchemists' Guild...

The art feels playful... I can hear Leah belly laugh as I look at her confessional piece about fried cheese addiction... and I can feel the pre-coffee slump of her coffee/cigarette in the morning piece....

Come in and check out Leah's art... You'll have fun and learn a couple things about our friend Leah... good things... fnord

Pravritti has a totally dank blog site... boney-knob...

2006-07-18T18:05:00.000-05:00

E and E-Prime by Robert Anton Wilson (fnord)

2006-07-18T09:09:00.000-05:00

In 1933, in Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski proposed that we should abolish the "is of identity" from the English language. (The "is of identity" takes the form X is a Y. e.g., "Joe is a Communist," "Mary is a dumb file-clerk," "The universe is a giant machine," etc.) In 1949, D. David Bourland Jr. proposed the abolition of all forms of the words "is" or "to be" and the Bourland proposal (English without "isness") he called E-Prime, or English-Prime.

A few scientists have taken to writing in E-Prime (notable Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. E.W. Kellogg III). Bourland, in a recent (not-yet-published) paper tells of a few cases in which scientific reports, unsatisfactory to sombunall members of a research group, suddenly made sense and became acceptable when re-written in E-Prime. By and large, however, E-Prime has not yet caught on either in learned circles or in popular speech.

(Oddly, most physicists write in E-Prime a large part of the time, due to the influence of Operationalism -- the philosophy that tells us to define things by operations performed -- but few have any awareness of E-prime as a discipline and most of them lapse into "isness" statements all too frequently, thereby confusing themselves and their readers. )

Nonetheless, E-Prime seems to solve many problems that otherwise appear intractable, and it also serves as an antibiotic against what Korzybski called "demonological thinking." Most of this book employs E-Prime so the reader could begin to get acquainted with this new way of mapping the world; in a few instances I allowed normal English, and its "isness" to intrude again (how many of you noticed that?), while discussing some of the weird and superstitious thinking that exists throughout our society and always occurs when "is" creeps into our concepts. (As a clue or warning, I placed each "is" in dubious quotation marks, to highlight its central role in the confusions there discussed).

As everybody with a home computer knows, the software can change the functioning of the hardware in radical and sometimes startling ways. The first law of computers -- so ancient that some claim it dates back to dark, Cthulhoid aeons when giant saurians and Richard Nixons still dominated the earth -- tells us succinctly, "Garbage In, Garbage Out" (or GIGO for short).

The wrong software guarantees wrong answers, or total gibberish. Conversely, the correct software, if you find it, will often "miraculously" solve problems that had hitherto appeared intractable.

Since the brain does not receive raw data, but edits data as we receive it, we need to understand the software the brain uses. The case for using E-Prime rests on the simple proposition that "isness" sets the brain into a medieval Aristotelian framework and makes it impossible to understand modern problems and opportunities. A classic case of GIGO, in short. Removing "isness" and writing/thinking only and always in operational/existential language sets us, conversely, in a modern universe where we can successfully deal with modern issues.

To begin to get the hang of E-Prime, consider the following two columns, the first written in Standard English and the second in English Prime.

Standard English//English Prime

1. The photon is a wave.// 1. The photon behaves as a wave when constrained by certain instruments.

2. The photon is a particle.// 2. The photon appears as a particle when constrained by other instruments.

3. John is unhappy and grouchy.// 3. John appears unhappy and grouchy in the office.

4. John is bright and cheerful.// 4. John appears bright and cheerful on holiday at the beach.

5. The car involved in the hit-and-run accident was a blue Ford.// 5. In memory, I think I recall the car involved in the hit-and-run accident as a blue Ford.

6. That is a fascist idea.// 6. That seems like a fascist idea to me.

7. Beethoven is better than Mozart.// 7. In my present mixed state of musical education and ignorance Beethoven seems better than Mozart to me.

8. Lady Chatterly's lover is a pornographic novel.// 8. Lady Chatterly's lover seems like a pornographic novel to me.

9. Grass is green.// 9. Grass registers as green to most human eyes.

10. The first man stabbed the second man with a knife.// 10. I think I saw the first man stab the second man with a knife.

In the first example a "metaphysical" or Aristotelian formulation in Standard English becomes an operational or existential formulation when rewritten in English Prime. This may appear of interest only to philosophers and scientists of an operationalist/phenomenologist bias, but consider what happens when we move to the second example.

Clearly, written in Standard English, "The photon is a wave," and "The photon is a particle" contradict each other, just like the sentences "Robin is a boy" and "Robin is a girl." Nonetheless, all through the nineteenth century physicists found themselves debating about this and, by the early 1920s, it became obvious that the experimental evidence depended on the instruments or the instrumental set-up (design) of the total experiment. One type of experiment always showed light traveling in waves, and another type always showed light traveling as discrete particles.

This contradiction created considerable consternation. As noted earlier, some quantum theorists joked about "wavicles." Others proclaimed in despair that "the universe is not rational" (by which they meant to indicate that the universe does not follow Aristotelian logic. ) Still others looked hopefully for the definitive experiment (not yet attained in 1990) which would clearly prove whether photons "are" waves or particles.

If we look, again, at the translations into English Prime, we see that no contradiction now exists at all, no "paradox," no "irrationality" in the universe. We also find that we have constrained ourselves to talk about what actually happened in spacetime, whereas in Standard English we allowed ourselves to talk about something that has never been observed in spacetime at all -- the "isness" or "whatness" or Aristotelian "essence" of the photon. (Niels Bohr's Complementarity Principle and Copenhagen Interpretation, the technical resolutions of the wave/particle duality within physics, amount to telling physicists to adopt "the spirit of E-Prime" without quite articulating E-Prime itself.)

The weakness of Aristotelian "isness" or "whatness" statements lies in their assumption of indwelling "thingness" -- the assumption that every "object" contains what the cynical German philosopher Max Stirner called "spooks." Thus in Moliere's famous joke, an ignorant doctor tries to impress some even more ignorant lay persons by "explaining" that opium makes us sleepy because it has a "sleep-inducing property" in it. By contrast a scientific or operational statement would define precisely how the structure of the opium molecule chemically bonds to specific receptor structures in the brain, describing actual events in the spacetime continuum.

In simpler words, the Aristotelian universe assumes an assembly of "things" with "essences" or "spooks" inside of them, where the modern scientific (or existentialist) universe assumes a network of structural relationships. (Look at the first two samples of Standard English and English Prime again, to see this distinction more clearly.)

Moliere's physician does not seem nearly as comical as the theology promulgated by the Vatican. According to Thomist Aristotelianism (the official Vatican philosophy) "things" not only have indwelling "essences" or "spooks" but also have external "accidents" or appearances. This "explains" the Miracle of the Transubstantiation. In this astounding, marvelous, totally wonderful, even mind-boggling Miracle, a piece of bread changes into the body part of a Jew who lived 2000 years ago.

Now the "accidents" -- which include everything you can observe about the bread, with your senses, or with the most subtle scientific instruments -- admittedly do not change. To your eyes or taste buds or electron microscopes the bread has undergone no change at all. It doesn't even weigh as much as a human body, but retains the weight of a small piece of bread. Nonetheless, to Catholics, after the Miracle (which any priest can perform) the bread "is" the body of the aforesaid dead Jew, one Yeshua ben Yusef, who the goys of the Vatican call Jesus Christ. In other words, the "essence" of the bread "is" the dead Jew.

It appears obvious that, within this framework, the "essence" of the bread can "be" anything, or can "be" asserted to "be" anything. It could "be" the essence of the Easter Bunny, or it could "be" Jesus and the Easter Bunny both, or it could "be" the Five Original Marx Brothers, or it could "be" a million other spooks happily co-existing in the realm outside spacetime where such metaphysical entities appear to reside.

Even more astounding, this Miracle can only happen if the priest has a Willy. Protestants, Jews, Zen Buddhists etc. have ordained many female clergy-persons in recent decades, but the Vatican remains firm in the principle that only a male -- a human with a Willy -- can transform the "essence" of bread into the "essence" of a dead body.

Like the cannibalism underlying this Rite, this phallus-worship dates back to Stone Age ideas about "essences" that can be transferred from one organism to another. Ritual homosexuality, as distinguished from homosexuality-for-fun, played a prominent role in many of the pagan fertility cults that got incorporated into the Catholic metaphysics. See Frazer's Golden Bough and Wright's Worship of the Generative Organs. It requires a phallus to transmute the bread into flesh because some of our early ancestors believed it requires a phallus to do any great work of Magick.)

In Standard English we may discuss all sorts of metaphysical and spooky matters, often without noticing that we have entered the realms of theology and demonology, whereas in English Prime we can only discuss actual experiences (or transactions) in the spacetime continuum. English Prime may not automatically transfer us into a scientific universe, in all cases, but it at least transfers us into existential or experiential modes, and it takes us out of medieval theology.

Now, those who enjoy theological and/or demonological speculations may continue to enjoy them, as far as I care. This book merely attempts to clarify the difference between theological speculations and actual experiences in spacetime, so that we do not wander into theology without realizing where we have gotten ourselves. The Supreme Court, for instance, wandered into theology (or demonology) when it proclaimes that "fuck" "is" an indecent word. The most one can say about that in scientific E-Prime would read: "The word 'fuck' appears indecent in the evaluations of x per cent of the population," X found by normal polling methods.

Turning next to the nigmatic John who "is" unhappy and grouchy yet also "is" bright and cheerful, we find a surprising parallel to the wave/particle duality. Remaining in the reality-tunnel of standard English, one might decide that John "really is" manic depressive. Or one speaker might decide that the other speaker hasn't "really" observed John carefully, or "is" an "untrustworthy witness." Again, the innocent-looking "is" causes us to populate the world with spooks, and may provoke us to heated debate, or violent quarrel. (That town in Northern Ireland mentioned earlier -- "is" it "really" Derry or Londonderry?)

Rewriting in English Prime we find "John appears unhappy and grouchy in the office" and "John appears bright and cheerful on holiday at the beach." We have left the realms of spooks and re-entered the existential or phenomenological world of actual experiences in spacetime. And, lo and behold, another metaphysical contradiction has disappeared in the process.

To say "John is" anything, incidentally, always opens the door to spooks and metaphysical debates. The historical logic of Aristotelian philosophy as embedded in Standard English always carries an association of stasis with every "is," unless the speaker or writer remembers to include a date, and even then linguistic habit will cause many to "not notice" the date and assume "is" means a stasis (an Aristotelian timeless essence or spook.)

For instance, "John is beardless" may deceive many people (but not trained police officers) if john becomes a wanted criminal and alters his appearance by growing a beard.

"John is a Protestant" or "John is a Catholic" may change any day, if John has developed a habit of philosophical speculation.

Even stranger, "John is a Jew" has at least five different meanings, some of which may change and some remain constant, and only one of which tells us anything about how John will behave in spacetime.....

"John is a plumber" also contains a fallacy. John may have quit plumbing since you saw him last and may work as a hair dresser now. Stranger things have happened. In E-Prime one would write "John had a job as a plumber last I knew."

Trivial? Overly pedantic? According to a recent article Professor Harry Weinberg -- curiously, an old acquaintance of mine -- once tried to emphasize these points to a class by trying to make them see the fallacy in the statement "John F. Kennedy is President of the United States." Dr. Weinberg pointed out that the inference, Nothing has changed since we came into this classroom, had not been checked by anybody who insisted the statement about Kennedy contained certainty. Weinberg, like his students, got the lesson driven home with more drama than anybody expected, because this class occurred on November 22, 1963, and everybody soon learned that during that class time John F. Kennedy had died of an assassin's bullet and Lyndon B. Johnson had taken the oath as President of the United States.

That makes the idea kind of hard to forget, doesn't it?

Looking at sample five -- "The car... was a blue Ford" we might again encounter Bertrand Russell's two-head paradox. It seems a blue Ford exists "in" the head of the witness, but whether the blue Ford also existed "outside" that head remains unsure. Even outside tricky psychology labs, ordinary perception has become problematical due to the whole sad history of eye-witness testimony frequently breaking down in court. Or does the "external universe" (including the blue Ford) exist in some super-Head somwhere? It seems that the translation into E-Prime -- "I recall the car... as a blue Ford" better accords with the experiential level of our existence in spacetime than the two heads and other paradoxes we might encounter in Standard English.

James Thurber tells us that he once saw an admiral, wearing a 19th Century naval uniform and old-fashioned side whiskers, peddling a unicycle down the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York. Fortunately, Thurber had broken his glasses and had not yet received replacements from the optometrist, so he did not worry seriously about his sanity. In the Castro section of San Francisco, a well-known homosexual area, I once saw a sign which said 'HALF GAY CLEANERS' -- but when I looked again, it said, 'HALF DAY CLEANERS'.

Even Aristotle, despite the abuse he has suffered in these pages, had enough common sense to point out, once, that "I see" always contains fallacy; we should say, "I have seen." Time always elapses between the impact of energy on the eye and the creation of an image (and associated name and ideas) in the brain, which explains why three eyewitnesses to a hit-and-run such as we postulate here may report, not just the blue Ford of the first speaker, but a blue VW or maybe even a green Toyota.

I once astonished a friend by remarking, apropos of UFOs, that I see two or three of them a week. As a student of Transactional Psychology, this does not surprise or alarm me. I also see UNFOs, as noted earlier -- and I do not rush to identify them as raccoons or groundhogs, like some people we met earlier. Most people see UNFOs, without thinking about the implications of this, especially when driving rapidly, but sometimes even when walking. We only find UFOs impressive because some people claim they "are" alien spaceships. My UFOs remain Unidentified, since they did not hang around long enough for me to form even a guess about them, but I have found no grounds for classifying them as space-ships. Anybody who does not see UFOs frequently, I think, has not mastered perception psychology or current neuroscience. The sky contains numerous things that go by too quickly for anybody to identify them.

My own wife has appeared as an UNFO to me on occasion -- usually around two or three in the morning when I get out of bed to go to the john and then encounter a Mysterious and Unknown figure emerging from the dark at the other end of the hall. In those cases, fortunately, identification did not take long, and I never reached for a blunt instrument to defend myself. Whatever my critics may suspect, I never mistook her for a squirrel.

If you think about it from the perspective of E-Prime, the world consists mostly of UFOs and UNFOs. Very few "things" (spacetime events) in the air or on the ground give us the opportunity to "identify" them with certainty.

In example six -- "That is a fascist idea" versus "That seems like a fascist idea to me" -- Standard English implies an indwelling essence of the medieval sort, does not describe an operation in spacetime, and mentions no instrument used in measuring the alleged "fascism" in the idea. The English Prime translation does not assume essences or spooks, describes the operation as occurring in the brain of the speaker and, implicitly, identifies said brain as the instrument making the evaluation. Not accidentally, Standard English also assumes a sort of "glass wall" between observer and observed, while English Prime draws us back into the modern quantum world where observer and observed form a seamless unity.

In examples 7 and 8, Standard English again assumes indwelling spooks and continues to separate observer and observed; English Prime assumes no spooks and reminds us of QUIP (the QUantum Inseparability Principle, so named by Dr. Nick Herbert), namely, the impossibility of existentially separating observer and observed.

Meditating on example 9 will give you the answer to a famous Zen koan, "Who is the Master who makes the grass green?" It might also save you from frequent quarrels (mostly occurring between husbands and wives) about whether the new curtains "are really" green or blue.

Example 10 introduces new subtleties. No explicit "is" appears in the Standard English, so even those trained in E-Prime may see no problem here. However, if the observation refers to a famous (and treacherous) experiment, well-known to psychologists, the Standard English version contains a hilarious fallacy.

I refer to the experiment in which two men rush into a psychology class, struggle and shout, and then one makes a stabbing motion and the other falls. The majority of students, whenever that has been tried, report a knife in the hand of the man who made the stabbing (knife-wielding) motion. In fact, the man used no knife. He used a banana.

Look back at the re-translation into E-Prime. It seems likely that persons trained in E-Prime will grow more cautious about their perceptions and not "rush to judgement" in the manner of most of us throughout history. They might even see the banana, instead of hallucinating a knife.

Exercises

1. Have the group experiment with rewriting the following Standard English sentences into English Prime. Observe carefully what disagreements or irratibility may arise.
"The fetus is a person."
"The zygote is a person."
"Every sperm is sacred/Every sperm is great/If a sperm is wasted/God gets quite irate." (M. Python)
"Pornography is murder." (A. Dworkin)
"John is homosexual."
"The table is four feet long."
"The human brain is a computer."
"When I took LSD, the whole universe was transformed."
"Beethoven was paranoid, Mozart was manic-depressive, and Wagner was megalomaniac."
"Today is Tuesday."
"Lady Chatterly's Lover is a sexist novel."
"Mice, voles and rabbits are all rodents."
"The patient is resisting therapy."
"Sin and redemption are theological fictions. The sense of sin and the sense of redemption are actual human experiences." (paraphrased from Ludwig Wittgenstein.)

taken from Quantum Psychology

Summoning Eris for Fun and Magick by Zin Zin Bodieo

2006-07-11T08:53:00.000-05:00

Mystics, Magickians, and brain-change technicians alike employ ritual to invoke the archetypal mind(which is simply the art of tuning into those "cosmic" signals we normally edit) and to expose and make accessible our power source - the potential energy of Chaos. We enter a "non-local" state where our definitions of reality, our masks of personality, temporarily fall away. Who we believe we are at any given moment is always fiction, for we are another thing a moment later; or as W.B. Yeats implied we cannot "know the dancer from the dance." Eris aids in dissolving the protective circle of self-concept by scrambling our programs, confusing us, and ferrying us into the space of No-Form, the lap of Chaos: Hence, we find ourselves in reach of magickal power, in a state of trance, ready to dance a new reality for ourselves. As William Burroughs astutely commented, "escape routes open in times of chaos."
Emptied of prior definition and highly impressionable, we use whatever means or rituals we choose to change the station to a reality more in accord with our will, or create a wholly new one. Brain-change technicians are meta-programmers who dance through dozens of virtual realities. We re-program ourselves, clothing ourselves with new belief systems or realities as creatively and as often AS WE WILL. (As I see it, the more often we change, the faster we evolve.)
As we commit ourselves to a practice of magickal crucifictions, moving through processes of dis-identification and redefinition of our perceived selves and realities, our normal reality changes to a magickal reality, and we soon re-cognize that we are no-thing, everything, and something. The WoMan who practices the art of reality shaping understand what Hassan I Sabbah meant when he said the "Nothing is true, everything is permissible."

Formal ritual performed in this concept-free state, whether Crowley-style invocations or a Catholic Exorcism, has a high success rate, evoking or invoking what spirits, angels, demons, gods, goddesses, in the form and style you expect, and as you will. Plugged into the source of your power - the Chaotic Pool of Potentia - you may wish to employ your concentrated will and imagination, thereby utilizing this force to "charge" your magickal tools, talisman, and amulets, or to project your desire into the Cornucopian Womb of the Universe.
The will is very effective when applied in the dimension of potential (Chaos), more so, I think, than when applied to the denser astral of physical planes, where it can be refracted by opposing wills or sabotaged by your own re-actionary mental processes. YOUR MAGICK WILL WORK, so be certain that you want that which you will. Also, it helps to have some sort of symbol of your desire at hand to concentrate upon or verbalize - a word or mental image will do (but Kevin will make you a cool artifact if desired)- so you won't need to regain "normal" consciousness in order to remember the purpose of your ritual.

Coming Soon... Pt3 How Shall I Invoke Thee? Many and Joyful are the Ways.

Using LSD to Imprint the Tibetan-Buddhist Experience

2006-07-07T08:44:00.000-05:00

by Dr. Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

A Guide to Successful Psychedelic Experience

1. Planning a Session
2. Preparation
3. Some Practical Recommendations
4. The Setting
5. The Psychedelic Guide
6. The Period of Ego Loss or Non-Game Ecstasy

Having read this preparatory manual one can immediately recognize symptoms and experiences that might otherwise be terrifying, only because of lack of understanding. Recognition is the key word. Recognizing and locating the level of consciousness. This guidebook may also be used to avoid paranoid trips or to regain transcendence if it has been lost. If the experience starts with light, peace, mystic unity, understanding, and continues along this path, then there is no need to remember the manual or have it reread to you. Like a road map, consult it only when lost, or when you wish to change course.

===>Planning a Session

What is the goal? Classic Hinduism suggests four possibilities:
Increased personal power, intellectual understanding, sharpened insight into self and culture, improvement of life situation, accelerated learning, professional growth.
Duty, help of others, providing care, rehabilitation, rebirth for fellow men.
Fun, sensuous enjoyment, esthetic pleasure, interpersonal closeness, pure experience.
Trancendence, liberation from ego and space-time limits; attainment of mystical union.
The manual's primary emphasis on the last goal does not preclude other goals - in fact, it guarantees their attainment because illumination requires that the person be able to step out beyond problems of personality, role, and professional status. The initiate can decide beforehand to devote their psychedelic experience to any of the four goals.

In the extroverted transcendent experience, the self is ecstatically fused with external objects (e.g., flowers, other people). In the introverted state, the self is ecstatically fused with internal life processes (lights, energy waves, bodily events, biological forms, etc.). Either state may be negative rather than positive, depending on the voyager's set and setting. For the extroverted mystic experience, one would bring to the session candles, pictures, books, incense, music, or recorded passages to guide the awareness in the desired direction. An introverted experience requires eliminating all stimulation: no light, no sound, no smell, no movement.

The mode of communication with other participants should also be agreed on beforehand, to avoid misinterpretations during the heightened sensitivity of ego transcendence.

If several people are having a session together, they should at least be aware of each other's goals. Unexpected or undesired manipulations can easily "trap" the other voyagers into paranoid delusions.

===> Preparation

Psychedelic chemicals are not drugs in the usual sense of the word. There is no specific somatic or psychological reaction. The better the preparation, the more ecstatic and relevatory the session. In initial sessions with unprepared persons, set and setting - particularly the actions of others - are most important. Long-range set refers to personal history, enduring personality, the kind of person you are. Your fears, desires, conflicts, guilts, secret passions, determine how you interpret and manage any psychedelic session. Perhaps more important are the reflex mechanisms, defenses, protective maneuvers,
typically employed when dealing with anxiety. Flexibility, basic trust, philosophic faith, human openness, courage, interpersonal warmth, creativity, allow for fun and easy learning. Rigidity, desire to control, distrust, cynicism, narrowness, cowardice, coldness, make any new situation threatening. Most important is insight. The person who has some understanding of his own machinery, who can recognize when he is not functioning as he would wish, is better able to adapt to any challenge - even the sudden collapse of his ego.

Immediate set refers to expections about the session itself. People naturally tend to impose personal and social perspectives on any new situation. For example, some ill-prepared subjects unconsciously impose a medical model on the experience. They look for symptoms, interpret each new sensation in terms of sickness/health, and, if anxiety develops, demand tranquilizers. Occasionally, ill-planned sessions end in the subject demanding to see a doctor.

Rebellion against convention may motivate some people who take the drug. The naive idea of doing something "far out" or vaguely naughty can cloud the experience.

LSD offers vast possibilities of accelerated learning and scientific- scholarly research, but for initial sessions, intellectual reactions can become traps. "Turn your mind off" is the best advice for novitiates. After you have learned how to move your consciousness around - into ego loss and back, at will - then intellectual exercises can be incorporated into the psychedelic experience. The objective is to free you from your verbal mind for as long as possible.

Religious expectations invite the same advice. Again, the subject in early sessions is best advised to float with the stream, stay "up" as long as possible, and postpone theological interpretations.

Recreational and esthetic expectations are natural. The psychedelic experience provides ecstatic moments that dwarf any personal or cultural game. Pure sensation can capture awareness. Interpersonal intimacy reaches Himalayan heights. Esthetic delights - musical, artistic, botanical, natural - are raised to the millionth power. But ego-game reactions - "I am having this ecstasy. How lucky I am!" - can prevent the subject from reaching pure ego loss.

===> Some Practical Recommendations

The subject should set aside at least three days: a day before the experience, the session day, and a follow-up day. This scheduling guarantees a reduction in external pressure and a more sober commitment. Talking to others who have taken the voyage is excellent preparation, although the hallucinatory quality of all descriptions should be recognized. Observing a session is another valuble preliminary.

Reading books about mystical experience and of others' experiences is another possibility (Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, and Gordon Wasson have written powerful accounts). Meditation is probably the best preparation. Those who have spent time in a solitary attempt to manage the mind, to eliminate thought and reach higher stages of concentration, are the best candidates for a psychedelic session. When the ego loss occurs, they recognize the process as an eagerly awaited end.

===> The Setting

First and most important, provide a setting removed from one's usual interpersonal games, and as free as possible from unforseen distractions and intrusions. The voyager should make sure that he will not be disturbed; visitors or a phone call will often jar him into hallucinatory activity. Trust in the surroundings and privacy are necessary.

The day after the session should be set aside to let the experience run its natural course and allow time for reflection and meditation. A too-hasty return to game involvements will blur the clarity and reduce the potential for learning. It is very useful for a group to stay together after the session to share and exchange experiences.

Many people are more comfortable in the evening, and consequently their experiences are deeper and richer. The person should choose the time of day that seems right. Later, he may wish to experience the difference between night and day sessions. Similarly, gardens, beaches, forests, and open country have specific influences that one may or may not wish. The essential thing is to feel as comfortable as possible, whether in one's living room or under the night sky. Familiar surroundings may help one feel confident in hallucinatory periods. If the session is held indoors, music, lighting, the availablility of food and drink, should be considered beforehand. Most people report no hunger during the height of the experience, then later on prefer simple ancient foods like bread, cheese, wine, and fresh fruit. The senses are wide open, and the taste and smell of a fresh orange are unforgetable.

In group sessions, people usually will not feel like walking or moving very much for long periods, and either beds or mattresses should be provided. One suggestion is to place the heads of the beds together to form a star pattern. Perhaps one may want to place a few beds together and keep one or two some distance apart for anyone who wishes to remain aside for some time. The availability of an extra room is desirable for someone who wishes to be in seclusion.

===> The Psychedelic Guide

With the cognitive mind suspended, the subject is in a heightened state of suggestibility. For initial sessions, the guide possesses enormous power to move consciousness with the slightest gesture or reaction.

The key here is the guide's ability to turn off his own ego and social games, power needs, and fears - to be there, relaxed, solid, accepting, secure, to sense all and do nothing except let the subject know his wise presence.

A psychedelic session lasts up to twelve hours and produces moments of intense, intense, INTENSE reactivity. The guide must never be bored, talkative, intellectualizing. He must remain calm during long periods of swirling mindlessness. He is the ground control, always there to receive messages and queries from high-flying aircraft, ready to help negotiate their course and reach their destination. The guide does not impose his own games on the voyager. Pilots who have their own flight plan, their own goals, are reassured to know that an expert is down there, available for help. But if ground control is harboring his own motives, manipulating the plane towards selfish goals, the bond of security and confidence crumbles.

To administer psychedelics without personal experience is unethical and dangerous. Our studies concluded that almost every negative LSD reaction has been caused by the guide's fear, which augmented the transient fear of the subject. When the guide acts to protect himself, he communicates his concern. If momentary discomfort or confusion happens, others present should not be sympathetic or show alarm but stay calm and restrain their "helping games." In particular, the "doctor" role should be avoided.

The guide must remain passively sensitive and intuitively relaxed for several hours - a difficult assignment for most Westerners. The most certain way to maintain a state of alert quietism, poised in ready flexability, is for the guide to take a low dose of the psychedelic with the subject. Routine procedure is to have one trained person participating in the experience, and one staff member present without psychedelic aid. The knowledge that one experienced guide is "up" and keeping the subject company is of inestimable value: the security of a trained pilot flying at your wingtip; the scuba diver's security in the presence of an expert companion.

The less experienced subject will more likely impose hallucinations. The guide, likely to be in a state of mindless, blissful flow, is then pulled into the subject's hallucinatory field and may have difficulty orienting himself. There are no familiar fixed landmarks, no place to put your foot, no solid concept upon which to base your thinking. All is flux. Decisive action by the subject can structure the guide's flow if he has taken a heavy dose.

The psychedelic guide is literally a neurological liberator, who provides illumination, who frees men from their lifelong internal bondage. To be present at the moment of awakening, to share the ecstatic revelation when the voyager discovers the wonder and awe of the divine life-process, far outstrips earthly game ambitions. Awe and gratitude - rather than pride - are the rewards of this new profession.

===> The Period of Ego Loss or Non-Game Ecstasy

Success implies very unusual preparation in consciousness expansion, as well as much calm, compassionate game playing (good karma) on the part of the participant. If the participant can see and grasp the idea of the empty mind as soon as the guide reveals it - that is to say, if he has the power to die consciously - and, at the supreme moment of quitting the ego, can recognize the ecstasy that will dawn upon him and become one with it, then all bonds of illusion are broken asunder immediately: the dreamer is awakened into reality simultaneously with the mighty achievement of recognition.

It is best if the guru from whom the participant received guiding instructions is present. But if the guru cannot be present, then another expert. But if the guru cannot be present, then another experienced person, or a person the participant trusts, should be available to read this manual without imposing any of his own games. Thereby the participant will be put in mind of what he had previosly heard of the experience.

Liberation is the nervous system devoid of mental-conceptual redundancy. The mind in its conditioned state, limited to words and ego games, is continuously in thought-formation activity. The nervous system in a state of quiescence, alert, awake but not active, is comparable to what Buddhists call the highest state of dhyana (deep meditation). The conscious recognition of the Clear Light induces an ecstatic condition of consciousness such as saints and mystics of the West have called illumination.

The first sign is the glimpsing of the "Clear Light of Reality, the infallible mind of the pure mystic state" - an awareness of energy transformations with no imposition of mental categories.

The duration of this state varies, depending on the individual's experience, security, trust, preparation, and the surroundings. In those who have a little practical experience of the tranquil state of non-game awareness, this state can last from 30 minutes to several hours. Realization of what mystics call the "Ultimate Truth" is possible, provided that the person has made sufficient preparation beforehand. Otherwise he cannot benefit now, and must wander into lower and lower conditions of hallucinations until he drops back to routine reality.

It is important to remember that the consciousness-expansion is the reverse of the birth process, the ego-loss experiencee being a temporary ending of game life, a passing from one state of consciousness into another. Just as an infant must wake up and learn from experience the nature of this world, so a person must wake up in this new brilliant world of consciousness expansion and become familiar with its own peculiar conditions.

In those heavily dependant on ego games, who dread giving up control, the illuminated state endures only for a split second. In some, it lasts as long as the time taken for eating a meal. If the subject is prepared to diagnose the symptoms of ego-loss, he needs no outside help at this point. The person about to give up his ego should be able to recognize the Clear Light. If the person fails to recognize the onset of ego-loss, he may complain of strange bodily symptoms that show he has not reached a liberated state:

Bodily pressure
Clammy coldness followed by feverish heat
Body disintegrating or blown to atoms
Pressure on head and ears
Tingling in extremities
Feelings of body melting or flowing like wax
Nausea
Trembling or shaking, beginning in pelvic region and spreading up torso.

The guide or friend should explain that the symptoms indicate the onset of ego-loss. These physical reactions are signs heralding transcendence: avoid treating them as symptoms of illness. The subject should hail stomach messages as a sign that consciousness is moving around in the body. Experience the sensation fully, and let consciousness flow on to the next phase. It is usually more natural to let the subject's attention move from the stomach and concentrate on breathing and heartbeat. If this does not free him from nausea, the guide should move the consciousness to external events - music, walking in the garden, etc. As a last resort, heave.

The physical symptoms of ego-loss, recognized and understood, should result in peaceful attainment of illumination. The simile of a needle balanced and set rolling on a thread is used by the lamas to elucidate this condition. So long as the needle retains its balance, it remains on the thread. Eventually, however, the pull of the ego or external stimulation affects it, and it falls. In the realm of the Clear Light, similarly, a person in the ego-transcendent state momentarily enjoys a condition of perfect equilibrium and oneness. Unfamiliar with such an ecstatic non-ego state, the average consciousness lacks the power to function in it. Thoughts of personality, individualized being, dualism, prevent the realization of nirvana (the "blowing out of the flame" of fear or selfishness). When the voyager is clearly in a profound ego-transcendent ecstasy, the wise guide remains silent.

Miss Prints

2006-07-03T17:50:00.000-05:00

Courtney has done it again... Check out the new designs at the Alchemists' Guild- super cheap and super stylin' as always... We even have some boy sizes!

Don't miss your chance to get one of these limited prints...

Breanne Hunter's Closing Show Friday 30 June 06

2006-06-28T10:20:00.000-05:00

Join us at the Alchemists' Guild for Breanne's She-Owl Finale...Take one last look at the drawings that have made us tremble and cower all month. There will also be food, drink, and good company. 7-9pm... Don't miss out

Life and Yoga By Sri Aurobindo

2006-06-28T09:04:00.000-05:00

THERE are two necessities of Nature's workings which seem always to intervene in the greater forms of human activity, whether these belong to our ordinary fields of movement or seek those exceptional spheres and fulfilments which appear to us high and divine. Every such form tends towards a harmonised complexity and totality which again breaks apart into various channels of special effort and tendency, only to unite once more in a larger and more puissant synthesis. Secondly, development into forms is an imperative rule of effective manifestation; yet all truth and practice too strictly formulated becomes old and loses much, if not all, of its virtue; it must be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit revivifying the dead or dying vehicle and changing it, if it is to acquire a new life. To be perpetually reborn is the condition of a material immortality. We are in an age, full of the throes of travail,when all forms of thought and activity that have in themselves any strong power of utility or any secret virtue of persistence are being subjected to a supreme test and given their opportunity of rebirth. The world to-day presents the aspect of a huge cauldron of Medea in which all things are being cast, shredded into pieces, experimented on, combined and recombined either to perish and provide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities. But it has first to rediscover itself, bring to the surface the profoundest reason of its being in that general truth and that unceasing aim of Nature which it represents, and find by virtue of this new self-knowledge and self-appreciation its own recovered and larger synthesis. Reorganising itself, it will enter more easily and powerfully into the reorganised life of the race which its processes claim to lead within into the most secret penetralia and upward to the highest altitudes of existence and personality.

In the right view both of life and of Yoga all life is either consciously or subconsciously a Yoga. For we mean by this term a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent Existence we see partially expressed in man and in the Cosmos. But all life, when we look behind its appearances, is a vast Yoga of Nature attempting to realise her perfection in an ever increasing expression of her potentialities and to unite herself with her own divine reality. In man, her thinker, she for the first time upon this Earth devises self-conscious means and willed arrangements of activity by which this great purpose may be more swiftly and puissantly attained. Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a means of compressing one's evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of bodily existence. A given system of Yoga, then, can be no more than a selection or a compression, into narrower but more energetic forms of intensity, of the general methods which are already being used loosely, largely, in a leisurely movement, with a profuser apparent waste of material and energy but with a more complete combination by the great Mother in her vast upward labour. It is this view of Yoga that can alone form the basis for a sound and rational synthesis of Yogic methods. For then Yoga ceases to appear something mystic and abnormal which has no relation to the ordinary processes of the World-Energy or the purpose she keeps in view in her two great movements of subjective and objective self-fulfilment; it reveals itself rather as an intense and exceptional use of powers that she has already manifested or is progressively organising in her less exalted but more general operations.

Yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has the scientific handling of the force of electricity or of steam to the normal operations of steam and of electricity. And they, too, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. All Rajayoga, for instance, depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces, can be separated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. And if in some other of its forms this character of Yoga is less apparent, because they are more intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the Yoga of Devotion, to a supernal ecstasy or, like the Yoga of knowledge, to a supernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use of some principal faculty in us by ways and for ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous workings. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest.

But as in physical knowledge the multiplication of scientific processes has its disadvantages, as that tends, for instance, to develop a victorious artificiality which overwhelms our natural human life under a load of machinery and to purchase certain forms of freedom and mastery at the price of an increased servitude, so the preoccupation with Yogic processes and their exceptional results may have its disadvantages and losses. The Yogin tends to draw away from the common existence and lose his hold upon it; he tends to purchase wealth of spirit by an impoverishment of his human activities, the inner freedom by an outer death. If he gains God, he loses life, or if he turns his efforts outward to conquer life, he is in danger of losing God. Therefore we see in India that a sharp incompatibility has been created between life in the world and spiritual growth and perfection, and although the tradition and ideal of a victorious harmony between the inner attraction and the outer demand remains, it is little exemplified. In fact, when a man turns his vision and energy inward and enters on the path of Yoga, he is supposed to be lost inevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular effort of humanity. So strongly has the idea prevailed, so much has it been emphasized by prevalent philosophies and religions that to escape from life is now commonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object of Yoga. No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: ``All life is Yoga.''
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Daily Comics #9 by Cody G.

2006-06-21T09:03:00.000-05:00

The new daily comic is back for the attack!

New Maps of Hyperspace by Terence McKenna

2006-06-20T08:49:00.000-05:00

A talk given at the invitation of Ruth and Arthur Young of the Berkeley Institute for the Study of Consciousness, 1984. (Included as written word because this edited transcription appears in print as part of his book The Archaic Revival - dimitri)
In James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus tells us, "History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awaken." I would turn this around and say that history is what we are trying to escape from into dream. The dream is eschatological. The dream is zero time and outside of history. We wish to escape into the dream. Escape is a key thing charged against those who would experiment with plant hallucinogens. The people who make this charge hardly dare face the degree to which hallucinogens are escapist. Escape. Escape from the planet, from death, from habit, and from the problem, if possible, of the Unspeakable.
If one leaves aside the last three hundred years of historical experience as it unfolded in Europe and America, and examines the phenomenon of death and the doctrine of the soul in all its ramifications - Neoplatonic, Christian, dynastic-Egyptian, and so on, one finds repeatedly the idea that there is a light body, an entelechy that is somehow mixed up with the body during life and at death is involved in a crisis in which these two portions separate. One part loses its raison d'etre and falls into dissolution; metabolism stops. The other part goes we know not where. Perhaps nowhere if one believes it does not exist; but then one has the problem of trying to explain life. And, though science makes great claims and has done well at explaining simple atomic systems, the idea that science can make any statement about what life is or where it comes from is currently preposterous.

Science has nothing to say about how one can decide to close one's hand into a fist, and yet it happens. This is utterly outside the realm of scientific explanation because what we see in that phenomenon is mind as a first cause. It is a example of telekinesis: matter is caused by mind to move. So we need not fear the sneers of science in the matter of the fate or origin of the soul. My probe into this area has always been the psychedelic experience, but recently I have been investigating dreams, because dreams are a much more generalized form of experience of the hyperdimension in which life and mind seem to be embedded.

Looking at what people with shamanic traditions say about dreams, one comes to the realization that for these people dream reality is experientially a parallel continuum. The shaman accesses this continuum with hallucinogens as well as with other techniques, but most effectively with hallucinogens. Everyone else accesses it through dreams. Freud's idea about dreams was that they were what he called "day-residues," and that one could trace the content of a dream down to a distortion of something that happened during waking time.

I suggest that it is much more useful to try to make a geometric model of consciousness, to take seriously the idea of a parallel continuum, and to say that the mind and the body are embedded in the dream and the dream is a higher-order spatial dimension. In sleep, one is released into the real world, of which the world of waking is only the surface in a very literal geometric sense. There is a plenum - recent experiments in quantum physics tend to back this up - a holographic plenum of information. All information is everywhere. Information that is not here is nowhere. Information stands outside of time in a kind of eternity - an eternity that does not have a temporal existence about which one may say, "It always existed." It does not have temporal duration of any sort. It is eternity. We are not primarily biological, with mind emerging as a kind of iridescence, a kind of epiphenomenon at the higher levels of organization of biology. We are hyperspatial objects of some sort that cast a shadow into matter. The shadow in matter is our physical organism.

At death, the thing that casts the shadow withdraws, and metabolism ceases. Material form breaks down; it ceases to be a dissipative structure in a very localized area, sustained against entropy by cycling material in, extracting energy, and expelling waste. But the form that ordered it is not affected. These declarative statements are made from the point of view of the shamanic tradition, which touches all higher religions. Both the psychedelic dream state and the waking psychedelic state acquire great import because they reveal to life a task: to become familiar with this dimension that is causing being, in order to be familiar with it at the moment of passing from life.

The metaphor of a vehicle - an after-death vehicle, an astral body - is used by several traditions. Shamanism and certain yogas, including Taoist yoga, claim very clearly that the purpose of life is to familiarize oneself with this after-death body so that the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche. One will recognize what is happening. One will know what to do and one will make a clean break. Yet there does seem to be the possibility of a problem in dying. It is not the case that one is condemned to eternal life. One can muff it through ignorance.

Apparently at the moment of death there is a kind of separation, like birth - the metaphor is trivial, but perfect. There is a possibility of damage or of incorrect activity. The English poet-mystic William Blake said that as one starts into the spiral there is the possibility of falling from the golden track into eternal death. Yet it is only a crisis of a moment - a crisis of passage - and the whole purpose of shamanism and of life correctly lived is to strengthen the soul and to strengthen the ego's relationship to the soul so that this passage can be cleanly made. This is the traditional position.

I want to include an abyss in this model - one less familiar to rationalists, but familiar to us all one level deeper in the psyche as inheritors of the Judeo-Christian culture. That is the idea that the world will end, that there will be a final time, that there is not only the crisis of the death of the individual but also the crisis of death in the history of the species.

What this seems to be about is that from the time of the awareness until the resolution of the apocalyptic potential, there are roughly one hundred thousand years. In biological time, this is only a moment, yet it is ten times the entire span of history. In that period, everything hangs in the balance, because it is a mad rush from hominid to starflight. In the leap across those one hundred thousand years, energies are released, religions are shot off like sparks, philosophies evolve and die, science arises, magic arises, all of these concerns that control power with greater and lesser degrees of ethical constancy appear. Ever present is the possibility of aborting the species' transformation into a hyperspatial entelechy.

We are now, there can be no doubt, in the final historical seconds of that crisis - a crisis that involves the end of history, our departure from the planet, the triumph over death, and the release of the individual from the body. We are, in fact, closing distance with the most profound event a planetary ecology can encounter - the freeing of life from the dark chrysalis of matter. The old metaphor of psyche as the caterpillar transformed by metamorphosis is a specieswide analogy. We must undergo a metamorphosis in order to survive the momentum of the historical forces already set in motion.

Evolutionary biologists consider humans to be an unevolving species. Some time in the last fifty thousand years, with the invention of culture, the biological evolution of humans ceased and evolution became an epigenetic, cultural phenomenon. Tools, languages, and philosophies began to evolve, but the human somatotype remained the same. Hence, physically, we are very much like people of a long time ago. But technology is the real skin of our species. Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. All our tool making implies our belief in an ultimate tool. That tool is the flying saucer, or the soul, exteriorized in three-dimensional space. The body can become an internalized holographic object embedded in a solid-state, hyperdimensional matrix that is eternal, so that we each wander through a true Elysium.

This is a kind of Islamic paradise in which one is free to experience all the pleasures of the flesh provided one realizes that one is a projection of a holographic solid-state matrix that is microminiaturized, superconducting, and nowhere to be found: it is part of the plenum. All technological history is about producing prototypes of this situation with greater and greater closure toward the ideal, so that airplanes, automobiles, space shuttles, space colonies, starships of the nuts-and-bolts, speed-of-light type are, as Mircea Eliade said, "self-transforming images of flight that speak volumes about man's aspiration to self-transcendence."

Our wish, our salvation, and our only hope is to end the historical crisis by becoming the alien, by ending alienation, by recognizing the alien as the Self, in fact - recognizing the alien as an Overmind that holds all the physical laws of the planet intact in the same way that one holds an idea intact in one's thoughts. The givens that are thought to be writ in adamantine are actually merely the moods of the Goddess, whose reflection we happen to be. The whole meaning of human history lies in recovering this piece of lost information so that man may be dirigible or, to paraphrase James Joyce's Finnegans Wake on Moicane, the red light district of Dublin: "Here in Moicane we flop on the seamy side, but up n'ent, prospector, you sprout all your worth and you woof your wings, so if you want to be Phoenixed, come and be parked." It is that simple, you see, but it takes courage to be parked when the Grim Reaper draws near. "A blessing in disguise," Joyce calls him.

What psychedelics encourage, and where I hope attention will focus once hallucinogens are culturally integrated to the point where large groups of people can plan research programs without fear of persecution, is the modeling of the after-death state. Psychedelics may do more than model this state; they may reveal the nature of it. Psychedelics will show us that the modalities of appearance and understanding can be shifted so that we can know mind within the context of the One Mind. The One Mind contains all experiences of the Other. There is no dichotomy between the Newtonian universe, deployed through light-years of three-dimensional universe, and the interior mental universe. They are adumbrations of the same thing.

We perceive them as unresolvable dualisms because of the low quality of the code we customarily use. The language we use to discuss this problem has built-in dualisms. This is a problem of language. All codes have relative code qualities, except the Logos. The Logos is perfect and, therefore, partakes of no quality other than tiself. I am here using the word Logos in the sense in which Philo Judaeus uses it - that of the Divine Reason that embraces the arhcetypal complex of Platonic ideas that serve as the models of creation. As long as one maps with something other than the Logos, there will be problems of code quality. The dualism built into our language makes the death of the species and the death of the individual appear to be opposed things.

Likewise, the scenarios that biology has created through examining the physical universe versus the angel- and demon-haunted worlds that depth psychology is reporting is also a dichotomy. The psychedelic experience acts to resolve this dichotomy. All that is needed to go beyond an academic understanding of the plant hallucinogens is the experience of the tryptamine- induced ecstasy. The dimethyltryptamine (DMT) molecule has the unique property of releasing the structured ego into the Overself. Each person who has that experience undergoes a mini-apocalypse, a mini-entry and mapping into hyperspace. For society to focus in this direction, nothing is necessary except for this experience to become an object of general concern.

This is not to suggest that everyone should experiment with mushrooms or other naturally occurring sources of psychoactive tryptamines. We should try to assimilate and integrate the psychedelic experience since it is a plane of experience that is directly accessible to each of us. The role that we play in relationship determines how we will present ourselves in that final, intimated transformation. In other words, in this notion there is a kind of teleological bias; there is abelief that there is a hyperobject called the Overmind, or God, that casts a shadow into time. History is our group experience of this shadow. As one draws closer and closer to the source of the shadow, the paradoxes intensify, the rate of change intensifies. What is happening is that the hyperobject is beginning to ingress into three-dimensional space.

One way of thinking of this is to suppose that the waking world and the world of the dream have begun to merge so that in a certain sense the school of UFO criticism that has said flying sources are hallucinations was correct in that the laws that operate in the dream, the laws that operate in hyperspace, can at times operate in three-dimensional space when the barrier between the two modes becomes weak. Then one gets these curious experiences, sometimes called psychotic breaks, that always have a tremendous impact on the experient because there seems to be an exterior component that could not possibly be subjective. At such times coincidences begin to build and build until one must finally admit that one does not know what is going on. Nevertheless, it is preposterous to claim that this is a psychological phenomenon, because there are accompanying changes in the external world. Jung called this synchronicity and made a psychological model of it, but it is really an alternative physics beginning to impinge on local reality.

The alternative physics is a physics of light. Light is composed of photons, which have no antiparticle. This means that there is no dualism in the world of light. The conventions of relativity say that time slows down as one approaches the speed of light, but if one tries to imagine the point of view of a thing made of light, one must realize that what is never mentioned is that if one moves at the speed of light there is no time whatsoever. There is an experience of time zero. So if one imagines for a moment oneself to be made of light, or in possession of a vehicle that can move at the speed of light, one can traverse from any point in the universe to any other with a subjective experience of time zero. This means that one crosses to Alpha Centauri in time zero, but the amount of time that has passed in the relativistic universe is four and a half years. But if one moves very great distances, if one crosses two hundred and fifty thousand light-years to Andromeda, one would still have a subjective experience of time zero.

The only experience of time that one can have is of a subjective time that is created by one's own mental processes, but in relationship to the Newtonian universe there is no time whatsoever. One exists in eternity, one has become eternal, the universe is aging at a staggering rae all around one in this situation, but that is perceived as a fact of this universe - the way we perceive Newtonian physics as a fact of this universe. One has transited into the eternal mode. One is then apart from the moving image; one exists in the completion of eternity.

I believe that this is what technology pushes toward. There is no contradiction between ecological balance and space migration, between hypertechnology and radical ecology. These issues are red herrings; the real historical entity that is becoming imminent is the human soul. The monkey body has served to carry us to this moment of release, and it will always serve as a focus of self-image, but we are coming more and more to exist in a world made by the human imagination. This is what is meant by the return to the Father, the transcendence of physis, the rising out of the Gnostic universal prison of iron that traps the light: nothing less than the transformation of our species.

Very shortly an acceleration of this phenomenon will take place in the form of space exploration and space colonies. The coral-reef-like animal called Man that has extruded technology over the surface of the earth will be freed from the constraints of anything but the imagination and the limitations of materials. It has been suggested that the earlioest space colonies include efforts to duplicate the idyllic ecosystem of Hawaii as an ideal. These exercises in ecological understanding will prove we know what we are doing. However, as soon as this understanding is under control we will be released into the realm of art. This is what we have always striven for. We will make our world - all of our worlds - and the world we came from will be maintained as a garden. What Eliade discussed as metaphors of self-transforming flight will be realized shortly in the technology of space colonization.

The transition from earth to space will be a staggeringly tight genetic filter, a much tighter filter than any previous frontier has ever been, including the genetic and demographic filter represented by the colonization of the New World. It has been said that the vitality of the Americas is due to the fact that only the dreamers and the pioneers and the fanatics made the trip across. This will be even more true of the transition to space. The technological conquest of space will set the stage; then, for the internalization of that metaphor, it will bring the conquest of inner space and the collapse of the state vectors associated with this technology deployed in Newtonian space. Then the human species will have become more than dirigible.

A technology that would internalize the body and exteriorize the soul will develop parallel to the move to space. The Invisible Landscape, a book by my brother and myself, made an effort to short-circuit that chronology and, in a certain sense, to force the issue. It is the story, or rather it is the intellectual underpinnings of the story, of an expedition to the Amazon by my brother and myself and several other people in 1971. During that expedition, my brother formulated an idea that involved using harmine and harmaline, compounds that occur in Banisteriopsis caapi, the woody vine that is the basis for ayahuasca. We undertook an effor to use harmine in conjunction with the human voice in what we called "the experiment at La Chorrera." It was an effort to use sound to charge the molecular structure of harmine molecules metabolizing in the body in such a way that they would bind preferentially and permanently with endogenous molecular structures.

Our candidate at the time was neural DNA, though Frank Barr, a researcher into the properties of brain melanin, has made a convincing case that there is as great a likelihood that harmine acts by binding with melanin bodies. In either case, the pharmacology involves binding with a molecular site where information is stored, and this information is then broadcast in such a way that one begins to get a mental readout on the structure of the soul. Our experiment was an effort to use a kind of shamanic technology to bell the cat, if you will, to hang a superconducting, telemetric device on the Overmind so that there would be a continuous readout of information from that dimension. The success or failure of this attempt may be judged for oneself.

The first half of the book describes the theoretical underpinnings of the experiment. The second half describes the theory of the structure of time that derived from the bizarre mental states that followed the experiment. I do not claim that we succeeded, only that our theory of what happened is better than any theory proposed by critics. Whether we succeeded or not, this style of thinking points the way. For example, when I speak of the technology of building a starship, I imagine it will be done with voltages far below the voltage of a common flashlight battery. This is, after all, where the most interesting phenomena go on in nature. Thought is that kind of phenomenon; metabolism is that kind of phenomenon.

A new science that places the psychedelic experience at the center of its program of investigation should move toward a practical realization of this goal - the goal of eliminating the barrier between the ego and the Overself so that the ego can perceive itself as an expression of the Overself. Then the anxiety of facing a tremendous biological crisis in the form of the ecocrises, and the crisis of limitation in physical space forced upon us by our planet- bound situation, can be obviated by cultivating the soul and by practicing a new shamanism using tryptamine-containing plants.

Psilocybin is the most commonly available and experientially accessible of these compounds. Therefore my plea to scientists, administrators, and politicians who may read these words is this: look again at psilocybin, do not confuse it with the other psychedelics, and realize that it is a phenomenon unto itself with an enormous potential for transforming human beings - not simply transforming the people who take it, but transforming society in the way that an art movement, a mathematical understanding, or a scientific breakthrough transforms society. It holds the possibility of transforming the entire species simply by virtue of the information that comes through it. Psilocybin is a source of gnosis, and the voice of gnosis has been silenced in the Western mind for at least a thousand years.

When the Franciscans and the Dominicans arrived in Mexico in the sixteenth century, they immediately set about stamping out the mushroom religion. The Indians called it teonanacatl, "the flesh of the gods." The Catholic church had a monopoly on theophagia and was not pleased by this particular approach to what was going on. Now, four hundred years after that initial contact, I suggest that Eros, which retreated from Europe with the rise of Christianity, retreated to the mountains of the Sierra Mazateca. Finally, pushed into seclusion there, it now reemerges in Western consciousness.

Our institutions, our epistemologies are bankrupt and exhausted; we must start anew and hope that with the help of shamanically inspired personalities, we can cultivate this ancient mystery once again. The Logos can be unleashed, and the voice that spoke to Plato and Parmenides and Heraclitus can speak again in the minds of modern people. When it does, the alienation will be ended because we will have become the alien. This is the promise that is held out; it may seem to some a nightmare vision, but all historical changes of immense magnitude have a charged emotional quality. They propel people into a completely new world.

I believe that this work must be done using hallucinogens. Traditionally it has been thought that there were many paths to spiritual advancement. In this matter I must fall back on personal experience. I have not had good results with any other techniques. I spent time in India, practiced yoga, visited among the various rishis, roshis, geysheys, and gurus that Asia had to offer, and I believe they must be talking about something so pale and removed from closure with the full tryptamine ecstasy that I don't really know what to make of them and their wan hierophanies.

Tantra claims to be another approach. Tantra means "the short-cut path," and certainly it might be on the right track. Sexuality, orgasm, these things do have tryptaminelike qualities to them, but the difference between psilocybin and all other hallucinogens is information - immense amounts of information.

LSD seemed somehow to be largely related to the structure of the personality. Often it seemed to me the visions were merely geometric patterns unless synergized by another compound. The classic psychedelic experience that was written about by Aldous Huxley was two hundred micrograms of LSD and thirty milligrams of mescaline. That combination delivers a visionary experience rather than an experience of hallucinations. In my opinion the unique quality of psilocybin is that it reveals not colored lights and moving grids, but places - jungles, cities, machines, books, architectonic forms of incredible complexity. There is no possibility that this could be construed as neurological noise of any sort. It is, in factm the most highly ordered visual information that one can experience, much more highly ordered than the normal waking vision.

That's why it's very hard with psychedelic compounds to bring back information. These things are hard to English because it is like trying to make a three-dimensional rendering of a fourth-dimensional object. Only through the medium of sight can the true modality of this Logos be perceived. That is why it is so interesting that psilocybin and ayahuasca - the aboriginal tryptamine-containing brew - both produce a telepathic experience and a shared state of mind. The unfolding group hallucination is shared in complete silence. It's hard to prove this to a scientist, but if several people share such an experience, one person can describe it and then cease the monologue and another person may then take it up. Everyone is seeing the same thing! It is the quality of being complex visual information that makes the Logos a vision of a truth that cannot be told.

The information thus imparted is not, however, merely restricted to the mode of seeing. The Logos is capable of going from a thing heard to a thing seen, without ever crossing through a discernible transition point. This seems a logical impossibility; yet when one actually has the experience, one sees - aha! - it is as though thought that is heard does become something seen. The thought that is heard becomes more and more intense until, finally, its intensity is such that, with no transition, one is now beholding it in three-dimensional, visual space. One commands it. This is very typical of psilocybin.

Naturally, whenever a compound is introduced into the body, one must exercise caution and be well informed with regard to possible side effects. Professional psychedelic investigators are aware of these factors and freely acknowledge that the obligation to be well informed is of primary importance.

Speaking for myself, let me say that I am not an abuser. It takes me a long time to assimilate each visionary experience. I have never lost my respect for these dimensions. Dread is one of the emotions that I feel as I approach the experience. Psychedelic work is like sailing out onto a dark ocean in a little skiff. One may view the moon rising serenely over the calm black water, or something the size of a freight train may roar right through the scene and leave one clinging at an oar.

The dialogue with the other is what makes repetition of these experiences seem worthwhile. The mushroom speaks to you when you speak to it. In the introduction to the book that my brother and I wrote (under pseudonyms) called Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, there is a mushroom monologue that goes: "I am old, fifty times older than thought in your species, and I came from the stars." Sometimes it's very human. My approach to it is Hasidic. I rave at it; it raves at me. We argue about what it is going to cough up and what it isn't. I say, "Well, look, I'm the propagator, you can't hold back on me," and it says, "But if I showed you the flying saucer for five minutes, you would figure out how it works," and I say, "Well, come through." It has many manifestations. Sometimes it's like Dorothy of Oz; sometimes it's like a very Talmudic sort of pawnbroker. I asked it once, "What are you doing on Earth?" It said, "Listen, if you're a mushroom, you live cheap; besides, I'm telling you, this was a very nice neighborhood until the monkeys got out of control."

"Monkeys out of control:" that is the mushroom voice's view of history. To us, history is something very different. History is the shock wave of eschatology. In other words, we are living in a very unique moment, ten or twenty thousand years long, where an immense transition is happening. The object at the end of and beyond history is the human species fused into eternal tantric union with the superconducting Overmind/UFO. It is that mystery that casts its shadow back through time. All religion, all philosophy, all wars, pogroms, and persecutions happen because people do not get the message right. There is both the forward-flowing casuistry of being, causal determinism, and the interference pattern that is formed against that by the backward-flowing fact of this eschatological hyperobject throwing its shadow across the temporal landscape. We exist, yet there is a great deal of noise. This situation called history is totally unique; it will last only a moment, it began a moment ago. In that moment there is a tremendous burst of static as the monkey goes to godhood, as the final eschatological object mitigates and transforms the forward flow of entropic circumstance.

Life is central to the career of organization in matter. I reject the idea that we have been shunted onto a siding called organic existence and that our actual place is in eternity. This mode of existence is an important part of the cycle. It is filter. There is the possibility of extinction, the possibility of falling into physis forever, and so in that sense the metaphor of the fall is valid. There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules. The noetic enterprise is a primary obligation toward being. Our salvation is linked to it. Not everyone has to read alchemical texts or study superconducting biomolecules to make the transition. Most people make it naively by thinking clearly about the present at hand, but we intellectuals are trapped in a world of too much information. Innocence is gone for us. We cannot expect to cross the rainbow bridge through a good act of contrition; that will not be sufficient.

We have to understand. Whitehead said, "Understanding is the apperception of pattern as such;" to fear death is to misunderstand life. Cognitive activity is the defining act of humanness. Language, thought, analysis, art, dance, poetry, mythmaking: these are the things that point the way toward the realm of the eschaton. We humans may be released into a realm of pure self-engineering. The imagination is everything. This was Blake's perception. This is where we came from. This is where we are going. And it is only to be approached through cognitive activity.

Time is the notion that gives ideas such as these their power, for they imply a new conception of time. During the experiment at La Chorrera, the Logos demonstrated that time is not simply a homogeneous medium where things occur, but a fluctuating density of probability. Though science can sometimes tell us what can happen and what cannot happen, we have no theory that explains why, out of everything that could happen, certain things undergo what Whitehead called "the formality of actually occurring." This was what the Logos sought to explain, why out of all the myriad things that could happen, certain things undergo the formality of occurring. It is because there is a modular hierarchy of waves of temporal conditioning, or temporal density. A certain event, rated highly improbable, is more probable at some moments than at others.

Taking that simple perception and being led by the Logos, I was able to construct a fractal model of time that can be programmed on a computer and that gives a map of the ingression of what I call "novelty" - the ingression of novelty into time. As a general rule, novelty is obviously increasing. It has been since the very beginning of the universe. Immediately following the Big Bang there was only the possibility of nuclear interaction, and then, as temperatures fell below the bond strength of the nucleus, atomic systems could be formed. Still later, as temperatures fell further, molecular systems appeared. Then much later, life became possible; then very complex life forms evolved, thought became possible, culture was invented. The invention of printing and electronic information transfer occurred.

What is happening to our world is ingression of novelty toward what Whitehead called "concrescence," a tightening gyre. Everything is flowing together. The "autopoetic lapis," the alchemical stone at the end of time, coalesces when everything flows together. When the laws of physics are obviated, the universe disappears, and what is left is the tightly bound plenum, the monad, able to express itself for itself, rather than only able to cast a shadow into physis as its reflection. I come very close here to classical millenarian and apocalyptic thought in my view of the rate at which change is accelerating. From the way the gyre is tightening, I predict that concrescence will occur soon - around 2012 A.D. It will be the entry of our species into hyperspace, but it will appear to be the end of physical laws accompanied by the release of the mind into the imagination.

All these images - the starship, the space colony, the lapis - are precursory images. They follow naturally from the idea that history is the shock wave of eschatology. As closes distance with the eschatological object, the reflections it is throwing off resemble more and more the thing itself. In the final moment the Unspeakable stands revealed. There are no more reflections of the Mystery. The Mystery in all its nakedness is seen, and nothing else exists. But what it is, decency can safely scarcely hint; nevertheless, it is the crowning joy of futurism to seek anticipation of it.

the Mighty Galactic Phil Collins has his own site!

2006-06-19T10:18:00.000-05:00

Check out that crazy blue meanie on his own turf... fnord

Miss Prints by Courtney

2006-06-17T08:56:00.000-05:00

Courtney's new prints are in... Come in and check out the selection... Super cheap, super stylin'... $10-$15 They go quick, so don't postpone the inevitable...

A Quick on How Magick Works by The Mighty Zin-Zin Bodieo

2006-06-15T08:10:00.000-05:00

Occult magick, witchcraft, and shamanism is concerned with the re-ordering of reality through the re-ordering of consciousness and the accessing of will. The magickian aims the change self, consciousness, and/or peripheral reality in accord with will. Through migickal practice and ritual the magickian aims to cultivate the consciousness necessary to manifest such change.

Most occult practices presume a sympathetic model of the planet or universe- a web of life, if you like. The Idea that the we are One, yet Many. While in the reality-tunnel of our "normal" state of consciousness, we believe ourselves as autonomic, individual, and un-connected to the whole. But it is not far-fetched to entertain the concept that we are as yet unable to perceive 'higher' levels of existence.

When you alter your reality through ritual, sex, drugs, sensory deprivation, or what you will, 'normal' reality ceases to be and we can access a seemingly 'mystic' dimension, whether it be a dimension of the mind or an actual dimension in space. Magickians and Shamans of yore knew that too much time spent in the mundane world and 'normal' consciousness would cause them to 'forget' alernity and thus sabotage the success of their magick, whether it be healing, precognition, or controlling weather. They knew that the common world view of individual separateness worked as a wall to block the underlying magickal sympathetic reality while bombarding them with doubt, interference, reactionary thinking, and criticism. That is why they took care to break routine now and then incorporating such acts as fasting in the desert, strange rites, ingestion of drugs, vision quests, and prolonged sexual abstinence and/or activity into their lifestyles. Harvard psychologist William James believed altered states of consciousness are the key to magical powers, the key to becoming artists of our own lives. Altered states lets us put off the cloak of culture and tune into the primary self where the future rests ripe for manipulation, if you will. Dr. James said,"Actualities seems to float in a wider sea of possibilities from out of which they are chosen."

Magickal reality pre-supposes the existence of a free-for-all power source - that "divine" energy which has its center everywhere and circumference nowhere- variously called the Archetypal World, the lifeforce, Void, Atman, Tao, Anima Mundi, Spirit, Chaos, God, etc. This is the stuff from which magick, inspiration and genius stems. It is the thread which connects us to the ancient mind, the Great Memory, the Akashic Records, or the Aboriginal Dreamtime, holding the potential of future as well as the tapestry of the past. It is the force which, upon amalgamation and application of conscious will, allows us to speak the language of our primal ancestors: animals, insects,plants, algaes, stones, rivers, and, earlier still, the stars, and, perhaps even to communicate with our future selves....

Coming Soon Pt. 2 Summioning Eris For Fun and Magick or What Kind of Hair is That?

Iowa City Comics Creators Club - Join the Parade

2006-06-06T17:25:00.000-05:00

Have you been yearning for a place to talk, draw, and otherwise convulse over comics? Join Shane the O'Face O'Shaughnessy for a weekly injection of comic interaction... with some free food! Good God man, could it be for real? Well, that depends on you... and the shape of your hair cut... Every Sunday from 2-5pm at the Alchemists' Guild the chips and cookies will flow and so will the comic sloppy...

Check it out, Chum!

Yerba Mate cups by Shumpei Yamaki

2006-05-30T10:25:00.000-05:00

Long time Guild member Shumpei Yamaki has out done himself once again with his newly refined Yerba Mate cup design...
Forget about that moldy gourd you have been using all these years, Shumpei's cups are hardcore. Sized and shaped for functional perfection, and beautiful... Each handmade. Each one-of-a-kind. Only $15...
Shumpei also has a wide assortment of bowls, cups, plates, and vases for sale at the Alchemists' Guild all at very reasonable prices... Oh yeah, there are dinosaurs too...

She Owl by Breanne Hunter

2006-05-25T09:46:00.000-05:00

Breanne Hunter presents She-Owl at the Alchemists' Guild... She has transformed the Guild into a naughty children's nightmare, a dark forest feeling that keeps you looking over your shoulder...

Breanne will also be performing a puppet show based on the characters in the drawings as part of her closing show later this month...

Make sure you stop in and check this scene out... And whatever you do, don't forget your bread crumbs...

Greening Power of the World

2006-05-22T09:54:00.000-05:00

This is my most recent magic wand...

It is a wedding present for a friend of Johnny Strange.. Mr. Strange will be having an art show at the Guild in august...

If you would like a magic wand of your own or for a gift, look under Magic Artifacts For Sale on the right hand side of the page for a ready to go piece.... Send me an email or stop by the shop and I will make you a custom...

Kali Ray, founder of TriYoga, is coming to Cedar Rapids

2006-05-16T08:46:00.000-05:00

Guild members, AppleSeed Nancy and MindMap Sterling, are hosting TriYoga founder Kali Ray in early June... This is a super sweet crazy treat.

Here is the schedule so far:
June 2, Friday 7-10pm All levels $45/$40
June 3, Saturday 12-2.30pm Basics-Level 1 $40/$35
June 3, Saturday 3.30-6.30pm Level 2 $45/$40
June 4, Sunday 12-3pm Level 4 $45/$40
June 4, Sunday 3.30-6pm Prana Vidya $30/$25

There will also be chanting Saturday and Sunday evening... For Free! Everyone is welcome...
You have heard of Jimmy Hendrix? Come see Kali Ray!

All classes are held at Serenity in Cedar Rapids, the coolest yoga studio on the planet - check out their web site... www.serenity-inc.com
(due to limited space- Kali Ray will pack the place - please pre-register for classes and pre-pay at www.triyoga.com)

Kali Ray is one busy chica and she giving us some quality time here in the Midwest... Don't miss out on this awesome opportunity... Be the coolest kid on your block!

Sterling's closing party 19 May 06 7PM-11PM

2006-05-15T11:31:00.000-05:00

Don't miss the big finale...
We have been happily hanging out with Sterling's Mind Maps for a month and it is time to let them to go...
Friday 19 May 06, Sterling and the gang invite you to hang out and talk about art.
Now is your chance to ask questions and actually get answers... plus chai tea and a snack.
Bring your friends and fellow travelers...

Daily Comic #8 by Cody G.

2006-05-11T10:46:00.000-05:00

April brings Cody to her cartooning knees as she battles her internal creative disputes... She is finally saved, not by the Quakers' way of life, or townie tornado pride, but by her own body odor... Who can deny her limitless power?
praise her yourself at jewishwedding@msn.com

New Bat Maloy comic by Shane "O'Face" O'Shaughnessy

2006-05-11T10:31:00.000-05:00

It just tickles my biscuit to see this lil bugger coming back with another full on Bat Maloy attack... Brace yourselves for this $1 ride with the Marauder of the Mundane! Voyeur of the Absurd! Xerxes of Xanadu? Learn about Robyn Jr.'s strange birthday rituals and see Bat Maloy wear a funny nose... Just when you think you can't take another bit, Cat Linda takes a cat nap... On your face...
This is what Galactic Phil Collins has to say about the new issue, "Zowee!"
Tom Selleck says, "Quick and sloppy, just the way I like it..."
Come by and check it out...

As Is Blank

2006-05-11T10:18:00.000-05:00

The Alchemists' Guild has just received new As Is Blank notebooks by our friend and Guild member Josh Doster...
If you are looking for a truly unique, well made notebook for a gift, special project, or personal scribbles- we have your situation pending... He has also been known to do requests.
Josh has also hinted that he may do a show in the Alchemists' Guild Art Space soon... sweaty anticipation...
Come in and check it out...

Mind Mapping Workshop -- OH YEAH!

2006-04-30T09:07:00.000-05:00

I sat down at the Round Table, colored pencils in-hand, and let Sterling guide me toward organizing my mental landscape Mind Map style... Words came first - bits of words actually, recognizable bits... Sterling quickly explained that old code bubbles up directly. He urged us to think past the word into the symbolic - shapes, colors, textures... I fumbled around, drawing clumsy images that I threw onto the page blankly. Rudely. Trying to navigate my own slimy seas... then came a tap on my subtle bodies shoulder. A familiar tap of cherry goodness, and suddenly I knew what I had to do. I grabbed at my colors and began drawing my totem... The Kool Aid Man - OH YEAH! Breaking down the walls to deliver refreshment to the masses. Good on sno-cones too!
My barriers had been destroyed and I spent the rest of the workshop totally in the Flow. I learned several techniques that I will be able to use to organize different aspects of my life, and I had a super fun time.
Thanks for the insights Sterling, maybe we can do it again someday...

Don't Forget about Saturday...

2006-04-25T08:10:00.000-05:00

Sterling Hart will be teaching us his mind mapping technique this Saturday at the Alchemists' Guild...
We will begin at 5pm and Sterling has assured me that he will gently scrape us off the ceiling around 7pm...
Sounds like a good time to me...
Grab your notepad, some colored pencils, and come check it out...

Galactic Phil Collins... Attack!

2006-04-25T08:09:00.000-05:00

Galactic Phil says, "I feel funny... in my pants."

New Amulets for Sale

2006-04-21T12:54:00.000-05:00

Be sure to check out the new Amulets of Power for sale. They are a combined effort of three Guild members. Using herbs, stones and mantras in a hand blown glass bead, protective/energy gathering amulets are made.

Daily Comics issue 7

2006-04-19T08:03:00.000-05:00

Join the Cody team as she searches for her missing cat, fertilizes her own pants, and eats a cheese pizza...
Copies available at the Alchemists' Guild...
You may also email her your gratitude at jewishwedding@msn.com

Mind Mapping Workshop 29 APR 06 5-7 PM

2006-04-11T08:28:00.000-05:00

There will be a Mind Mapping class at the Alchemists Guild on the 29th of April as part of Sterling Hart's art show...
This is a crazy cool opportunity, so don't miss out...
Here is what Sterling has to say...

Mind Mapping Workshop

29 April Saturday 5-7pm

Mind mapping is a technique for organizing large amounts of information in a visual format.
It is easier to remember an image then it is to memorize a text.
Useful for any endeavor several kinds of formats will be worked with.
We will cover guidelines that will improve your maps, and exercises to use mind mapping for greater self awareness.
Don't just think, bring in the artistic side of the brain and integrate the two!

$25 Dollars, bring notepad and colored pencils or pens.

Mind Mapping art show by Sterling Heart

2006-04-10T14:48:00.000-05:00

Sterling Hart is showing his amazing Mind Maps at the Alchemists Guild during the month of April...
These pictures are just the tiniest smidgen of this crazy information presentation... You must come in and check it out in person... Bring plenty of study time and an open mind... map...

Happy SiriusFnord Day

2006-04-01T07:58:00.000-06:00

Ty Cobb's closing show was sweet... awesome conversation, food, and music... Kirk made these crazy spiced pears, yogi tea, ginger cake, and zoom-zoom cheesecake.... all in the super potent kirk-style... Bless that man... cha cha
Ty Cobb, that shape-shifting bastard, baby sat us all night long with swirling beats and strange Snoop Dog samples...
and brownies...
My face still hurts from smiling...
Sterling Hart will be setting up his mind-map show on Thursday 6APR6... This is a special treat, so don't miss a moment..
I will post pictures asap...
I reference to SiriusFnord Day, I can only quote the Mighty Galactic Phil Collins, "Lick my plate..."

Now for the news...

2006-03-30T08:30:00.000-06:00

Daily Iowan Interview
I'm in the University of Iowa newspaper... not just a interview, but a whole damn video... check it out...
scroll down a bit until you see the "features" are on the left hand side, click on archive...
new screen pops up... select 30 March 06, then select the "80 Hours" article titled "Blowing Up a Storm"

Ty Cobb's Closing Show Friday, 31 MAR 06

2006-03-28T10:32:00.000-06:00

Ty Cobb's fantastic show avec art is coming to an end... However, the Time Bomb has yet to go off... Join us Friday at 7pm, for the explosion that could very well end time... Ty Cobb ->himself<- will be present for this historic cha cha into infinity... This is your chance to pick up his easy priced ART-ifacts - one of a kind clothing, CountDown clocks, and actual TimeBombs... He may even bless us with a live musical preformance... Food and spirits will be provided... All are welcome, few will ever be the same...

Lily's wand

2006-03-28T10:18:00.000-06:00

This is the wand I made for KeepItKiller Lily... She makes the tasty bags for my tasty wands... and she is my pinky-swear pineapple partner....

Wand of Protection...

2006-03-27T09:22:00.000-06:00

This extremely powerful wand is used for balancing out the energy of the environment at three different levels... Personal, regional, and global... The incantation takes a bit of time, but the effects are immediate... My friend Chris Nelson will use it well...

Debauch

2006-03-22T09:54:00.000-06:00

This is my newest wand Debuach... the idea came from the 7 of cups card in the Crowley deck... there are times when we long for the bliss of being a child in our mother's arms... when this longing does not inspire one to further development, but rather to a regression into childish modes of behavior and concepts, it is then that the poisonous waters threaten to consume everything that is not truly grounded.... this wand is for stirring the emotional waters so they do not stagnate...

AppleSeed Yoga starring Nancy

2006-03-16T09:53:00.000-06:00

There are yoga classes at the Guild...
Wednesday night 7:15pm and Sunday morning 11 am (followed with a public meditation)..
We go and eat indian food after the sunday classes.... What a tasty treat...
First class is free... then 6 classes for $50 = super cheap...
Nancy Paris has been yogic-ly rocking my world for the last seven years... She is a former teacher at Sun/Moon Yoga and currently teaches Tri Yoga at Serenity Center in Cedar Rapids...
Come check it out...

Daily Comics

2006-03-08T07:55:00.000-06:00

Daily Comic issue 7

Join the Cody team as she searches for her missing cat, fertilizes her own pants, and eats a cheese pizza...
Copies available at the Alchemists' Guild...
You may also email her your gratitude at jewishwedding@msn.com

Daily Comic issue 6
Cody brought in her newest Daily Comic yesterday... very exciting for all... come into the Guild and get yourself a copy before they are gone... Also, don't forget to stop by and see her at the BIKE LIBRARY... The wheel and spoke season is almost upon us... if you hurry you can check out the sweetest ride in town...

Borders, Boundries, and Beyond - art show by Ty Cobb

2006-03-04T07:30:00.000-06:00

Ty Cobb will be hosting a closing party on 31 MAR 06 at the Alchemists' Guild... All folks are invited for art, live music, and happy cha cha... His opening party made me feel funny in my pants, so don't miss the crazy conclusion....

magic wand

2006-03-02T09:54:00.000-06:00

magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand magic wand

Magic Wand of Abundance number four...

2006-03-01T07:55:00.002-06:00

Number four in an abundance series of four... This magic wand is about creating space to let abundance into your life... It is an airy wand used to focus thoughts in that direction... if your a thinker-abouter this ones for you... Super nice lily bag too... $70...

Magic Wand of Abundance number three

2006-03-01T07:48:00.000-06:00

Number three in an abundance series of four... The fiery blast cleans out the scene and what is left can stretch out... There can be abundance where one least suspects... $70

Magic Wand of Abundance number two...

2006-02-28T11:14:00.001-06:00

This magic wand is second in a four piece abundance series... I was thinking about focusing the sunset overflow... Laksmi hanging out in the evening... crazy man... This wand is also homeless... email me if you need it... $70 Sold...

Magic Wand of Abundance number one...

2006-02-28T10:58:00.000-06:00

This magic wand is the first in a four piece abundance series.... I used a laksmi mantra and a bit of sunrise juice to create this potent piece of cha cha... KeepitKiller Lily made the beautiful bag... $70 SOLD

Saraswatyai

2006-02-27T09:13:00.000-06:00

This is a magical divining wand... Most of my wands are about focused projection, however, this wand is about finding and attracting... I sent her to Ansel in California...

Kali Rays Magic Wand

2006-02-27T09:07:00.000-06:00

I made this magic wand for Kali Ray founder of TRI Yoga....Sita Rama