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Interview with Antero Alli

April 12, 2008 / Klint Finley

Nice long interview in Key 64:

MG: Both Leary and Wilson felt that the bottom circuits imprinted at acute, random moments in early childhood and adolescence, but I do not see the biological basis for such small windows of imprinting. Certainly birth is the primary C1 imprinting process and a universal human event, but I suspect it only accounts for roughly 30 to 80% of the C1 imprint depending on the individual and the circumstances of birth. It seems that C1 imprinting starts in the womb and continues well into the first several months of life. I suspect that C4 imprinting occurs over a period as long as several years and I find it hard to agree with Wilson’s assertion that the entire C4 imprint is taken on at the moment of first orgasm. How do you feel about these early childhood imprints?

AA: My experiences parallel Wilson’s and Leary’s here regarding the early childhood imprints of the first four circuits. Once imprinted, however, there are years and decades of affirmative conditioning that fortify and maintain those imprints, habits that can run throughout the rest of our lives and can run or rule the rest of our lives. Though C-1 imprinting does start with the infant dependency event with the mother, or surrogate mother, I think circuits two through four (especially C-4) can remain “un-imprinted” for years to come differing, of course, with each person and their circumstances.

As for the entire circuit four imprint occurring with the first orgasm, this sounds ridiculous to me. If only it were that simple and easy yet circuit four has proven to be anything but easy and simple. It’s not just me; look at the world, look at our human history of warfare, genocide and social tragedy. Other equally complex imprints such as religious upbringing, courtship rituals, woman and manhood rites of passage, pregnancy, and parenting also inhabit the web of fourth circuit realities.

Full Story: Key 64.

Don’t forget: Antero Alli will be doing a presentation on the 8 circuit model at Esozone: the Other Tomorrow this October in Portland. Buy your pre-sale ticket now for only $40 (prices go up Sunday night at midnight).

LSD history in Chick tract form

April 9, 2008 / Klint Finley

lsd history as chick tract like comic

Full Comic.

(Thanks Honky Tonk Dragon)

Esozone announces first round of speakers and location for 2008

April 7, 2008 / Klint Finley

ESOZONE: the other tomorrow

October 10-12

Watershed Building
5040 SE Milwaukie Ave
Portland, OR

Confirmed speakers:

Dennis McKenna, ethnopharmacologist and co-author of Invisible Landscape and Psilocybin – Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide

Antero Alli, author of Angel Tech, director of the performance art group Paratheatrical Research, and director of films such as The Invisible Forest

Paul Laffoley, acclaimed visionary artist

Rex Church, surrealist/occult artist and Magister Templi of the Church of Satan

Lupa, author of A Field Guide to Otherkin and Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone, and co-author Kink Magic

Taylor Ellwood, author of Multimedia Magic, Inner Alchemy, and co-author of Kink Magic

Alex Ansery, host of the television show Outside the Box

Thirtyseven, MC also known as Humpasaur Jones, member of the hip hop outfits Wombaticus Rex and the Algorhythms and editor of Brainsturbator

Trevor Blake, editor of OVO Magazine

Bianca Lee, aka Nysidra, editor of biancalee.com

Bill Whitcomb, author of Magician’s Reflection and the Magician’s Companion

Edward Wilson, co-author of the Art of Memetics

More TBA!

Overview of scientific research of meditation

April 3, 2008 / Klint Finley

meditation

Research into the health claims made for meditation has limitations and few conclusions can be reached, partly because meditation is rarely isolated – it is often practised alongside other lifestyle changes such as diet, or exercise, or as part of group therapy.

So should we dismiss it as quackery? Studies from the field of neuroscience suggest not.

It is a new area of research, but indications are intriguing and suggest that meditation may have a measurable impact on the brain.

In Boston, Massachusetts, Dr Sara Lazar has used a technique called MRI scanning to analyse the brains of people who have been meditating for several years.

She compared the brains of these experienced practitioners with people who had never meditated and found that there were differences in the thickness of certain areas of the brain’s cortex, including areas involved in the processing of emotion.

She is continuing research, but she believes that meditation had caused the brain to change physical shape.

Full Story: BBC News.

(via Plutonica)

Kirlian photos of Fell’s progress through Reiki

March 27, 2008 / Fell

I’ve been studying Reiki under two local Reiki masters here, and it’s been good so far. I’ll write more about it once I’ve progressed farther. I’ve completed my Level I and some friends and I begin Level II in a couple weeks. I’ll be studying straight through the year until the Master class.

The teachers aren’t your traditional New Age fruits. They’re more like existential yogis, but the Reiki they practise is phenomenal. As an added bonus, they begin sessions with a Kirlian camera. Now, don’t read too much into these. But interesting to see the results as I progress through sessions with them and my own studies.

The image (click image for larger size) is mirrored, so the pinky finger is associated with your connection to one’s intuition, the ring finger with one’s emotional state, middle finger with one’s physical state, and index finger with one’s mental state.

The first row of finger tips is captured as they have you in your normal state, then they ask you to embody happiness, then frustration, and then to feel as if you’re the most comfortable state with yourself as possible. They capture these four sets onto one film and voilà!

The broken lines represent a lack of connection or awareness of that aspect of your being. Beyond language and labels, just being. And as the rings grow in brightness, I believe they come to represent one’s comfort with just being a part of existence — letting the whole of the life experience wash over oneself.

I went today, and as you can see from the bottom-right image, my way of living is beginning to more wholly encompass all facets of being. It was a good session and the past year’s been good.

Might be worth looking into for those unaware of Reiki. As Saul Williams says in his song "Raised to Be Lowered":

To find the balance between all you sense and all you see
To find the patience and the strength it takes to let it be
To stand amongst the crowd and have the strength to hold your own
To throw away the pen and pad and simply be the poem
To rise above hatred to love through seeming contradiction
To seldom take a side and learn to compliment the friction.

Joe Rogan on the isolation tank

March 18, 2008 / Klint Finley

One of the coolest things from the psychedelic movement of the 60’s that for some reason never really caught on with the mainstream is the isolation tank. It’s an amazing invention by the late, great psychonaut John Lilly. He was trying to find a way to isolate the mind and the thoughts to be completely independent of the distraction of normal sensory input from the body- like touch, sound, sight, etc.

The idea being that if you could get away from all of the normal, natural signals and distractions your mind could function on a much deeper level. What he came up with is a tank filled with water that’s heated to the same temperature as the surface of your skin, and it’s got 800lbs of Epsom salts in it, so that you float on the surface of the water. The water is heated to the same temperature as your skin, so when you lay in it after a while you can’t feel it. Your ears are under water so you don’t hear anything, and when you close the lid of the tank you’re in complete darkness. It’s a really freaky feeling, and at first it’s kind of hard to get comfortable. Your brain isn’t used to the experience, so it’ll start giving you ‘busy work’ – making you think that you’ve got to itch your nose, or move your arm or something, but if you can just breathe and relax you can get past this stage.
Once you learn to get comfortable it becomes amazing how clearly you can think and see things.

Full Story: Joe Rogan.

Develop Perfect Memory With the Memory Palace Technique

March 18, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“The Memory Palace is one of the most powerful memory techniques I know. It’s not only effective, but also fun to use – and not hard to learn at all.

The Memory Palace has been used since ancient Rome, and is responsible for some quite incredible memory feats. Eight-time world memory champion Dominic O’Brien, for instance, was able to memorize 54 decks of cards in sequence (that’s 2808 cards), viewing each card only once. And there are countless other similar achievements attributed to people using the Memory Palace technique or variations of it. Even in fiction, there are several references to the technique. In Thomas Harris’ novel Hannibal, for example, serial killer Hannibal Lecter uses Memory Palaces to store amazingly vivid memories of years of intricate patient records (sadly, it was left off the movie).

Of course, most of us are not in Dominic’s memory championship line of business (or in Hannibal’s line of business for that matter). But still, the Memory Palace technique is amazingly effective in all kinds of endeavors, such as learning a foreign language, memorizing a presentation you’re about to deliver, preparing for exams and many others – even if all you want is to jog your memory.”

(via Litemind)

(A more occult/magickal look at “The Art of Memory” via The Society of Guardians)

“God helmet”?…yeah…right…

March 13, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“A “neurotheology” researcher called Dr Michael Persinger has developed something called the “God Helmet” lined with magnets to help you in your quest: it sounds like typical bad science fodder, but it’s much more interesting than that.Persinger is a proper scientist. The temporal lobes have long been implicated in religious experiences: epileptic seizures in that part of the brain, for example, can produce mystical experiences and visions. Persinger’s helmet stimulates these temporal lobes with weak electromagnetic fields through the skull, and in various published papers this stimulation has been shown to induce a “sensed presence”, under blinded conditions.

There is controversy around these findings: some people have tried to replicate them, although not using exactly the same methods, and got different results. But however improbable or theologically offensive you might find his evidence, because it is published and written up in full, you can try to replicate it for yourself and find out whether it works. In fact, you really can try this at home: the kit needed to make a God Helmet is fabulously rudimentary.”

(via Pure Pedantry)

A Review of Methodology in “Biblical Entheogens”

March 9, 2008 / TiamatsVision

An argument about the theory that “Moses was high on drugs”.

“Over the last week, Benny Shanon’s article ‘Biblical Entheogens: A speculative hypothesis’ has been a rather popular topic online, both in mainstream media outlets and specifically in the skeptical community. I wonder how much of this interest, especially in the the skeptical community, is just a case of Schadenfreude. After my skeptical comments on the article earlier this week, I have decided to go through the article thoroughly, and offer a more concrete review of Shanon’s work.

Effectively, Shanon’s thesis is that Moses, throughout his encounters with God, was under the effects of an Entheogen, a mind altering psychedelic drug, which lead to hallucinations and an altered state of consciousness. This is certainly an interesting theory, but one that I believe Shanon fails to support. His main evidence appears to be comparison to known historic and modern usages of such substances in religious and spiritual endeavors. However, his comparisons to Pre-Columbian and modern American examples may serve as example of entheogen use, they cannot serve as evidence of Israelite use.”

(via Archaeoporn)

Moses was high on drugs: Israeli researcher

March 4, 2008 / Klint Finley

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

“As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics,” Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the “burning bush,” suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

“The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon,” he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to “see music.”

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil’s Amazon forest in 1991. “I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,” Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

From: Breitbart.

(Thanks Bill!)

I’d like to know what his evidence is. The idea that it’s all just a bunch of myths seems plenty plausible to me, but I’m obviously not privy to his research. I’m also curious what psychedelics were available in that part of the world (amanitas? psilocybin?)

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