{"id":216,"date":"2004-07-04T03:19:00","date_gmt":"2004-07-04T03:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=216"},"modified":"2004-07-04T03:19:00","modified_gmt":"2004-07-04T03:19:00","slug":"under-the-spell-of-sulis-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=216","title":{"rendered":"Under the Spell of Sulis-2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>But before I could visit the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.romanbaths.co.uk\">temple of Minerva Sulis<\/a>, there was the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bathspa.ac.uk\/schools\/historical-and-cultural-studies\/sophia\/conferences\/exploring-consciousness.asp\">conference<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n<p>Arriving at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bathcitychurch.org.uk\/forum.html\">The Forum<\/a>, a 1930s movie palace now home of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bathcitychurch.org.uk\/\">Bath City Church<\/a>, I was a little perplexed by the church&#8217;s name on the marquee. But the building <em>looked<\/em> right, and once inside, I knew. <\/p>\n<p>For that weekend, the stage was decorated with potted <em>Salvia divinorum<\/em>, San Pedro cactus, morning glory, and other interesting plants&#8211;not quite the BCC style, I&#8217;m sure. But they fit with an auditorium full of psychonauts, astrologers, Pagans, and (mostly Pagan) academics.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>My list of people whom I knew of but had never met included the grand couple of psychoactive chemistry, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cognitiveliberty.org\/shulgin\/shulginbio.htm\">Alexander<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.erowid.org\/culture\/characters\/shulgin_ann\/shulgin_ann.shtml\">Ann<\/a> Shulgin, as well as two outstanding astrologers, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.robhand.com\/\">Robert Hand<\/a> from the US and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.astrology.co.uk\/LizG.htm\">Liz Greene<\/a> from England, not to mention the two German ethnobotanists, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.erowid.org\/culture\/characters\/ratsch_christian\/ratsch_christian.shtml\">Christian Raetsch<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.erowid.org\/culture\/characters\/muller-ebeling_claudia\/muller-ebeling_claudia.shtml\">Claudia Mueller-Ebeling<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>More to come. Meanwhile, some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chasclifton.com\/bathviews.html\">views of Bath<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,8,13],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-england","tag-entheogens","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3u","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":215,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=215","url_meta":{"origin":216,"position":0},"title":"Under the Spell of Sulis-1","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 3, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Back from England, I am planning several blog posts as I edit the photos and video clips to go with them. Left: the base of a column that once helped to support a high, vaulted roof over the main swimming pool in the Roman baths, rebuilt in the 2nd century\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":219,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=219","url_meta":{"origin":216,"position":1},"title":"Under the Spell of Sulis-4","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 5, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1 Part 2 Part 3At today's exchange rate, it costs US $16.38 to tour the excavated ruins of the Roman baths that give Bath its name. I paid the entry fee twice, last Sunday and last Monday. It was worth it.Full of tourists as it is, the place still\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":221,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=221","url_meta":{"origin":216,"position":2},"title":"Under the spell of Sulis\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 7, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Under the spell of Sulis (5) Part 1 Part 2 I have added one video clip to Part 3 and two video clips to Part 4","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":218,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=218","url_meta":{"origin":216,"position":3},"title":"Under the Spell of Sulis-3","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1 Part 2RIGHT: Indigenous Avon skipperThe 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":494,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=494","url_meta":{"origin":216,"position":4},"title":"The logistics of sacrifice (1)Looking\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The logistics of sacrifice (1)Looking at an artist's rendition of the Roman temple of Minerva Sulis at Bath, UK, you will see a thin plume of smoke arising from the altar outside the temple. There appears to be no fuel, just smoke.I got to thinking about animal sacrifice, not the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}