Part 2, Psychedelic, Mythology and Madness: The Patriarchal Expropriation of the Sacred Fruit of the Goddess

“The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge

The Tree of Life was one of the primary images of the goddess herself, in whose immanent presence all pairs of opposites are reconciled. Growing on the surface of the earth, with roots below and branches above, the tree was the great pillar that united earth with heaven and the underworld’ through which the energies of the cosmos poured continuously into earthly creation. The animating spirit that moved within it was the serpent, guardian also of the fruit or treasure of the tree, which was the epiphany of the goddess, that is, the experience of unity.”

I contacted Anne Baring, co-author of the book, The Myth of the Goddess; Evolution of an Image, asking her thoughts about this issue I was wondering about:

“In my looking for research over a long period, I have been very surprised the rarity of feminists--or any women--focussing on psychedelics in relation with mythology, psychology etc, and their expropriation by the patriarchy. I have wondered about this. Nearly all the authors and speakers I know of are males. I find it odd, because I understand that going way back, it was always women who were the closest to the plants etc, and were the Wise Women.

So I am entertaining a theory, and wonder if you may agree with me? That this 'silence' is due to the traumatic reverberations from really just a few centuries ago--the Burning Times-- where many women who would have been connected with sacred plants were dreadfully persecuted, tortured, and killed in their thousands. That even though it has been mainly feminists who have boldly de-constructed the patriarchy that this as yet still remains taboo area?

I would really welcome your ideas about this matter.” (I added hyperlink later)

To which Anne Baring replied:

“The reason women have not addressed this subject is probably as you say, because of an unconscious fear of persecution and also ridicule and shaming, that is still latent. Also men are still immensely powerful and for a woman to get through the barrier set up by the male ethos that controls so much of our culture is almost impossible. I think you need to go to women in the indigenous cultures - there are some remarkable women in the Indian tribes that still survive in America. There is one in the Lakota tribe whose name I have unfortunately forgotten - I think it is Apela whom I met at a conference a couple of years ago. Also, women, as you say, knew about the use of herbs for medicine but every attempt to bring through this different approach is blocked and attacked by very powerful groups in the medical profession, as well as by new rules about Alternative Medicines coming out of the European Union. So I think women have just given up.”

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When the Sacred Fruit of the Goddess, psychedelic inspiration, is thought to be separated from nature, and is believed to inspire the celebrant to transcend nature, in the regard that nature and the body are believed to be negative, and/or in a more modern sense, when the potential deep psychedelic experiences that interconnect the celebrant with nature, on ever deeper levels of meaning, are dismissed in a reductionist and materialistic way, this is indicitive of a familiar patriarchal ongoing mindset needing to be exposed. Research into how the male-supremacist warriors and patriarchs understood and currently understand sacred vegetation, and experience, and how their mindset differs from earth-respecting indigenous, and Goddess ways, is vital to explore.

How the patriarchs thought of women – in their mythology and religion – and treated them in real life, would also project similar attitudes onto the whole aesthetic and meaning of their sacrament, the sacred mushroom!

The patriarchal minded ancients believed ‘God’s’ “semen", in the form of rain, came powerfully in thunder and lightening storms, spitting mightily from the ‘lips’ of God’s “penis” supernaturally generating forth sacred/psychedelic mushrooms , and the ‘active spiritual principle’ of the sacred mushroom was ‘his’ powerful spermatozoa.

The rain which collected underground was also the semen, and the earth was merely a ‘container’ for ‘God’s’ seed. The storm was the actual “Word of God”, and seeing that no microscopic technology existed to know about mushroom spores, these mushrooms were understood to be "virgin born", the 'Word of God' “made flesh”, the “Son of God”, the ‘Christos’! And eating the mushroom would bring the initiate into contact with 'God' (J.Allegro)

The 'Word of God' would mean the actual sound of the the storm, and the mushrooms, but also 'God's Word' speaking forth through the mouth of their prophets who after ingesting the psychedelic sacrament were believed to be 'channeling' God's 'Word' directly.

This is a familiar belief to the far more ancient shamanistic possession, where the curandero, shaman, etc., will 'speak as the mushroom' (or it could be a different psychedelic plant, or substance):

"I am he who speaks.

I am who speaks with the mountains.

I am he who speaks with the corners.

I am the doctor. I am the man of medicine.

I am. I am he who cures.

I am he who speaks with the Lord of the World.

I am happy. I speak with the Mountains.

I am he who speaks with the mountains of peaks.

I am he who speaks with the Bald Mountain.

I am the remedy and the medicine man.

I am the mushroom.

I am the fresh mushroom.

I am the large mushroom.

I am the fragrant mushroom.

I am the mushroom of the spirit."

--Mazatec Indian shaman --The Mushrooms of Language

and Mazatec Curandero, Maria Sabina:
"It is sung in a shamanic trance in which, as she recounted, the "little children" [the sacred mushrooms] speak through her:





Because I can swim in the immense
Because I can swim in all forms
Because I am the launch woman
Because I am the sacred opposum
Because I am the Lord opposum I am the woman Book that is beneath the water, says
I am the woman of the populous town, says
I am the shepherdess who is beneath the water, says
I am the woman who shepherds the immense, says
I am a shepherdess and I come with my shepherd, says Because everything has its origin
And I come going from place to place from the origin..."

Unlike the indigenous vision inspired with sacred vegetation, however, where spirit is understood as immanent in nature, patriarchal myths tend to separate spirit from nature, and in their prescribed rituals of the sacred mushroom, they believed they were rather being “born again in the spirit”, for this ’spirit-seed’ they were ingesting was thought of as being of God’s ‘spirit’, and not ‘of the earth’, for they had ‘divided’ spirit from nature. The Christian myth claims nature as ‘Fallen’, and cursed, because of the sin of Eve and Adam. Woman, and her devalued womb, was now thought to be mere container for the 'superior' male seed, and the earth, for the 'super superior' sky-god’s seed:

'Original Sin' adhered intrinsically to
Orgasmic Experience.

Love to be made pious and useful, had to be sanctioned by the Lord, blessed by a male priest and then it was to be practiced only for the purpose of procreation. Soberly, not ecstatically. Men should use women for the Lord: to be fruit­ful and multiply His followers. El Shaddai, God of the early Hebrews, was a relentless punisher of 'sexual deviation' and 'deviation' was any sexual activity not directed toward making children. Non-reproductive sex was a capitulation to 'bestiality' [another error, since 'beasts' copulate only to reproduce] and he who wasted his semen was a murderer, to be punished accordingly. Onan was slain for spilling his seed on the ground to prevent conception. This command of the Hebrew tribal god against waste of male seed is the source of all Western laws against: abortion, contraception, masturbation, homosexuality, oral sex, etc. To 'waste' the semen was to waste the life-seed, or life-blood, of the Father, diminishing His essence. [It was also to 'use' women as something other than seed-ovens.] Hindu religion is also obsessed with semen, seeing it as 'Atman', the Cosmic Seed.

It has been claimed that the knowledge that males had a part to play in conception came relatively late ( I don't know if this is true) and may have fueled the rise of patriarchal dominance. And with this came the belief that the male semen-seed was the main active principle of conception (which is untrue), and from there arose the idea of gods giving birth to goddesses, and the monotheistic God allowing his creation Adam to give birth to his female companion, Eve.

And in Christianity is the belief in the 'Immaculate Conception', which is allegorically referring to the real meaning of the myth explained above. The 'Goddess' Mary--who is 'demoted' to a mortal woman (as is Eve in the Old testament) is now the passive receiver of 'God's 'semen' who gives birth to the 'Christ', 'his' son. Jesus returns to the 'Father' not the Mother as is so in the Goddess mythos, of life, death and regeneration within the spiral of sacred nature. The Christian myth sees death as unnatural, and nature as cursed, and therefore inevitably omits the regeneration part of the cycle.

The living reality is that it's the male who only has to 'shoot' his seed, and walk away if he chooses to another 'conquest', but it is the woman within whom the amazing event of birth all happens, and tis she who will carry the developing life inside her usually for nine months, and then going through the momentous event of birthing the baby, and nurturing it!

Before the patriarchs de~graded the womb of the woman, and mythologically expropriated the Womb of the Goddess, the Womb was held sacred because all life, not just in earth, but also the cosmos (for all life was connected, as symbolized in the image of the World Tree) was thought to be birthed from the Womb of the Goddess. We came from her Womb; when we ‘died’ in life via sacred ritual inspired from eating her Sacred Fruit we deepened to the understanding of this Mystery, the Underworld, and were ‘reborn’, and when we physically died we returned to her Womb whereupon we rested and then regenerated and born into new forms of life.

Agrarian people who knew the more ancient religion of the Goddess understood that the earth as her body was sacred, hence all fruits, vegetation, and all life in general were sacred, especially the fruit which allowed the celebrants access to her deeper Mysteries.

There is not a so-called split between nature and spirit!

The Goddess is the sacred fruit, both nature and spirit, and so is her Son-Lover the Horned God of nature, symbolizing the fertilizing aspect of nature. And it is ‘he’ who is the seed who dies and is regenerated/born again:

So when the Celebrant eats the sacred fruit the god eat/sacrificed dies and is ‘born again’ as in possessing the Celebrant:

"Both Figures 1 and 2 show a female and a male figure, a central tree and a serpent, yet their meanings are completely different. In Figure 1 the seated female is the Bronze Age Sumerian Mother Goddess and the serpent who coils upright behind her is the image of her regenerative power. On the other side of the tree, in identical posture, sits her son-lover, called ‘Son of the Abyss: Lord of the Tree of Life’, whose role as fertilizing the source of life is given in the bull’s horns upon his head. Since the serpent and the bull, on opposite sides of the seal, are both images of the living and dying manifestation of the goddess, a true mirror-image is created of the unification of opposites in a single vision. Further, both goddess and son-lover gesture with outstretched hand towards the hanging fruits of the Tree of Life, offering the gifts of immortality and enlightenment together - she, immortality, and he, enlightenment. Here is the perennial story of the sacred marriage of zoe and bios, enacted under many guises - Inanna and Dumuzi, Ishtar and Tammuz, Isis and Osiris, Aphrodite and Adonis, Cybele and Attis - and all of them images of reconciliation and affirmation." Eve: The Mother of All Living

for the Celebrant’s previous sense of hirself has also ‘died’,

and has ‘become a god’ in the sense of experiencing the Garden of the Goddess,

Paradise.

S/he has become the very god/dess of nature, lover of the Goddess.

In this set&setting spirit is not divided from nature and so this experience is really a fuller, deeper, expanded

understanding and expression of this all-pervading spirit which regenerates one’s being in nature.

So…after such experience the ‘come down’ (a modern terminology referring to the coming down from psychedelic experience) isn’t a ‘return’ to ‘fallen nature’, or, in a modern sense, a return to a soulless mechanistic materialistic reality, but rather a continuum of sacred experience! For in this world of the Goddess, so-called ordinary life is not separated from sacred experience, but enriched by it. And as a result the community becomes enriched also, as does all of nature, it too is ‘born again’ as you are. Not in an idealistic way, but as your insight into the sacredness of nature deepens then you seek to care for nature, and encourage children and others to, and so on. It is a symbiosis, whereby our eating of sacred vegetation--when done with utmost respect and openess--allows you a deepening sensual spiritual interelationship with the natural world...

In the patriarchal monotheistic context, however, nature is cursed, fallen, ruled over by the 'Prince of Darkness', the ‘Devil’, and thus is a trap for the unwary soul. This life is thought to be a perilous slippery stepping stone to a 'future' spiritual pure state far from nature and earth (thus encapsulating the believer within the sense of linear time towards a goal), if one abides by the 'Faith'; and in the current mechanistic-materialist context, where ‘God is dead’, and the ‘Devil’ mere superstition from our Medieval past.

Nature it is now officially 'scientifically believed ‘ to be reduced to particles, chemicals, and genes, and is ‘dead’, having no deep meaningful mysterious sense. In this soulless ‘Wasteland’, instead of the dread of the ‘Devil’ we have the dread of ‘mental illness’ (Szasz/The Manufacture of Madness).

In this ‘brave new world’ there exists a great fear of visionary experiences, non-conformity, and not being accepted as ‘normal’ by this soul-lost culture, which is itself insane and intent on blindly and unfeelingly destroying the very Web of Life.

Similarly as with 'our' orthodox religious past with its Inquisitions against wild women, and men, with wild plants, modern ‘secular’ culture also forbids psychedelics and participation mystique with nature. Whereas in the past oppressive religious orthodoxy such experience and understanding would be demonized, now, with the 'evolution' of scientism, authentic spiritual experience is demeaned and/or pathologized—called "delusional", reduced to a mere meaningless chemical experience, or claimed to be pathological, especially if after psychedelic experiential 'come down' one confessed to experiencing reality in a wholly different way, and desired to have a lifestyle which refelected such insights, and seen to contradict and conflict with the mechanistic-materialistic-consumerist-meritocratic-pharmacratic worldview.

These are strange times, as surely modern physics has given a strong hint just how mysterious reality is, and yet this mechanistic view is still clung to by the predominant culture, but I do hear that consciousness is now being looked into!

There is the irony of the secret partaking of psychedelics, at the beginnings of the Judaic-Christian religion, amongst the initiates (which, strange as it may seem, may still continue: see Heretical Visionary Sacraments Amongst the Ecclesiastical Elite -) , the cryptic mention of psychedelic vegetation is secretly and cleverly hidden in their religious literary script, and yet allegorically condemned in the words, and in the imagery, as is shown in the Genesis creation myth, as all the symbols refer to the far more ancient Goddess religion and her Sacred Fruit which are condemned!

As Joseph Campbell has pointed out, a great discord exists between the images in the Genesis Garden of Eden myth, and the words, and story; a dissonance, and this is because of the primeval meaning of the images which the patriarchal elite then try and subvert from their original meaning and associations . For images have a far deeper meaning than words, but the Bible is based on the “Word”of God’ and God supposedly very against the image! 'Yahweh' is a very "jealous God".

His First Commandment is:

"I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

and the Second Commandment is:

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." (Exodus 20:4)

Of course for the indigenous peoples this theocracy was imposed on them by force, as is evidenced in the Bible where we read how Goddess religion is attacked, and the slaughter of her people:

"Then ye shall drive out all of the inhabitants the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places." (Num. 35:52)

The victims of this monotheistic tyranny would have very well known about the subversion of their mythologies by the monotheists, and thus their despised Religion of the Earth would have had to go 'underground, which is a big reason for the later Inquisitions of the Christian church who would sadistically try, and once and for all, crush any competition which they saw as a threat to their powerful empire. And it also a ‘good’ way to make more money as the Church made sure it kept the possessions of the women, and others, they destroyed.

The biblical prophets had access to psychoactive substances, yet their messages conformed to the patriarchal demands.

Modern ‘prophets’ such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and James Hillman—all males as usual—have attempted to reveal the deeper meaning of religion, mythology, and the power of ‘archetypes’ and so on, and the whys and wherefores of our sense of desires, fears, struggles, and ‘psychopathologies’.

Freud who had no time for participation mystique with nature which he would pathologize as ‘oceanic consciousness’, a 'regression to mother’s womb'—quite ironical really--was friends with the younger Carl Jung, and there was a falling out between them regarding Jung’s theory of the Collective Unconscious, a theory much closer to the interrelated sense of the Goddess than is Freud's theory of the 'Unconscious' which he saw as mainly a dumping ground for repressed memories.

Jung however, had his own Feminist blindspots which are articulately explored by his daughter,

Carla J Emmatoni :

Anne: Tell me about the feminist critique of Jung's psychology.

Carla: Do you have a couple of weeks? (laughing) No, seriously... I'll try to summarize the main points for your readers, because it's vitally important that people learn to sort out Jung's useful ideas from those which reinforce stereotypes and ways of thinking that are actually damaging to women. This is crucial, because Jung's worldview is as much religion as psychology, and most western religious beliefs — with the exception of the re-emerging Goddess and pagan spiritualities — tend to reinforce the idea that women are inferior and should be subordinate to men.

Anne: Jungian psychology... a religion?

Carla: Oh, yes. In a letter to Freud written Feb. 11, 1910, Jung wrote: "Religion can only be replaced by religion. ... What sort of new myth does it [psychoanalysis] hand on for us to live by? ... 2000 years of Christianity can only be replaced by something equivalent..." ¹⁶ Freud wasn't interested in pursuing this line of thought, but Jung was very clear that he connected psychology and religion. He went on to write, in the same letter, that it would take time "to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying god of the vine, which he was, and in that way absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what they once were — a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal." ¹⁷

So, you see, Jung saw very clearly the religious nature of myths and symbols, which were the foundation of his analytic method. And the problem with this is that things which are seen as religious are also seen as natural — the way things are and ought to be. So if a religion's myths and symbols are interpreted in a way which reinforces gender stereotypes — which has been the case in western religious mythology ever since Genesis gave Eve and the serpent a bad rap — they tend to be extraordinarily hard to change. This is especially true since religious symbols and myths, which really represent beliefs, get internalized, and in the case of women, this means a great deal of internalized oppression." (PLEASE checkout her interpretation of Jung's famous 'Descent' into 'Hades'!)

In part 1 of this article, I wrote how I’d been trying to learn more about James Hillman who is known as post-Jungian. From what I had read from Hillman online, some things I clicked with, such as and his sense that we do not have Imagination, but live in Imagination, as do all other species, and nature, and some other ideas I didn’t, for example his promotion of patriarchal Greek Olympian polytheistic gods as main archetypes, etc. But I had been particularly interested in trying to find what he had written about psychedelics, and their relationship with mythology, (because like Jung, Hillman sets great stock in understanding the importance of mythic archetypes, and surely to go into that you must be aware of them being connected with psychedelic fungi, plants, etc) ,as well as his ideas about the new resurgence of psychedelic therapies, and so on.

Sincethen, I found a review of Hillman’s book, The Dream and the Underworld

Jung would not have known about psychedelics centrality in the formation of, and initiated ritual in, the Judaic-Christian religion as far as I'm aware.

It also seems strange the most notable post Jungian doesn't seem to either, nor see the significance of psychedelic experience!

..."Such dark rhetoric, like that of Norman O. Brown, often seems at odds with the rather cerebral and conservative personal style of Hillman himself. This tension in these radical thinkers whose teen years fell long before the eruptions of the 1960s I find fascinating. But it’s not just a case of tension between behavioural style and intellectual commitments; central to Hillman’s (and Brown’s) view is the fight against literalism. While their rejection of psychedelics and shamanic revelry is a little out of synch with contemporary culture, their stern reminders that literally, overtly wild behaviours can repress the subtleties of the unconscious as much as their prohibition, are interesting foils to common counter-culture wisdom.

Pagans will surely be as challenged as me in grappling with Hillman’s railing against the “materialism” of heathen symbolism. He rejects the use of nature-based metaphors for approaching the dream, insisting on the dream’s location in Hades: not the earthy, dark underground of fertility and regeneration, but the cold, airy, liminal underworld of insubstantial shadows."

Hillman seems to have a fixation with Classical Greece including its philosophers of which he thinks himself sharing this 'priveleged' lineage. On one hand he intellctualizes the importance of mythological archetypes--calling his post-Jungianism, 'Archetypal Psychology'--and chooses the patriarchal Classical Greek pantheon of Olympic gods as being the best archetypes for the 'western mindset', and will insist the 'Underworld' is the Classical Greek description of Hades. The same male god, Hades, who rapes Persephone (Goddess) -- "rape", of course, being a sure indicator the patriarchy is coopting and subverting the more ancient myth of the Goddess -- and abducts her to 'his' abode; the male god expropriating the Goddess' Womb, originally the source of connectiveness, and regeneration, (as he does her Fruit) but in his split-off soulless mindset conceives of it as 'cold', with 'insubstantial' shadows", just like his mindset. Cut off from his body and nature.

The Goddess was the 'Underworld', theWomb, and could come and go as she pleased, and would not be abused and abducted, and captured there!

Persephone and Demeter adore the Sacred Mushroom, from the temple wall at Eleusis, c. 450 BC

If one cares to research what the name, Persephone, means, you may find:

PERSEPHONE

"Gender: Feminine

Usage: Greek Mythology

Other Scripts: Περσεφονη (Ancient Greek)

Pronounced: pər-SEF-ə-nee (English) [key]

Meaning unknown, perhaps related to Greek περθω (pertho) "to destroy" and φονη (phone) "murder". In Greek myth she was the daughter of Demeter and Zeus. She was abducted to the underworld by Hades, but was eventually allowed to return to the surface for part of the year. The result of her comings and goings is the changing of the seasons."

Notice the negative-sounding speculations,. "destroy" and "murder"!

A far more plausible meaning of Persophone's name was discovered by a Philologist, John Allegro, in his book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross he reveals:

"The myth of the dying and rising god is variously treated within the mushroom cycle. One of the best-known stories is that of Persophone/Kore, her mother Demeter, and the wicked uncle Pluto. The beautiful virgin who is the heroine of the tale presents in her double name the equivalent of the effeminate male Hermaphodite. Her two names can now be seen as two aspects of the mushroom. Persophone being the volva (Sumerian *BAR-SIB-U-NI, "container of the penis of fecundity") and Kore the stem of "phallus" *GU-RI, as in the storm-god's name, *USh-GU-RI[ISKUR]).
Put in other fungus folk-lore term, Kore is the charmed and erect "serpent", thrusting open the egg of Persephone...." (Allegro ibid)

So Persophone/Kore is the actual sacred mushroom, as most of the goddess and gods in essence are!
The polytheist gods more closest to the Goddess, hence nature, are the ones that have animal and plant attributes, which mean they are inclusive of the whole of nature, interspecies, but the patriarchal polytheist gods of Classical Greece become 'superhuman' and distant and aloof on the pyramidial Mountain, and they assert only they are the 'immortals' and us 'peasants' below become the 'mortals', and the patriarchal writers behind this theocracy make it so there is a terrible 'sin' done when the mortal desires to cross the 'gulf' to immortality which is termed 'hubris'; with mono~theism we get the mono-god who warns of the same threat to Adam:

Genesis 3:22: And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.






But, knowing and hearing the deeper song, these Fruits bring the celebrant into contact with the gods, directly.

'You' are possessed by the very god/dess of nature.

You are nature!

Nature loving its being in ecstasy~~~

Psychedelic, Mythology, and Madness (Part 1)

mu: I have decided to share what I have been speaking about at The Icarus Project in my blog:

Psychedelic, Mythology, and Madness:

I would like to explore this vast subject, and see where it goes--please feel free to join in: total freedom allowed

I was first introduced to psychedelics (LSD) when I was 15. In summary what the experiences with LSD did was revitalize my sense of the magic of nature which in the short (but very LONG years for a kid) years from being young--ie, up to about 8-9 I had ben really sensing the wonder and magic of nature. I loved fairy books, and when most kids were into the Jnet and John realism adventure book phases, I was still into fairy books, and then from 8-9--till 15 something had happened which had hardened me. Made me a little sadistic; not care about nature, I would throw litter, I started reading Pan Horror books, would not garden. Liked plants like the Venus Fly trap...............began to experience nature as some kind of dusty backdrop, and my real love was big city, and my dream mythical cities were LA and especially NYC! So at 13 on to 15, I WAS IN LOVE WITH HIGH RISES, CONCRETE, CARS, TRAFFIC, CROWDS, NEON, HEARING ABOUT HOW UNFEELINGS NEW YORKERS WERE SUPPOSED TO BE. FLYOVERS (NOT SURE WHAT AMERCIANS CALL THEM, BUT WHERE THE ROADS ARE ELEVEATED ABOVER OTHER ROADS)......

BUT, when I became 15, and was allowed to go to a big city, London to train in dance, and these Hippies turned me onto LSD, on the 'come downs' (after the climax of the psychedelic experience) we would walk around gardens, and go into parks~~~~~I suddenly saw and felt the magic of nature again. My eyes were opened!

I then went on this quest to find books/authors who could somehow integrate what I had been through. I went though a lot; Castenada; Aurobindo; Gurdjieff; Nietzsche; ...etc, but couldn't dig any of it, but one little book hit the spot for me, and I nearly read the whole of it in the shop I bought it in--Cloudhidden Whereabouts Unknown, by Alan Watts. A wonder of a book, where he explore polar-related reality: How you cannot have white without black (how can you even KNOW 'white' without knowing black---how could you read this text!), light without dark, pleasure without pain, life without death, and so on.........So I count this milestone of a book as the beginning of my spiritual journey

Not so long after I discovered the book The Myth of Mental Illness! What drew me to it was the cover which is a painting of a human shaped profile of a head but made completely out of sea life. I have searched the book to find the name of artist or painting but to no avail. But that also was a profund find that changed my life. Thank the Goddess I found that book!!!
[UPDATE--I found the picture!]



Guiseppe Arcimboldo ~ Water (1527_1593)

Next BIG book was my finding The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, by John M.Allegro--and this has a really magical story to the finding ...I walked past this shop in the city centre that sold all kinds of comics, and old books, soft porn, you name it, something was glinting, and I looked into the window and saw one of the books on a shelf there had this golden colour shining in the sun which drew me in, and thats how I found it---the cover of book is colour of psilocybin cubensis mushroom, hence the golden like shining in sun ;))

One of the things this book did for me was make me take mythology far seriously than I had done. Because he shows how it is composed as art, in layers, using all kinds of wordplay, and other literary devices, and how secrets are contained for the initiates--and the central mystery is the spiritual names of the psychedelics and experiences

And another book which totally turned me around (I found out that nearly ALL my books had male authors!) was Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor's The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, and Monica Sjoo's Return of the Dark/Light Mother or New Age Armegeddon? (this book is so very important, because she exposes in depth the so-called New Age falseness and pretence to care for nature etc, and compares that with authentic Goddess religion.

So all these books and more ( I thought I would leave it there for now) have had great effects on my understandings about reality, and my learning and exploration continues, and I dont think it ever stops.

I have recently been reading John Weir Perry's, Trials of a Visionary Mind (you can read a 'summary of it here ) and have also ordered it, and am very looking foreward to it. I had wanted to read this book for a long time. Just starting reading it has sparked an intense research project for me. A wanting to explore how POST-Jungians and feminists think and feel about madness

It was Seth Farby who fairly recently turned me onto Mad Pride (I have briefly explained about this in my intro at these forums)

But I also am wanting to also wonder about the psychedelic question in regard to madness.............I will leave it there for now, but Like I say, I really welcome any feedback....



will: I just interviewed Louis Sass, who wrote the book Madness And Modernism, for madness radio. the interview should be available next week. i'm really intrigued by his work, and he's a very clear and talented writer. you might really find him interesting:

Madness and Modernism-detailed contents

mu: I have begun trying to understand Archetypal Psychology, ala James Hillman.
I had heard of him years back, but oh I don't know, at the time something may have put me off. What comes to mind is this for example--I am an artist, and I eventually chose to go abstract, and when at art school there was this amazing lecture given by this guy called Michael Tucker, and I bought his big book titled Dreaming with Open Eyes, all about the shamanic influences in art, including music---is a really great book. And I think author mentioned how Hillman considered abstract art to be 'broken images' because it didn't show people etc---and at that time that pissed me off lol
But in effect, I notice that I am not a purist abstract artist at all, and am rather a spontaneous artist who allows images to form from chaos---that is may favourite way of doing art anyhow

But from what I have read online about Archetypal Psychology, I feel I can relate to it. Here is a good definition I read last night:

“What really makes archetypal psychology different than Jungian analysis of individuals and culture? There are many levels to this answer, some of which are quite complex, but basically there is a shift in the attitude of the psyche being in us to us being in the psyche. Some would argue that Jung made this shift himself (When we are awake we say we had a dream, but when we are dreaming we know the dream has us). However, the archetypal school draws these elements out in a particular way that brings into question a wide variety of Jungian concepts, including the Self, the Heroic ego, representations, symbols and many other ideas" http://improverse.com/ed-artic.....hology.htm

Now, reading that reminded me of this very powerful thing I'd read in one of THE most beautiful books I have ever experienced (The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram):

“. Indeed, the ineffability of the air seems akin to the ineffability of awareness itself, and we should not be surprised that many indigenous peoples construe awareness, or "mind," not as a power that resides inside their heads, but rather as a quality that they themselves are inside of along with the other animals and the plants, the mountains and the clouds." Pages 226-227” The Spell of the Sensuous)

And from aforementioned link again, (continued):

" Corbin’s placing of archetypal realities in the middle zone of reality reveals the archetype as accessible to imagination first. First when it presents itself as image and so the whole procedure of archetypal psychology becomes imaginative, its tools rhetorical and poetic, its reasoning beyond logic and it goal other than social adaptation or traditional mental health. In terms of therapeutic work, the goal is to restore the person to imaginal realities long since repressed by the culture. That is, the aim is the development of a sense of soul as the middle ground of reality, and the method of therapy is the cultivation of imagination"


So what I thinks is being said there is that, what we have been used to/oppressed by--by culture, and cultures gatekeepers, the shrinks and behavioural psychologists, etc., is a coercive suppression of freedom of our imaginal depths, being. But what happens then is not that imagination suddenly--or gradually-- CAN EVER be suppressed, but that it imagines souless scenarios devoid of imagination--the 'Wasteland', and of course the so-called 'psychotic break' etc etc is when the suppressed freedom of imagination erupts like volcanoe in a natural process of self~healing.

Now remember, I am just speculating here. I am not sure this is exactly what Hillman is saying, but it is what I am imagining.......:)

chiaroscuro: [ you wrote]: " But what happens then is not that imagination suddenly--or gradually-- CAN EVER be suppressed, but that it imagines souless scenarios devoid of imagination--the 'Wasteland'"

This makes SO MUCH SENSE. Reeling.

Love the conception of mind in that Abrams quote too... and the middle zone stuff... this is all pretty great.

But what's a person to DO? Other than take psychedelics. How to bring the imagination out of that endless loop of imagining soullessness?

mu: Great question, and I am exploring this too. years before this I have been exploring this, and many things I have heard from Hillman I have come to in my own ways.
From what I have read, I feel that Hillman is not an idealist. So he is not saying that if you are living in a souless environment that JUST imagining it otherwise will some how magically change it. He is activist also, and encourages that we get freakin angry and passionate about injustice and oppression etc
Surely this is what Mad Pride is all about. It is radical living/being and activism whereby we undermine the very pernicious manipulations of language to encage imposed on mad people by the pharma-psychiatric-governmental monolith by embracing the term 'mad' as benevolent and not de-graded as it is supposed to be via 'normative' peer pressure, etc

So in this respect we are liberating imagination. We are already doing this.
BUT....we also know that many of the 'Wasteland' scenarios we find ouselves in, and are forced to live in (and many people are actually homeless. That is a reality) is real, and this is imagined by the soul-dead mindset authorities, and also people who accept this as the 'real world'

There are many kids, for example, who don't know where vegetables and fruit comes from, they imagine they come from supermarkets (this is no lie!). This situation is so big here in UK that some councils are saying they are going to begin planting 'free' vegetables and fruit in the parks, and that this has only ever been done in ONE park.
Now when I read that I had very mixed emotions--one of joy that this may happen, but also one of utter contempt that this wasn't already freely done!! get me? It means that this barren scene with fruitless 'parks' all mown and so on has been imagined like that by the 'planners'. And people accept this. So the problem isn't JUST these suits in rooms deciding all this grim shit we have to live of corwded souless built up areas, and little parks fenced off etc etc, but people in general imagining this is IT. And thus having no vision, no outrage....

So I feel a big part of this deadness is that also being imagined us is the media circus, and of course our so-called 'education' from school etc, peer pressure, and the sense of having to survive that can make us feel crushed and helpeless. And this is the insanity

Madness surely is coming awake to it...But then the gatekepers quickly are there saying that no we are 'mad' in their negative meaning, and use language and drugs etc to confound us even more. And then we are in the wasteland with the litter and dog shit and lose all sense of imagination IF we don't start looking through it, continuously. Seeing ouselves as a dynamic living being, Alive with spirit
What do you think?


....Imagining soulessness is something Rene Descartes imagined, he imagined :

"I think: therefore I am"

And doing so he identified with his thinking capacity as distinct from his feeling organism in relation with living nature. And his ignoreant imaginings believed that animals were machines, and this idea furthere gave excuse--in a pseudo philosophical cum scientific way--to torture animals for the 'good of humanity' who were 'blessed' with this 'thinking' which was connected with the 'God of reason'----------So you can see all this imagining right here with this dude. And his effect still continues. Millions of animals are still captured and abused due to this souless imagining

dionysiandialect: hey, awesome. reminds me of how much Descartes still continues to affect us. it was because of him that people believe mathematics and numbers are the only legitimate form of objective truth, at least, he said as much and was taken seriously.

however, according to his own dream argument, he did not exist. if you are not thinking, his logic goes, your are not existing. who thinks when they dream?

mu: Exactly, and actions speak louder than words. Like your tone of voice and body language give you away if you dont mean what you say. I want a book by R.D.Laing which goes into that in depth. Read this interesting thing recently:

(Page 7) – "The question of a genetic factor in the formation of the brain that produces a proclivity to psychosis is also part of this same issue of causation. Some current researchers hold to the idea that the effect of the gene currently under scrutiny is one that conveys and inclination towards extrasensitivity as opposed to pathology; if this is so, it would fit the psychological observations much better. The individuals most apt to undergo the episode we are examining are usually endowed with a highly sensitive makeup, so that in childhood they were inclined to perceive falseness, defensiveness, and hidden emotions, more than others. The perception of such characteristics is usually, of course, less than welcome in a family accustomed to denial. These sensitive individuals accordingly were made to feel in an awkward position because they perceived what others did not and hence they were made to feel odd or wrongheaded , resulting in a sense of being excluded from the oneness of the family circle and cast in the role of the family scapegoat. These and other points have been extensively pursued and documented very tellingly in the work of Laing and Esterton in Sanity, Madness and the Family."

So there is the ridiculous Descartes and his followers , animal and people and children torturers, thinking that they are thinkers and that means they 'are', and all the time arenn't even aware what their bodies are doin!! Or tone of voice, and certainly not actions, because they have cut themselves OFF from their bodies, other people, other species, and nature.

And we get born into the legacy of this insanity-all-round, and when we protest in diverse ways, including natural self-healing madness, are deemed by that mindset--basing itself, it thinks, on 'mathematics', as being 'mentally ill', 'dis-ordered'

That mindset treats everything in same way. I was reading yesterday about difference between permaculture, and the prevailing agriculture that looks at plants as products and anything that threatens their product, and monoculture, as the enemy that needs exterminating...

will: If you're not familiar with Paul Levy's work I'd really check it out:

http://www.awakeninthedream.com/

"WE ARE ALL SHAMANS-IN-TRAINING

By Paul Levy

In 1981 I spontaneously went into such an ecstatic state that I was hospitalized by what I call the “anti-bliss patrol.” The authorities had become alerted because I was simply unable to restrain my enthusiasm at the “good news” that was beginning to reveal itself to me about the nature of reality. Stepping out of my usual way of trying to control my experience, during that next year I was thrown in mental hospitals a number of times and (mis)diagnosed as having manic-depressive (bi-polar) illness. I was told that I had a chemical imbalance and would have to go on medication and learn to live with my “illness” for the rest of my life. Little did the doctors realize that although my experience looked like a typical nervous breakdown, I had actually gotten “drafted” into a deeper psycho-spiritual process of an entirely different order – a spiritual awakening/shamanic initiation - that was blowing my mind as it was simultaneously revealing it.

My inner process had spilled outside of my skull and just like a dream was synchronistically expressing itself through events in the seemingly outer world. Finding myself in a meaning-filled, meaningful, and enchanted universe, the world had become animated by spirit, as if it was a living oracle, a continually unfolding revelation that was speaking symbolically. It became glaringly apparent to me that there was an intimate correlation and synchronistic correspondence between what was going on in the internal landscape of my psyche and the seemingly outer world. The boundary between inner and outer was dissolving. It was as if something deep inside of me was expressing itself through the medium of the outside world, and was able to extend itself into the outside world and configure events so as to in-form and give shape to itself.

According to consensus reality, I was “certifiable,” and I was in full agreement, in that I had certifiably stepped out of my self-entrancing, self-limiting, and self-binding conceptual, cognitive mind into a much more expansive “space.” As if snapping out of a trance, I found myself not out of my mind, in the sense that I was crazy, but rather, inside of my mind, which was now discovered to be everywhere, in that I was beginning to realize that I was dreaming.

My parents bought into the psychiatrist’s diagnosis that their only child had a mental illness, as in my parents’ world doctors were genuine authority figures who knew what they were talking about. In the words of the late psychiatrist R. D. Laing, “Attempts to wake before our time are often punished, especially by those who love us most. Because they, bless them, are asleep. They think anyone who wakes up, or who, still asleep, realizes that what is taken to be real is a ‘dream’ is going crazy.” Tragically, with the support and blessing of the psychiatric community, both of my parents passed away convinced their son was crazy.

When we begin to spiritually awaken, our personality structure and sense of who we are can melt down and dis-integrate, as our inner “constitution” is being rewritten. This process can convincingly appear to others as if we are having a nervous breakdown or a psychotic break.

Stepping out of my normal, conditioned, repressed and domesticated self as if breaking out of a prison, I felt on the cutting edge of the big bang itself. It was as if I was becoming attuned to and a receptive vehicle for a deeper, more authentic, less self-conscious and much more unfettered, creative and ecstatic part of myself to freely in-form my experience and give shape to itself. My experience was so mind-blowing that I had trouble “keeping it together,” particularly because previous to the hospitalizations I wasn’t in a safe container but was unrestrained, out in a world that did not understand the value of such experiences. My situation was actually quite dangerous, as during the beginning stages of my awakening I was not able to mediate and channel the transpersonal energies that were activated within me in a way that was acceptable to the culture at large.

The dissolution and breakdown of the old structures of the psyche can become a breakthrough, however, depending on how it is contained and related to by the surrounding community and unfolded. The dis-integration can be the beginning of a coming together at a more coherent, and unified level of consciousness.

Our species and its civilization are currently in the throes of a collective (nervous) breakdown. If what we, as a species, are doing to ourselves (destroying the biosphere, the very life-support system of the planet, to use one example) isn’t collective madness, then what in the world is? Our underlying institutionalized and incorporated structures that are helping to keep us asleep are breaking down and coming apart. Just as with an individual’s psyche, only writ large en masse on the world stage, we are going through a collective shamanic initiation process, a genuine “death/rebirth” experience. The false, illusory separate self, which experiences ourselves as alien from one another is “dying” as the fundamental framework by which we relate to each other and the world, as we incarnate and give “birth” to a truer sense of who we are, realizing our deep interconnection and interdependence with each other and all living beings."

mu: That is a great link Will, I have also listened to the interview he has given with Redice productions, inspired from read ing your link!
Most of what he says completely gells with what I am exploring----He mentions Jung, but I am surprised he doesn't seem to mention post-Jungian ideas from james Hillman, and feminists--I would like to contact him

Reservations I have: Well he seems to separate 'spiritual emergence' from 'nervous breakdown'. I am not comfortable with that. It creates a kind of caste system where some people considers kosher religious visionaries are deemed higher than others who --for ewhatever reason--cannot cope with this mechanistic 'dream' and 'breaksdown in a diverse range of ways. For me that is ALL spiritual. And it is NOT that 'spiritual emergency' "mimics" 'real mental illness'.

Also he seems to suggest 'all of humanity' are undergoing a collective potential transformation' without acknowledging that indigenous peoples were/are already understand what he means and were/are persecuated by the mechanistic mindset. Ie., it is the 'warrior/patriarchal/mechanistic' mindset that is waking up to its own nightmare it has created over the centuries, and will have to face what it has down to people who were understanding the interrelatedness of all species, animals, people, and the land! And that the land has ALWAYS been sacred. So it is not the universe which is 'waking' up, but as I say, that mindset that got lost, and became blind to the sacred.

Also finally, Paul's emphasis on Bush Jr, as being the embodiment of evil (plus collective evil for the people who support him) without acknowledging the complete sham which is the political circus itself which is geared for the pormotion of egotistical criminality and corruption. That is its modus operandi. If we imagine it is JUST Bush, then what about Clinton, and the ones before, and the Founding Fathers and their role in slavery, and the American Holocaust, against Native American tribes?

But thanks so much, a lot of what he says is incredibly powerful and very important!

will: I absolutely agree with you 100%. This is a recurring criticism I have had of the "spiritual emergence" crowd (and one of the reasons I ended up flunking out of California Institute of Integral Studies counseling program, but that's a different story). I have talked with Paul about this quite a lot and he is also in complete agreement. I think the wording of this article is unfortunate as it mis-represents where his thinking is today. I encourage you to contact him with your thoughts, as I think he needs to be more vigilant about not endorsing the "really crazy" versus "spiritual" split. In practice that just comes down to money -- the spiritual people are the ones with money, the "really crazy" ones are the poor folks.

This is of course not to endorse any behavior or experience that is negative or destructive/fearful/harm based, or to somehow say that everything is positive and you have to just go with it. Quite the opposite -- it means that when encountering trauma, fear, suicidality, paranoia -- all the things we associate with 'not spiritual' kinds of madness -- the best way to engage with that is to treat it as being potentially spiritual if worked with and approached with openness, curiousity, compassion, and all the other qualities we use in spiritual practice. Anything pathologizing, disorder-oriented etc just risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, alienating the other, putting them down, dehumanizing them, and all the rest of the mental health oppression we see.

Paul has also looked behind the "Bush-focus" that you address here. He was not an Obama supporter for the same reason I wasn't - the power issues are beyond the personality of the president and the campaign machinery. Read some of Paul's more recent work and I think you'll see a very radical perspective on how power and politics operate behind the scenes of the media spectacle.

mu: If possible, Will, I would VERY much like to hear your story--about your experiences at the California Institute of Integral Studies counselling programme as this is a central interest of mine--This splitting up of 'spiritual emergencies' from 'mental illnesses'. Which as you say directly is the splitting up of the usually middle classes and uppers from the poor, and thus carrying on a very damaging abusive caste system that is even more perncious--if that were possible. But more hypocritical, and blind. So we need to challenge this strongly.
I read this article recently which is very eye-opening , Carl Jung and Schizophrenia:'Jungian Social Neglect,'by Robert Couteau

"My conversations with these analysts revealed a consistent (and odd) response to the idea of working with schizophrenics. For example, I “learned” that (to paraphrase their remarks) “Jungian psychology is not for everyone. It requires a certain amount of sophistication, which state hospital patients [poor and “ethnic” people] tend not to have. Analysis is not an appropriate treatment for schizophrenia. Schizophrenics don’t have the proper ego-structure to benefit from Jungian analysis.” There was also a general belief that schizophrenics are “unemployable” (not a good investment?), “low functioning” (uninteresting?), and always on the “verge of psychosis” (presenting dangerous counter-transference problems?)."

Ie., Same attitude entirely!

You know, I am so glad you are pointing this all out here. I see this as so important because it cuts through the crap. Because--for example, say you believe you have had a spiritual emergence, or know about them etc and yet still promote and contribute to an abusive caste system where the 'mentally ill', 'poor',and the 'ethnics', and women, and children, etc just keep getting the same old abuse...what's changed?! Nothing. There's just been yet a new category made is all, as is the case in the DSM I believe with 'spiritual problems'?

I talked with Seth Farby about this and Seth told me that a huge influence on this splitting up the 'sheep' from the 'goats' is Ken Wilber's influence on the Transpersonal Psychology Movement. For as you know he has this myth of his he calls the "pre/trans fallacy" where he assumes that 'oceanic states of consciousness' which he likens to 'nature mysticism', and various forms of 'schizophrenic' experiences, and so on is 'prepersonal/womb-like' whilst his preference for Eastern forms of mysticism which he deems superior is 'transpersonal'. And there he is as middle class white guru lording it up...At the top of his imagined hierarchy.

There also is an existing power structure behind the scenes of the left right act of politics.
I really am going to read more of what Paul is saying, and would love to get in touch with him!


I like how Paul Levy said that 'diabolic' was the opposite of 'symbolic'---I did a little search and found this:


Anger, madness, and the daimonic

"...when properly interpreted, the symbol of the devil holds truly a coincidentia oppositorium - a coincidence of opposites. This highly significant fact is contained in the etymology of our English term "devil", which as [Rollo] May explains:

'Comes from the Greek word diabolos; "diabolic" is the term in contemporary English. Diabolos, interestingly enough, literally means "to tear apart" (dia-bollein). Now it is fascinating to note that this diabolic is the antonym of "symbolic."...There lie in these words tremendous implications with respect to an ontology of good and evil. The symbolic is that which draws together, ties, integrates the individual in himself and with his group; the diabolic, in contrast, is that which disintegrates and tears apart. Both of these are present in the daemonic. [my emphasis]'


Reading that reminded me of what I have read about the so-called shamanic initiation where symbolically the individual chosen ==by the spirits--to be shaman is visited by demons and/or ancestors and is symbolically 'torn to bits' and then reconstituted usually with an extra portion added to her or his body, often of quartz crystal

And look at this also: Where John Weir Perry is explaining the visionary sequences of so-called 'actute psychotic episodes'

In Trials of a Visionary Mind
page 5:"...The first is an experience of dying or of having already died which symbolizes a disolution of the acustomed self.
The second element closely related to the first, is a vision of the death of the world. These "world-destruction fantasies" involve the disolution of the person's world-image, which symbolizes the accustomed culture or subculture by which the psyche has organized its experience of the world.
Studies of rapid culture change show that the visionary experiences of prophets frequently contain images of the world disintergrating and being reabsorbed into chaos, which then allows a regeneration to occur. In these accounts, it is clear that what is being transformed is the image of the culture. We also see this process in the acute episode; one suffers the collapse of one's accustomed cultural models. One's basic security and long-held value system, as well as one's view of the world, are shaken up and disassembled, preparing the way for their reconstruction. Meanwhile the psyche remains in a state of inchoate potential. The process, however, is autonomous and moves naturally into the reintegrative phase..."

It is clear that disintegration and reintegration as a dynamic reality of both 'inner' (psychological) and 'outer' (the natural cyclical world/nature) is natural living process.
But in not understanding this, and/or suppressing this we create hellish scenarios where the disintegrational reintegrational processes cannot be fulfilled, and thus replacing this alive dynamic process with rigidity, and deadness.

In patriarchal Christian mythology this has been the creation of an anthropomorphized 'Devil' and 'Hell' which are not part of a dynamic which is a whole process of disintegration, reintegration, disintegration....and so on. But of rigid categories that never change, mutate, live

In Eastern belief systems there is the implication that disintegration is inevitable while we are 'here', but one should choose to eventually transcend it and seek all-the-time-bliss. A similar one-sided hope ignoreing the polar-related part of process! This mindset--which includes the present myth of scientism--is like the observation of a dance, and it will insist that some of the movements of the dance they have frozen in their video measuring device do not relate to the other moves they have also frozen on another device. Therefore not even aware of the dance itself...

Another Brave New Poly Pill in a Mono World

...Just take this pill, they say, and you can live longer. What pill? A POLY pill is what pill. Not a red or blue pill a polly pill.
You couldn't make this up!
It has of course been pushed in the news, and there's some weird doublespeak shit going on, as usual.
Well, I have looked on a mainstream so-called 'independent' news site and it says:

"The polypill: Medicine's magic bullet

"The capsule costs pennies, contains a simple cocktail of medicines, and halves the number of strokes and heart attacks. Doctors want to hand it out in the first mass medication for the middle-aged in Britain. So why are the big drug companies so uninterested?" (emphasis mine)



Yet over here, here we read: Big Pharma's Latest Insanity? A "PolyPill" Combining Five ...
" (NaturalNews) What do you get when you combine cholesterol medication, three different blood pressure drugs and aspirin into a single pharmaceutical pill? If you believe the drug company that funded its own study on this chemical cocktail, you get a wonder drug that has all the "benefits" of five different drugs with no more side effects than a single drug!

That's the story from Bangalore, India, anyway, where 2000 citizens of India were recruited into a clinical trial to test these drugs. The use of low-income citizens in developing nations as guinea pigs is now a common Big Pharma practice, by the way. It's cheaper than using Americans as guinea pigs, and the risk of lawsuits from harm or death is much lower in such countries.

According to the results of this study which was funded by the pharmaceutical company hoping to sell this drug, the study subjects taking the five medications in combination had no more side effects than those taking each medication individually.

And thus, it was declared that the more pharmaceuticals you take, the safer they become!"

So did you see the contradiction? Most mainstream news reports pretending that big pharma are against this pill, whilst we find behind the scenes so to speak using '3rd world brown people' as guinae pigs, the pharmaceutical industry are funding it. Of course they are, because world-wide use of a pill taken by people -- made to feel fear about their health even when they are healthy via big pharma-sponsored advertizing etc -- for life, will bring in huge vast profits for them. Along with their other disease-mongering pills they push for all manner of 'problems' like blushing....and whatnot! More and more 'diseases/disorders' seemingly made up every business year!

Yes making out that the might of the pharmaceutical corp. inc. hate 'this darned wonder pill'. Yeah...a pill that is being pushed to everyone worldwide...hmmmmm. This is their spin.

Meanwhile in this polypill hype, no mention is even whispered of prevention of the diseases, this poly pill is supposed to prevent, through natural lifestyles of good food, exercise, and seeing through the mono world's hype...........Not a mention, which is why I am mentioning it.
It is the promotion of symptomatic medicine--which genuine medical people say was warned about and condemned in medical school, and as we see they now have graduated into pre-emptive profit mode!

Not In His Image--- book critique

I remember reading about the book, Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, quite a while ago, and I was put off buying it. I can't remember exactly why--most likely a big reason was the author -- John Lamb Lash -- claiming ancient Gnosticism was earth and body friendly--disregarding all other sources I had researched, and others I had not, that said the reverse.
Later, when I got into a site called Metahistory, and I began reading articles by the author of the book, I am critiquing, I tended to dig what he said in the articles, which were on different themes................
And then eventually a few months ago, I order his book and really looked foreward to it. It was a challenge to my pre-existing knowledge from my research, but I was willing to take that challenge


See, I was under the impression that Gnosticism included very much a belief system that was believing the world and body was a trap, and aim of the intitates was to get back to some kind of eroticised spirit world. I couldn't dig that at all, and had read a very good long essay that greatly argued against it which I had shared about. I really gelled with what the author said. I am not of course opposed to erotic spirituality, but not at the expense of material reality. Not positing some separate realm away from earth and the organism said to be trapping the 'spirit'.

To summarize, the previous essay I had read, prior to reading Lash's theories,titled From Orphism to Gnosticism*, it is said that it was the Orphics who kind of took over the more primal Dionysian religion, and imposed an oppressive dogma which later influenced the Gnostics, and Christianity. And is also stressed, amongst other things, that the more original Goddess-connected Dionysian religion had a freer open interpretation of ecstatic experience. Hence the initiate could integrate their own personal--though sacred--interpretation of the experience usually inspired with sacred medicine/sacraments, whereas with the growth of Orphism, their myth became far more dogmatic, and oppressive, and was the first to be written down! They also 'diluted' the sacraments. And the rituals became more and more formalized.

Lash was saying that this was not so, and claiming to be himself a Gnostic, argues that Gnosticism has been widely misunderstood. He is really a loner with this theory--as far as I'm aware. BUT his interest in all things psychedelic swayed me to hear him out, and so began to read his book with excited expectations!

Its got a great cover.
So I began reading it, and I like the beginning, because he explores how the Christian religion creates a "victim/perpetrator" syndrome where both sides 'need' each other in some sorry self destructive game, and this game is justified by the claim that the Judaic-Christian-Islamic 'God' intends it. And that this self-destructive belief system is in large part the reason for the sadism, and inevitable Holocaust against the indigenous peoples this mindset encountered. I could very much understand that.

Then I put the book aside for quite a while, because of other interests, and recently went back to reading it again.

Lash then starts writing about the Gnostics initiates who he claims had special powers and could see microsopically, and other siddhas and being able to commune with an amorphous light which is a manifestation of 'Sophia' the 'fallen Goddess' which is also Earth.
And he rates the 'romantic' love of nature, trees, clouds, etc as less than this initiated 'superior' communication contact with this white light.

Well, as soon as I continued reading it all was becoming clear that what Lash was laying out was exactly what I had read before, only with a slightly different guise ...I couldn't relate with that at ALL! I felt very let down, because up to this I had been quite seduced by Mr Lash, but this ideas to me were a huge let down. Everything I hate.

The idea of a select few who are in contact with 'an event only known by a few initiates with superhuman awareness and powers'--thus implying that natural deep reverence for the actual events of nature---the moving clouds, trees swaying in the wind, birds singing and flying...flowing water, and the joy one sensually feels through interelation with all this Mystery, and so on---that this wonder is somehow inferior to the 'Gnostic intitates' contact with some talking white light....?

Then he begins explaining the Gnostics cosmological mythos, and claims planet earth is 'trapped'...And when I read that I said --in my head--"HAH!"---its just the same old shit! All his talk about Gnosticism being misunderstood, when he is basically just saying same thing, but being an apologist for it, with the use of 'different' terms, and trying to pretentiously match up modern science to back up this nonesense

On the surface, Lash seems to be liberating us from the Christian oppressive mythology--which of course subconsciously still affects the so-called secular world, its vision, but instead he replaces one toxic mythology with another one! One fraught with even more paranoia, if possible. Because not only is the Earth said to be 'trapped', etc, but he claims the 'Archons'--which are created by Sophia by mistake-- are equivalent with the modern reported 'Greys' whose intent is to beguile and further entrap us.

I stopped reading, as I had read enough.

I have better ways to spend my time, like learning guitar and looking and feeling the slow moving clouds, the fresh green shoots and blossoms, the birds, the shadows........the whole changing Mystery~~~including myself

I see the resolving of crises differently than Lash, and those who want to set down yet more dodgy myth, and/or carry them on.

I am seeing it.

I mean rather I am seeing A solution as when indigenous wisdom meets modern reason and insights. I think this synthesis will be inevitable.......................and thats a good thing. Its well worth exploring freely

* I wanted to link this post to the the essay, From Orphism to Gnosticism, but under the link from Google is a warning that downloading the site can harm my computer. I find this intriguing. Are forces out there not wanting people to read it??!
Anyway, it is up to you if you care to Google that title, and download the site.
I had never had trouble before, and made quite copious notes. It is a shame, because I would like more people to read it than Lash's take on the subject.

pills, pills, more pills , plastic tits, and shaved pubes, and... etc

The Folly of the World Pieter Breugel

I am reflecting on things I have read in the mainstream papers, and seen and heard in a very eye-opening -in more ways than one - documentary series that appeared on mainstream TV.

First the pills: I have been seeing articles about pills. Pills that can stop you from getting, and being fat, pills that can stop you shoplifting, and pills that can stop you smoking cigarettes...etcetera!

The scientific' explanation I read about 'anti-shoplifting' pills, is that they 'work' because they cut off the pleasure centres in the brain people experience when they do 'exciting' things like stealing from shops...

The pills cut off the pleasure centres?!!

I remember as a kid growing up in the 1960s, when the 'swinging' media/culture supported a naive hope in 'technological advances' of the future. There was this crazy idea that we would soon --'in the near future'-- be all dressed in silver space-age Lycra, and only need eat a pill, for our sustenance, just like the new heroes of the age, the Apollo astronauts were said to do in their little tin cans in space, rather than the 'problem' of having to prepare and eat a natural meal...............Isn't this all like some weird dream??
So the brave new future was to consist of buttons you press for instant service, and pills you swallow for instant service. And....it's HERE!
......Isn't it....great....?!


In the news recently was story of a woman who killed herself soon after going on 'anti-smoking' pills. Her family blame the pills because killing herself was not in her nature, so they said.

So to see direct what is going on: the pharmaceutical industry--being as immoral and corrupt as it is--in its profiteering need of forever expanding its business - their empire - will find more and more ways to fuck with our brains. With our bodyminds. Our souls. They won't give a damn about the real deep reasons people smoke, drink, shoplift, eat so much they become obese (if they don't like to), etc etc etc. They will see a 'need' and exploit it. Exploit the people who are told they have a problem, who are fed via their advertizing that all they need to do is pop a pill and hey presto, problem gone.

As I am exploring in other articles, we have seen how this industry exploits people with emotional and physical disturbances--which are labelled mental illnesses by their glorified and patronized salespeople, the psychiatrists, psychologists, teachers, the media, etc--and then they have their pills at the ready fresh off the press--'anti' this 'anti' that.
Can you see their big pill-making/packing machines churning them pills out? Shut your eyes and meditate on this! And at same time imagine the cash registers dinging too. $$$$£££££$$$$.... It's the same deal!
Time to wake up to what is going on people. Tell your friends!



I also saw a documentary about Internet porn, and how it may be effecting children. The female presenter went to a number of schools, and asked the kids--mostly adolescents--questions, and had them looking at pictures. Some distended and extended males penises, (first hardon I'd ever seen on mainstream telly actually), balls, vaginas, women's breasts.

The first programme involved real life models stripping off and seen on a large screen. First models, all women (and very very brave, because they could hear the reaction of the large youthful audience)--The women were all shapes and sizes, and some had large breasts, some smaller. All sizes.

It was already established from the beginning of this documentary that the average kid now will watch 90 minutes of Internet porn a week! And children as young as 11 are very familiar with Internet porn.
So their perception of the world and people is being shaped by porno-world--was the main assertion of the documentary-makers.

The lads in the audience were asked about the breasts of the women models, and most of the lads weren't happy with the natural bodies of the naked women, and said how inferior their breasts were in comparison to the tits they are used to on Internet porn. Yes, plastic tits. Barbie-doll tits.
These young lads viewed 'surgically improved tits' as superior to natural women's breasts!
But reluctantly , when pressed, did say how they liked the biggest natural breasts sported by one of the models, though not as much as falsies.

Later, a selection of lads were brought into a large room in the school and were confronted with an assortment of large life-sized photographs of women's breasts, and asked which ones they preferred. All headed straight for the only false ones there, the plastic tits!

What is even sadder is that later, a gaggle of girls also did! And they said that they want breasts like that, "because it's what the lads want".
Also sad to watch because the girls body language was betraying this shame for their natural bodies.

There was also shame about pubic hair. Being gay myself, I have seen this disdain for pubic hair in the gay community, especially since the 'AIDS/HIV' hoax of the early 1980s! And I have never ever accepted it. I love natural bodies.
I also remember a film by Derek Jarman, called Sebastian, a scene in which Roman homophobic soldiers, in their Baths, shave their bodies with mini scythe-shaped razors .

Some of the girls interviewed said they had shaved their private parts because of the expectations of their boyfriends, and got called derogatory names if they did not conform to peer pressure to do so.
The boys also shaved theirs, and when shown a gallery of unexcited male genitals, laughed at the ones most hairy and said they were 'untidy' and needed shaving.

Many of the teens were asked what kind of porn they'd seen, and all described very kinky sex scenes, including sex with animals.
Many parents, it was said in the programme, either are ignore-ant of, or cannot be bothered to get available software which would create safeguards protecting kids from Internet porn.
A funny/sad scene, in the docu., involved a collection of kids parents, etc, who claimed not to be aware what their youngens could view online, taken to a private cinema and shown what was legal to be shown (ie., they couldn't watch some of the scenes even their kids could watch), and the TV camera was pointed at this audience as they squirmed, and let out howls of shock at the porn scenes they were witnessing.

..............So, yeah. pills pills pills plastic tits, shaved pubes, and....etc. The 'scene' we are in reminds me of some of the scenes from Breugel's and Bosch's paintings, especially Breugel's The Folly of the World. The sense that everything is arse upwards and noone knows whats going on kind of feeling.