April 8, 2007

• Moving Right Along to the Rear

  Know what today is? 

  It’s the first Sunday after the first full ecclesiastical moon after the Vernal Equinox.  The celebration of resurrection isn’t tied strictly to the calendar, nor to the lunar cycles, but to an arbitrary bastardization of the two.  How archaic is that?

  It’s not very archaic, as old things go.  The celebration of the Earth’s resurrection from the dead of winter (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyhow — we are such hemispherists in the Euro-American culture) is older than the Church, but not as old as the moon and stars.

  The Archaic Revival has been on my mind a lot, lately.  Once upon a time, it was a big deal in our household, back when the resident shaman, my everlovin’ Old Fart, thought that I was New Age and he was Archaic Revival, and that the two groups were discrete entities.  He said this morning that the two subcultures seem to be melding, but I suspect that’s more a matter of his perception than of actual action.  His view of the world is not so black-and-white as it was once upon a time.

  Recent entries here have triggered comments about druids, paganism, ancient secret societies, and other manifestations of the Archaic Revival, unless those things are simply nothing more than manifestations of the coming of a new age.  It could be that in order to get on with our transformation, some of us feel a need to go back and unravel some of the fabric of our past culture, to reweave it into today’s reality — something durable upon which to hang tomorrow.  That’s not my style, though.  To me, it is all NOW — at least insofar as I remain present.

  The term, “Archaic Revival,” was coined by Terence McKenna.

  History is ending because the dominator culture has led the human species
  into a blind alley, and as the inevitable chaostrophie approaches, people
  look for metaphors and answers. Every time a culture gets into trouble it
  casts itself back into the past looking for the last sane moment it ever
  knew. And the last sane moment we ever knew was on the plains of Africa
  15,000 years ago rocked in the cradle of the Great Horned Mushroom Goddess
  before history, before standing armies, before slavery and property, before
  warfare and phonetic alphabets and monotheism, before, before, before. And
  this is where the future is taking us because the secret faith of the
  twentieth century is not modernism, the secret faith of the twentieth
  century is nostalgia for the archaic, nostalgia for the paleolithic, and
  that gives us body piercing, abstract
  expressionism,
  
  surrealism,
  jazz,
  
  rock-n-roll and catastrophe theory. The 20th century mind is
  nostalgic for the paradise that once existed on the mushroom dotted
  plains of Africa where the plant-human symbiosis occurred that pulled us
  out of the animal body and into the tool-using, culture-making,
  imagination-exploring creature that we are. And why does this matter?
  It matters because it shows that the way out is back and that the future
  is a forward escape into the past. This is what the psychedelic
  experience means. Its a doorway out of history and into the wiring under
  the board in eternity. And I tell you this because if the community
  understands what it is that holds it together the community will be
  better able to streamline itself for flight into
  hyperspace because what we need is a new myth, what we need is a new true
  story that tells us where we’re going in the universe and that true story
  is that the ego is a product of pathology, and when psilocybin is regularly
  part of the human experience the ego is supressed and the supression of the
  ego means the defeat of the dominators, the materialists, the product
  peddlers. Psychedelics return us to the inner worth of the self, to the
  importance of the feeling of immediate experience – and nobody can sell
  that to you and nobody can buy it from you, so the dominator culture is not
  interested in the felt presence of immediate experience, but that’s what
  holds the community together. And as we break out of the silly myths of
  science, and the infantile obsessions of the marketplace what we discover
  through the psychedelic experience is that in the body, IN THE BODY, there
  are Niagras of beauty, alien beauty, alien dimensions that are part of the
  self, the richest part of life. I think of going to the grave without
  having a psychedelic experience like going to the grave without ever having
  sex. It means that you never figured out what it is all about. The mystery
  is in the body and the way the body works itself into nature. What the
  Archaic Revival means is shamanism, ecstacy, orgiastic sexuality, and the
  defeat of the three enemies of the people. And the three enemies of the
  people are hegemony, monogamy and monotony!

  deoxy.org

  Oh, how that man could rant!  I don’t know whether he had tunnel vision or whether he was simply targeting his message.  That’s probably not important.  Someone needed to say what he was saying, and someone else (I suppose I’m it.) needs to say that’s not the whole story.  Psilocybin is not the only road to ecstasy.  It’s a fine and wonderful way, but if we’re too avid in the collection of it and too liberal in consuming it, the ‘shrooms will go the way that Vedic Soma has already gone and traditional medicinals such as ginseng and golden seal are rapidly going:  into extinction.

  BTW that, “last sane time,” to which he refers, the Paleolithic period of 15,000 years ago, was the Age of  Virgo.  Gaia’s pulse and ours were in synch.

  

  Not only are there other substances besides psilocybin that can allow us to break through the walls of ego and open the windows of infinity, some of those substances are produced in our own brains and can be generated through meditation, or archaic shamanic practices such as drumming, chanting and ecstatic dance, or with New Age tools such as psychotronic machines.

  I recently learned, as I listened to the CD Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything:  Or Old Bob Exposes His Ignorance, that in the 1980s and ’90s, he and I were engaged in similar activity:  using a succession of black boxes, brain tuners, sound-and-light machines and the like, to enhance our minds.  He says he did so much of it, and without any scientific controls or record-keeping, that he has no idea what worked or what didn’t.  That’s how it was for me, too.  We both realize that something changed for us, we like the difference, and others noticed it, but neither of us was able to adequately describe or explain the change.

  If you choose to go chasing rabbits down the electronic tunnels, there are many devices available.  Some of them won’t do anything, but I have not found any credible reports of ones that do harm.  Effective ones do produce irreversible brain change, to which some people refer as brain damage.  It’s a matter of perception, I suppose.

  From my experience, who do I trust?  I don’t know everyone in the field.  For audio/video, I trust Jeffrey Thompson, Brian Paulson and Dick Sutphen.  Since the ‘eighties, I have used one of Bob Beck‘s electronic Brain Tuners.  I have recently learned that before his death he developed a treatment protocol for chronic fatigue syndrome, and I’m working on acquiring what I will need to try it.

  If you go out looking on the web for psionic devices and information, you’ll find everything from aluminum foil deflector beanies and psychalking to Uncle Chuckie’s Mystical Wonders, in addition to a broad range of legitimate devices such as the Brain Gate, which allows quadriplegics to interact with their environment through brainwave sensors.  MKzine appears to be a reliable source of info, and technorati.com covers the subject, too.  Among suppliers,  Tools for Wellness has been around almost twenty years and I have had no complaints about their products or service.

  The U. S. Psychotronics Association might be a useful resource.  I just found it and haven’t had much time to check it out.  Investigate for yourself, and don’t be put off by something just because it seems weird and improbable.  Remember what Marshall McLuhan said: 

  “Only the small secrets need to be protected.  The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.”

  

  • 5:39 pm
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