Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Not surprising.  

The 1950s/60s era, back when LSD was taken quite seriously both as a
medicine and a source of spiritual growth among various celebs was
fascinating.  Cary Grant couldn't say enough good things about it!

Tiny Dr. Tim put an end to that, but as awful a person as he was, I
suppose if he hadn't done it someone else would have.

The democratization of psychedelics was probably inevitable.
  

    
In my memory, we first took it for spiritual reasons but it quickly
became just another entertaining drug.  
  

    
I always liked Humphry Osmond's classification of psychedelics as a
"technology." Understand how it works, then choose which application
you want at a given time. I never did it lightly, which isn't to say I
didn't have a bunch of fun. I've always regretted that, in the short
time I was seeing Osmond socially (friend of my girlfriend's father,
and colleague of her best friend's mother, frequently came to dinner
after taking calligraphy lessons from her dad), I never revealed that I
knew what he was talking about. 
  

    
There's a sense where every generation and culture needs a new myth as
a syncretism for all that has passed; sort of an answer to David
Byrne's "How did I get here?"... seems to be missing today. Shamans
serve the role of cultural and mythic transmission; again, something
missing today as well.
  

    
That's not to say there aren't groups around: Burning Man,
Evolver.net, Ion, etc.; all definitely 'fringe' :)
  

    
yeah, i always thought the rave culture in the 90's and new generation
jambands of the last decade seemed to preserve the spiritual essence
of the experience, but i have been an old guy on the fringes of those
so can't really speak to the internal experience. 
  

    
Right now, any cultural phenomenon that stays on the fringe is
probably well out of harm's way. Because the mainstream's a mess.
  

    
I hadn't really looked at it that way, but good point!  The
contentious, deluded mainstream culture I was used to as a kid would
probably seem like a breath of fresh air and common sense at this
point.

Straight folks don't know whether to shit or go blind these days. ;-)
  

    
It occurred to me to mention that the ritual ceremonies of the
fraternal order the Grange, which is sort of an agricultural version of
the Masons, make reference to the Mysteries as well.
  

    
<dpd> what groups and traditions do you explore in your book?  

Also, in another vein we tend to be interested in, how is the book
being marketed/distributed?
  

    
distribution - Autonomedia online bookstore. in my hometown, it's
carried in lefty politics/lifestyle bookstore, and in New Age/Body Mind
Spirit specialty bookstore. i think they distribute thru Publishers
Group West.  Marketing is author driven, like much of the world these
days outside the big ticket writers.  

what groups and traditions? I thought i cast a wide net but the Grange
is new to me. now that i live in the "midwest" (at least eastern
colorado) i'll have to explore that. but lets see

- classical Greek/Roman pagan traditions
- a little bit of old testament judaism, plus jewish mysticism e.g.
kabbalah (my last name comes from town called Dulcigno, now in
Montenegro, and that was a place where a messiah figure named Shabbatai
Sevi was exiled for his messianic/kabbalah movement in Ottoman
Thessaloniki/Salonica)
- witchcraft/wicca medieval burning times - i find Wiccan
practitioners are sympathetic to my line of thinking
- freemasonry - revival of Eleusis other pagan practice, plus cross
pollenation with Islamic/Sufi strains and mysticism like the dervishes 
- Greek Orthodox, Athonite monasticism
- hippie pagan and witchcraft revivalism; later techno-pagans
  

    
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Grange_of_the_Order_of_Patrons_of_Hu
sbandry>
  

    
I definitely never would have thought of a connection between the
Eleusinian mysteries and the Grange.
  

    
Googling the two terms can be interesting and occasionally amusing.
Here is one of the more serious looks at the links between the two.

<http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Peter_Lamborn_Wilson__Grange_Appeal.html>
  

    
I like the conclusion: "That the earth is alive and in love with life
may be true but unprovable, like certain axioms in mathematics.
Precisely here mysteries can become Mysteries. Hermeticism is perhaps a
science of the unprovable, and it is based on the axiom that the earth
is not only alive but in some sense sacred. Long before modern
neo-pagans began worshipping Nature, the cult of the goddess was
already reborn, as it always will be — but this time in the hearts of
hardworking Temperance/Protestant American farm families. A strange
moment in radical history, to be sure — this birth of Green
Spirituality."

I suppose what we're discussing here, what shamanism is about and what
the many references in the book point to, is a spirituality that is
grounded in a connection with the earth, that acknowledges the
character of matter as energy and energy as matter (cf Buddhist "form
is emptiness, emptiness is form.") 

And the extent to which we've lost that connection. The Sunday morning
church service liturgy is only the slightest reflection of the
mystery. The typical party with alcohol and music may be a sense of
ritual that's lost its spiritual connection. Today's shaman is hiding
from legal restriction and social constraint.

How could we revive the shamanic tradition as a timely aspect of 21st
century culture?
  

    
I just want to say Wow to Sharon's link.  
 > In its heyday, the Grange was one of the most progressive forces in
the Populist movement, not just a club for lonely farmers in those
long-dead days before cars and TVs atomized American social life. Once
upon a time, the Grangers were firebreathing agrarian radicals.
Moreover, it turned out that the Grange was a secret society with
secret rituals. 
>  

Wow.   Now back to Jon's question about revival.
  

    
<7th degree Grange member. I'm younger by 20 years than everyone else
in my chapter, but it's interesting.
  

    
Jon, I like the way you phrase that so much, probably because it
resonates with the pagan that I have always been. Though to be honest
it's as easy to come up with examples that might prove the earth hates
life as much as it loves life, or is at least indifferent to individual
forms of life, however it enjoys the concept.
  

    
i'm pleased to see Peter Wilson come up in the conversation. He was
the editorial adviser at Autonomedia who recommended publishing, with
some apt improvements suggested, my book.  I've been a fan of his
writings on spiritualism, heretical Islam, and of course his alter ego
Hakim Bey of Temporary Autonomous Zones fame; funny how that's a
seminal text of Net freedoms, where Wilson himself is almost entirely
off the grid himself last I knew.  

to Jon's question, when i briefly considered making a legal run at
legalization, i quickly came to conclude that the thing is a
decentralized phenomenon to begin with. it may be that the embrace of
Eleusinian mysteries by subsequent Hellenistic and Roman empires is
where it went kind of wrong...
  

    
Hmmm, that's the rub isn't it?....there's a tension between the
organic experience and the ritualized structures that allow a 'creative
chaos' and synthesis to occur. Coming from a monastic nomad tradition
I find these 'transmissions' better served in retreats and one-on-one
settings - better caught than taught ('better' implying it can be
taught!). It seems to break down in the follow-up and
follow-thru...what would be thought of as discipleship, the chief
obstacle being that of avoiding a cult of personality rather than a
focus on the (fill in your blank - divine, spiritual,
cosmic...whatever).

To put that in English, how many of us were "dropped" in the 60's and
70's and left to find our way? How many others 'lost' whatever they
first glimpsed in the decade of partying that followed? It was what it
was. The present zeitgeist seems to be the raising of a world-wide
consciousness - a spiritual leap somewhere! Not sure that can be
directed. In any case, it will transcend cultures so we're not likely
to make the Greek-Roman-European mistake....we'll make entirely new
ones:) 
  

    
Big question for is whether the entheogenic substances -
peyote/mescaline, mushrooms/psilocybin, ergot/LSD - reveal truth or
create more delusion. 
  

    
Well, truth really is a delusion so what's the difference?
  

    
And there's that nagging thought that imagination may be more
important than "truth" or "facts" or "reality".
  

    
Breathing works fine for me:) 
  

    
Our shared sense of a phenomenological reality allows us to access and
use the world and have social connections based on common experience
and perception. The psychedelic experience is subjective, much of it
seems to be interior with the potential for disconnect from the
"experience commons," similar to psychosis (hallucinogens are
characterized as "psychomimetic," in that they mimic psychosis). So my
comment about truth vs delusion was simplistic; I think what I refer to
as "truth" is more of a consensus about phenomenological reality than
any kind of absolute. (I always liked the concept in Gibson's
_Neuromancer_ of the "consensus hallucination" - and the similar thing
in "The Matrix" - if we all agree to a reality, does that alone make it
"real"?)

I think a value of the psychomimetic experience is that it gives you
an alternative perception, so that you don't take the vernacular
reality for granted as anything but a social reality, an agreement
about what we'll say is "real." (I also liked the Berger/Luckman
"Social Construction of Reality" - I studied literature because I was
interested in authors' different representations of reality and how
they could call bullshit on consensus.)