Light Entry…
The Macro…
A week of discoveries and wonders. Alien Life found in Mono Lake, Wiki Leaks opening up the dark underbelly of US diplomacy and policy… and so much more.
I was deeply moved to find that there is a wider view of the possibilities of life in just one week. Perhaps the story of this century so far, and I think it is very under-reported, or at least appreciated. Along with the fact that there were echoes of something going on before the so called “Big Bang”… we have had a moment in time of incredible depth and opening of vistas. Life will not be bound by narrow viewpoints and designations (and never was) we are now entering the realm of “Shadow Biologies”… what will come next IMPOV will be a deep expansion of consciousness in these areas…
The storm around Wikileaks continues to grow. There are thousands upon thousands of articles out there on this, but I have to say that we are watching a revolution equivalent to the Gutenberg Bible emerging. (a possible over statement…80} ) Anyway, this is bigger than what “The Vietnam Papers” were back when Daniel Ellsberg did his duty. Although WikiLeaks gets the brunt/credit publically, I think we should tip the hat to Bradley Manning for taking this action in the first place. If we are to lose our privacy and rights as we have been in the process of over the last 10 years, I see no reason that the Empire should have clothes… Damn the notion that the state knows what is best for us. Seeing the mess in the world, one could posit in many different ways from this line of reasoning.
The Micro…
Saturday: I have to say… it has been a week of it. Helped celebrate Morgan Miller’s Birthday on Tuesday at Bushwacker Cider, a nice cider house right here in Portland! Made some connections with friends and people I hadn’t seen for awhile.
After Thanksgiving work came in, I succumbed to our littlest vector’s cold that he shared at Thanksgiving, and generally have been out of my usual loop.
It the midst of all that we (Mary and I) painted the living room, I have been working on the magazine, and laying low when I can. Lots of sleep. When I have a cold (or what ever the heck it is), I just kinda sink with the gippy chest. I started to develop this chest with growing up in a household of smokers. Then of course I did the dumb and smoked like a chimney for 18 years. Throw in some pneumonia on top of that, and you have a chest that has a flashing “Welcome!” sign to any stray microbe looking for a home. I passed up a party tonight so I wouldn’t dispense the wealth to the unsuspecting, it was the least I could do. It’s getting better but I sound not quite myself. Take care of your health, it is a precious commodity if that is the right word.
Sunday: The Magazine: Last stage of assembly, the last bits are in from our people out there. Redoing a couple of pages as I had a fixation on “My Little Rainbow Pony” colour scheme is seems. Sent Rowan screaming from the room. So, that is being repaired.
It seems that someone tagged our Poetry Post last night. Sad but true. Painting over the stuff tomorrow if it is warm enough. I am putting up a pad with pencil so they can submit poems instead. Do ya think that will work?
So looking forward to The Solstice. I need a bit of light here in the cave.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
“Sufi” Sam Lewis Quotes
Lisa Gerrard – Come Tenderness
A Tryptamine Expedition
Li Po Poems
Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke “Sacrifice”
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I was blessed with being in the company of Sam Lewis for a time before he passed. From early 1969, until late 1970 I sat in on classes and attended the dances when I could get down to the Bay Area… He was a wise and gentle soul, and he had a great sense of humour to go with it!
“Sufi” Sam Lewis Quotes:
“Forget yourself, get into the spirit of song, rise and fall on the waves of ecstasy, and express [your] pure being. Then you escape all differences, all divisions, all duality, all pain, all sorrow.”
“Words are not peace. Thoughts are not peace. Plans are not peace. Programs are not peace. Peace is fundamental to all faiths. Peace is fullness, all inclusive…and must be experienced.”
“One of the reasons I am teaching this music and dancing is to increase Joy, not awe towards another person, but bliss in our own self. This is finding God within, through experience.”
“Thinking is more stinking than drinking, but to feel is for real. ”
“The question about the New Age is: If it is to be anarchical, it will destroy the present society — that will go away — but to what purpose? And if we have the feeling of one in the spirit, we will build up a New Age, even a New Jerusalem because I believe God works through man, not through chance. .
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Still love her work after all these years…
Lisa Gerrard – Come Tenderness
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A blast from the past…. Gracie and Zarkov helped to re-awaken me to the DMT state after having visited it way back when. Articulate, smart and poetic
A Tryptamine Expedition
by Gracie and Zarkov
Introduction:
This paper is about the strangest trip that we have ever had. Furthermore, in our discussions with other experienced heads it became clear that this trip was one of the more peculiar trips that we have even heard of! That in and of itself might not warrant an article. However, the possible implications of this trip are such that we have decided to write about our experience to add to the store of ‘stubborn empirical fact’ that make up psychedelic phenomenology.
We are also aware that this trip was outlandish enough that its retelling may cause our readers to believe that we finally have either lost it or are resorting to creative writing. We would like to assure our readers that what you are about to read happened exactly as described (within the limits of our powers of observation).
In this paper we give a description of the trip, our beliefs concerning the phenomenology, and our tentative conclusions regarding our experience. It seems impractical to reproduce the entire trip narrative written right after the experience since it runs to twenty typewritten pages. Therefore, this paper is a highly condensed version of the trip narrative.
Background
The weekend prior to our strange experience, Grace had decided to take 5 grams of potent stropharia mushrooms by herself. While it is common practice for us to trip together, Zarkov’s high dose mushroom trips have been uniformly negative ever since he established contact with certain insectoid creatures who claimed to have engineered the mushroom for their own purposes. (See, High Frontiers, Issue no. 2 and Note no. 8). Gracie was going in alone to perform reconaissance. After ahout an hour and one half of arguing with the voice and being unable to see any visions, she began to ‘interview’ the voice which seemed quite amenable to questioning. Gracie called in Zarkov and together we interviewed the voice in Gracie’s head for about two hours. One of the raps was that Gracie had trouble entering the vision state because she hadn’t practiced enough visualization and was afraid to leave her body.
Now it is true that despite how much talk there is about how hard it is to get into the far-out mushroom states, Zarkov would just ‘fall down the rabbit hole’ on any dose over 3 grams without knowing how he did it, while Gracie had much more elusive contact with the mushroom vision states even at doses in the 10 gram range. However, given Gracie’s consistent ability to see the ‘visible language’ on DMT (which Zarkov has so far only briefly glimpsed) and her other visionary experiences on DMT, this rap seemed rather unlikely.
But, the mushroom voice held cut hope. Gracie should practice building a fantasy world in her head and maybe, if we both took mushrooms together, she could ‘show’ her fantasy world to Zarkov. Zarkov was extremely skeptical of the whole rap. It seemed very enticing and very unlike his experiences with the mushrooms. That week Zarkov went to the East coast on business and left Gracie to work on her fantasy world.
Upon Zarkov’s return on Friday, Gracie announced that she had worked diligently on her fantasy world and would like to show it to Zarkov that weekend using mushrooms. The only description she gave of the world was that it was a barbarian bronze age planet run by Goddess-worshipping group of priestesses and that he was cast as a high-tech off-worlder.
Zarkov was apprehensive, since he didn’t want another ‘alien space wars’ trip on the mushroom. The experimental protocol that we agreed on was to do a DMT shot at noon on Saturday and if the experience seemed positive, to take the mushrooms later in the day. The first shot was inconclusive because Zarkov didn’t get off but he did get a terrific case of the tryptamine giggles. He decided to take another dose. The visions in the noontime sunlight were exquisite. Over the next half hour, we each consumed betweeen 100 and 150 mg of DMT in four separate ‘trips’. The experience for Zarkov had been glorious. His relationship with the DMT over the last four months of regular usage had been uniformly positive even when it had been terrifying. The idea had came into his head (from where?) that by presaturating himself with the DMT, his previous problems with the mushroom could be avoided.
We had fasted since Friday night and had been especially careful with our diets all week. At 2:00 PM, we both took 5 gms of potent stropharia mushrooms. We washed down the ‘shrooms with ginger ale. We stayed in the bright sunlight until the closed eye visions began to come on strongly (about 30 mlnutes). We then went into our darkened trip room.
The basic phenomena of the trip were as highlighted below.
Gracie saw none of the visions described below. In fact, she saw no visions during the trip. She was high and the trip roam took on a beautiful jewelled quality. She had no tendency to drift into a trance even though she had taken the same dosage of DMT and mushrooms as Zarkov.
Zarkov could not resist the trance. Strangely, he could talk with ease but could not maintain any other semblance of contact with reality. Any attempt to do so resulted in overwhelming stomach cramps, full body shivers, vertigo and throbbing headache. All of these body symptoms went away if he paid attention to the trance state.
Zarkov’s first vision was a stadium full of hostile giant insect creatures that he was familiar with from previous mushroom trips. However, immediately the DMT ‘banshee’ creatures floated in and sang this message, ‘Aren’t they a dull and pompous bunch! But don’t worry, they can’t get at you because we are here.’ These ‘banshee’ creatures were a common occurance in Zarkov’s DMT trips. [imagine a picture of two smiling banshees here… my ascii-art capabilities just aren’t up to reproducing them -cak]
The Trip: Content and Comments
The next series of visions were of various aliens that seemed to be trying to sell Zarkov various visions. The banshees continued to accompany the visions and offer comment.
At about the chemical peak of the trip (one hour), the house had a rash of poltergeist phenomena that were jointly observed by both of us. Furthermore, the cats noticed them and followed them as they made their way through the house. The banshees advised Zarkov not to worry about them because ‘things like this happen.’ This was the last point in the trip where Zarkov could maintain contact with ordinary reality.
The banshees formed a gate next to an alien selling visions indicating that Zarkov should ‘buy into’ this vision.
By ‘going’ through the gate, Zarkov found himself someplace else.
This some place else was another world. It no longer seemed like a psychedelic vision, but rather it seemed like a real world. The sun felt warm; when it went down Zarkov felt cool. To move around it was necessary to walk. Wherever he looked, there was a realistic amount of detail. No insubstantial visions, just a real world wherever Zarkov looked. He could eat, walk, swim, fuck and talk to the other characters.
The world was Gracie’s fantasy world. Even though she couldn’t see it, Zarkov’s verbal description matched her world. She could give instructions to Zarkov that he could follow to get around.
The world was a bronze-age city. In the background were green and fertile mountains. The architecture was of massive granite blocks with a poured concrete look about them. The style was neoclassical crossed with Minoan with a touch of Jack Vance. The mise-en-scene made sense and did not appear contrived. The aesthetic sensibility, while of the wretched excess school, was coherent. It was the most beautiful place Zarkov had ever seen, in shades of pink, mauve, purple and gold.
The story line was that of the wierdest heavy metal video ever designed. There were barbaric artifacts and luxury items all over. The world was inhabited by buxom, bottom-heavy, voluptuous nymphos. Zarkov found himself in an elaborate caped outfit, somewhere between Darth Vadar and Ming the Merciless. His entourage was a group of cretinous, long-haired sleazos in heavy metal dress and carrying guitars. The trip consisted of a tour through the city from the wharf to the main temple where a three-day orgy took place.
The world somehow seemed like an isomorphic metaphor to Gracie’s personality structure.
The world was coherent and consistent. It had internal rules as inexorable as the ‘natural laws’ on earth.
It had its own linear time. Subjectively, Zarkov spent three days in the world. Yet this voyaqe was encompassed in a normal six-hour mushroom trip. Furthermore, any attempt to reestablish contact with earth left huge gaps in the story since the world proceeded at its own pace, even if Zarkov wasn’t paying attention.
It did not seem like telepathy or a projection from Gracie’s head. Rather, we believe that somehow the fantasy world was lifted from Gracie’s head and placed in the tryptamine ‘library of all time and space’ where Zarkov ‘read out the diskette .
The only psychedelic aspect to the world was the continual presence of the DMT banshees, albeit they were ‘disguised’ as a sort of observer/chorus as bats, orchids, etc., throughout the experience.
The DMT acted as a tuner of some sort for the mushroom experience. Certain aspects of the vision seemed characteristically DMT, like the banshees, the extreme time dilation, and the bejewelled colors. The mushroom contributed the epic quality, the exfoliating details and the practical joke quality of the whole set-up.
Such an experience, if controllable, would be extremely useful to a shaman trying to treat mental illness. He could walk through the streets of his patient’s mind without the verbal filter of analysis. It might even be possible to make changes in the landscape to effect a cure. The demons lurking in the shadows would be a constant danger, ‘You might not come back.’
Conclusion:
Zarkov has not attempted to repeat the experience. Gracie, however, has used the DMT predose before a lower dose of mushrooms (3 grams) and found herself in an irresistible trance with a series of faint visions. This was outdoors at night with a friend who did the same mix and also found herself in a trance, although her visions remained state-bound.
We don’t know what Zarkov’s vision means or how he got there, but we encourage anyone with visionary tendencies to try exploring these modes.
Copyright August 1985 by Gracie and Zarkov Productions. We believe that in a truly free society the price of packaged information would be driven down to the cost of reproduction and transmission. We, therefore, give blanket permission and encourage photocopy, quotation, reprint or entry into a database of all or part of our articles provided that the copier or quoter does not take credit for our statements.
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One of my favourite Chinese poets. I would of liked to have sat with him.
Li Po Poems
Autumn Air
The autumn air is clear,
The autumn moon is bright.
Fallen leaves gather and scatter,
The jackdaw perches and starts anew.
We think of each other- when will we meet?
This hour, this night, my feelings are hard.
—
Alone Looking At The Mountain
All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other –
Only the mountain and I.
—
Green Mountain
You ask me why I live on Green Mountain ?
I smile in silence and the quiet mind.
Peach petals blow on mountain streams
To earths and skies beyond Humankind.
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The Old Dust
The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.
One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
The rabbit in the moon pounds the medicine in vain;
Fu-sang, the tree of immortality,
has crumbled to kindling wood.
Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word
When the green pines feel the coming of the spring.
Looking back, I sigh;
Looking before, I sigh again.
What is there to prize in the life’s vaporous glory?
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Clearing At Dawn
The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragment of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatters away.
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Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke “Sacrifice”
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