Please send Love, Light and Blessings to Sasha Shulgin!

Sasha's surgery to replace his aortic heart valve was a success. He is now recovering at home. Please send him lots of love and healing energy. This past year has been a difficult road for him and Ann. Lets pray that he quickly returns him back to his usual, extraordinary self!

We love you Sasha!

Thanks for bringing us all soooo much love!

Be well soon!

World Psychedelic Forum 2008: Michael Horowitz

Michael Horowitz

The Revolving Doors of Perception

Deconstructing the Myths and Ambiguities of the Psychedelic Zeitgeist

Direct Mp3 download: HERE

(right click, save as)

Michael Horowitz, former co-director of the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library, offers tours through the L.S.D. Library, sharing stories and anecdotes to single exhibits. Director of Flashback Books, Editor of Works by Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary.

Michael Horowitz's lecture from the World Psychedelic forum in Basel Switzerland. Michael talks about mythic events in Western history since the discovery of LSD 65 years ago. Horowitz speculates about the films that will be showing at the 2020 world film festival and the top 10 films yet-to-be-made, and talks about the superb aptness of the word 'trip',the mythic status of a person's first, best and worst trips in their life, the coincidence of the discovery of LSD and nuclear bombs, the CIA's experiments with psychedelics and their unwitting creation of the 60s counterculture, the Wasson family's legendary meeting with Maria Sabina, Tim Leary's psychedelic research and his later imprisonment, president Kennedy's acid-seductress, Aldous Huxley's humane and fully conscious death, the Beatles, rock festivals, underground chemists, acid-anarchists, the fate of the hippies, Nixon's near-miss with an LSD spiking, empathogens and the rave movement and the coicident rise of anti-depressants, 2012 and the transformative power of chaos and Tim Leary's death.

From: Psychonautica

How to Chew Betel Nut in Papua New Guinea

How to Chew Betel Nut in Papua New Guinea

from wikiHow

If you ever go to Papua New Guinea, the first thing you will notice is the brilliant red-stained teeth and lips of the local men and women. Betel nut, or what the locals call buai [boo-eye] is the cause. Green betel nut is a nut that grows in the tropical climates of South East Asia and is popular in the South Pacific Islands. It can be found on every street corner in Papua New Guinea and is chewed as part of social occasions or as a part of everyday life. Betel nut has a mild stimulant effect and in addition to reasons of tradition local people chew it for stress reduction, heightened awareness, and suppression of hunger.

Many foreign visitors try betel nut as a way to experience a part of the local Papua New Guinea culture. In addition, if a visitor arrives at a local person’s house for dinner, the visitor will most likely be given betel nut as a welcome offering. If you would like to learn how to chew betel nut, follow these steps.

Steps

1. Gather the ingredients needed to chew betel nut. You will need the green betel nut (buai), a jar or bag of lime powder (kambang) and a bean-like green called mustard (daka). These can be bought on any street corner for about one Kina (30 cents).
   
2. Break the betel nut open by cracking the shell with your teeth. Take the meaty center out of the shell and start chewing it. Do not swallow the fibrous residue of the nut as it is said to cause stomach aches.
   
3. Chew the betel nut for 2-5 minutes or until it forms a wad in your mouth.
   
4. Slightly moisten the mustard seed with your mouth and dip it into the jar/bag of lime powder.
   
5. Move the betel nut wad to the side of your mouth and then bite off the piece of mustard seed that has the lime powder on it. Make sure to not put the lime directly on your mouth or gums as they will feel a burning sensation. Instead try to bite the mustard seed directly into the betel nut wad. As you chew the mixture together, they will form a chemical reaction that will make your teeth and lips red and provide a mild high.
   
6. Know that as you chew, spit out the fibrous residue of the nut as needed. Most people just spit on the street so there is often red splattering of betel nut all along the street and sidewalks.
   
7. Keep chewing until there is no more betel nut left. You may have a mild euphoric feeling because of betel nuts’ mild stimulant effects.
   

Warnings

• Do not chew Betel Nut if you are a minor. Betel Nut is a drug and can become habit forming.
  
• The International Agency for Research on Cancer considers betel nut to be a human carcinogen (i.e. oral cancer is common in places where betel nut is chewed)
  
• Betel nut will make your teeth and lips very red, sometimes permanently if chewed a lot. When chewed over long periods of time it can also lead to gum and teeth disease.
  
• Betel nut is often compared to tobacco. It can be very addictive and habit forming. In many places in PNG you will find “no betel nut” signs that are similar to “no smoking signs.”
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Chew Betel Nut in Papua New Guinea. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

The Leaves of the Shepherdess by Kat Harrison

The Leaves of the Shepherdess
By: Kat Harrison

From: Awakened Woman

Mazatecan curandera preparing Salvia divinorum for ceremony
(Drawing by Jon Hann ©2000)

Salvia divinorum, a relatively obscure sacred plant native to Oaxaca, was rediscovered by Gordon Wasson in 1962, when he and Albert Hofmann's wife Anita first noted its psychoactive effects. Used for "divining" and other purposes at least as far back as the Aztecs, the plant began to be cultivated and used in the U.S. beginning in the mid-1990s.

I had grown the plant -- Salvia divinorum -- for twenty years, and I knew the scant botanical and anthropological literature on this rare, sacred plant, but I´d never successfully had a visionary experience from ingesting the leaves. Once I´d tried putting thirty leaves in a blender with water and drinking the green slurry, but other than a headache and distinct empathy with a trapped butterfly, not much had happened.

In the summer of 1995 I was ready for another in my series of solo ethnobotanical fieldwork adventures, and so I headed off for a month in the mountains of northern Oaxaca, Mexico. My son and daughter were staying with family, and I had work to do: not only investigating the folk uses and beliefs regarding healing plants, but also a health challenge of my own. For a couple of years following the dissolution of my marriage and the sad, slow death of my father, my heart had not been beating regularly. I´d always had a heart murmur and the strain of recurrent anemia, but this was more disturbing, grabbing my breath away. After one episode with a doctor, I decided I wanted to ask a Mazatec healer to do a ceremony for me with the Leaves of the Shepherdess.

The Mazatecs are renowned for their ritual shamanism, made world-famous by the twentieth-century "discovery" of their ancient practices using psilocybin mushrooms. The curandera Maria Sabina became the emblematic shaman who was revealed and unfortunately sacrificed to Western popular attention. The mushroom rituals intrigued me of course, but I was most drawn to the more elusive medicina of these leaves. I wanted to meet La Pastora, the Shepherdess.
An anthropologist friend gave me directions to an old curandero´s hut, perched above a tiny village in a remote valley of those tropical mountains. I came bringing greetings from our mutual friend and gifts of multi-vitamins and vegetable seeds. I was met with caution, which I felt was appropriate, and interviewed over two days as to my life experience and my intentions. The curandero and his son, who acted as our interpreter from Spanish to Mazatec, agreed to gather the leaves for a session with me.

Shka Pastora, the Leaves of the Shepherdess, grows in small, hidden glades in the upland moist forest of the Sierra Mazateca. The plant seems to propagate itself from nodes of the fallen stems, perhaps with the help of humans who tend their private patches. It is speculated that the species diminished its ability to set seed through centuries of human tending. And perhaps this highly sensitive species -- growing in light-speckled seclusion in such a small region of the world -- would have long ago disappeared, had it not been for its lovely medicina and gift to human consciousness. Each healer´s patch is a family secret, and the spirit of the plant is known to have a personal relationship with one who cares for her. Not just anyone can pick her leaves and derive benefit from her medicine. One´s purpose must be clean and clear.

Among many indigenous, nature-based peoples, significant plant species are each personified as a being with a name and particular attributes of character that relate to the plant´s effects. The plant spirit is a persona, to be honored, solicited and thanked for its gifts. Over the past five hundred years, a veneer of Catholicism has been laid over the rich indigenous animistic world-view, and stories of the helper-saints have meshed with the perceived primordial qualities of certain plant allies. The Virgin is often identified with plants that aid us; the Mazatecs recognize two species of morning glory (Ipomoea violacea and Rivea corymbosa) that produce Seeds of the Virgin, used for vision and difficult childbirth. Another name for La Pastora is Santa Maria, again a variation of the compassionate Mother Goddess.

We gathered for the session, a late night ceremony before a rough altar that held flowers, candles, pictures of the saints and powdered tobacco. We sat, the family and I, facing the stone wall that emerged from the earth there, against which they had built their tiny abode of tin, tar-paper and wood. La Pastora is very shy, they told me, timid like a deer. She will come only when we have eaten many pairs of the leaves and sit very quietly, perfectly still, in utter darkness, as in a glen in the forest in the moonlight. If someone moves or speaks suddenly, she will disappear in a moment. If we invite her, and are very clear and open to her, she will come, she will speak. She will whisper to us what we need to know and show us what she sees. She may help heal us, or bless us with good fortune. But we must pray and we must listen, and we must pay her our full attention. Do you know how to pray, really pray with all your heart? If not, tonight you will learn.

The curandero unrolled banana-leaf bundles of hand-sized Salvia divinorum leaves, slightly wilted, and sorted them into pairs. Both mushrooms and leaves are measured in pairs, he told me, representing masculine and feminine. He doled out forty pairs to me, rolled them into a long wad, rather like a salad rolled into a cigar. He explained that after he said the invoking prayers and we stated aloud our intentions, I was to eat the leaves. I was told not to hesitate at their bitterness, not to stop until I had eaten them all, and above all, not to laugh throughout the entire session. Laughter, he counseled, would steal away the power of the medicine.
The curandero held our leaves up to the altar, to the stone emerging from the mountain, and murmured a long prayer that included La Pastora, the Virgin of Guadalupe, San Pedro, San Pablo and names of native deities I could not recognize. He signaled me to state my intentions, make my request.

I greeted the spirit of La Pastora, identified myself, asked her to come be present with me that night. I asked, "Please help my heart to become strong and clear and without fear, so that it can pump smoothly." I asked, as I always do when I enter into relationship with sacred medicine, "What is my work now? May I please see the next stretch of the path?"

I took my first bite, stanched my reaction to the bitterness, and proceeded steadily through many bites to the end. By the time I had consumed almost the entire bundle, I was saturated with a taste that was sharp and fresh and ancient all at once. I had a momentary sense of how very long these people had been doing this ritual, the generations that had sought the wisdom of this plant spirit. Suddenly there was a shimmering, the curandero blew the candles out for total darkness, and within seconds I was completely in another realm, astonished. Some part of me ate the final bite, and I relaxed into another place: I was in the presence of a great female being, a twenty-foot high woman, semi-transparent. I was standing in her garden. There she was, some distance away, at the edge of her garden, near the forest, standing amidst her lovely plants against a small, white picket fence. There were butterflies and hummingbirds flying around and through her. Her great translucent face, the density of rainbows, leaned toward me and away. She moved through the garden, tending her leaves and flowers, leaning over them and standing again, beams of sunlight pouring through her. I felt a great longing for her to move toward me, to touch me, and I realized I could not move my feet from the earth where I stood. I felt the other human spirits around me -- the old curandero, his wife, his son and the little granddaughter -- and they were all giving her their full attention. I realized then that we were plants at the edge of her garden. She drifted slowly toward us, reached out and ran her hands through us, like a breeze, like a ripple, and I knew in those moments that my body was clear, that when she touched me I was in perfect order. I knew in my bones that if we ever asked for her to touch us, and we gave in exchange our most profound attention when she did, all would be well. I inhaled and exhaled her presence. She circled the garden again and returned to us. When she passed her hand through my chest a second time, I saw a tiny, ornate wooden door in my heart. It was carved with flowers and vines, and had an intricate golden filigreed handle and hinges. As her grand spirit fingers brushed it, I felt a strong breeze open the tiny door and a pocket of hurt blew away into the sweet air of the garden.

There is this enduring memory of my own face gazing out of a plant, and the dark but not unfriendly presence of the woods nearby. As she faded from view and I returned to a sense of the present, I heard the words repeatedly, in both Spanish and English: "Show them the edge of the garden. Les muestra el borde del jardín." That is my work.

This article is from a forthcoming anthology called Sisters of the Extreme: Women Writing on the Drug Experience from Inner Traditions in May.

Their website is innerraditions.com

Be sure to visit Gaian Botanicals

Penn and Teller - Bullshit: War On Drugs

Penn & Teller
Bullshit: War on Drugs

www.GaianBotanicals.com

Dr. Phil. Christian Rätsch: Magic mushrooms

Dr. Phil. Christian Rätsch talks about magic mushrooms at

the "Spiritual Healing" event in Germany in 2005.

Christian Rätsch (born 1957) is Germany's premier expert on ethnopharmacology and psychoactive plants and animals. Rätsch is an anthropologist and author or many AWESOME BOOKS, including Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers and the grand daddy of them all, The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications. Rätsch conducted field research for three years whilst living with the Lacandón Indians in Chiapas, Mexico and completed his doctorate on their incantations and spells. Rätsch resides in Hamburg, Germany with his wife Claudia Müller-Ebeling. Rätsch is the founder and co-editor of The Yearbook of Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness.

These video's are in German, with accurate English subtitles.

Christian Rätsch: Magic mushrooms 1/4

Christian Rätsch: Magic mushrooms 2/4

Christian Rätsch: Magic mushrooms 3/4

Christian Rätsch: Magic mushrooms 4/4

Christian Rätsch links:

Christian's Home Page

On Erowid

On Matrix Masters, mp3 talks

The Love: 4 hour all ambient massive mix

Of the 40 or so mixes Waldemar aka DJ lp3 has made available online, this one is BY FAR his most-requested for download. It being all ambient (and mostly beatless except for just a couple of instances of light organic downtempo), it seems to be very popular among people who are not into electronic dance music. It is great for meditation, chillin or as a sound track to ones entheogenic state.

Here is the tracklisting and download link:

Download Now: THE LOVE improved.mp3 (right click & save target as)

THE LOVE (massive 4-hour all-ambient mix by Waldemar, early 2007, dedicated to his grandmother 'Liber' Prichard)

http://www.myspace.com/waldemarlandry

1.) SETI - 'Signal 001'
2.) Tetsu Inoue - 'Mood Swing'
3.) Vangelis - 'Blade Runner Blues' [from the film Blade Runner]
4.) The Drum Club - 'Furry Meadows'
5.) Future Sound Of London - 'Cerebral'
6.) Dallas Simpson - 'Abha' Dallas Simpson - 'Adoration, 1st Movement'
7.) Natural Language - 'Sylvanshine'
8.) Woob - 'Giant Stroke'
9.) Terre Thaemlitz - 'Fina_Departure'
10.) A Small, Good Thing - 'Ostrichism'
11.) Dallas Simpson - 'Waterpump'
12.) Deep Space Network - 'Zenn La'
13.) The KLF - 'Last Train To Trancentral' (Mu D. Vari-Speed Version)
14.) A Small, Good Thing - 'Gulch'
15.) Terre Thaemlitz - 'Fat Chair'
16.) Material (Bill Laswell with William S. Burroughs) End of Words
17.) Friends, Lovers & Family - Seaside Sad World (Dr. Atmo) - Harsin
18.) Mike Kandel - 'Slow Boat To China'
19.) Mia - 'Savannah'
20.) Fognode - 'Thin Faces'
21.) Art of Noise - 'Momento'
22.) Mark Fauver - 'Return To Innsmouth'
23.) Miasma - 'Miasma'
24.) Future Sound of London - 'Among Myselves'
25.) Beatsystem - 'Endlessly Downward'
26.) Woob - 'Gate'/'Pondlife'
27.) O Yuki Conjugate - 'Still Breath'
28.) Phauss - 'Radiator (for Amanita Muscaria & Mark McCloud)'
29.) Woob - 'Strange Air'
30.) Belt - 'Under The Sunset'
31.) Elliot Sharp - InSERGEncy [Tim Leary 'LSD has been discovered.']
32.) Beatsystem - 'Invade Areas Where Nothing's Definite'
33.) The Orb - 'We're Pastie To Be Grill You'
34.) Terre Thaemlitz - 'Still Life With Numerical Analysis'
35.) Sub Dub - 'Babylon Part 2'
36.) The Orb - 'Log Of Deadwood'
37.) Bedouin Ascent - 'Mammon'
38.) Michael Kamen & Orbital - 'Event Horizon' [from Event Horizon]
39.) Air (Pete Namlook) - Trip 4
40.) Air (Pete Namlook) - Trip 6
41.) Lucid Dreams 0096 - 'Nightmares'
42.) Pink Floyd - 'A Saucerful Of Secrets'
43.) Terre Thaemlitz - 'A Means From An End [Reduction of Contents]'
44.) Aphex Twin - 'Analogue Bubblebath 3'
45.) Electric Skychurch - 'Outside'
46.) Love Spirals Downward - 'Kykean'
47.) The Pelican Daughters - 'The Bicycle Ride' [aural rendition of Albert Hoffman's infamous accidental excursion & therefore the first L.S.D. trip ever, 1943, Switzerland]
48.) Brian Eno & Jon Hassell - 'Delta Rain Dream'
49.) Spooky vs. Scanner - 'Kybernetes'
50.) Sequential - 'The Mission' (live from the Outer Zone)
51.) Adam Shaikh - 'Vapor'
52.) Young American Primitive - 'Expanding'
53.) Dubtribe - 'Memory' (edit)
54.) Aphex Twin - 'Parallel Stripes'
55.) Evolve Now - 'Impetus'
56.) Silence [Pete Namlook & Dr. Atmo] - 'Heaven' (aw-Cut)
57.) Tangerine Dream - 'Phaedra' (edit)
58.) Killing Joke - Requiem (A Floating Leaf Always Reaches the Sea)
59.) Spacetime Continuum - 'Ping Pong'
60.) Orgship - 'Liquid Sky'
61.) Prototype 909 - 'Understand' (live)
62.) 4 Voice - '4VI Outro'
63.) Harold Budd - 'Flowered Knife Shadows'
64.) Mysteries of Science - 'The Technological Womb'
65.) L.S.G. - 'Jillianity'
66.) Hawkwind - 'Space Dust'
67.) Cabaret Voltaire - 'Exterminating Angel'
68.) Roger Eno - 'Voices'
69.) Sheila Chandra - 'True'
70.) Kitaro - 'The Field'
71.) Sigur Ros - '( ).4'
72.) 777 [System 7] - 'Sirenes' (Tranquility mix)
73.) Brian Eno - 'An Ending (Ascent)'
74.) Silence [Pete Namlook & Dr. Atmo] - 'Sweet Angels'
75.) Vaughan Williams - 'The Lark Ascending'

LINK : THE LOVE (2006) (320kbps).mp3 550.23 MB

Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis

Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis
Author: Shanon, Benny
Source: Time and Mind, Vol 1, Num 1, March 2008 , pp. 51-74
Publisher: Berg Publishers

Abstract: A speculative hypothesis is presented according to which the ancient Israelite religion was associated with the use of entheogens (mind-altering plants used in sacramental contexts). The hypothesis is based on a new look at texts of the Old Testament pertaining to the life of Moses. The ideas entertained here were primarily based on the fact that in the arid areas of the Sinai peninsula and Southern Israel there grow two plants containing the same psychoactive molecules found in the plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew Ayahuasca is prepared. The two plants are species of Acacia tree and the bush Peganum harmala. The hypothesis is corroborated by comparative experiential-phenomenological observations, linguistic considerations, exegesis of old Jewish texts and other ancient Mideastern traditions, anthropological lore, and ethnobotanical data.

The full text is free: HERE

Cops Raid Legal Herbalists in Nebraska

Cops Raid Legal Herbalists in Nebraska

Cory Matteson
Lincoln Journal Star
March 13, 2008

A legislative bill that would make Salvia divinorum an illegal drug in Nebraska has little chance of passage during the last six weeks of the legislative session.

Lincoln Police on Monday made a Salvia bust anyway.

Citing a state statute that prohibits Nebraskans from selling certain compounds that will induce an intoxicated or otherwise mind-altering state, officers executed a search warrant on Exotica, 2441 N. 48th St. The Lincoln store sells the herb, a cousin of sage, generally smoked to create a short-term hallucinogenic experience.
Exotica owner Christian Firoz said four officers entered his store early Monday evening, took all his Salvia and issued him a citation for selling certain compounds.

“They said they’re going to hit everybody that’s selling Salvia and take everything,” Firoz, 35, said.

Firoz said his court date is April 16, and that he’s going to challenge the citation.

“I signed (the citation),” Firoz said. “I’ll be in court. We plan to fight it because we’ve been selling it for a while and it’s a lot of our sales.”

He also said the information that he has leads him to believe it is legal to sell Salvia.

Sen. Vickie McDonald of St. Paul sponsored the bill to ban Salvia on behalf of Attorney General Jon Bruning. The bill has no priority status, and there’s little movement to add it as an amendment to another bill.

But Lincoln Police determined that a law currently on the state books outlaws the sale of Salvia.

One day after Firoz was quoted in the Journal Star about Salvia divinorum’s trance-like effects, his quotes ended up in a Lincoln Police report, Lincoln Police Capt. David Beggs said.

“It’s all psychological,” Firoz said in the article. “It puts you in a trance. It’s very hard to explain.”

State statute 28-420 bans the sale of any substance which will induce an intoxicated condition when the seller “knows or has reason to know that such compound is intended for use to induce such condition.”

The “intoxicated condition,” as defined by Sec. 28-419, can include a “condition of intoxication, stupefaction, depression, giddiness, paralysis, inebriation, excitement, or irrational behavior, or in any manner changing, distorting, or disturbing the auditory, visual, mental or nervous processes.”

Beggs said an undercover officer purchased some Salvia earlier at the store Monday. Then the search warrant was executed, resulting in the seizure of 8.5 grams of the substance.

From: Infowars.com

Zeitgeist Day: March 15th, 2008

ZEITGEIST DAY aka ZDAY
MARCH 15TH 2008

For a ZDAY Event near you CLICK HERE

Psychedelic Salon #130: Timothy Leary 1966 Radio Interview

The Psychedelic Salon
Subscribe: FREE
Download: MP3
PCs - Right click, select option
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PROGRAM NOTES:
[NOTE: All quotes below are by Dr.Timothy Leary.]

"Psychedelic drugs are to the human mind today what the discovery of the microscope was to medicine and biological science three or four hundred years ago. Psychedelic drugs expand and speed up consciousness. They are going to bring about a tremendous change in our society, in our view of man and our way of life in the future."

"When you take LSD you do go on a trip. It’s a voyage. It’s the most ancient voyage that man has ever known, the one beyond your mind and your current tribal situation into the incredible possibilities which lie inside. So it’s a fair statement to say an LSD voyage is a trip."

"A chemical age is going to have a chemical sacrament."

"Every great breakthrough in religion and science has always involved a new method of bringing into consciousness what you couldn’t see before, the telescope, the microscope. And you remember, the fellow that developed the telescope back in Florence a few hundred years ago got into the same sort of trouble with society that we’re in today. Any new instrument which opens up consciousness threatens the establishment."

"It takes a long time to learn to use LSD. It’s no shortcut. It’s no instant mysticism. It’s no instant psychoanalysis. It’s tough, hard work."

"Stay away from it unless you’re willing to take LSD in a state of grace for serious and important purposes."

www.PsychedelicSalon.org

The 2nd Gaialogues podcast interview with Dr. Ralph Metzner

If you have not done so already, please be sure to visit the first

Gaialogues podcast interview with Dr. Ralph Metzner

Gaialogues with Joanna Harcourt-Smith
Dr. Ralph Metzner
Recorded: Feb 26, 2008
Download the podcast: HERE

Psychotherapist, writer and researcher who has been involved in the study of transformations of consciousness since graduate school when he worked with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) on the Harvard Psilocybin Projects. He co-wrote The Psychedelic Experience, and was editor of The Psychedelic Review. He is the co-founder and president of the Green Earth Foundation, an educational and research organization dedicated to the healing and harmonizing of the relationships between humanity and the Earth.

www.GaianBotanicals.com