Friday, January 20, 2012

Psychedelics, Shamanism and 2012

Ok, so far on here I have specifically NOT mentioned the whole 2012 meme and what it means.  I have kept my opinions to myself for the most part.  Today I end my silence.  So what is going to happen in a little over 11 months?

Well as you may know, depending on who you ask, it means either the destruction of this world or the coming of a new golden age.  As you might guess I subscribe to neither assertion.   If the astronomical data is correct around the time of December 21st of this year the earth will be near a point in space that aligns with the center of the galaxy on the plane of the ecliptic.   If that data is accurate then there is a possibility that some kind of energy change will happen in our solar system.  The sun is a giant electromagnetic fusion reactor and it is possible that this event, which last happened about 26,000 years ago, could trigger some kind of solar reaction.  That in turn could have a direct effect on the earth.

I am not necessarily talking about a coronal mass ejection, nor giant solar flares.  However, such things could happen.  My gut instinct as well as divination tell me that the effects will be subtle.  The change in solar radiation will cause a change in human behavior.  Some evidence exists that cycles of high solar activity many times result in times of violence and crisis in human populations.  What is different this time is the position of our solar system in relation to the galactic center.  Will this alignment cause a fundamental change in the kind of solar radiation hitting the planet?  I suspect it will.

Those of you who are familiar with the webbot project at www.halfpasthuman.com will notice that the head time monk Clif High has suggested that around March of this year we will be experiencing what he calls "release language"  What that means, without getting too technical is that humans are going to be in a state of releasing pent up tension on a grand scale.  This has happened before according to Clif, an example would be 9/11.  The same kind of release was experienced, however tensions started building again within days of the event.  With this event coming in March the tensions don't start to appreciably build until June if I am reading his interpretations correctly.

So what does this mean?  And how does it relate to the 2012 end times date?

Well first I would say that March is the beginning of spring, so astronomically there will be differences in how the earth is positioned in relation to the sun and by extension, the galactic center.   My guides have let me know that this will not be a time of great disaster, at least not for those living in the NW of the USA  instead we will be seeing a series of events that will totally blow our collective mind.  One of my guides told me that it will be for many people like they woke up and found out that they were living in a Sci Fi movie.  In other words some strange shit is going to go down.  This high weirdness will be experienced on such a grand scale that people will be talking about it for months.  What kind of weirdness?  Hard to say exactly. My guides were being cryptic on this point but I would gather that we are going to all be experiencing things that will make many of us think we are going crazy. Except that it will be happening to enough other people that collectively we are all going  to know that something weird is happening.  Think missing time, time slips, mass UFO sightings, massive paranormal experiences, etc.

Now this leads me up to Dec 21.  By that time I think that a large percentage of humans, maybe not the majority but a large percentage will ready for some kind of reality shifting event.  There will be gatherings on a massive scale.  Hundreds of thousands of people will gather together to pray for peace, understanding and global awakening.  I believe that this gathering of humanity will have such a profound effect that it will cause our world to experience an awakening on a species wide level. It will be like the whole world took a dose of Yage!   This will cause a death to the old world and a birth to a new one.

Those of you who can, I suggest making shamanic journeys to communicate with your guides as often as possible between now and March to acclimate yourself to the new meme that will be spreading through humanity.  Furthermore if you can find a qualified ayahuascero to lead you in a ceremony.   I have written on this blog before of my personal experiments and while I feel they have done me no harm physically or psychically.  I must concede that I am not typical.  If you have never done powerful psychedelics before in ritual then I would suggest finding someone experienced in doing so.  Ideally an experienced shaman but living in North America you find it hard to find one.  As an alternative I suggest using a lighter mind altering substance such as marijuana or perhaps a small dose of mushrooms.  Combine that with a shamanic drumming tape or binaural beats.  I have such a ritual that I will be posting in the next couple of days to help those who may want to get in contact with their spirit guides to help them handle this time of transition.

Please note that I am not saying it is necessary to take a psychoactive, it may be you will not need such help.  This may especially be true if you use binaural tapes with invocational scripts.  If you are uncomfortable or inexperience in the use of mild altering substances in general then please do NOT use them.  These states can be experienced without mind altering drugs.  This blog is called Psychedelic Shamanism so it is from that perspective that I report my experiments and experiences but I do not suggest anyone copy what I am doing unless they are experienced or unless they wish to risk their sanity.

Symbiosis Gathering 2012 - Solar Eclipse

Pyramid Lake Nevada, May 17th - 22nd Symbiosis Gathering featuring a solar eclipse on May 20th.

I live within driving distance to this event and I am going to be attending.  Any of you who want to meet up there, just leave me a comment and we can make arrangements.  For ticket info go to http://www.pyramideclipse.com

Looks like this is going to be a really cool gathering and the fact that an eclipse is taking place makes it a once in a lifetime event for those of use in the North American west.

See ya there

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Being a Psychedelic Shaman or Hallucinogenic Magick in Theory and Practice

Here is an excerpt from a something I posted over at Evolver.net called:  Being a Psychedelic Shaman or Hallucinogenic Magick in Theory and Practice.  You can read the rest of it by clicking on the link at the bottom of the excerpt.

Being a Psychedelic Shaman or Hallucinogenic Magick in Theory and Practice


I have been using mind altering drugs for spiritual exploration for most of my adult life. I am 41 now and I feel like I am just beginning to understand how these amazing substances can really change the world. I have also been studying magick, shamanism and mysticism for most of my adult life. When I started combining the two over 20 years ago, there wasn't much published on the subject. Yes there were books on using psychedelics for spirituality, however these books usually followed the eastern mysticism path. While there is nothing wrong with eastern mysticism, I just wasn't interested in just passively observing. I wanted a more active form of spiritual attainment. Although I did meditate, my real interests focused on western magick and hermeticism. I had read books on witchcraft or wicca, I even joined a coven for a while. I also read books on shamanism and hermetic magick. The books that heavily influenced me at the time were; Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner, The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda, and Magick in theory and Practice by Aleister Crowley. Each book gave me a piece to the puzzle but I was still lacking a good method of integrating these powerful substances into a context of magical ritual.
At this same time most people in the magical/spiritual community were rabidly anti-drug. No smoking pot before circle! Drugs and ritual don't mix! You can go insane by trying to mix drugs and ritual! Whenever I pointed out that hallucinogens have been used by primitive cultures going back thousands of year, I was met with skepticism and suspicion. Even those who were sympathetic told me that, while it may be true shamans of old used psychedelic plants, they had teachers experienced in such practices and we don't, so don't do them. That was that.

Read the Rest Here

Plant alchemy and Gnosis

Part of the nature of the human animal is a need to transcend its normal conscious awareness. This need for humans to alter perception and awareness has led us to experiment with everything from fasting and self flagellation to the consumption of exotic plants and animals. All in an effort to change our perceptions. Why? That question has many different answers and perhaps has as many answers as there are people. My suspicion is that expanded awareness and our quest as a species to transcend normal waking awareness function as a kind of instinctual internal compass meant to direct us towards a more evolutionary adaptive method of perceiving the world.

This line of thinking leads me to contemplate the role of plants in human diet. It is widely believed that our earliest human ancestors were primarily vegetarian, but were opportunistically omnivorous, meaning that we would occasionally scavenge kills from predictors to supplement our diet with the much more calorie dense meat. I for one find this hard to believe. Personally I think that the earliest humans were most likely like chimps in that we ate bugs for protein and fruits and vegetables when we could find them and would hunt small animals occasionally. I know this sounds like I am going off on a tangent here but bare with me. So you see, as far as plants go, humans would go for fruits and vegetables, roots, tubers etc. However, how ever did we develop some of the sophisticated forms of plant medicines that ancient peoples had access to?

This is where magic and altered states go hand and hand.  Dreams are the one altered state that can be said to be common to all humans.  The dream state has for all of mankind's history been seen as a direct path to communication with gods, spirits, ghosts and all the other denizens of the spirit world.  Theses spirits in many times are helpful and act as teachers to those who seek out knowledge and guidance.  In cultures that view the world as pantheistic (spirit exists in everything) plants are seen as conscious beings that humans can communicate with.  In fact in many shamanic traditions, psychoactive plants are called Teacher Plants.  Shamans in these traditions report that they are taught how to use the plants in different ways by the plants themselves, or rather the spirits of the plants.  These communications may start as rituals of communion months or years before the plants themselves are consumed.  By building a relationship with the plant spirit, the shaman learns all he needs to know about how to use the plant and how to navigate the altered states that the plants produce.

In this way, modern shamans differ greatly with those of generations past.  Today, you can buy all the ingredients for Ayahuasca by mail, mix it up in your kitchen and be tripping and barfing by that evening.  There is no perceived need to commune with the plant.  I think this is a mistake and a missed opportunity for modern psychedelic shamans.  By personifying the plant spirits and by addressing them, we can build relationships with these plants and maybe develop new techniques and new practices based on knowledge given by the plants themselves.  This is the approach that our ancestors took and it seemed to work pretty damn good, considering that they were about to discover plant combinations that would take millions of years to happen upon by mere chance.

Coming Soon!
A full modern ayahuasca ritual to invoke the spirit of yage and begin the process of making yage your spirit ally.

Can Psychedelics Ever Become Mainstream

As an entheogen enthusiest as well as an activist for personal freedom I sometimes pause to examine some of my beliefs about how I would like the world to be. For example I would be overjoyed if this country and indeed the rest of the world would abandon the tyranical and wastfull war on drugs. I long for the time when the majority of people will recognize that people have the right to alter their consciousness any way they see fit and that they should be able to do that by consuming whatever substance they choose.

Even though I work every day twards realizing that goal, I can't help but wonder if we can ever have a world like that. I notice that behaviors and lifestyles that are out of the mainstream sometimes take generations to gain the tolerance let alone acceptance of the majority. Just look at the homosexual community in the US. A generation ago being gay was seen as antisocial, immoral, sinfull, illegal and dangerous. Today, while there are still those who still believe those things about Gays, those attitudes are starting to fade. However gays still do not enjoy complete acceptance by the mainstream and it may take another 30 year before being gay is seen as just another lifestyle. Drug use is even more problematic when it comes to gaining acceptance. We are still living at a time when drug use and drug users are seen as antisocial, immoral, sinful, illegal and dangerous. Homosexuality is for the most part now seen as being something that you are born with and not a choice (why this should make a difference I do not know) which has helped the general public sympathize with the plight of  homosexuals. Drug use is seen as a choice and indeed it IS a choice but it is a viable choice for those who wish to alter their perceptions. Will the Just Say No attitude ever change? There are some signs that such attitudes are changing, but as long as the consumption of drugs to alter our minds is seen as ESCAPIST and somehow a sign of weakness we will always face a certain stigma from the public.

Take for instance the medical marijuana legal rollercoaster of the past 4 years.  First, President Obama campaigned on a platform that you shouldn't keep sick people away from their medicine. Further he suggested that medical marijuana was a low priority and that dispensaries and patients would not be harassed.  Now, 4 years later with his 2nd term in jeopardy, President Obama is allowing his Justice Department to use threats and intimidation to cow state and local authorities. States like California that had a thriving medical marijuana industry are now facing threats of closure form local authorities.  I actually feel sorry for these local officials.  In many cases the US Attorney General has suggested that by granting business licences to these California LEGAL businesses, that they are somehow committing a Federal offense.  So local officials are caught between carrying out the will of California voters or facing Federal drug prosecution.

Poles show again and again that most Americans favor legal medical marijuana.  However this doesn't matter to the president.  Drug prohibition is big business and the Obama administration has never met a government program it wanted to cut, so naturally they need to ramp up spending again for the drug war.  Its all an endless cycle.  Peoples attitudes have obviously changed but the government doesn't know or care about this.  Government has to enforce control over people.

Until such a time that psychoactive drugs become legally available for all Americans, the only way that we can exercise our human right to consume what we want, is be outlaws.  The suburban shamans mixing up ayahuasca or yage in their kitchen to share with his friends.  The covert mushroom growers who are looking to grow just enough for their own use and maybe a bit more for friends.  The medical marijuana patient that has to grow his own in order to secure a supply of his medicine.  All of us in the psychedelic underground, we must stay the coarse.  Our time will come.  It may take decades but I have no doubt that legal access and use will be available in our lifetime.  Until then, keep up the fight.  Keep up the research.  Keep the drums beating.