Event Category: Psychedelics

Spiritual Abduction: ETs, NDEs & DMT – Pascal Michael

Spiritual Abduction: The surprising semblance betwixt spirits and aliens, near-death and extraterrestrial experiences

The relationship between near-death experiences (NDEs) and death/dying is evident. The connection between the psychedelic DMT and the alien encounter similarly so. The resonance between NDEs and aliens, however… less so.

What could be the possible interlacing between NDEs, ETs, UFOs and DMT? Some may be surprised to hear of a phenomenological space-sharing between the experience of dying and that of alien abduction and other UFOlogical motifs, the sometimes reported presence of the deceased during such ET encounter events, and the generally unemphasised (at least in certain discourses) but fundamentally spiritual nature of “alien” beings. This echoes such controversial topics as ancient astronaut theory, and the divinisation of ‘star beings’ – the ‘Aliens as Angels’ analogy – as well as the shamanic, entheogen-ocassioned communing with these entities.

But the most pivotal question in this context remains – Do what we refer to as ‘aliens’ have something to do with human death?

While this subject is firmly within the realms of high weirdness and is of ontological implications – the experience of having a loved one die and the subsequent grief is unavoidable. As such, it simultaneously becomes a subject of the most intimate nature one can explore. In this vein, a personal experience of recent grief will be shared – to complement the far out with the fundamentally deeply within.

Speaker Bio:

Pascal Michael BSc, MSc is a Psychology PhD candidate at the University of Greenwich, comparing experiences from the first DMT field study to the near-death experience (NDE), with a view to establish the NDE as a psychedelic episode – indicated by their phenomenology and neural correlates, as well as their transformative and parapsychological effects. His interests lie in death and dying as an entangled continuum – existing at the levels of the molecular, humanistic, and transpersonal. He has presented at Breaking Convention and the Oxford University Psychedelic Society, and published in Frontiers. He is a coordinator for the ALEF Trust’s certificate in Psychedelics, ASCs and TP, and the 2020 recipient of the Schmeidler Outstanding Student Award.

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic and parapsychology researcher. Having just graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, her work over the last six years has been informed by her concurrent shamanic training, work with the Wixárika (Huichol) tribe from Mexico, and role as a research assistant under Dr David Luke of Greenwich university in the study of the psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other worlds. Walking between the worlds of the arts, science and the occult, she combines media and investigative techniques from each to inform and articulate one another in the exploration of ontology, consciousness and altered states, mytholopeia and mythology, ecology, the human condition and its relation to the environment, otherness and mortality. She describes her practise and research as contemporary Memento Mori (‘remember you will die’), and explores what that means in a time of mass ecocide and species extinction.

Follow her on the crooked path on Instagram @maya_themessiah

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 300 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex.

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon 

Exploring the Anomolous in Psychedelic Therapy – Dr David Luke

Exploring the Anomolous in Psychedelic Therapy, from neurodivergence to the transpersonal

This Month’s Psychedelicacies, our very own Co-host and Maitre d’ of the Psychedelicatessan, Dr David Luke, will be providing the night’s talk

Now that the psychedelic renaissance has found its way out of the birth canal and enters its childhood there is an ever-increasing need for psychedelic psychotherapy, integration, sitting, welfare and aftercare. While many therapists and counsellors are well equipped to provide containers and practice for processing the autobiographical material that arises there a number of unique dimensions to the transpersonal nature of psychedelics that warrant special attention and treatment. This talk explores some of the range of transpersonal experiences that may arise, their ontological complexities and challenges, and the metaphysical shifts that may arise. Some consideration will also be given (if time) to the nature of neurodivergence and the use of psychedelics. Topics likely to be covered include inter-species communication, eco-consciousness, mediumship, possession, entity encounters, near-death and out-of-body experiences, psi, alien abduction experiences and lycanthropy, alongside blindness, aphantasia, synaesthesia, HPPD and autism/ASD.

Speaker Bio

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 300 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex.

‘Blossom’ by Erik Thor Sandberg. https://erikthorsandberg.com

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic and parapsychology researcher. Having just graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, her work over the last six years has been informed by her concurrent shamanic training, work with the Wixárika (Huichol) tribe from Mexico, and role as a research assistant under Dr David Luke of Greenwich university in the study of the psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other worlds. Walking between the worlds of the arts, science and the occult, she combines media and investigative techniques from each to inform and articulate one another in the exploration of ontology, consciousness and altered states, mytholopeia and mythology, ecology, the human condition and its relation to the environment, otherness and mortality. She describes her practise and research as contemporary Memento Mori (‘remember you will die’), and explores what that means in a time of mass ecocide and species extinction.

Follow her on the crooked path on Instagram @maya_themessiah

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon 

The Museum of Drugs: Under the Influence – a history of drug use from early evolution to criminalisation – Ben Curran

Under the Influence – a history of drug use from early evolution to criminalisation.

Archaeological and social anthropological evidence suggests that drug use played an important role in our early evolution as Homo sapiens; affording us the means of deeper introspection and wider connection within social groups and structures. Drugs have played an important role in the economic development of our civilisations, as valuable commodities to be traded across land and sea. They have been vital in our creative development, influencing art, literature, music, dance, and ritual.

Yet in modern times, drugs have become synonymous with crime and disorder; vilified in the media as the root cause of many of our social ills, and lambasted by politicians who are keen to demonstrate they are tough and uncompromising. Since 1971, we have been engaged in a War on Drugs, a war that has seen trillions of dollars of investment with little sign of it reaching an imminent conclusion, despite mounting calls for a paradigm shift.

How did we arrive at this point in our history?

Using a unique collection of antiques and artefacts, Under the Influence explores the historical events, the myths and moral panics, that have resulted in the criminalisation of the production, supply, and possession of drugs throughout the world.

The collection includes some artefacts that are of a challenging nature, including items depicting racial stereotypes. They are presented as part of the lecture for the purpose of adopting an anti-discriminatory position.

Bio

Ben Curran, (He/ Him), has worked in supported housing, drug rehabilitation, outreach services, and senior leadership positions, throughout the last 25 years. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of East Anglia and the University of Delaware, as well as a trainer in the field of drug use, legislation and policy. Ben Curran is the founder, CEO, and Curator of the Museum of Drugs, www.museumofdrugs.com, a charity established to provide public exhibitions and lectures on the history of drugs with the aim of challenging discrimination.

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Nature, Shamanism and Psychoactive Drugs in Greek Bronze Age Religion by Dr Caroline Tully

Nature, Shamanism and Psychoactive Drugs in Greek Bronze Age Religion

What kind of religious activities were practised in the Greek Bronze Age? Through examination of ancient visual art, objects and texts, this lecture will explain how aspects of Aegean religion can be considered shamanic. The lecture will primarily focus on “glyptic art” (miniature images engraved on gold signet rings and stone seals) which is the most extensive body of Aegean Bronze Age representational art. It will look at ritual scenes depicted in glyptic art for evidence of shamanism including consumption of psychoactive drugs, adoption of special body postures, trance, spirit possession, communication with supernatural beings, metamorphosis and the journey to other worlds. The lecture will also look at the presence of nature in ritual scenes, particularly sacred trees. In the majority of these scenes human figures approach the trees in a calm and reverential manner, but in seven examples the ritual participant clasps and vigorously shakes the tree. The reasons for interpreting this activity as indicating a shamanic-style altered state of consciousness and prophetic consultation of the tree through the sound of its rustling leaves will then be explained. Comparative examples of prophetic trees from Near Eastern and Greek literature such as the Hebrew Bible, the Ugaritic Epic of Baal and Hesiod’s Theogony will be discussed, and later Greek tree oracles such as that of Zeus at Dodona will be compared with the glyptic images.

Bio:

Dr. Caroline Tully is a lecturer and tutor at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Caroline’s research interests include religion and ritual in the Bronze Age Aegean and East Mediterranean, Reception of the Ancient World, and Contemporary Paganisms. She is the author of The Cultic Life of Trees in the Prehistoric Aegean, Levant, Egypt and Cyprus (Peeters: Leuven, 2018), many other articles and book chapters, and is associate editor of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. Caroline is also a professional tapestry weaver at the Australian Tapestry Workshop and a tarot reader and workshop facilitator at Muses of Mystery.

See her Academia page here: https://unimelb.academia.edu/CarolineTully

See her blog, Necropolis Now, here: http://necropolisnow.blogspot.com/

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon 

Wild Kindness; Artistic Practice as Psychedelic Integration – Bett Williams

Wild Kindness; Artistic Practice as Psychedelic Integration

When Bett’s writer’s block began to negatively affect every area of her life, she turned to psilocybin mushrooms for help. The Psychedelic provided an ethos, a way of seeing, a scaffolding that catalyzed her non-fiction book The Wild Kindness; A Psilocybin Odyssey. Bett advocates for rogue psychedelic use outside of medical and therapeutic establishments, arguing that artistic practice is a legitimate ceremonial form in which to explore the nature of consciousness.

After her talk she will perform a piece from recent work she has done in collaboration with dancer, poet and archivist Rosemary Carroll.

Speaker Bio:

Bett Williams is the author of The Wild Kindness; A Psilocybin Odyssey. She has been a featured speaker at Horizons Perspectives of Psychedelics Conference, a regular writer for Lucid News and DoubleBlind Magazine and featured on Comedy Centrals Tales From the Trip YouTube Series. Currently she is collaborating and touring with dancer, writer and archivist Rosemary Carroll. @love.rosemary.carroll

“In general, this is a balm. It is the polar opposite of rhe Michael Pollan book.” – Molly Young, Vulture, New York Times

The Wild Kindness is absolutely electric. It’s not only the subject matter, which is mystical and fascinating. Bett William’s voice is untamed and inspired, full of gonzo humor, ambitious daring and high-vibrating heart. The personal, the political, the spiritual and the unknown come together into a mesmerizing read that is full-on literary fireworks. —MICHELLE TEA

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic and parapsychology researcher. Having just graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, her work over the last six years has been informed by her concurrent shamanic training, work with the Wixárika (Huichol) tribe from Mexico, and role as a research assistant under Dr David Luke of Greenwich university in the study of the psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other worlds. Walking between the worlds of the arts, science and the occult, she combines media and investigative techniques from each to inform and articulate one another in the exploration of ontology, consciousness and altered states, mytholopeia and mythology, ecology, the human condition and its relation to the environment, otherness and mortality. She describes her practise and research as contemporary Memento Mori (‘remember you will die’), and explores what that means in a time of mass ecocide and species extinction.

Follow her on the crooked path on Instagram @maya_themessiah

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 300 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Psychedelic Therapy and Depth Relational Process by Maria Papaspyrou

Psychedelic Therapy and Depth Relational Process

As psychedelic medicines are moving towards becoming integrated into mainstream medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy, we face the danger of narrowing down their incredible breadth, depth and potential. How are we to hold the wide net of dialogue between often diametrically opposed disciplines and traditions, such as psychiatry and shamanism, open, active and fertile? How can we maintain a multiplicity of voices and perspectives as the most powerful and often most destructive structures of our societies attempt to assimilate psychedelics as medicines in the traditional western sense?

The integrative approach of Depth Relational Process is an attempt to maintain some core values of psychedelic inquiry through a framework that supports diversity, integrity and meaningfulness in the meeting of these forces with our western disciplines.

Bio

Maria Papaspyrou is an integrative psychotherapist, supervisor, and systemic facilitator based in Brighton, UK. She is a co-founder and co-director of the Institute of Psychedelic Therapy (IPT), and a co-editor of “Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine” and “Psychedelics & Psychotherapy: The Healing Potential of Expanded States”. You can find out more about her work at towardswholeness.co.uk

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic and parapsychology researcher. Having just graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, her work over the last six years has been informed by her concurrent shamanic training, work with the Wixárika (Huichol) tribe from Mexico, and role as a research assistant under Dr David Luke of Greenwich university in the study of the psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other worlds. Walking between the worlds of the arts, science and the occult, she combines media and investigative techniques from each to inform and articulate one another in the exploration of ontology, consciousness and altered states, mytholopeia and mythology, ecology, the human condition and its relation to the environment, otherness and mortality. She describes her practise and research as contemporary Memento Mori (‘remember you will die’), and explores what that means in a time of mass ecocide and species extinction.

Follow her on the crooked path on Instagram @maya_themessiah

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 300 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

A brief history of the magic mushroom by Andy Letcher on zoom

Magic mushrooms – mushrooms that contain the psychoactive tryptamine psilocybin – are going mainstream. Once the sole preserve of hippies and a psychedelic underground, now they’re helping us understand the inner machinery of the brain; they’re being used as a potential cure for depression and other mental illnesses; and they may even bring us into closer relationship with the non-human world, at a time of profound ecological crisis. But how did this happen?

In this talk Dr Andy Letcher takes a critical look at how an innocuous mushroom came so dramatically to affect modern culture. Did the ancient Druids trip out at Stonehenge? Which Oxford Professor of Poetry had a magical mushroom ride? And who were the freak brothers who conversed with a UFO and cracked the secret of how to cultivate magic mushrooms at home? All these questions and more will be answered!

Speaker Bio:

Dr Andy Letcher is a Senior Lecturer at Schumacher College, where he is programme lead for the MA Engaged Ecology. He is the author of Shroom. A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, as well as many papers on subjects as diverse as fairies, eco-magick, psychedelic experience, mysticism and animism. He is currently researching the use of psychedelics by contemporary Druids, and the use of the Fly Agaric mushroom in contemporary culture.

Andy portrait

 

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic and parapsychology researcher. Having just graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, her work over the last six years has been informed by her concurrent shamanic training, work with the Wixárika (Huichol) tribe from Mexico, and role as a research assistant under Dr David Luke of Greenwich university in the study of the psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other worlds. Walking between the worlds of the arts, science and the occult, she combines media and investigative techniques from each to inform and articulate one another in the exploration of ontology, consciousness and altered states, mytholopeia and mythology, ecology, the human condition and its relation to the environment, otherness and mortality. She describes her practise and research as contemporary Memento Mori (‘remember you will die’), and explores what that means in a time of mass ecocide and species extinction.

Follow her on the crooked path on Instagram @maya_themessiah

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 300 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex.

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

The Future of Psychedelic Spirituality by Rick Strassman on Zoom

Psychedelics magnify and clarify spiritual feelings and ideas. The psychedelic renaissance in the West—within research and non-research settings alike—emphasize the “mystical-unitive” spiritual experience—one devoid of a sense of self, content, or verbal information. Modeled on an Eastern religious platform of enlightenment, this approach shapes one’s preparation for a psychedelic session, determines how one manages the acute experience, and then integrates it. On the other hand, the foundational spiritual text of the West, the Hebrew Bible, emphasizes the “interactive-relational” experience; that is, “prophecy,” while not a single case of the mystical-unitive state appears. While I expected our DMT volunteers to undergo mystical-unitive sessions, to both their and my surprise, effects were nearly exclusively interactive-relational. Further inquiry revealed that the degree of phenomenological overlap with Hebrew Biblical prophetic experience is striking; however, the overlap regarding informational content was much less so. I will discuss the prophetic model, its relevance to the psychedelic state, and advantages over the mystical unitive approach.

 

A native of Los Angeles, Rick Strassman obtained his undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Stanford University, and his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. He trained in general psychiatry at UC Davis in Sacramento and took a clinical psychopharmacology research fellowship at UC San Diego. Joining the faculty at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in 1984, his clinical research with melatonin discovered its first known function in humans.

Between 1990-1995 he performed the first new US clinical research with psychedelic drugs in a generation. His studies involved DMT, and to a lesser extent psilocybin, and received federal and private funding. From 1995-2008 he practiced general psychiatry in community mental health and the private sector. He has authored or co-authored nearly 50 peer-reviewed papers, has served as guest editor and reviewer for numerous scientific journals, and consulted to various government, non-profit, and for-profit entities. His book DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2001) has sold 250,000 copies, been translated into 13 languages, and is the basis of a successful independent documentary that he co-produced. In 2008, he co-authored with Slawek Wojtowicz , Luis Eduardo Luna, and Ede Frecska Inner Paths to Outer Space. His first novel, Joseph Levy Escapes Death, a tale of near-fatal illness, love, loss, and poor health-care, appeared in 2019.

Rick Strassman was raised in a Conservative Jewish family, bar mitzvah, and as an adolescent attended Camp Kinneret and Camp Ramah. He studied and practiced Zen Buddhism for over 20 years under the tutelage of a major Western Zen order, was ordained as a layman, and founded and led an affiliated meditation center in Northern California. He returned to his Jewish roots in his mid-40s. His interest in prophecy and psychedelia resulted in his 2014 book DMT and the Soul of prophecy. He is currently Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the UNM School of Medicine, and lives in Gallup New Mexico.


This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic and parapsychology researcher. Having just graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, her work over the last six years has been informed by her concurrent shamanic training, work with the Wixárika (Huichol) tribe from Mexico, and role as a research assistant under Dr David Luke of Greenwich university in the study of the psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other worlds. Walking between the worlds of the arts, science and the occult, she combines media and investigative techniques from each to inform and articulate one another in the exploration of ontology, consciousness and altered states, mytholopeia and mythology, ecology, the human condition and its relation to the environment, otherness and mortality. She describes her practise and research as contemporary Memento Mori (‘remember you will die’), and explores what that means in a time of mass ecocide and species extinction.

Follow her on the crooked path on Instagram @maya_themessiah

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 300 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex.

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Dennis McKenna on Psychedelics and evolution: the ‘Stoned Ape Theory’

In honour of the 30th anniversary of Dennis and Terrance Mckenna’s ‘Stoned Ape Theory’, Dennis McKenna presents an exclusive lecture discussing brand new reflections, theories and findings on the theory based on his ‘Stoned Ape Symposium’ taking place in winter 2021.

First proposed in 1992 by 20th century ethnobotanist and psychedelic bard Terence McKenna (1946-2000) in his 1992 book “Food of the Gods”, and emerging from conversations between the two brothers, the theory proposes that the consumption of psychedelic fungi played a crucial role in the evolution of consciousness and the development of human mind, self reflection, language and culture, and spurring the homo erectus to evolve into the homosapien. He called this the Stoned Ape Hypothesis.

With the re-emergence of psychedelics in mainstream culture and conversations in the psychedelic renaissance, and the elevation of the theory to widespread and popular knowledge, how does it stand 20 years on? What new hypotheses and perspectives have developed from the theory with the increase of psilocybin research? And with the rise of psychedelic research and interest, are we any closer to solving the ‘hard problem of consciousness’?

Join us for this fascinating and in depth lecture to find out.

Dennis McKenna Ph.D.

Dennis McKenna, brother of Terence McKenna, is a true psychedelic elder. Among his many engagements and accomplishments, he has conducted research in ethnopharmacology for over 40 years, is a founding board member of the Heffler Research Institute, and was a key investigator on the Hoasca Project, the first biomedical investigation of ayahuasca. Since 2019, he has been working with colleagues to manifest a long-term dream: the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy (https://mckenna .academy) dedicated to the study of plant medicines, consciousness , preservation of indigenous knowledge, and a re-visioning of humanity’s relationship with Nature. Dr. McKenna is author or co-author of 6 books and over 50 scientific papers in peer­ reviewed journals. He emigrated to Canada in the spring of 2019 together with his wife Sheila, and now resides in Abbotsford , BC.

 

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic and parapsychology researcher. Having just graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, her work over the last six years has been informed by her concurrent shamanic training, work with the Wixárika (Huichol) tribe from Mexico, and role as a research assistant under Dr David Luke of Greenwich university in the study of the psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other worlds. Walking between the worlds of the arts, science and the occult, she combines media and investigative techniques from each to inform and articulate one another in the exploration of ontology, consciousness and altered states, mytholopeia and mythology, ecology, the human condition and its relation to the environment, otherness and mortality. She describes her practise and research as contemporary Memento Mori (‘remember you will die’), and explores what that means in a time of mass ecocide and species extinction.

Follow her on the crooked path on Instagram @maya_themessiah

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 300 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism & The Cosmic Tree – Gina Buenfeld – Zoom

The magical kingdoms of plants and fungi are too often overlooked, yet the mysteries that reside in their forms and behaviours reveal a significance to human consciousness and spirituality that reaches deep into our evolutionary past, to the beginning of life itself. The symbolic forms of the tree, plant or mushroom appear in global mythologies around the world and in the languages of religious and occult mysticism, from Kabala, Gnosticism, Alchemy and Hermeticism to Tantra, Rosicrucianism and Theosophy. Plants perform a kind of alchemy by transmuting celestial energy from our nearest star into a habitable, terrestrial – material – world and the archetypes of the Cosmic Tree and the Mandala are symbolic motifs that connect the transcendent and terrestrial realms through a world axis – the Axis Mundi. These forms also direct us to the inner realm of the mind, of consciousness, of spirituality – a world that opens-up through the fractal and sacred geometries so resplendent in the vegetal and fungal kingdoms and in encounters with psychoactive plant medicines like ayahuasca, psilocybin and mescalin.

Departing from a recent exhibition at Camden Art Centre – The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and The Cosmic Tree – this talk will explore the ways in which plants have informed artists, mystics and scientists throughout history and around the world. Drawing on the wisdom traditions of indigenous peoples in the Amazon rainforest, where plants reside at the centre of their cosmologies, this talk will speculate on the function of pattern and music as ways to connect and communicate with the life-field we humans are entangled with – a realm that includes microbial, vegetal, and animal life.

Gina Buenfeld-Murley is Exhibitions Curator at Camden Art Centre, London where she has co-curated The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and The Cosmic Tree (2020-21); A Tale of Mother’s Bones: Grace Pailthorpe, Reuben Mednikoff and the Birth of Psychorealism (2019); Athanasios Argianas, Hollowed Water (2020); Wong Ping, Heart Digger (2019); Yuko Mohri, Voluta, (2018); Joachim Koester, In the Face of Overwhelming Forces (2017); João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Papagaio (2015); Bonnie Camplin (2016) and Rose English (2016). Recent independent curatorial projects include Gäa: Holistic Science and Wisdom Tradition, at Newlyn Art Gallery and The Exchange, Cornwall, and Origin Story, at The Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku, Finland (both 2019). In 2017 she was curatorial resident at Helsinki International Curatorial Programme, Finland and has been researching the place of plants within indigenous cultures in Europe and South America, including in Finnish Lapland (Samí shamanism) and in the Colombian, Peruvian and Brazilian areas of the Amazon Rainforest where she researched the sacred geometries and music of the Yawanawa, Huni Kuin and Shipibo-Conibo peoples. In 2014-15 she was curator-in-residence with Arts Initiative Tokyo (AIT) and established Tokyo Correspondence, a series of exhibitions, residencies and research visits, facilitating cultural dialogue between artists in the UK and Japan and curated At the Still Point of the Turning World at Shibaura House Tokyo, featuring work by Manon de Boer; Joachim Koester; Simon Martin; Ursula Mayer; Jeremy Millar; Sriwhana Spong; Jesse Wine; and Caroline Achaintre. She was previously Director at Alison Jacques Gallery, London.

Image Sunset Birth by Ithell Colquhoun