A new Ayahuasca article by Dennis McKenna

The Scientific Investigation of Ayahuasca

A Review of Past and Current Research

By Dennis J McKenna PhD, J C Callaway PhD, Charles S Grob MD
Date: Apr 8th, 2008
From: Ayahuasca.com

Introduction

Of the numerous plant psychotropics utilized by indigenous populations of the Amazon Basin, perhaps none is as interesting or complex, botanically, chemically, or ethnographically, as the beverage known variously as ayahuasca , caapi, or yage. The beverage is most widely known as ayahuasca , a Quechua term meaning “vine of the souls,” which is applied both to the beverage itself and to one of the source-plants used in its preparation, the Malpighiaceous jungle liana, Banisteriopsis caapi (Schultes, 1957). In Brazil, transliteration of this Quechua word into Portuguese results in the name, Hoasca . Hoasca, or ayahuasca , occupies a central position in Mestizo ethnomedicine, and the chemical nature of its active constituents and the manner of its use makes its study relevant to contemporary issues in neuropharmacology, neurophysiology, and psychiatry.

Traditional and Indigenous Uses of Ayahuasca

The use of ayahuasca under a variety of names is a widespread practice among various indigenous aboriginal tribes endemic to the Amazon Basin (Schultes, 1957). Such practices undoubtedly were well established in pre-Columbian times, and in fact may have been known to the earliest human inhabitants of the region. Iconographic depictions on ceramics and other artifacts from Ecuador have provided evidence that the practice dates to at least 2000 B.C. (Naranjo, 1986). Its widespread distribution among numerous Amazonian tribes also argues for its relative antiquity.

Considerable genetic intermingling and adoption of local customs followed in the wake of European contact, and ayahuasca , along with a virtual pharmacopoeia of other medicinal plants, gradually became integrated into the ethnomedical traditions of these mixed populations. Today the drug forms an important element of ethnomedicine and shamanism as it is practiced among indigenous Mestizo populations in Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador. The sociology and ethnography of the contemporary use of ayahuasca (as it is most commonly termed) in Mestizo ethnomedicine has been extensively described (Dobkin de Rios, 1972, 1973; Luna, 1984, 1986)

Syncretic Religious Use of Ayahuasca

From the perspective of the sociologist or the ethnographer, discussion of the use of ayahuasca or hoasca can conveniently be divided into a consideration of its use among indigenous aboriginal and mestizo populations, and its more recent adoption by contemporary syncretic religious movements such as the Uni’ do Vegetal (UDV), Barquena, and Santo Daime sects in Brasil. It is within the context of acculturated groups such as these that questions regarding the psychological, medical, and legal aspects of the use of ayahuasca become most relevant, and also, most accessible to study.

The use of ayahuasca in the context of mestizo folk medicine closely resembles the shamanic uses of the drug as practiced among aboriginal peoples. In both instances, the brew is used for curing, for divination, as a diagnostic tool and a magical pipeline to the supernatural realm. This traditional mode of use contrasts from the contemporary use of ayahuasca tea within the context of Brazilian syncretic religious movements. Within these groups, the members consume ayahuasca tea at regular intervals in group rituals in a manner that more closely resembles the Christian Eucharist than the traditional aboriginal use. The individual groups of the UDV, termed nucleos, are similar to a Christian Hutterite sect, in that each group has a limited membership, which then splits to form a new group once the membership expands beyond the set limit. The nucleo consists of the congregation, a group leader or mestre, various acolytes undergoing a course of study and training in order to become mestres, and a temple, an actual physical structure where the sacrament is prepared and consumed at prescribed times, usually the first and third Saturday of each month. The membership of these newer syncretic groups spans a broad socio-economic range and includes many educated, middle-class, urban professionals (including a number of physicians and other health professionals). Some older members have engaged in the practice for 30 or more years without apparent adverse health effects.

The UDV and the Santo Daime sects are the largest and most visible of several syncretic religious movements in Brasil that have incorporated the use of ayahuasca into their ritual practices. Of the two larger sects, it is the UDV that possesses the strongest organizational structure as well as the most highly disciplined membership. Of all the ayahuasca churches in Brasil, the UDV has also been the most pivotal in convincing the government to remove ayahuasca from its list of banned drugs. In 1987, the government of Brasil approved the ritual use of hoasca tea (’hoasca’ is a Portugese shortening of ‘ayahuasca’ and is sometimes used to differentiate UDV brew from non-UDV ayahuasca) in the context of group religious ceremonies. This ruling has potentially significant implications, not only for Brasil, but for global drug policy, as it marks the first time in over 1600 years that a government has granted permission to its non-indigenous citizens to use a psychedelic substance in the context of religious practices.

Please see the complete article at
Ayahuasca.com

Happy 65th birthday LSD!

Nevertheless, in the spring of 1943, I repeated the synthesis of LSD-25. As in the first synthesis, this involved the production of only a few centigrams of the compound. In the final step of the synthesis, during the purification and crystallization of lysergic acid diethylamide in the form of a tartrate (tartaric acid salt), I was interrupted in my work by unusual sensations. The following description of this incident comes from the report that I sent at the time to Professor Stoll:

Last Friday, April 16, 1943 I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.

This was, altogether, a remarkable experience—both in its sudden onset and its extraordinary course. It seemed to have resulted from some external toxic influence; I surmised a connection with the substance I had been working with at the time, lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate.

Dr. Albert Hofmann

---

Bicycle day

On April 19, 1943 Dr. Albert Hofmann intentionally ingested 250 µg of LSD, which he hypothesized would be at most a threshold level dose, based on his research on other ergot alkaloids. Surprisingly, the substance showed a potency orders of magnitude above almost any other substance known at the time, amounting to a much heavier dose than typically given in modern therapeutic use. After ingesting the substance Hofmann found himself struggling to speak intelligibly and asked his laboratory assistant, who knew of the self-experiment, to escort him home on his bicycle, since wartime restrictions made automobiles unavailable. On the bicycle ride home, Hofmann's condition became more severe and in his journal he stated that everything in his field of vision wavered and was distorted, as if seen in a curved mirror. Hofmann also stated that while riding on the bicycle, he had the sensation of being stationary, unable to move from where he was, despite the fact that he was moving very rapidly.

Once Hofmann arrived home, he summoned a doctor and asked his neighbor for milk, believing it might help relieve the symptoms. Hofmann wrote that despite his delirious and bewildered condition, he was able to choose milk as a nonspecific antidote for poisoning. Upon arriving the attending doctor could find no abnormal physical symptoms other than extremely dilated pupils. After spending several hours terrified that his body had been possessed by a demon, that his next door neighbor was a witch, and that his furniture was threatening him, Dr. Hofmann feared he had become completely insane. In his journal Hofmann said that the doctor saw no reason to prescribe medication and instead sent him to his bed. At this time Hofmann said that the feelings of fear had started to give way to feelings of good fortune and gratitude, and that he was now enjoying the colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind his closed eyes. Hofmann mentions seeing "fantastic images" surging past him, alternating and opening and closing themselves into circles and spirals and finally exploding into colored fountains and then rearranging themselves in a constant flux. Hofmann mentions that during the condition every acoustic perception, such as the sound of a passing automobile, was transformed into optical perceptions. Eventually Hofmann slept and upon awakening the next morning felt refreshed and clearheaded, though somewhat physically tired. He also stated that he had a sensation of well being and renewed life and that his breakfast tasted unusually delicious. Upon walking in his garden he remarked that all of his senses were "vibrating in a condition of highest sensitivity, which then persisted for the entire day".

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