Saturday, August 23, 2008

4th International Amazonian Shamanism Conference: FREE Mp3 Downloads

Amazonian Shamanism Conference

For those of you (like me) who unfortunately could not attend the fourth annual Amazonian Shamanism Conference in Iquitos Peru this summer. I have some good news that I am happy to share with you. A number of  presentations were recorded and are available online for NO charge. These include talks and presentations by: real Shaman & Curandero's, Dennis McKenna, Robert Forte, Frank Echenhofer, Pablo Amaringo, Dr. Richard Grossman, Jimmy Weiskopf, and many other luminaries of this field. Enjoy!

Download the complete Mp3 collection:
4th_International_Amazonian_Shamanism_Conference_vbr_mp3.zip [1GB Zip file]
Right click and save as.

Individual Audio Files in Mp3 format
Right click on file size and save as to download
64Kbps VBR
Opening - Conference Blessing 455 KB 1.5 MB
Dennis McKenna - Plant Teachers 55 MB 200 MB
John Alexander - Near Death Experiences 28 MB 95 MB
Robert Forte - In A Civilized Country 35 MB 120 MB
Wendy Lucky - Huachuma 26 MB 83 MB
Jimmy Weiskopf - Ayahuasca 39 MB 123 MB
Peter Gorman - A Cautionary Tale 20 MB 67 MB
Dennis Weir - Trance 24 MB 82 MB
Frank Echenhoffer - Altered States 35 MB 109 MB
Aeli Ronin Yaka - A Magical Life 19 MB 56 MB
Richard Grossman - Sound Healing 27 MB 92 MB
Ananda - Entheogens & Hadronic Mechanics 20 MB 57 MB
Pablo Amaringo - Ayahuasca & Healing 40 MB 121 MB
Peter Michael Kilbryde - Irish Icaros 26 MB 81 MB
Maria Gilissen B - Aya Recreation Song 11 MB 36 MB
Augustin Rivas - Interlude 1.7 MB 5.3 MB
Boras - Dance & Music 4.0 MB 14 MB
Boras - Dance & Music 2 7.6 MB 24 MB
Shipibos - Dance & Music 1.6 MB 5.5 MB
Yaguas - Dance & Music 4.9 MB 16 MB

Links:
Above files are hosted by: The Internet Archive
The C-Realm: Dennis McKenna and KMO & Jim Clark

Friday, August 22, 2008

Police raids end in tragedy

police raid

No One Is Safe
From: Drug Policy Alliance

It's the day after Christmas in 2001. You're 21 years old. After finally putting your 18-month-old daughter to sleep, you're relaxing in your favorite recliner, nodding off in the flickering light of the television show you're only half-watching and the string of Christmas lights around your front window. When you hear the sounds of someone trying to kick in your door, you run to your daughter's bedroom; when someone does break in and kick down her bedroom door, you shoot. It turns out the man you shot is the (white) police chief's son, and as he dies of internal bleeding en route to the hospital you (a black man) are arrested, beaten so badly your bleed from your ear for a week, and are put on death row for five years (until a judge overturns what was a wrongful sentencing). The drugs the cops were looking for (using a warrant that named no one in your household) were never found. This is the case of Mississippian Corey Maye, who is still locked up.

Or: you are 57 years old, getting ready for work in mid-May 2003. It's shortly after six in the morning. A battering ram breaks down your door, and in gets tossed a flash grenade. You can't breathe, you're coughing, and the police don't believe you - they're looking for a stash of drugs and guns they'll never find. Taking no notice of your worsening condition, they handcuff you, and in little more than an hour, though you're finally on the way to the hospital, the heart attack caused by this traumatic violation takes your life. This was Alberta Spruill, a church volunteer and city worker in Harlem.

Or it's November 2006. You're a fierce 92-year-old woman, frightened by the sounds of someone prying off the burglar bars that cover your front door, but determined to protect your home: when your door is broken down you fire one shot at the intruders, before being shot 39 times, handcuffed and left to die while the police (who are the intruders, and as it turns out, have broken down the wrong door) realize their mistake and plant drugs in your basement. This was Kathryn Johnston of northwest Atlanta; two of the cops responsible for her death pled guilty to manslaughter last year, and a third was recently convicted of lying in the cover-up.

In December of 2006 police burn down the home of a 73-year-old man with Alzheimer's in Arizona. They launched a diversionary grenade through a bedroom window that started a fire that destroyed the entire house and all the families possessions. According to the search warrant they were looking for $7,000 in cash, electronics, weapons, a pit bull and rims from a Cadillac Escalade because a vehicle they believed to have been used in a robbery had this poor families address on its registration.

Imagine instead it's 2008. Coming home one night in late July, you find a large package which happens to contain marijuana. You are the mayor of a wealthy DC suburb and as it turns out, also victim to a drug smuggling scheme that targets innocent addresses in the UPS system. You bring the box inside - only to watch as moments later SWAT officers break in and shoot your two beautiful Labradors. As the dogs lay there dying, bleeding all over your nice floors, you are held in the very same room, handcuffed for hours. The law enforcement officials don't - at that time - actually believe that you are the mayor of this suburban town, and to date have yet to apologize for the killing of your family's pets.

No one is safe. Last month's case involving Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo is one of perhaps 40,000 (yes, forty thousand) such raids each year. (see Cato Institute report, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America). What has made it so widely covered is simply the (white, class) privilege and power of the victims. Many, many lives are lost or ruined by these paramilitary operations. You're in extra danger if you happen to be poor and/or a person of color. Ellen blogged about these raids recently: check out her post and the Cato Institute's map of raid casualties.

This is not the world I want to live in. Take action now - check out our most recent action alert and encourage the U.S. Conference of Mayors to protect themselves and their cities from further unthinkable violence in what has honestly become a police state.

Links:
Scotto's post at DoseNation
1000 cop raid in London
Police SWAT teams: Overused?
Police Raid Mayor's Home and Kill His 2 Dogs

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Sugar free Red Bull makes your blood "sticky"

 
Scotto_SF-4-pack_23416_sm

Memo: sugar free Red Bull makes your blood 'sticky'

And in the "people drink sugar free Red Bull?" department, here's some potentially disturbing news:

An Australian study found the sugar free version of the caffeine-loaded beverage causes the blood to become sticky and increases the chance of a life threatening clot.

Dr Scott Willoughby, who tested the drink on students, said: “One hour after they drank Red Bull, their blood systems were no longer normal. They were abnormal like we would expect in a patient with cardiovascular disease.

“If you add in other risk factors for cardiovascular disease - stress or high blood pressure - this could be potentially deadly.”

Thank god the sugar-full version is completely and thoroughly healthy and good and proper and righteous and everything one could hope for in a can full of wakey-wakey deliciousness, whew! I love, of course, that they "tested the drink on students." Perfect!

In other health news, other things you might enjoy are probably killing you as well. Film at eleven, et cetera.

Posted By Scotto on DoseNation.com
Link: www.telegraph.co.uk

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Psychedelic drugs could heal thousands

By: Andrew Feldmár
From: guardian.co.uk
Tuesday August 19 2008

Andrew Feldmár has been practising psychotherapy in Vancouver, Canada for 38 years. He writes:

There is a horrible sense of meaninglessness and chaos that comes from the extreme loneliness of being cut off. Trauma, whether sustained in the family, or in the military during combat, renders millions feeling unsafe, insecure, mistrustful, and in the end isolated, lonely and desperate. Judith Lewis Herman, who wrote the definitive book on trauma and recovery, stated that all so-called mental illness and suffering could be seen as a person's misguided attempt to survive trauma. Fear separates, love unites. We all wish to grow to freedom, to belong, to participate. Hatred is like gangrene, shame is deadly. Forgiveness is but a faint hope.

Sandoz began to market LSD in 1947 as a psychiatric panacea, the cure for everything from schizophrenia to criminal behaviour, sexual perversions, alcoholism, and other addictions. During a 15-year period beginning in 1950, research on LSD and other hallucinogens generated over 1,000 scientific papers, several dozen books and six international conferences, and LSD was prescribed as an adjunct of psychotherapy to over 40,000 patients. The current research using psychedelics heralds a reawakening to the magnificent healing possibilities of these now prohibited substances. After over 40 years of repression or oppression, Rick Doblin of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (Maps), and others are spearheading a more enlightened, less hysterical and terrified approach to the use of these substances. I am participating in what hopefully will be Canada's first government approved clinical trials in 40 years, sponsored and organised by Maps, evaluating MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for subjects with treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder.

There are many other applications of psychedelic psychotherapy, such as ibogaine, or ayahuasca for the treatment of substance abuse. Large numbers of people could benefit from the use of psychedelics as entheogens, introducing people to spiritual experiences, reducing pain and suffering due to isolation, by the irresistible realisation that each of us is a small part of something much greater than any of us, that separateness is an illusion, there is nothing to fear, and love is accessible, shame can be left permanently behind. Rites of passage, responsibly organised, could benefit everyone.

Despite prohibition, people have often asked me to attend their own psychedelic experiments, to keep them safe, to guide them towards liberation, the end of automatic habit patterns, kneejerk reactions, towards heartfelt responses, love, acceptance and forgiveness. After one session with MDMA, people were able to sustain insights gained, without further assistance from the drug. Psychotherapy proceeded faster and deeper than before: the debilitating effects of shame have been annulled, heavily defended hearts opened, and stayed open, and people acquired the ability to enjoy the sacrament of every living moment without distraction by past regrets or future worries. No small gains!

After three LSD sessions, a patient emerged from what was labelled chronic psychotic depression (she had attempted suicide three times, had been hospitalised, and given several courses of ECT, major antipsychotics and antidepressants), and was able to hold a job, derive pleasure from her days, and look forward to cultivating a varied garden of delights. She moved from cursing me for not letting her die to blessing me for the surprising freedom that opened up for her as a result of her LSD experiences. Psychotherapy, without LSD, would not have been enough, I'm afraid.

I can only hope that if new research with psychedelics proceeds in a responsible, careful and creative manner, the powers that be can begin to support and foster further research into this fascinating realm. I was 27 when I first tasted this incredible substance called LSD. Now I am 68 and for the last two years have been persona non grata in the US, because a border guard Googled my name, and found an article I wrote many years ago on entheogen-assisted psychotherapy. I hope I will be invited into the US before I die to teach professionals how to use psychedelics for the benefit of all.

Dr. Timothy Leary: Criminalizing the Natural

AsahiTimothyLeary

Criminalizing the Natural and Naturalizing the Criminal

By:
Dr. Timothy Leary

Originally from: The Psychedelic Review in the early 1960s

Updated in the 1989 for inclusion in Psychedelic Monographs & Essays Vol. 4

Updated in 1992 for inclusion in Stiletto2: The Disinherited.

Everyone knows that Life on this planet emerged way down south in the hot, thick, steamy stew of the tropics. Way back then the first life forms were lazy, single-celled, amoeboid, hot-tub hedonists with ambitious appetites. Everything was organic, natural. Nothing was immoral, unauthorized or illegal.

In time, however, pre-programmed, mutually-stimulating food chain competitions among the squishy unicellulars led to programs of physical fitness and careerist self-improvement.

This, in turn led to acquisitive materialism and the popularity of Young, Upscale, Port-Protozoa technologies such as shaper vision, high-fidelity aural reception, hinged-thumbs.

There was, a few hundred million years ago, a predictable consumer craze for high-tech hunting and fishing gear such as fangs, bones, teeth, tusks. And high-fashion seasonal obsessions for erotically attractive fur coats, feather boas, leather-ware, snakeskin hip-huggers.

Later, younger generations of self-directed organisms developed auto-mobile bodies equipped with tentacles, wings, legs which allowed the social-climbing, trendy forms to squirm, crawl, walk, or fly uptown to the more exclusive, temperate, classier neighborhoods, namely 30th to 45th streets., north and south latitude.

HUMAN SPECIES ALSO EMERGED FIRST IN THE TROPICS

Down south in the lush, luxurious jungles of the equator, our first ancestors needed no artificial technologies for survival. The glorious, dark-skinned naked body was the instrument with which to original individual human related to the environment.

Transportation downtown in the tropical jungles was by pedicab.

Food gathering involved manual delivery systems.

Social relations and communication involved gestures, spoken words, dancing, strutting. The semioticians call this "Body Language." There was direct, skin-tight experimental contact with the commodity markets and energy centers upon which human survival depends.

We're talking about real estate basics here. Solar energy; pure spring-fed water supply; cavernous homes with wood-burning fireplaces. Conventional neighborhood access to natural foods found in the handy vegetable, fruit, fowl, fish, meat departments.

Our new-born ancestors, 25,000 years ago, were equipted with an additional powerful survival appliance. They had brains calibrated like ours, with 100 billion neurons. And each neuron, we now realize, has the thought-processing capacity of an IBM-PC or Machintosh. The software (ie. the thoughts) which operated this awesome neural equipment was programmed to react to information from the local environment.

The brand-name for our species is homo sapiens, sapiens. This means "Human, the information processor: the thinker about thinking."

With all that main-frame, super-power, parallel processing, Neurological-Intelligence (N.I) built into our black, fuzzy, tropical skulls, not to mention the infinity of megabyte memory bank tellers, there had to be a whole lotta figuring going on in the heads of our ancestors. Just as our bellies are designed to digest food, our brains are designed to digest and process information. This inevitably leads to thinking about why things keep on happening like they do.

What, for example, must we do to satisfy the Power-Light-Water-Grocery-Suppy sources?

For example, why droughts? Have we forgotten to pay the water bill? And to whom?

Why do the animals whose flash provide our dinners decide to migrate? What have we done to our furry and feathered friends to cause them to walk out on us?

From whence the powers of fertility, pregnancy, birth?

Why illness and death?

The first human tribal cultures to emerge down south involved nature worship and was understandably polytheistic. Survival Pantheism tailored to the conditions. Since the information each tribe recieved was limited to the neighboorhood network, religion was hands-on, personal, practical. The Gods (i.e. the Higher Powers & Utility Companies) were local, reachable, available to the individual.

So each tribe developes its own mythology. And each person selects the rituals for making theological deals. The powers of the Gods flow through the individual body. Most pagan religious ceremonies involve the ingestion of sacred plants which produce altered states of trance, posession, vision, triggering-off intense dialogues with the Supremes.

Religiousrituals involve the body: drums, chants, dance. Since the body is the only available appliance of survival and worship, it is flaunted and glorified in its naked, center fold beauty. The role of women in pagan cultures is naturally elevated because Her body is seen as the producer of Life.

Tropical latitudes produce natural attitudes about the gods, man and law. Nothing was illegal.

HUMANITY MIGRATES NORTH TO THE MID-TEMPERATE ZONE

There are many obvious reasons-climatic, psycho-geographical, logistical-why the next stage of more complex human cultures emerged in the Mid-Temperate (30th and 45th) rather than the frosty Cold Temperatures (45th and 60th) or the Tropics.

Next time you look at a world-map, turn it upside sown and notice how most of the land lies north of the equator. Note how most of the inner waterways, the seas and lakes and rivers are located on the affluent, busy north-side. Suppose the Mediterranean had been in the middle of Africa with the Nile flowing south to it and the Congo too and that big Gibraltar mouth opening to the Atlantic around Angolia.

Notice how almost all the enduring civilizations emerged in this narrow geographic zone=30th to 45th streets. Life north in the Mid-Temperate is more demanding. Your Hunter-GatherCredit-Card won't get you faruphere, lad. Natural technologies no longer suffice. There are few neighborhood fruit stores and local delicatessens north of 30th street. You gotta start whittling and chipping artifacts. Tools. During the years of 4000 BC to 1500 AD, the strip between the 30th and 45th degrees became the frenetic, high-tech genetic runway.

Run your finger left to right along this interstate road-map. Recite the names of the exits. China. India. Persia (still a big tourist attraction). Babylonia. Egypt. Rome. Venice. Spain. Portugal.

Can you feel the action?

Alone this thin highway moved the camel caravans, horse-drawn carts, the legions, the sailing ships, the galley cruise-liners, the iron-age technologies.

All this movement was made possible by new hand-tool technologies for transporting people and for communicating ideas. Literacy and the alphabet made long distance communication possible.

Can you visualize how small, tribal gene-pools numbering hundreds and then thousands of sould became absorbed into nations numbering millions? These centralized feudal empires were held together by collective labor and strict cultural rules.

The individual becomes a dependant cog in a vast hierarchical social structure. In ancient Rome, food, water, lodging, security were not obtained through natural-physical actions. The goodies come from Caesar's utility departments.

Politics is no longer a personal confrontation with the family next door. It involves submission to the ruler.

Religion is no longer a personal hand-shake deal with the local G.O.D.S. (Gods of Duty) but a complicated political coda of instructions, commandments, rewards, recorded on marble tablets and illuminated manuscripts, mediated by a bureaucratic priesthood which claimed to be fronting for the Almighty Ruler who allowed no violation of his moral code and laws.

When the neighborhood 30th to 45th streets was happening, the individual was vassal, totally dependant and submissive. Tropical folks felt some primative pride in their personalability to put food on the table and avoid enemies-via their own bodily skills, jungle-smarts and bribery deals with the utility companies. But the Feudal person did not share this personal sense of self-confidence.

The most revealing insights about any human culture or gene-pool probably come from observing attitudes towards animals, the human body, and the femal body in particular. Polytheistic societies totematically worship natural forces. Animal spirits and the naked forms of the attractive healthy human. Check the religious art framed in the cave-galleries of pagan people.

Feudal societies, by grim contrast, are organized around the monotheistic principles of One Elderly Male God, the Almighty Ruler, who sits on a Throne awathed in Regal robes. The Monotheistic God who rules things along the 30th to the 45th is never seen running around town bare assed. flaunting his naked beauty and grace. Can you imagine Jehovah on the cover of Rolling Stone?

Monotheistic religions tend to derogate the natural, scorn the body and manifest a "puritantical" hatred for the naked female form. In orthodox Christian, Jewish and Moslem cultures, woman is covered by black dresses and veils. This is tacky, low-fashion garb, designed to conceal Her life-affirming image. But life in hierarchical feudal societies is not all submission and puritantical repression. The man can always beat his wife, his kids, his camel. But the greatest source of pleasure and pride for True-Believers is this: you can always strap on your sword and head down-town below 30th street and exhibit the superiority of your God and your gene-pool by kicking innocent, nature loving tropicals around.

For 10,000 years and more, northern folks have invaded, conquered, enslaved Southerners, Kill 'em, loot 'em, rape 'em in the name of God and Country because tropical people don't count. They are heathen, pagan, illiterate, immoral, naked primitives. They have rejected The One God and that's why we have the metal swords, the written bible, the cavalry, the ships. And they don't.

The invasion and colonialization of the south by the north has produced a curious "fenetic stratification" or cultural infiltration. The Northern colonizers built feudal-age cities, towns, cities, roads, ports, churches, bridges in the southern "possessions." And they imposed their new fangled, artificial, man-made, social, political, religions, cultural and linguistic forms on the natives.

The Spanish conquest and settlement of South America is a classic example of the "trickle-down-south" phenomenon. The Feudal system of centralization, monotheism , bureaucratization, hierarchy, military control based in Madrid, produced a colonial replica of life in 15th century Spain.

The South American Indians were gently coaxed into the familiar serf mode of the Iberian peasantry. They shuffled to the fields and the to church and they knelt down and crossed themselves just like the vassals did up in the 30's Spain.

GOD AND MAN BECOME MACHINE TOOLED IN THE COLD-TEMPERATE ZONE

These aforementioned Feudal Empires which emerged along the Mediterranean basin were based on hand-tools used to tame horses, channel water, harness wind-power. People were held together by an intricate web of laws, rules, taboos, ethical prescriptions.

The next stage in human evolution was the industrial. Humans learned how to make tool-making machines. The German, Johannes Gutenberg, started it all with his diabolic printing press which made possible mass-literacy, mass-education, factory technology.

Get out your map of Europe and run your finger along the next step in evolution. The 45th to 60th latitudes. Notice how the great cities where the industrial Age emerged lie in this narrow strip. Milan, France, the Ruhr, Germany, England, Scotland, Scandinavia, USSR.

Dig the sudden brand switch in the God department. The great Feudal religions had been Catholic, Latin, and Islamic. The great religions of the Industrial Civilizations are White Protestant or White Communist. Extremely White Men worship an Engineer God whose ethical commandment is: "Put on your uniform and work!"

The virtuous citizen, like a good machine, is now defined as dependable, prompt, reliable, efficient, productive.

There are many reasons - climatic, geo-psychological, logistic - why industrial civilizations emerged in the cold environment. It's all about heat. A continual, indoor heat-supply was needed to warm houses in the frigid north. And heat requires the manufacture and storage and transmission of Newtonian energies. So it was heat that turned the wheels of the factories. Steam power, Coal-power, Oil.

Mastery of mechanical power produced the industrial empires of the 18th to the 20th Centuries. The factory-made steam vessels and railroads and weapon-machines made possible dreams of world conquest.

The energy-supplies required for the Northern factories were to be found, guess where, in the two lower floors:

- the Mid-Temperate zone, now called by Northern theologians "The Third World"

- and, of course, the Tropics, now called "The Fourth World."

So colonies were established in the Middle East, India, South East Asia, Africa, which zones were efficiently looted for "raw" materials.

Just as the Roman and Arabic and Spanish kingdoms of the Mid-Temperate sailed to the tropics to find black slaves and gold and ivory, so did the white-skinned empires steam and jet south to build railroads, airstrips, tourist hotels to loot these lands of raw materials and to erect the steam-belching, smoky temples of the Mechanical God-factories.

Again, the new Northern culture is layered down over the old customs. These days the typical tropical country, take Haiti or Kenya, is stratified like this: a solid foundation of tribal culture, veneered over by Feudal, Strong-Man military regime, which in turn, is supported by American or European or Soviet mechanical might. This works well for a while. The North exports guns and machines. The guns are used to motivate the tropical folks to dig out of the ground the raw materials which are shipped north to pay for the guns.

But on weekends and full-moons-and sacred occasions, guess what. The natives tend to revert to nature. They joyously perform the old rituals: strip off the veils, paint their bodies, drum, dance, chant, ingest plants that put them into altered states of consciousness, get possessed by God-knows-how-many different natural forces, engage in sexual activities, and just generally party it up in the classic sense of this sacred word. It's the basic, time-honored, religious, ceremony, you recall, a celebration, an innovation and an invitation of the Gods to inhabit, possess, take over the minds and bodies of their worshippers.

Believe me, no one is on his knees during a pagan religious service. Or if the are, it's not in suppliant, begging prayer.

Now the white protestants found this extremely shocking. The basic aim of nothern religions, we recall, was to root out, exorcise, censor, subdue the evil which the bibles say lurks in the hearts and loins of all men. Nature means sin. The Northern priests denounced the native practices as pagan, heathen, devilish, evil.

God fearing, descent, white-folks banded together in mechanical unanimity-unity to condemn nudity, sex, intoxication, possession.

So trouble, bad trouble, has been brewing down south for many centuries. Starvation, drought, poverty, over-population, racial and religious conflict, endemic war, increasing terrorism and growing anger towards the Northern rulers and cultures.

But now, these scary attitudes no longer seem quarantined down there in the untidy southern latitudes. They are already bubbling up to confront the industrial nations of the north.

THE SOUTH INVADES THE NORTH WITH SUPER-NATURAL POWERS!

The cultural and economic traffic between the tropics and the temperate zones has always been a two way street. The north exports artificials - tools, machines, guns, law books, political constitutions, cultural rules, religious taboos.

The south exports its natural resource-raw materials, ores, precious gems, rare woods, herbs, spices, exotic foods. Oil, of course.

And, most important, human bodies in the form of slaves and migrant workers.

Now, guess what these poor, benighted heathen smuggled in with them in the slave ships and immagrant boats? Exactly those precious gifts which the northern cultures had censored and prohibited in their own hard-working, God-fearing, inhibited folks. Precisely that for which the mechanical-robot people hungered for.

The Pagan Culture. The pantheist ways. The worship of the natural! The wild celebration of life. The exulant embrace of the ancient biological powers. The spontaneous exuberance of the sensual. The street-smart wisdom of the outsiders who, for centuries, had been coolly observing and mocking the "pious white folks" marching around with their guns and crosses.

This insidious cultural invasion surfaced in the Roaring 20th Century when intelligent Northerners began to sense the heavy price they paid for mechanization.

In the 1920's, the pagans revival came above ground in the form of jazz. Musicians no longer followed directors or conductors or printed scores. Improvisation, syncopation, innovation. The jazz musician gets possessed, trances out. In both the USA and the USSR the acceptance of jazz becomes the first sign that the industrial ethos is loosening up.

The definitive explosion of pagan cultural themes happened in the 19060's.

The Civil Rights movement. Black pride. The ghetto riots.

More important was the music. Never has a cultural-religious event changed the world as quickly and pervasively as rock & roll. Why? Because rock is a magical blend of African-polytheistic rhythms and European-pagan-Celtic-Druid lyrics amplified and flung around the world at the speed of light by quantum-electronic technology.

And it is no accident that the religious message of rock & roll was a joyful rejection of the mechanization that Feudal and Industrial cultures glorified.

When Bob Dylan sang: "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more," he expressed the spirit of everyone - colored, southern, white - who rejected the alienation of the smokestack-assembly-line Factory culture.

The popularity of psychedelic drugs is another example of the revival of southern culture.

Notice that the neurotransmitters made illegal in Reagan's land are the southern vegetables - the poppy, ground up coca leaves, the flowering tops of the marijuana plant. None of these botanical substances are as physically or psychologically dangerous as the factory-made northern mind-benters - distilled liquor, North Carolina-grown nicotine and prescription euphoriants and tranks used legally by middle-class house-wives.


The southern botanicals - grass, opium, coca - are threatening to the order and conformity demanded by the Factory Culture:

1. Like the natives who use them, these vegetables grow wild. They are non-domesticated. Grown up in mountains, they are hard to control. They are sold on the black market, that naughty, unauthorized, free exchange that operates outside the control of the white bankers and the feudal tax collectors.

Inexpensive, wild, southern herbs compete with the lucrative trade which our Puritan Founders had going with slaves and rum.

2. Native drug rituals are immoral, i.e. banned as sinful by the northern religions. Damn right they are! They incite personal freedom, pagan celebration, self-expression, disordered joy, sensual pleasure. They dramatically threaten the control of the priests. Remember those scandalous biblical stories about Moses and the other high-ranking priests coming down the mountain and finding the tribes stoned, whooping it up around the Golden Calf and other natural icons? Heresy. Sin. Devil Worship.

3. The ingestion of native plants is also criminal. Why? Because the white-men who write the laws and run the police stations say so!

4. The ingestion of natural plants is not only immoral, criminal, and bad-for-business, it is treasonous. It figures, doesn't it? You are a self-respecting native and in come these weirdo white robots brandishing guns, despoiling your neighborhood, your culture, breaking up your family, scorning your gods. Now the most effective, non-violent act of political resistance is to perform your native rituals, get high with a native plant. Neurotransmitters are the ultimate weapons of democracy. A few tokes on an opium pipe and you and your friends have gently and delightfully floated outside the white man's economic, religious, legal and political domination.


For centuries the nothern colonists ignored and tolerated the cultivation and ingestion of neuro-botanicals as long as it was restricted to the native quarters. Let the illiterate wogs get their primitive kicks. Keep 'em blissed and nodding out.

But in the 1960's, the new postwar generations of white folks began turning away from the Cold War and life on the assembly line. The cultural revolution in America produced a vigorous renaissance of the source religions of the south. Pantheist love of nature was expressed as Ecological awareness. Worship of bodily grace manifested in physical fitness. High pagan style becomes hip-high fashion.

The acculturization of psychedelic drugs by Americans in the 1960's provides a powerful endorsement of tropical religious rituals. The psychedelic drugs are all derived from tropical plants. Psilocybin from mushrooms, mescaline from peyote, LSD from rye-ergot, and, of course, marijuana. These are not the euphoriants, or energizers, or intoxicants favored by urban dwellers. Psychedelics produce states of possession, trance, expanded consciousness, spiritual illumination, powerful, mystical empathies with natural forces. These experiences, which are the aim of the ancient pagan religions, are the worst nightmares of the organized religions.

The so-called "drug culture" was not a campus fad; it was a world-wide revival of the oldest religions going. The hippies intuitively sensed this as they proudly wandered around barefoot, playing flutes. Paganism 101 suddenly became the most popular campus elective. Psychiatrists and law enforcement officials and politicians automatically assumed that psychedelic experiences were self-induced bouts of mass insanity. There were no terms or paradigms in the western intellectual tradition to explain this bizarre desire to "go out of your mind."

It is of great sociological interest that the so-called "drug culture" in America and West Europe (and now, we learn, in the Soviet bloc) dutifully re-enacted the rituals of pre-Christian pagans and polytheists. In the 1960-70's, millions living in industrial nations used psychedelics in the context of Hindu and Buddhist practices.

Psychedelic drugs were taken in groups and in public celebrations. The acid tests of Ken Kesey. The love-ins. The communes. The need for social bonding and tribal rituals was intuitively accepted by most psychedelic drug users.

Today, in the Rambo 80's, drugs are tooted, shot, free-based, cracked in secrecy. Usually alone.

The importance of group support expressed in pagan-psychedelic experiences cannot be over-estimated. The psychedelic culture proudly flaunted drug-taking because it was designed to produce nature-loving, tribe-solidarity experiences. The first San Francisco Be-In was advertised as "A Gathering of the Tribes!" This happens today at Grateful Dead concerts when 20,000 "dead-heads" mingle together in dancing celebration.

Drug-taking becomes drug-abuse when practiced in narcissistic solitude. In 1988, 30 million Americans use illegal drugs safely and 50 million use booze moderately. Why? Because they indulge during group rituals which protect against abuse. Beer-busts. Cocktail parties. Smoking grass with friends.

It is important to note that the only effective rehabilitation program for alcohol and drug abusers is A.A. The stated arms and tactic of A.A. are pagan-spiritual. Surrender to a higher power in an intense support-group setting. No churches. No government officials. No salaries. No funding. Just village-type group support.

Perhaps the greatest gift that Southerners gave to the North was a "resurrection of the body." The factory civilization covered skin by uniforms. The role models of the mechanical society were serious, frowning men in business suits, walking heavily, ponderously to their very important office jobs. No man of substance in Washington, D.C. or Moscow or London betrayed humor, grace, flashy style.

Watch newsreels of white athletes in the 1930 and 40's. Stubby little guys with pot-bellies stiffly running around with jerky movements. Watch the white folks dancing in the old movies.

When the Southerners were allowed on the playing fields and the TV screens, everything changed. Latin rhythms. Afro-cubano voodoo beats. Caribbean spontaneity on the base-paths. Black grace and elegance on the basketball courts. This was good. Just plain healing and good for the brittle, mechanical, white soul.

The Southerners also prepared the mechanical north for the post-industrial age. Let's face it, Blacks and Latinos never really bought into the factory society. The Southerners just don't make good robots or engineers.

But during the 1960's, the Southern rituals and styles suddenly took over the younger generation. The walk, talk, dress, attitude loosened white kids up. As Blacks attained fame and wealth in the performance-creative fields, they refused to act like slave-workers. They demanded to be paid whate they were worth as individuals. Wilt Chamerlain is the guy who changed the economic role-model. He was the best. And he expected, logically, to be treated like the best. White athletes had been treated like mill workers, bought & sold like indentured servants. Cheap couch tickets. Rooms in sleazy hotels. Wilt demanded first class. And hotel rooms with beds large enough to fit his grandeur.

It was the Black athletes and performers who came up with the new economic role-model for the 21st Century. In the post-industrial society, if you're good, then you're not a slave or a serf or a worker. You are a performer! A free agent!

The civil war between North and South is not over.

It can be seen in the war on Southern Plants which allows armed American policemen to roam around Central and South America, burning crops and harassing peasants. Here at home, the War provides distractions for politicians like George Bush, who enjoy being photographed with Dan Rather down in the ghetto or barrio, busting into the houses of the poor folks.

As Blacks and Latins exert more power in politics, the old-boy, white angers are revealed. In fun-loving, gun-loving Montana, local rifle-clubs issue bumper stickers saying, "Run, Jesse, Run." With the silent complicity of the Reagan administration, racism emerges not just in the Rehnquist court, but in college campuses and polling-booths.

At the same time, the Southern Migrants grow stronger in numbers and power. Soon, very soon, whites will be a minority in most American cities. The old Confederate slogan comes back again to haunt the bigoted sons of Dixie. The South will truly rise again.

Reprinted from Timothy Leary's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1. copies of which are available exclusively from KnoWare, 11288 Ventura Blvd., #702, Studio City, CA 91604

Link: The Psychedelic Review Archives 1963-1971 Free PDF downloads

Monday, August 18, 2008

The Birth of the Psychedelic Movement

The Birth of the Psychedelic Movement:
A Look Back at Another America

As presented at the

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Courtesy of the:
sychonautica Podcast

Contemporary witnesses recount the origins, expectations and experiences to describe this time of cultural, political, and social changes.

Featuring Panelist: Carolyn Garcia, Ralph Metzner, Cynthia Palmer, Michael Horowitz, Moderation: Dale Pendell


The term "psychedelic" was coined in 1956 by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, in a now-famous exchange with writer Aldous Huxley, who both recognized the potential of these "new" kind of psychoactive substances for self-awareness and to expand consciousness, in an age of nuclear proliferation and Cold War confrontations.

But it was American exponents, like Harvard scholars Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, novelist Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters, with their legendary Acid Tests, acid rock bands like The Grateful Dead, and underground LSD chemists exemplified by Owsley who, with other countercultural activists and artists, enabled a Psychedelic Revolution in the U.S. The youth movement, culminating at the "Summer of Love" in 1967, and perhaps best expressed by the slogans All You Need is Love and Make Love Not War, quickly spread to Western Europe and all over the world.

This discussion is kicked off by Dale Pendell who talks about the successes and failures of the 1960s psychedelic movement, its exposure by the media and eventual co-option, the main contributors to the movement, and his own experiences.

Cynthia Palmer talks about the conservative, repressed 1950s, her experiences as a teenager during this period, her introduction to drugs and move to New York, growing cannabis and getting busted.

Ralph Metzner talks about his forthcoming book with Ram Dass, the consciousness-expanding experience of being born, and various other metaphors for consciousness expansion, Paul stamet's new book 'mycelium running', the mutual understanding between psychedelic people, the illegalization of psychedelic drugs and different approaches to psychedelic expression.

Michael Horowitz talks about the high doses of LSD routinely used in the 1960s, the release of the Beatles' 'Sergeant Pepper's lonely hearts club' album in 1967, the abundance of love in the 1960s and his first trip alone. Finally, Carolyn Garcia talks about the concept of a chemically enhanced human being, the miraculous size of an LSD dose, the rapid changes and uncontrollability of the 1960s psychedelic movement, the political backdrop of the period, the music scene of the 1960s, and the protection it provided, Grateful Dead concerts as a conduit of the psychedelic movement, the end of the 1960s and its loss of freedom, the lasting effect of the 1960s on computer technology.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

DJ EROCx1: A Tribute to Bob Marley Mega Mix



I mixed up a little Marley Tribute for a BBQ yesterday. Started of with a sample from I am Legend. I really love that scene.

Two days before Bob Marley was suppose to perform at a peace rally a man walked in to his room and shot him down. Two days later he walked on stage and performed.

They asked him in an interview later that week, "Why didn't you rest after being shot?" Bob Marley replied, "The people that are trying to make the world worse never take a day off, why should I? Light up the darkness."

DJ EROCx1: A Tribute to Bob Marley Mega Mix:
Download it HERE

*Note: the site my mix is hosted on sometimes has ads that may not be appropriate for kids or work. Just a heads up.

One Love,
E

Friday, August 15, 2008

UPDATE on the Kenneth Rau Salvia divinorum arrest

UPDATE ON KEN RAU!

The prosecutors in North Dakota want Kenneth Rau to spend the next 5 years of his life in prison for possession of Salvia divinorum leaf! Anyone who has had the great misfortune of standing in a court room to hear the Great State of ..... Against little old you; knows prosecution throws these offers at you like a McDonald's cashier asks if you would like to Supersize your meal. They want to incarcerate a man who works, pays his taxes and is no threat to the public for 5 years all because he has an interest in ethnobotanicals. This is an outrage.

"My lawyer told me she offered me five years if I pleaded guilty," said Rau. "He
said he didn't think I would take it, but he had to ask. He was right -- I am not going to accept that. I just don't think depriving someone of his freedom for some dried plant leaves is right."

Rau, a bottling plant worker with an interest in herbalism, altered states, and religion and spirituality, was arrested by Bismarck police on April 9 when they searched his home looking for his adult son, who was on probation for drug charges. Police found a marijuana pipe, eight ounces of salvia leaf, a quantity of amanita muscaria mushrooms, and a number of other herbal products.

Although Rau bought the salvia leaf on eBay for $32, he faces a possible 20-year sentence after being charged with possession of the now controlled substance with the intent to distribute, based on prosecutors' assertions that the leaf contained hundreds of possible doses.
The complete article can be found HERE

Original post: North Dakota Man Facing Years in Prison After Buying Salvia Divinorum On eBay

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Dr. Timothy Leary: Think for Yourself and Question Authority

Tim leary 
From:
The Psychedelic Salon

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PROGRAM NOTES:

NOTE: All quotations below are by Dr. Timothy Leary.]

"When I say think for yourself, I don’t mean think selfishly for yourself. I mean think independently."

"If you’re going to think for yourself, you gotta learn to think clearly."

"The person who thinks for herself or himself has to have a sense of humility, and of modesty, and of relativity because you have to realize that I’m thinking for myself, but hopefully you are too, and you’re bound to come out with something a little different from me. So there has to be an ability to listen, compassion, plus the modesty. No matter how smart we are there’s a lot we aren’t going to be able to figure out tonight."

"I’m glad we’re laughing together because that’s a key. A sense of humor is the key. … That ability to laugh together certainly goes along with the ability to think together."

"Any time you introduce a new technology of thought processing, or of thought communication, you change everything else."

[Speaking about the biblical Eve] "I’m really pleased that the first member of my species was a woman who had the courage to stand up on her feet and think for herself."

"The idea that any human being should be forced by economics, forced to do work that can be done better by a machine or a computer is totally humiliating to any concept of our human dignity and worth."

"Now in the Industrial Age, a good person was someone who was prompt, reliable, dependable, productive, efficient, and replaceable."

"It’s always the artists, by the way, I think. The artists, and the entertainers, and the writers, and the musicians whose job it is to prepare society, to become a comfortable way for changes that otherwise would be too frightening."

"The point of the 20th century, you can argue, is to get us to accept knowledge, processing, and reality on screens."

"To me, a computer is a thought processor."

www.PsychedelicSalon.org


Links mentioned in this podcast:

A case in defense of Salvia divinorum
Mythic Imagination
Fred Johnson and Michael Meade
Johnson sings an introduction for Ari Berk
"What Was Said to the Rose"
Mythic Journeys (preview trailer)

Thank you Lorenzo! for your compliments on
my
case in defense of Salvia divinorum


www.GaianBotanicals.com

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Clones are soon to be used in the war on drugs

cloned_dogs 
Four of the cloned dogs called Toppy during their exercise break at the Defector Dog Training Center in Incheon, west of Seoul. (Lee Jin-man/AP Photo)

For those not familiar with clones or clinging. It is the science of creating genetically identical copies of an organism by replicating its DNA sequences. There are various forms of cloning. However for the purposes of this entry, I am referring to reproductive cloning.

Cloning is one of the most advanced technological discoveries in the field of modern biology. While some what new to existing in reality. The concept is rather old. In fact when I first think of cloning, Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World is the first example which comes to mind. Along with many other works of science fiction which have speculated at a future manipulated by cloning. Some feature films include Jurassic Park, Island of Dr. Moreau, Blade Runner, Star Wars, The Island and many others. This technology is now fact, not fiction.

Cloning has the potential to repair or replace damaged organs or tissue, defective genes, hearts, infertility and possibly even cure cancer. 

To date fish, cats, dogs, cattle, goats, horses, pigs, rabbits, rats, monkeys, sheep and many other animals have all been successfully cloned. At least this is the list disclosed to the public. It is plausible that secret research is occurring in labs around the planet as I type this.

So considering all the previously mentioned potential medical benefits cloning may bring to mankind. What has science chosen to use this new cloning technology for in real life applications? My first impulse was to cure a disease? No, the latest cloning accomplishment is a new line of cloned drug sniffing Labrador retrievers. All of which have passed a behavior test to check if they are qualified to work as drug sniffing dogs. Typically only 10 to 15 percent of naturally born dogs pass the test.

"They have a superior nature. They are active and excel in accepting the training," said Kim Nak-seung, a trainer at the Korean Customs Service affiliated dog training center.

If the cloned dogs succeed in other tests for physical strength, concentration and sniffing ability, they will be put to work by July next year at airports and harbors across South Korea, according to the training center.

Why not bomb sniffing dogs? Wouldn't that be more beneficial line of work cloned super dogs? The same laboratory claims they could clone cancer-sniffing canines. Who knows, prior to being excepted to purchase life or health insurance. You may need to be screened by a clog first?

If Hitler had cloning technology, I'm sure he would have cloned dogs to sniff out "inferior races" of human beings to send them off to concentration camps. Maybe the war on drugs will really out do the goals of Nazi science and be the first to use cloned dogs (or cloned super soldiers) to send its "undesirable" citizens off to prisons. Of course this technology will not be limited to dogs, it will eventually be applied in new forms of eugenics. Are human beings with altered or missing receptor sites to far out of the realm of possibility?

I must confess I am NO expert on cloning. If there are any inaccuracies in this blog entry, please do let me know or correct me in the comments. I always welcome feed back in general as well.

Thanks for visiting!
E

More info can be read on National Geographic.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Don't Talk to the Police by Professor James Duane

Criminal law professor James Duane from Regent University in Virginia brings forth a laudable effort to pound it in our thick skulls to never, ever talk to the police. Not even if we are innocent. It's a well-argumented speech, with real life examples, and features an intervention by a detective describing police tactics for fooling people into talking and spinning their words out of context.

Link: Professor James Duane

Saturday, August 2, 2008

A Case in Defense of Salvia divinorum

I was recently approached by Brent McDonald & Kevin Sack from the New York Times who were producing a newspaper article and video story on Salvia divinorum with an emphasis on its current legal struggles. One of the producers contacted me to arrange a telephone interview which after reviewing some of Brent and Kevin's work, I accepted and conducted on August 1, 2008. While I believe these journalist and film makers are honorable people wanting to share a fair and honest story. I have some trepidation as to how the editors and executives of national news corporation will influence the final version of the story. So as soon as the interview concluded. I wrote down my version of what was said. This entry was written from those notes.

I did my interview today and am pretty pleased with how it went. At first it seemed their primary interest in me was my perspective as the proprietor of Gaian Botanicals. However I tried not to focus too much on that and steered our conversation more towards the plant and the issues that encompass it.

The first thing I said was go to
Entheogen.com and read what the members had to say about this interview. I consulted them the day prior, seeking their input and wisdom.
I asked the journalist interviewing me if he had tried Salvia divinorum? Unfortunately he replied with a no. I recommended that any professional investigator preparing a national story on an ineffable experience should at least invest 15 minutes and try the herb. It's like someone reporting on a religion and the person being interviewed said, "Do you want to meet my god?" And the interviewer says, "No." Why wouldn't you? It’s safe and legal. I honestly do not believe anyone could possibly comprehend Salvia divinorum without directly experiencing it. Maybe he will try it, maybe he won’t. That’s his personal and private choice, but I hope he does.

He was familiar with most of the major the scientific literature already so there was really no point in repeating what he already knew. I made it clear the Salvia divinorum is NOT like any other psychedelic.

Yes this includes Marijuana, LSD, Magic Mushrooms or any other of more commonly known psychedelics. This comparison is all too commonly used by the media and is more inaccurate then claiming all food tastes the same and has the same nutritional properties or that all medicine is the same. These analogies are absurd.

I continued with the my main question, why make Salvia divinorum illegal? It is likely that over the past decade at least a million of people from around the world have tried it in some form. No one has died, became ill, addicted, mentally deranged or suffered any other from of disability due to Salvia. This is even with production of extracts and cultivation being somewhat underground. Not regulated like food or medicine offered at your retail store and still no ill effects with Salvia. The chemicals sold by your neighborhood pharmacy are probably more toxic.

The government technically does not have the authority to declare something Schedule 1 unless it’s a hazard to public safety, addictive and / or has NO medical use. Salvia divinorum is not a threat; it is the opposite of addictive and has demonstrated significant potential medical use in the treatment of depression, addiction, among other possibilities. Doctors will not be able to determine its best medicinal uses until they have had an opportunity to thoroughly investigate and research it.

This plant is unique. Fist of all Salvinorin A is a Diterpenoid which acts as a kappa opioid receptor agonist. This is important because it is the first known compound with such action that is not an alkaloid. All of the other known hallucinogens are Tryptamines and Phenethylamines which act on the Serotonergic system.

Salvinorin A practically sets a speed record for how fast it crosses the blood brain barrier. If one were developing medicines which must rapidly reach the brain, Salvinorin would be a good compound to study. What all of this means to science and medicine is that Salvia contains a completely unique pharmacological action previously unknown thus it extremely valuable to humanity. Not only to learn more on how the brain works, but also for its potential medicinal value. Shouldn’t these discoveries be celebrated instead of persecuted?

Most legislators argue Salvia is similar to illegal substances therefore it too should be illegal. The Federal government all ready has a law that makes any substance similar to illegal substances also illegal. It’s called the Analog Act. This only further proves (as previously mentioned) that Salvia is special and is not like the other classic psychedelics.

Please keep in mind when these things are made illegal, they are not only restricted for use by ordinary people. They are restricted from scientific study. Unless your a government lab trying to maintain the illegal status. Well except a few recent scientific studies which have been allowed for DMT, Psilocybin and MDMA. The authorities were finally forced to admit that the most powerful substances known to act upon the human mind may have some medical use? Something most people who have experimented with them already knew.

My friend Fraser Clark once said only two things can change a person in a single instant: Psychoactive drugs, and direct religious experience. The greatest transformation would then come via a synthesis of these two: a religious experience created by psychoactive drugs. This is a very wise and true observation. The ancient institution of Shamanism has relied on these powerful tools for such purposes since pre-history. In fact it is completely plausible that entheogens have played a significant role in our human evolution. But that’s another story for another day. When addressing the public in general, I don’t want to get too far out of their current belief system.

Back to the legal status. Today we have let some thirty-five years of potential scientific study be wasted. In a field of medicine with the potential to aid victims of war, rape, molestation, abuse, assaults and traumas. Medicines that can reduce the anxieties of the terminally ill dying from cancer and other horrible diseases. Help them come to better terms with their death.

Drug addiction and alcoholism could have been cured. Making families more loving, healthy and happy. Over 35 years of scientific and medical progress lost, all due to paranoia of entheogens? Well that’s sorta off topic of Salvia, but I wanted to lay out some of the consequences of illegalization. Lets just end this point by stating the issue is not that Salvia is threat to public safety; the issue is that the establishment fears psychedelics. Free thinking isn’t conducive to controlling a population. They want everyone to fit within the cultural paradigm of being good little consumer robots who go about playing their game and following the rules with out questioning their authority or motives. In the 60's the US government wanted to escalate the war in Vietnam and large parts of the population were using psychedelics. The authority’s propaganda was not effective and the people would not tolerate the actions of their government. Therefore the government had to put an end it to it all. Of course many mistakes were made by the drug users of that era. It was all too new. We know much more about these things now.

California and Maine have taken very reasonable and wise steps in regulating Salvia. No sales to minors. Everyone in the Salvia divinorum community applauds this. We hate to see kids acting stupid on YouTube more then anyone. I wish Salvia were inaccessible to minors. I am a parent and I don't want my kids using anything either. My wife and I are very involved with our children's life and take the responsibility to educate them and raise them to make wise decisions. My interest in entheogens is private; I don't talk about or use anything in their presence. If when they are responsible adults, they choose to explore this domain. I will be glad that I have some wisdom and guidance to offer on the topic. Not what most uninformed parents offer.

When it comes to teens. As it’s always been, some will be determined to get high. If Salvia is what they get their hands on. It’s allot better then what this demographic has used in the past. Paint, glue or solvent huffing, computer duster inhaling, prescription drug abuse or even worse. Dangerous and addictive drugs that poison the mind and body and can lead toward destructive and criminal lifestyles. That’s not what Salvia is, nor will it ever be. Not in the least. This distinction must be made crystal clear.

This is about Americans just surrendering their rights and not caring about freedom. We have become so conditioned to just doing what we are told. As the late Terence McKenna said. "If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include cognitive liberty, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on." I didn’t have the exact quote with me in my car, but I like my version better.

He asked me of the Salvia users I knew, what are they like? Based on my circle of friends and people I know from the net. Most who choose Salvia. Do so initially because they don’t want to be made criminals. It’s a legal option as many have families and jobs that would be threatened by using illegal drugs. Also if you have just a half-hour with no kids, work or other responsibilities. You could have an effective entheogenic experience. It brings some magic and amazement to your day. An alternate perspective for self reflection and you don’t need 8 hours of nothing to do to have this experience. As I said most users I know, are responsible tax paying citizens. They just choose to make this experience part of their life. They find it a useful tool. For many reasons. Some people I know try it and never want to try it again. Salvia isn’t a match for everyone; in fact its not for most. It can be a totally boundary dissolving, reality model smashing experience. For some it totally astonishes them, they come back and can’t believe it. They run to a mirror to see if they are indeed themselves awake and not dreaming and if what they witnessed really happened. It gives one a lot to think about.

I’ve always valued entheogens for reflecting on my own self. It helps reach clarity to what’s most important in your life. What work must be performed on yourself and in your relationships. What habits you must end and what interests you should peruse. Prior to my first being turned on. I felt like a cultural robot executing the code I was programmed to follow. This was my individuality and freedom I thought I had.

Being an medically diagnosed insomniac, back in the early 90’s I ended up an underground party in search of a little fun. Upon entry someone I slightly knew handed me a piece of Starburst candy that had LSD dropped on it. I didn’t even know it until another friend said you’re going to get really high. I thought how potent could a Starburst be? I danced all night, the music, lights, colors and people where all amazing. My senses have never been so inundated. I had these thoughts I never thought before. I discovered my inner voice. Separated not only from my friends, but reality. I recall wandering the day glow lit warehouse in a state of trance, and then I heard a voice say. “Ok walk over here, find your friends. Don’t look at the two guys making out in the corner. Don't eat, drink or smoke anything. Sober up.” Then I thought. Who said that? Voices? OK Symptom A your insane. No. Once I learned I had this voice that was commanding my being. I was able to make some positive changes in my life. I was able to deal with my subconscious and change my mental programming.

Well not by this experience alone. I was greatly influenced by some really amazing people who I was fortunate enough to encounter back then. Mainly Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson and Terence McKenna along with many other individuals with extraordinary ideas and philosophies. In fact as I speak to you know I can hear the bard’s novel voice, sorta as if I am channeling him or perhaps just straight out plagiarizing. But in this case I don't think he would mind. With out this experience, I would have never taken the path I have and that would be a tragedy. To deny this experience to people should be the crime.

I must make it clear for the record. I do not use or posses any illegal substances. At this phase in my life, Salvia and psychedelic thinking are more then enough to satisfy my entheogenic needs. Mostly I enjoy the philosophy and theory of it all. I like to read, participate on forums and listen to podcasts like my friend Lorenzo’s Psychedelic Salon. By doing so I am able to benefit simply by taking in other peoples reflections on their experiences.

The thing that really bothers me most is the criminalization of plants. Who the hell do we think we are? If you are religious most likely you believe the earth and everything on it was created by a god. If you’re an atheist or evolutionist you probably believe there was a big bang, everything came together and 13 billion years of cosmic evolution labored to bring all the life found on earth in to existence. How egotistical can humans be to come along and declare parts of this miraculous creation illegal? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. There is a total disrespect of nature. But look at the environment; this shouldn’t be news to anyone. It’s our blindly following those in power that will drive our species into extinction.


EROCx1

The rest of the talk was stuff we all know. The effects of Salvia range from mild to profound and last about 15 minutes. A little of the history of Salvia from the Mazatecan shamans, re-discovery by Wasson & Hoffman. All the way up to making her emergence onto the Internet and probably on her path to extinction. But we won’t let her go with out our best effort to keep her legal. She is an intelligent plant spirit. Evading the Inquisition and all attempts to stomp out the use of Shamanic plants. We talked about the communities’ attempts to keep Salvia legal. Being that this is not currently a Federal matter. Its difficult to organize state by state, now we must even watch county and city ordinances. Just knowing the law of the Country is difficult enough, let alone fight all the smaller battles. There is presently no national organization of Salvia users taking political action. Maybe there should be, or are we too late?

Thank you for reading this. Please feel free to share this with others. I would appreciate a link back to this blog or my website.

Namasté,
EROCx1, D.D.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Police Raid Mayor's Home and Kill His 2 Dogs

Mayor Cheye Calvo and Trinity TomsicHere is just more evidence of the inhumanity demonstrated by the War on Drug and how they can make victims of anyone at any time. This is an obvious setup. By someone unhappy with the Mayor possibly even his own Sheriffs Department. Perhaps he shot down a motion to supply free daily doughnuts to law enforcement officers. Wait, the proprietors of doughnuts already pay that tribute for protection.
From: The WashingtonPost.com
June 31, 2008

A police SWAT team raided the home of the mayor in the Prince George's County town of Berwyn Heights on Tuesday, shooting and killing his two dogs, after he brought in a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been delivered to his doorstep, police said.

Mayor Cheye Calvo was not arrested in the raid, which was carried out about 7 p.m. by the Sheriff's Office SWAT team and county police narcotics officers. Prince George's police spokesman Henry Tippett said yesterday that all the residents of the house -- Calvo, his wife and his mother-in-law -- are "persons of interest" in the case.

The package was addressed to Calvo's wife, Trinity Tomsic, said law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

Tippett said police are working to determine for whom the drugs were meant.

Calvo said yesterday that he did not know how the drugs wound up on his doorstep. He works part time as the mayor and serves as director of expansion for the SEED Foundation, a well-known national nonprofit group that runs urban public boarding schools.

"My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs," Calvo said. "They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don't think they really ever considered that we weren't."

Calvo described a chaotic scene, in which he -- wearing only underwear and socks -- and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated for hours. They were surrounded by the dogs' carcasses and pools of the dogs' blood, Calvo said.

Spokesmen for the Sheriff's Office and Prince George's police expressed regret yesterday that the mayor's dogs were killed. But they defended the way the raid was carried out, saying it was proper for a case involving such a large amount of drugs.

Sgt. Mario Ellis, a Sheriff's Office spokesman, said the deputies who entered Calvo's home "apparently felt threatened" by the dogs.

"We're not in the habit of going to homes and shooting peoples' dogs," Ellis said. "If we were, there would be a lot more dead dogs around the county."

Calvo, 37, has been mayor of the 3,000-person town near College Park since 2004. His wife is a finance officer for the state, he said.

The investigation that led police to their house in the 8500 block of Edmonston Road began in Arizona, officials said. There, a police dog at a shipping facility identified the package as being filled with marijuana. Prince George's officers posed as deliverymen and brought it to Calvo's home.

Calvo said he came home early from work Tuesday. While walking the dogs, Calvo said, he noticed several black sport-utility vehicles and a woman parked in a car down the street.

"I figured someone was having a party," he recalled.

It was the police. They were watching, waiting for someone to bring the package into the house.

As Calvo returned to the house, he said, he spotted the large package that his mother-in-law had told a deliveryman to leave on the porch. He placed it on a buffet table near the front door and went upstairs to change.

"I brought it inside because I figured it was something we'd gotten for the garden," he said.

Moments later, just after he had undressed, Calvo said, he heard his mother-in-law scream that someone was coming toward the house. He looked out his bedroom window and saw officers in SWAT gear running across the lawn.

"I heard a loud crash and then 'bang, bang, bang,' " he said, recalling the sounds of the police shooting the dogs. "I hit the floor."

As the police came in, Calvo said, they shot his 7-year-old black Labrador retriever, Payton, near the front door and then his 4-year-old dog, Chase, also a black Lab, as the dog ran into a back room. Walking through his house yesterday, Calvo pointed out a bullet hole in the drywall where the younger dog had been shot.

"I understand they have a job to do, but it didn't have to go like that," Calvo said. He said the police could have knocked on his door and asked him about the package. "I've never done drugs in my life. Anyone who knows me knows that I am so adamantly opposed to them."

Police said yesterday that, when they seized the package during the raid, it was unopened.

Berwyn Heights Police Chief Patrick Murphy said county police and the Sheriff's Office had not notified his department of the raid. He said town police could have conducted the search without a SWAT team.

"You can't tell me the chief of police of a municipality wouldn't have been able to knock on the door of the mayor of that municipality, gain his confidence and enter the residence," Murphy said. "It would not have been a necessity to shoot and kill this man's dogs."