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

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.

Calif. counties lose bid to overturn marijuana law

Associated Press

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Federal law does not pre-empt state law in a court battle over the licensing of medical marijuana, an appeals court has ruled.

San Diego and San Bernardino counties had argued that issuing identification cards to eligible users, as required by the 1996 state law, would violate federal law, which does not recognize the state measure.

But the appeals court concluded Thursday that ID card laws "do not pose a significant impediment" to the federal Controlled Substances Act because that law is designed to "combat recreational drug use, not to regulate a state's medical practices."

San Diego supervisors had sued to overturn the state law after it was passed by voters in 1996, but a Superior Court judge ruled against them in 2006. The county appealed last year and was joined by San Bernardino.

The counties have 40 days to either appeal Thursday's ruling to the California Supreme Court or implement an ID card program.

"The court didn't really get to the key issue," said Thomas D. Bunton, senior deputy county counsel in San Diego. "(Federal law) clearly regulates medical practices. It says marijuana has no currently accepted medical use."

Neuroscientists find God in mushrooms

Neuroscientists find God in mushrooms

Wednesday July 12, 2006
By Jeremy Laurance

LONDON - A universal mystical experience with life-changing effects
can be produced by the hallucinogen contained in magic mushrooms,
scientists claimed yesterday.

Forty years after Timothy Leary, the apostle of drug-induced
mysticism, urged his 1960s hippie followers to "tune in, turn on, and
drop out", researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US have for
the first time demonstrated that mystical experiences can be produced
safely in the laboratory.

They say that there is no difference between drug-induced mystical
experiences and the spontaneous religious ones that believers have
reported for centuries. They are "descriptively identical".

And they argue that the potential of the hallucinogenic drugs, ignored
for decades because of their links with illicit drug use in the 1960s,
must be explored to develop new treatments for depression, drug
addiction and the treatment of intolerable pain.

Anticipating criticism from church leaders, they say they are not
interested in the "Does God exist?" debate. "This work can't and won't
go there."

Interest in the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs is growing around
the world. In the UK, the Royal College of Psychiatrists debated their
use at a conference in March for the first time for 30 years. A
conference held in Basel, Switzerland, last January, reviewed the
growing psychedelic psychiatry movement.

The drug psilocybin is the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, which
grow wild in Wales and were openly sold in London markets until a
change in the law last year.

For the Johns Hopkins study, 30 middle-aged volunteers who had
religious or spiritual interests attended two eight-hour drug
sessions, two months apart, receiving psilocybin in one session and a
non-hallucinogenic stimulant - Ritalin - in the other. They were not
told which drug was which.

One-third described the experience with psilocybin as the most
spiritually significant of their lifetime and two-thirds rated it
among their five most meaningful experiences.

In more than 60 per cent of cases the experience qualified as a "full
mystical experience" based on established psychological scales, the
researchers say. Some likened it to the importance of the birth of
their first child or the death of a parent.

The effects lasted for at least two months. Eight out of 10 of the
volunteers reported moderately or greatly increased wellbeing or life
satisfaction. Relatives, friends and colleagues confirmed the changes.

The study is one of the first in the new discipline of "neurotheology"
-the neurology of religious experience. The researchers, who report
their findings in the online journal Psychopharmacology, say that,
though unorthodox, their aim is to explore the possible benefits of
drugs like psilocybin.

Professor Roland Griffiths, of the department of neuroscience and
psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, said: "As a reaction to the excesses of
the 1960s, human research with hallucinogens has been basically frozen
in time. I had a healthy scepticism going into this. [But] under
defined conditions, with careful preparation, you can safely and
fairly reliably occasion what's called a primary mystical experience
that may lead to positive changes in a person.

"It is an early step in what we hope will be a large body of
scientific work that will ultimately help people."

A third of the volunteers became frightened during the drug sessions
with some reporting feelings of paranoia.

The researchers say psilocybin is not toxic or addictive, unlike
alcohol and cocaine, but that volunteers must be accompanied
throughout the experience by people who can help them through it.

The study is hailed as a landmark by former director of the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, Charles Schuster, in a commentary published
alongside the research.

In a second commentary, Huston Smith, America's leading authority on
comparative religion, writes that mystical experience "is as old as
humankind" and attempts to induce it using psychoactive plants were
made in some ancient cultures, such as classical Greece, and in some
contemporary small-scale cultures.

"But this is the first scientific demonstration in 40 years, and the
most rigorous ever, that profound mystical states can be produced
safely in the laboratory. The potential is great."

Enthogens, DNA, and Technology

I have recently begun reading the book The Cosmic Serpent - DNA and the Origins of Knowledge by Jeremy Narby. This is a fascinating book about an anthropoligist sent to study the traditional use of plants by native peoples in the amazon rainforest.

I had passed over this books many times in the passed not realizing that it was a detailed account of one man's attempt to understand the enthogen ayahuasca and how the knowledge aquired through its use is just as valid as how western science aquires knowledge. Indeed in its own way it is superior to western science in that the plants are the teachers of how to use them. There is no guessing involved. Here is a brief synopsis of the book.

Originally sent to try to prove the economic efficacy of how the natives of the region use the plants, he was initially fustrated by how the shamans described how they went about finding out the medicinal uses of these plants. While no one would argue with the effectivness of these plants at curing, it was the shamans' claim that they were shown how to use the plants by ayahuasca. Ayahuasca being a hallucinagen, this was initially very fustrating to Mr Narby, how could he prove that these indians were using the plants in an econmicly efficient way if they claimed that they got the knowledge from the plants themselves. This conundrum leads the author to eventually experience the power of ayahuasca for himself. This becomes a totally transformational moment for the author. His experience leads him to the Radical idea that perhaps anthropoligists have been wrong in assuming that the discriptions of the spirits seen after taking ayahuasca were mere hallucinatory imaginings. Instead perhaps these visions should be taken literally!

This radical notion leads the author to consider that perhaps the serpents, vines and other serpentine motifs of the ayahuasca visions were actually DNA communicating with the mind of the shaman!

This book is absolutly fascinating and I cannot recommend it enough! It presents an idea of how our knowledge of the universe can be augmented by expanding our concepts of how the universe works and that by combining western science with the knowledge of tribal cultures can give us knowledge greater than what can be understood by either worldview alone.

Ayahuasca in National Geographic Adventure Magazine

The following excerpt is from National Geographic Adventure Magazine's website. Click the link above to read the entire story.


For centuries, Amazonian shamans have used ayahuasca as a window into the soul. The sacrament, they claim, can cure any illness. The author joins in this ancient ritual and finds the worlds within more terrifying—and enlightening—than ever imagined.

I will never forget what it was like. The overwhelming misery. The certainty of never-ending suffering. No one to help you, no way to escape. Everywhere I looked: darkness so thick that the idea of light seemed inconceivable.

Suddenly, I swirled down a tunnel of fire, wailing figures calling out to me in agony, begging me to save them. Others tried to terrorize me. "You will never leave here," they said. "Never. Never."

I found myself laughing at them. "I'm not scared of you," I said. But the darkness became even thicker; the emotional charge of suffering nearly unbearable. I felt as if I would burst from heartbreak—everywhere, I felt the agony of humankind, its tragedies, its hatreds, its sorrows. I reached the bottom of the tunnel and saw three thrones in a black chamber. Three shadowy figures sat in the chairs; in the middle was what I took to be the devil himself.

"The darkness will never end," he said. "It will never end. You can never escape this place."

"I can," I replied.

All at once, I willed myself to rise. I sailed up through the tunnel of fire, higher and higher until I broke through to a white light. All darkness immediately vanished. My body felt light, at peace. I floated among a beautiful spread of colors and patterns. Slowly my ayahuasca vision faded. I returned to my body, to where I lay in the hut, insects calling from the jungle.

"Welcome back," the shaman said.

The next morning, I discovered the impossible: The severe depression that had ruled my life since childhood had miraculously vanished.

Giant blue butterflies flutter clumsily past our canoe. Parrots flee higher into treetops. The deeper we go into the Amazon jungle, the more I realize I can't turn back. It has been a year since my last visit, and I'm here again in Peru traveling down the Río Aucayacu for more shamanistic healing. The truth is, I'm petrified to do it a second time around. But with shamanism—and with the drinking of ayahuasca in particular—I've learned that, for me, the worse the experience, the better the payoff. There is only one requirement for this work: You must be brave. You'll be learning how to save yourself.

The jungle camp where our shamanistic treatment will take place is some 200 miles (322 kilometers) from the nearest town, Iquitos, deep in the Peruvian Amazon. Beside me are the other four members of my tour. There is Winston, the biggest person I've ever met. Nearly seven feet tall (two meters), surely over 400 pounds (181 kilograms), he has a powerful body that could easily rip someone apart. I expect him to be a bodyguard or a bouncer; turns out he's a security guard. But there is something else about him. Something less tangible. It seems to rest in the black circles beneath his eyes, the face that never smiles, the glances that immediately dismiss all they survey. Winston does not seem like a happy man.

Then the others: Lisa, who has a master's degree from Stanford and is now pursuing her doctorate in political theory at Duke University; Christy, who just quit her job counseling at-risk teens to travel around South America; and Katherine, Christy's British friend. By all appearances, our group seems to be composed of ordinary citizens. No New Age energy healers. No pan flute makers. No hippies or Rastafarians or nouveau Druids. Christy betrays only a passing interest in becoming a yoga instructor.

And then there is me, who a year ago came to Peru on a lark to take the "sacred spirit medicine," ayahuasca, and get worked over by shamans. Little suspecting that I'd emerge from it feeling as if a waterlogged wool coat had been removed from my shoulders—literally feeling the burden of depression lifted—and thinking that there must be something to this crazy shamanism after all.

And so I am back again.

Story continues

Watch a video clip of an ayahuasca ceremony here

Binaural Beats, Ayahuasca and Sorcery

I only now have the presence of mind to relate to you all my latest experiment with ayahuasca. First let me start of by saying that I have a copy of a very interesting program call BrainWave sychronizer. With this software you can create special audio signals call binaural beats which are made by pumping sound of 2 differing frequencies in to each side of your headphones. The 2 sounds produce a harmonic wave that creates and audible beat. These beats create a phenomenon called brainwave entrainment. By utilizing these sounds one can literally program your mind to produce different brainwaves in the alpha, theta and even delta bandwith. I have used the software by itself for some time and I have always intended to try using it with either a psychedelic or during ritual. Well last night I decieded to do both.

I designed a 60 min audio program to entrain my brain to go from alph for 20 min. to theta for 20 min. finally finishing with 20 minutes of delta waves. I also recorded myself doing the ritual in its entirety from banishing, to invocation and final closing. I timed it so that the ritual would finish after 40 min. Allowing the last 20 min. to be left for activation of the ritual intent. I exported the program to an mp3 and loaded it on my pocket pc so I could listen to it with headphones and not have to be at my computer. I had started about 2 hours before this time by ingesting a 15 gram combination of Syrian Rue and Mimosa Hostilis. I was just starting to get some of the preliminary effects of the huasca when I donned my headphones and started the program. I then went into my room which I had prepared by dimming the lights and lighting some pleasent incense, and layed down on my bed. The combination of the brainwave entraining beats, my own voice doing the ritual and the ayahuasca gave me the most intense closed eyed visuals that I have ever had. I fully visualized myself doing the ritual as I was listening to it. I had a vision of myself dressed in cerimonial garb projecting energy and tracing flaming blue pentagrams in the air. I could feel the names of power vibrating in my body as I listened and visualized the ritual progress. During the invocational portion of the ritual I had the distinct feeling of being 'inhabited' by the entity that I was trying to invoke. I felt like I was filled up, that somehow my body had expanded to 10 times it's normal size! In the final 20 min. of the program I had a very detailed visionary experience that is a bit too personal for me to write about at this time but sifice it to say, I felt like I was being shown these things by this entity. I was told that this entity was working in conjunction with the ayahuasca to show me these things and that I should do more invocations if I wanted to strengthen my ablity to bring back knowledge from this state.

There is a lot more to the experience, but I still need time to process it. I will be writting more about it as I am able to intigrate more of the experience into my conscious memory.

Longer Clip of Terence Mckenna's Last Public Lecture

Here is a longer clip from Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines by Terence Mckenna. This one is 13 min. long and is found on google video. By the way if you have bittorrent I understand that the entire 86 min video is available for download. I don't have a link but if you are a regular user of bittorrent then you know where to look to find a link. Anyway, enjoy!

Non Drug Altered States from Viking Youth Power Hour

As a student of magick and shamanism, altered states and how to attain them are an ongoing area of intense study and interest of mine. Though it may seem that I have a preference from drug induced altered states, I would love to be able to quickly and realiably achieve similar results without the need of chemical assistance. To that end I have made a life long study of the technologies of hypnosis and NLP which I have found to be THE most effective ways to achieve novel states of consciousness at will. If you are interested in hearing a discussion of such topics, tune in to the latest podcast from The Viking Youth Power Hour in which they discuss trance induction using NLP and other subjects of interest.

Daniel Pinchbeck, 2012 and the Return of Quetzalcoatl

Well I just started reading Daniel Pinchbeck's new book 2012
and I have to say that so far I am very impressed. Pinchbeck may indeed be Terence Mckenna's successor as the literary voice of the psychedelic community. Drawing from topics as varied as mayan and toltec myth, crop circles, alien abductions, amazonian shamanism and transpersonal psychology Mr. Pinchbeck has created in his words a though provoking "thought experiment" that resonated deeply with some of my deepest intuitions about the striking transformations that are taking place on this planet. If you would like to read an excerpt of the first two chapters you can find them at disinfo.com:

Chapter One

Chapter two

If you are interested in hearing Daniel talk about some of the themes found in 2012
you can tune into a podcast of a talk he gave at last years burningman festival entitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dimensional Shift." This is just one of many interesting Podcasts From The Psychedelic Salon which include recordings of Terence Mckenna, Shasha and Ann Shulgin, Alex Grey and others of interest. Check them out!