Tag: entheogens

Gallimaufry: Tab Clearing

On By Chas S. Clifton

Having been knocked down by a head cold the past week, I am just cleaning out some old links.

• Should you use digital cameras for ghost-hunting?

I notice that a lot of the ghost-hunting articles in Fate magazine count “orbs” as evidence of spirits. But are they just artifacts of the digital photographic process?

• I think I want to read Breaking Open the Head.

In a similar vein, I recently bought Dale Pendell’s latest, Pharmako/Gnosis, and it is another stunning combination of entheogenic analysis, poetry, and pharmacology.

• You won’t find “Paganistan” here, but these religious-affiliation maps are interesting.

I note from the low affiliation counts in counties that match the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona and much of the Lakota reservations in South Dakota that tribal religions were not censused either. This map’s concentration of Episcopalians in western South Dakota, however, is the result of that church’s presence on the various reservations.

• Bloggers like to note odd Google searches that brought readers to their blogs. Mine today is from Google Turkey: “sacrifice sheep watch woman video.” Does that seem a little creepy to you too?

Under the Spell of Sulis-3

On By Chas S. Clifton

Part 1 Part 2

RIGHT: Indigenous Avon skipper

The first evening of the consciousness conference ended with a cruise into the English rain forest, in the company of indigenous shamans. Our boat moved at a stately 5 knots or so down the dark and shimmering Avon, away from the town and into a green tunnel: the sinister Salix, the ghostly Umbellifereae. Techno/world music thumped in the main saloon in the indigenous dusk until, by a deserted mission station at the water’s edge, our indigenous pilot swung the bow around, we returned through the ancient Weston lock, and glided back from the green tunnel into the stone walls of dreaming Bath.

In this video clip, the rain-forest cruise is leaving Bath, heading down the River Avon. Watch your head.

Under the Spell of Sulis-2

On By Chas S. Clifton

But before I could visit the temple of Minerva Sulis, there was the conference to attend. I arrived midway through the first day, 24 June, considerably jet-lagged, after a journey on two airplanes, two trains, and my feet.

Arriving at The Forum, a 1930s movie palace now home of the Bath City Church, I was a little perplexed by the church’s name on the marquee. But the building looked right, and once inside, I knew.

For that weekend, the stage was decorated with potted Salvia divinorum, San Pedro cactus, morning glory, and other interesting plants–not quite the BCC style, I’m sure. But they fit with an auditorium full of psychonauts, astrologers, Pagans, and (mostly Pagan) academics.

We presenters really had only 20 minutes out of the allotted 30, once you subtract the introduction and the question-and-answer period. Some people (like me) still wrote out papers with citations, such for our own security, while knowing that we would have to condense them drastically.

My list of people whom I knew of but had never met included the grand couple of psychoactive chemistry, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, as well as two outstanding astrologers, Robert Hand from the US and Liz Greene from England, not to mention the two German ethnobotanists, Christian Raetsch and Claudia Mueller-Ebeling.

More to come. Meanwhile, some views of Bath.

Witchcraft Medicine

On By Chas S. Clifton

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia M =üller-Ebeling, Christian Rätch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I’ll read anything that R?tsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The translator here is Annabel Lee, whose work also appears in the journal Tyr — see the October 18 entry.

The book is more a study of cultural transformation using texts and art work. The three “explore the demonization of nature’s healing powers and sensuousness, the legacy of Hecate, the sorceress as shaman, and the plants associated with witches,” to quote the back-cover blurb.

This book is more historical than hands-on; from a practitioner’s position, I would rank it behind Dale Pendell’s work. But it’s still fascinating and inspiring.

One warning: don’t trust anthropologists making etymological arguments. “Cathar” (the heretics) does not derive from the German word for “tomcat.” (Storl gets it right: it’s from the Greek word for “pure.”) Nor does Boogie-Woogie, I will bet, derive from the same Indo-European root as the Russian Bog, “god.”

Witchcraft Medicine

On By Chas S. Clifton

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia M =üller-Ebeling, Christian Rätch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I’ll read anything that R?tsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The translator here is Annabel Lee, whose work also appears in the journal Tyr — see the October 18 entry.

The book is more a study of cultural transformation using texts and art work. The three “explore the demonization of nature’s healing powers and sensuousness, the legacy of Hecate, the sorceress as shaman, and the plants associated with witches,” to quote the back-cover blurb.

This book is more historical than hands-on; from a practitioner’s position, I would rank it behind Dale Pendell’s work. But it’s still fascinating and inspiring.

One warning: don’t trust anthropologists making etymological arguments. “Cathar” (the heretics) does not derive from the German word for “tomcat.” (Storl gets it right: it’s from the Greek word for “pure.”) Nor does Boogie-Woogie, I will bet, derive from the same Indo-European root as the Russian Bog, “god.”

Witchcraft Medicine

On By Chas S. Clifton

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia M =üller-Ebeling, Christian Rätch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I’ll read anything that R?tsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The translator here is Annabel Lee, whose work also appears in the journal Tyr — see the October 18 entry.

The book is more a study of cultural transformation using texts and art work. The three “explore the demonization of nature’s healing powers and sensuousness, the legacy of Hecate, the sorceress as shaman, and the plants associated with witches,” to quote the back-cover blurb.

This book is more historical than hands-on; from a practitioner’s position, I would rank it behind Dale Pendell’s work. But it’s still fascinating and inspiring.

One warning: don’t trust anthropologists making etymological arguments. “Cathar” (the heretics) does not derive from the German word for “tomcat.” (Storl gets it right: it’s from the Greek word for “pure.”) Nor does Boogie-Woogie, I will bet, derive from the same Indo-European root as the Russian Bog, “god.”

Witchcraft Medicine

On By Chas S. Clifton

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia Müller-Ebeling, Christian Rätsch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I’ll read anything that Rätsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The translator here is Annabel Lee, whose work also appears in the journal Tyr — see the October 18 entry.

The book is more a study of cultural transformation using texts and art work. The three “explore the demonization of nature’s healing powers and sensuousness, the legacy of Hecate, the sorceress as shaman, and the plants associated with witches,” to quote the back-cover blurb.

This book is more historical than hands-on; from a practitioner’s position, I would rank it behind Dale Pendell’s work. But it’s still fascinating and inspiring.

One warning: don’t trust anthropologists making etymological arguments. “Cathar” (the heretics) does not derive from the German word for “tomcat.” (Storl gets it right: it’s from the Greek word for “pure.”) Nor does Boogie-Woogie, I will bet, derive from the same Indo-European root as the Russian Bog, “god.”

Pokemon the Pagan

On By Chas S. Clifton

Here is a scholarly controversy that I had been unware of: whether there is a conflict between the teachings of Wicca and of Pokemon. That assumes that Pokemon has “teachings,” of course.

Meanwhile, getting ready for a workshop on traditional European entheogens next summer, I’m enjoying revisting Eliot Cowan’s Plant Spirit Medicine.