Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Jonathan Ott PROGRAM NOTES: In today's podcast Jonathan Ott unfolds a parade of history setting out the use and prohibition of psychedelic medicines throughout the course of human history. Although this talk was originally given at a 1996 entheobotany conference, it remains as current as if it were given yesterday. After Jonathan describes human uses of psychoactive plants stretching back into prehistory, he goes on to explain how what he calls “the overdeveloped world” has used religious morality to impose a pharmacratic inquisition that has essentially caused “the spiritual bankruptcy of our Western Civilization.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option “Shamans are Technologists of Myth” -Lorenzo The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and History In the Dark Places of Wisdom by Peter Kingsley Reality by Peter Kingsley Peter Kingsley Interview – Western Civilization was intentionally created

Guest speaker: Michael Garfield PROGRAM NOTES: Today's program features Michael Garfield who went to school for paleontology and then psychology before leaving academia to embark on a decade-long "trans-disciplinary" independent study of the intersections between art, science, and philosophy. As an experimental acoustic-electronic guitarist-singer-songwriter, as a scientific illustrator turned performance painter, and as a writer and speaker, Michael's work is an attempt to help articulate a vision for the best possible future for us – one that doesn't suffer the insane delusions of our separation from nature, technology, and each other. According to Cap Blackard, writing for “Consequence of Sound” this talk by Micheal rates in the top 25 of the 333 performances at this year's version of the Future Music/Future Thought Festival. He goes on to say: "Easily the most mind-opening presentation Moogfest 2016 had to offer – a multidisciplinary monologue that rivaled Brian Eno’s Moogfest 2011 keynote for all the unexpected twists and turns it took. This one-man show saw artist-musician Michael Garfield take a captive audience on a vision-quest through the lands where metaphysics and emerging technology meet. Make no mistake – it was a ramble, but an insightful and fascinating one from start to finish that traveled from the ancient dragon god Tiamat to the Victorians laying the transatlantic telegraph cable to the Manhattan Project giving birth to a new age of fear and awareness. The “psychedelic century”? That’s the here and now that’s just beginning, and the more our technology graduates us to the alchemical act of creation, the closer humanity comes to confronting “the cosmic mystery that we are.” Heavy and heady stuff, and a pleasant counterpoint to the doom and gloom of the average transhumanist cybergrumps whose future-thinking seems improbably grounded in the limited perceptions of the present." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Michael Garfield's music on Bandcamp Michael Garfield's talks on Bandcamp Michael Garfield's Art The Spirit of the Internet: Speculations on the Evolution of Global Consciousness by Lawrence "Lorenzo" Hagerty

Guest speakers: Shonagh Home and Sally PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a conversation between Shonagh Home and a cannabis grower in the State of Washington, where both medical and recreational cannabis are now legal. Among other things, we learn how cannabis can be grown without the use of any chemicals to keep the pests away, thus providing their customers with truly healthy medicine. We also learn about an organization named Certified Natural Cannabis, which is uniting farms that use clean cultivation techniques and that meet or exceed national organic standards. Their mission is to keep cannabis nontoxic and to represent producers and products that use no synthetic chemicals. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Contact Sally at: synesthesia (dot) sally (at) gmail (dot) com Certified Natural Cannabis To get up to speed with Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and blockchain technology, here are some links that may be of interest to you: Understand the Blockchain in Two Minutes About “The” DAO Blockchain Explained, What is Blockchain?

Guest speaker: Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a talk given by Sasha Shulgin in 1996. In many ways this is a perfect Shulgin talk for a podcast because he didn't use any photos or the chalkboard to assist in his presentation. This talk is also one of Sasha's best presentations as for not just the chemistry but also for some of the personal stories he tells. Also, he clarifies the Urban Legend about LSD occurring in nature. “I suddenly realized the fatuousness of people saying that 'mescaline taught me this', and I think the same, in a funny way, applies to plants, that 'the plants taught me this.' What it is, you use the plant, you use the compound as a facilitator, as a catalyst, to see within yourself what's there. And I think this is the heart of psychedelic drugs.” Sasha Shulgin Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story By Alexander Shulgin, Ann Shulgin Tihkal: The Continuation By Alexander Shulgin, Ann Shulgin

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today we pick up on the third section of a Terence McKenna workshop that was held in December of 1989. An interesting feature of this session is a report that Terence asked one of his friends to give about the state of ayahuasca use in Amazonian Peru. As one of the earliest accounts of what a Westerner will encounter when searching for an ayahuasca experience, we get to hear what it was like in the jungle before the plague of ayahuasca tourism took hold. One of the interesting ways in which he describes an ayahuasca vision is this it is a manifestation of one's own intuition. We also get to hear Terence describe what he calls “tingling-lip ayahuasca”. [NOTE: The following quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “If you take tingling-lip ayahuasca then you are one macho hombre.” “I don't like the drugs that absolutely destroy the witness. I think the witness is important.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I tend to think that there is a kind of unconscious racism in the suppression of the idea that the origin of not high culture but of humanism itself is in Africa.” “[The psychedelic experience] is about what is real, not what is culturally sanctioned.” “The ego lives by constraint. It draws lines, and this drawing of lines is a denial of the primary truth of the world, which is that it is seamless and one. Once you start drawing distinctions you're off into dualism, and it's no joke to say that dualism is the root of all evil.” “The Eleusian Mysteries are Cretan Mysteries that have been transplanted to Greece, and that's really where the psychedelic religion died.” “The major political task for people like ourselves is to be more stoned, is to find out more about the dimensions of the psychedelic experience.” “The drugs of the future are likely to be these non-invasive electronic drugs.” “Virtual reality is very important to creating a sane human future.” “The human visual apparatus is unbelievably forgiving of error. In fact, the human visual apparatus is set up to suppress error.” “Computers are becoming more like drugs. Drugs are becoming more like computers. The computers of the future will be taken orally, and the drugs of the future will probably be jacked into.” “What I think virtual reality is good for is showing each other the insides of our minds.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Marian Goodell PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a Palenque Norte Lecture given at the 2015 Burning Man Festival by Marian Goodall who is Burning Man's Chief Engagement Officer (CEO). This was actually a focused Q&A session during which many of the community's most pressing issues were discussed. Even if you aren't interesting in attending Burning Man yourself, this discussion may hold some important answers if you are considering becoming involved in producing large events yourself. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “History is, in fact, the quenching and the withdrawal of this relationship of symbiosis to the rest of nature.” “Hedonists are people who don't take hallucinogens, to my mind, because it largely is very hard work. I mean it isn't always hard work, but as a life, as a path, it's extremely hard work.” “The issue of psychedelics, of plant transformation, of losing the ego, is the most closely held facet of reality in a dominator society.” “There is no rational way to save the world. Our only hope is a miracle. And the only place a miracle is going to come, so far as I can tell, is from psychedelics. That's the only miracle in town.” “I really think that the major political obligation upon all of us is to get more stoned. Take larger hits.” “Most things in the world are hyped. Most things are over-sold and under-delivered, but in my experience sex, music, and psychedelics deliver. They are actually better than advertised.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Third Eye Drops podcast with Bruce Damer Inner Vision with Greg Friedman The Novelty Generators Podcast

Guest speaker: Neşe Devenot Help Neşe complete her Psychedelic Humanities Research PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features three short talks by Neşe Devenot who is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Puget Sound, where she teaches classes on psychedelics and literature. Nese received her PhD in 2015 in comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on the study of psychedelic philosophy and the literary history of chemical self-experimentation (what you and I call “trip reports”). She is a founder of the Psychedemia interdisciplinary psychedelics conference and is the former editor of “This Week in Psychedelics” (a Reality Sandwich column that reported on psychedelic news in the media between 2011 and 2013). And Nese is a founding member of the MAPS Graduate Student Association  . . . and as you will hear in the second short talk that I play, Nese has also earned her wings as a psychonaut as well. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Neşe Devenot Website: www.chemicalpoetics.com Twitter: @NeseLSD eMail: ndevenot (at) pugetsound (dot) edu Online academic work:  https://ups.academia.edu/ndevenot Psychedemia Conference Documentary /* #PsychedelicsBecause (video) Psymposia Psymposia, LLC is a group of collaborative social activism projects on psychedelics, plants, and policy, that includes live events productions, Psymposia Magazine, and the Palo Santo Project. We’re an active network of entrepreneurs, students, activists, researchers, organizations, progressive businesses, artists, musicians, comedians, designers, and fresh voices. We create projects that build community, have a positive social impact, and change perceptions of plants, psychedelics, and psychoactives. Our live storytelling, Psychedelic Stories, could be described as “The Moth Radio Hour… On Acid,” and is hosted by drug writer Lex Pelger. People have the opportunity to share compelling experiences, peculiar underground exploring, or scientific research from The Academy. We have organized social networking events, conferences, parties, fundraisers, and live streaming at lofts, universities, and venues in Amherst, Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Montreal, Florida, Vermont, and Oakland. Simply, we work with people, organizations, and companies who do positive work, within and without the psychedelic community. (See Friends) We are based on the East Coast, USA. Psychedelic Mysticism: The Good Friday Experiment & Beyond Shamanic Graffiti: 100,000 Years of Drugs, 100 Years of Prohibition By Frank Ogden, Marcus Rummery

Guest speakers: Timothy Leary, Myron Stolaroff, Gary Fisher, Fraser Clark, Terence McKenna, & Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a retrospective of some of the highlights of podcasts with several of the elders who are no longer with us. These clips include talks by Timothy Leary, Myron Stolaroff, Gary Fisher, Fraser Clark, Terence McKenna, and Sasha Shulgin. Interspersed with these clips Lorenzo tells a few stories of his own. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option