Program Notes
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Guest speaker: Shonagh Home
https://www.transformpress.com/communications/newsfeed/psychedelic-chemistry-cookbooks-reissued-in-stunning-boxed-setPIKAL and TIKAL Commemorative Editions
Date this lecture was recorded: August 11, 2018
Today’s podcast features a recent talk given by Shonagh Home at the New Moon Mycology Summit that was held in Wingdale, New York. As she speaks of humankind’s loss of some of the powerful symbols that paganism once provided, Shonagh weaves in specific examples of ways in which her clients have leveraged the imagery experienced in mushroom trips to resolve issues in their everyday lives. Shonagh also tells the story of how she came to be a medicine woman.
“Our state-run, Prussian education system, which is worldwide by the way, is designed to shut down imagination and creative genius to produce a predictable and compliant populace.” —Shonagh Home
https://www.shonaghhome.com/visionary-mushroom-practicumVisionary Mushroom Practicum:
A Medicine Woman’s Perspective
on the Practical and Mystical Layers
of Visionary Mushroom Medicine
Shonagh Home
Shonagh Home is a shamanic therapist, teacher, writer and poet. Her specialized private sessions and retreats are probing and revelatory, assisting clients to break chronic, self-defeating patterns, and move into empowered personal sovereignty. Shonagh is an international public speaker on the subject of visionary shamanic-spirit medicine, a voice for stewardship of the honeybees, and a teacher on the subject of Traditional Foods. She is author of the books, ‘Ix Chel Wisdom: 7 Teachings from the Mayan Sacred Feminine,’ ‘Love and Spirit Medicine,’ ‘Poetic Whispers from the Green Realms,’ and ‘Honeybee Wisdom: A Modern Melissa Speaks.’
Website: www.shonaghhome.com
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic
00:00:23 ►
Salon.
00:00:23 ►
And I’m pleased to begin by thanking Dennis T. and Michael D.,
00:00:28 ►
who made direct donations to the salon to help offset some of our monthly expenses.
00:00:33 ►
And I’d also like to thank Nikita, Wesley W., and Tyler V.,
00:00:39 ►
who are also supporting these podcasts by supporting me on Patreon.
00:00:44 ►
Now today, after too long of an interval since we last heard from her,
00:00:49 ►
our friend and sometimes co-host of these podcasts, Shauna Holm, is back with us.
00:00:54 ►
And as it turned out, on what was my birthday last August,
00:00:58 ►
Shauna was in New York at the New Moon Mycology Summit.
00:01:02 ►
I have to admit that, well, I wasn’t aware of this event before it happened.
00:01:07 ►
However, after seeing the lineup of speakers they had this year,
00:01:10 ►
I’m hoping that they’ll continue their work
00:01:12 ►
and produce another one of these events next year.
00:01:16 ►
And from the looks of the program,
00:01:17 ►
I have the sense that the East Coast now has its very own mushroom conference
00:01:22 ►
on the scale of the legendary Telluride Festival.
00:01:27 ►
The talk that Shauna gave is titled,
00:01:29 ►
Traversing the Imaginal Realms, the Sweet Nectar of the Mind,
00:01:34 ►
and in it Shauna presents word pictures of some of the realms that many of us have also visited from time to time.
00:01:41 ►
So now, here’s Shauna.
00:01:42 ►
So now, here’s Shauna.
00:01:54 ►
I’m going to open with a greeting that I think a few of you will recognize and appreciate.
00:01:59 ►
Elin Sela Lumen Omen Tielvo.
00:02:04 ►
A star shines on the hour of our meeting.
00:02:09 ►
And so I read Lord of the Rings years ago,
00:02:13 ►
and I remember coming to that line and pausing and reading it out loud a few times just to get a feel
00:02:18 ►
for how Elvin sounded in this realm.
00:02:24 ►
And it stirred something in me that I knew I had touched as a child,
00:02:31 ►
because I was very connected to the fairy as a young girl. I had an Irish grandmother
00:02:38 ►
who had the accent, and she was a master storyteller.
00:02:45 ►
And she would speak very quietly, so we as children had to be quiet and listen,
00:02:50 ►
and she would tell these amazing stories that had been passed down to her as a child,
00:02:56 ►
and down and down.
00:02:58 ►
The Irish are known for their storytelling, and there were a lot of fairy stories there.
00:03:05 ►
So when I look back, I realize I had started at this very young age,
00:03:10 ►
kind of in my own tradition, to get a taste for something that I think we have almost lost entirely.
00:03:20 ►
And so I’m very hopeful that in our own way, we will be bringing some of that back.
00:03:27 ►
So I did have a sense of the presence of very magical beings around me as child.
00:03:35 ►
And I longed so dearly to cross the threshold into their realm.
00:03:48 ►
into their realm. And there was a time on this planet when cultures near and far had their own unique connection to that realm. Now Tolkien had access to that world and rather
00:03:57 ►
than dismiss it as imaginings, he explored it with curiosity and wonder, and he brought forth, as we know,
00:04:07 ►
extraordinary stories that captivate us today. He crossed the threshold into the mythic realms,
00:04:18 ►
the imaginal worlds that Carl Jung would describe as the collective unconscious,
00:04:24 ►
that Carl Jung would describe as the collective unconscious,
00:04:28 ►
and Tolkien called it the realm of fairy,
00:04:32 ►
which is the experience of the otherworldly.
00:04:36 ►
And this is a place that has receded over time into the deep and quiet waters of our psyches.
00:04:41 ►
Now to our modern world,
00:04:44 ►
which is ruled by the surface consciousness. All of this is simply
00:04:49 ►
make-believe and a form of escapism, shall we say, from the real world. And yet, so many, many people
00:04:58 ►
have been stirred by what Tolkien brought forth for all of us.
00:05:04 ►
by what Tolkien brought forth for all of us.
00:05:09 ►
So he wrote, quote, Tolkien wrote,
00:05:14 ►
The normal, tangible, visible world is only an appearance.
00:05:18 ►
Behind it is a reservoir of power,
00:05:21 ►
which is manifest in these forms.
00:05:28 ►
If we could drive a well to this reservoir, we would tap a power that can not only change the visible forms of things already existent, but sprout up with a boundless wealth,
00:05:35 ►
things never before known, potential, but not realized. Now there is a fellow named Dr. Lance Owen. He’s an MD and he’s made a scholarly
00:05:48 ►
study of both Tolkien and Jung and he has got some fantastic talks on YouTube. I highly recommend
00:05:54 ►
looking him up. But he quoted Jung as saying, imagination, a natural human function, is atrophying in the modern world.
00:06:10 ►
Dr. Owen spoke of Tolkien walking along the Cornish coast,
00:06:15 ►
deep in his thoughts, when a name entered his mind.
00:06:21 ►
Eärendil.
00:06:24 ►
Eäandil. Ayarandil. His name permeated his mind, and a poem came to him.
00:06:34 ►
And when he returned home, he wrote this poem down, and he shared it with a friend, and this person asked, well, what’s it about? And Tolkien responded saying,
00:06:50 ►
I don’t know. I’ll find out. He didn’t say, I’ll go home and make more up. He said,
00:07:11 ►
He said, I’ll find out. In other words, he didn’t dismiss it as simply something from the imagination.
00:07:22 ►
And Dr. Owen described Tolkien as having the ability to open to the mythic realms and link and interpret the dimensions. And this is something that is innate in all of us,
00:07:28 ►
but very sadly it’s been programmed out of us in various ways.
00:07:34 ►
Our state-run Prussian education system, which is worldwide, by the way,
00:07:39 ►
is designed to shut down imagination and creative genius
00:07:45 ►
to produce a predictable and compliant populace.
00:07:51 ►
In addition, we are fed imagery and story by our media
00:07:57 ►
that flows through modern scrying machines
00:08:01 ►
in the form of the television, cell phones, and other devices that provide the story
00:08:09 ►
and the imagery courtesy of Disney, Time Warner, and other multinational corporations that have
00:08:19 ►
taken over for the imagination to provide their own brand of influence.
00:08:26 ►
Before that, we had the Industrial Age,
00:08:30 ►
which was ushered in with the spell word progress.
00:08:35 ►
And away went the long-held traditions of apprenticeship and mentorship
00:08:41 ►
and the original flavors of small villages and towns whose people passed
00:08:49 ►
down the myths and story of their folk and whose imaginations were very much active and
00:08:56 ►
accessible.
00:08:58 ►
And if we go back even further, we will see how the church banished the magical beings of pagan folk everywhere they could get a foothold.
00:09:11 ►
I think this takes us to the origination point where our innate connection to the imaginal or mythic realms began to falter.
00:09:28 ►
or mythic realms began to falter. Thomas Sheridan, an Irish author and filmmaker,
00:09:35 ►
speaks of how the monks and missionaries of the Roman church banished magical beings on lakes.
00:09:46 ►
He notes that pagan folklore has many associations with water, as does our deep psyche, which is symbolized by the watery depths.
00:09:52 ►
While a great number of magical beings in the Irish tradition were found in the deep waters of lakes and also wells, the church conducted rituals to banish these monsters
00:09:59 ►
from the lakes as a symbolic act to remove the old gods and goddesses, thereby delivering a
00:10:07 ►
message to the pagans that their druids had no power. The druids, who were the priestess class
00:10:15 ►
of the Irish, whose job in part was to maintain the magic and the mythic stories of the gods and
00:10:22 ►
goddesses and inhabitants of the unseen realms that were held in the minds of the pagan people of Ireland.
00:10:30 ►
Now some of these magical beings were said to go underground.
00:10:34 ►
The Tuatha Dé Danann were a supernatural race in Ireland.
00:10:41 ►
They were highly skilled in magic.
00:10:44 ►
The Milesians arrived at some point and a battle ensued
00:10:48 ►
and the twahadidon retreated beneath the land and became known as the she
00:10:55 ►
she is the gaelic word for mound so they became known as the people of the mound
00:11:00 ►
or the fairy mounds and they retreated to a beautiful realm just beneath
00:11:06 ►
the surface of the seen world. And in Sheridan’s words, quote, they have retreated to the margins
00:11:15 ►
of our perceptions. This is a powerful metaphor of the magical connection human beings have had with the mythic or magical realms,
00:11:27 ►
imaginal realms. This has been almost lost to us entirely as people around the world have been
00:11:35 ►
steered over time toward a mechanized, atheistic, five-sense material reality where corporate
00:11:43 ►
governance reigns supreme over a populace that has been
00:11:46 ►
contained within a Roman civil system and programmed since birth to serve the state
00:11:53 ►
and its investors. The deep psyche has been abandoned in favor of the surface consciousness.
00:12:01 ►
of the surface consciousness.
00:12:04 ►
Nothing to see over here, folks.
00:12:06 ►
Back to work.
00:12:10 ►
Carl Jung wrote in his commentary on the Red Book,
00:12:11 ►
quote,
00:12:16 ►
If you remain within the arbitrary and artificially created boundaries,
00:12:19 ►
you will walk as between two high walls.
00:12:23 ►
You do not see the immensity of the world.
00:12:27 ►
But if you break down the walls that confine your view then the ancient sleeper awakens in you if you look outside yourself you see the far-off forest
00:12:36 ►
and mountains and above them your vision climbs to the realm of the stars And if you look into yourselves, you will see on the other hand, the nearby as far off
00:12:50 ►
and infinite, since the world of the inner is as infinite as the world of the outer. Man lives in
00:12:59 ►
two worlds. And so I find it very interesting that the mushroom, with its ability to take the intrepid
00:13:09 ►
seeker into otherworldly realms inhabited by strange and wondrous intelligences, is making
00:13:16 ►
quite an impression on growing numbers of people at this time. I can’t help but wonder if the mushroom is a kind of ambassador to the deep
00:13:27 ►
waters of the psyche, providing an invitation to travel the imaginal realms or the sea of the
00:13:34 ►
collective consciousness in hopes that the seeker will return with something that will inspire both
00:13:41 ►
himself and possibly others, calling one back to connection with the mythic
00:13:47 ►
realms, a place our ancestors cherished. Traditionally, those who actively sought out
00:13:55 ►
these realms were the shamans of their communities. Barbara Tedlock, Ph.D., author of The Woman in the Shaman’s Body, described them as this, quote, shamans are seers,
00:14:08 ►
oracles, and oral poets, and their artistic language provides a healing path for their
00:14:17 ►
patients. Interestingly, I found the earliest shamans were the poets, and they often imbibed a ritual ungent, such as the
00:14:28 ►
need of inspiration, or soma, which took them into high trance states whereby they would cross the
00:14:35 ►
threshold into the mythic realms and return with magical information that cast a kind of spell with its inspiring and beautiful language.
00:14:47 ►
Certainly, Tolkien and others like him accomplished that without the use of visionary substances.
00:14:54 ►
And yet, we are today living in a world of manufactured realities
00:15:00 ►
that absorb our attention and stifle imagination
00:15:05 ►
as we hurtle ever farther away from nature
00:15:08 ►
and our own human nature toward, in my opinion,
00:15:13 ►
a transhumanist dystopia
00:15:15 ►
where nature is discarded in favor of artificial intelligence and technologies
00:15:21 ►
whose inventors claim can replace every human function as they thumb
00:15:26 ►
their noses at the genius of living intelligence, which is nature, which is you, which is me,
00:15:35 ►
which is the vast ocean of consciousness that flows through us.
00:15:49 ►
through us. And so, the mushroom makes itself known to many now, and calls the curious and the creative to the strangest of realms. Now, we know it changes the brain when ingested, and we know it
00:15:57 ►
has the capability to heal the mind of numerous imbalances, and provide an experience that informs and uplifts and can change the course
00:16:06 ►
of one’s life in extraordinary ways. It can also issue a harrowing experience that can leave the
00:16:15 ►
seeker shaken and traumatized. It’s not necessarily a good thing to trifle with. Now, the use of visionary substances through history was often
00:16:29 ►
used by initiates who were highly trained and had a reference point for what we today
00:16:36 ►
would consider strange or baffling. So how to enter these realms and translate the experience for ourselves and others?
00:16:47 ►
We’re acting as a kind of visionary when we eat the mushroom,
00:16:50 ►
and some of us return better able to understand ourselves and the mystery,
00:16:56 ►
and some of us weave the experience into art or music or poetry.
00:17:04 ►
The mushroom takes us into the hidden depths of the psyche and many
00:17:08 ►
have experiences there that connect them with intelligences that speak to them and share
00:17:15 ►
information, whether it is through conversation or symbolic imagery or the felt experience.
00:17:22 ►
And how does one translate that? This poses a problem for many people,
00:17:28 ►
whether it is a puzzling dream or a strange mushroom journey. How do we interpret the
00:17:34 ►
experience? Well, nature speaks in symbol and metaphor, and the psyche, which is the Greek word for soul, also speaks in symbol because the psyche is nature.
00:17:49 ►
When we are dreaming or imagining or traveling the mushroom realms,
00:17:54 ►
we have left the known world and we’ve entered the unknown.
00:17:59 ►
Upon our return, it can be helpful for us to translate the experience somehow.
00:18:07 ►
our return, it can be helpful for us to translate the experience somehow. I’ve noted that these experiences are as unique as each one of us and often seem to reflect what is going on in the
00:18:14 ►
psyche or they accentuate our natural inclinations or they surprise us altogether. In my therapeutic practice, I often work with clients that have had a mushroom journey
00:18:28 ►
and they’re absolutely mystified as to what the experience meant. And so I’m going to give you a
00:18:35 ►
couple of examples and I will start with what we would call a bad trip. A client of mine
00:18:43 ►
emailed me saying that he had taken a large dose of mushrooms the night
00:18:48 ►
before and found himself trapped within cold, dark dungeon walls. And try as he might, he was not able
00:19:00 ►
to escape. And this lasted for about four hours. And it put him through a kind of psychic
00:19:07 ►
hell. The following morning, he spoke with a couple of friends who chalked it up as a bad trip.
00:19:13 ►
And he emailed me and we had a Skype conversation later that day. And he was badly shaken and
00:19:22 ►
actually worried about his mental health moving forward.
00:19:25 ►
So when he shared with me the experience,
00:19:28 ►
I pondered the symbolism of being trapped in a dungeon
00:19:31 ►
and just asked him,
00:19:34 ►
Okay, where do you feel trapped in your life?
00:19:40 ►
And he sat back and said,
00:19:43 ►
Everywhere, everywhere.
00:19:46 ►
And it turned out that this man had two businesses.
00:19:49 ►
The first one was doing well, so he opened up a second business.
00:19:53 ►
It was doing very poorly.
00:19:54 ►
And the first business was supporting the second business,
00:19:57 ►
which was bleeding dry, the first business.
00:19:59 ►
And every month was a dance as to which bill to pay.
00:20:02 ►
And then there was the mortgage, of course, to pay.
00:20:05 ►
And oh, by the way, his partner had just had a second child
00:20:09 ►
and was not working at the time.
00:20:12 ►
So that night’s mushroom journey for him
00:20:14 ►
was not going to be a foray into the realm of fairy
00:20:18 ►
dancing with the shimmering beings, no.
00:20:21 ►
The prevailing theme in this man’s deep psyche
00:20:24 ►
was one of immense stress with no escape.
00:20:30 ►
And so with an understanding of that powerful symbolic message, we then moved into the deeper layers of what is his need to take such extraordinary risks.
00:20:44 ►
Whose eyes was he dancing to? What is he need to take such extraordinary risks?
00:20:47 ►
Whose eyes was he dancing to?
00:20:49 ►
What is he trying to prove?
00:20:50 ►
To who?
00:20:56 ►
And so through that, his demeanor began to change as he understood the genius of what the mushroom showed him.
00:21:02 ►
And he finished that conversation utterly changed, completely different mindset,
00:21:10 ►
and has proceeded to take the very necessary steps to disabuse himself, should we say,
00:21:20 ►
of the crippling stress. And he’s made amazing changes thus far.
00:21:32 ►
Now I have another client who shared a very, what opened up as a very frightening experience on the medicine, where she spent the first half, she told me, in a dissolving state.
00:21:39 ►
And so she had no sense of her body. Her identity was slipping away and she was trying desperately to hold on.
00:21:48 ►
And the tide then turned in the second half of this journey where she became aware of a massive
00:21:54 ►
set of wings that were attached to her back. And this filled her with joy and she spent the rest of that journey dancing in her backyard in a state of
00:22:06 ►
ebullience. Now my client at the time was in the process of ending her marriage and so we worked
00:22:14 ►
with the symbolism of this journey and I noted that in her current life she was in a kind of
00:22:21 ►
chrysalis and so everything she knew was dissolving around her and her own identity
00:22:28 ►
was dissolving. So her journey on the mushroom reflected a time of profound transformation,
00:22:37 ►
reflecting the loss or dissolving of herself as she knew herself, and then providing a kind of prophecy,
00:22:46 ►
the symbolism of the massive wings that could take her to new heights.
00:22:52 ►
Her own psyche was revealing her ultimate transformation and evolution
00:22:57 ►
through the dissolution of her marriage.
00:23:01 ►
And I can tell you that she has since reinvented herself
00:23:04 ►
and has indeed transcended
00:23:07 ►
and moved beyond her former self. So through her journey into what was her own nature, the vast
00:23:15 ►
forest of her psyche, she experienced a profound and archetypal story, if you will, where a woman descends into the depths of the unknown
00:23:26 ►
and arises from the darkness with wings,
00:23:31 ►
which engendered a joy that caused her to dance beneath the stars.
00:23:38 ►
And I would say that her ancient ancestors would be proud.
00:23:43 ►
Now, I’ve also spoken with people who have experienced
00:23:47 ►
entering the mushroom realms and meeting with a loved one who passed away. Each of these two
00:23:57 ►
people I spoke with shared with certainty that they had sat in conversation with that person and they were visibly changed by the experience.
00:24:07 ►
Each felt a profound sense of awe and wonder
00:24:11 ►
that such a thing was even possible.
00:24:14 ►
And one of them connected to her deceased mother
00:24:17 ►
and through that conversation was able to resolve
00:24:21 ►
what had been years of unresolved anguish around that relationship.
00:24:29 ►
Now, this kind of experience is deeply intimate and very meaningful, and it has given these people
00:24:37 ►
a sense of closure, as well as the knowing that spirit lives on long after the body has expired. Now modern psychiatry
00:24:47 ►
would dismiss that altogether and even possibly pathologize the experience.
00:24:54 ►
Yet our conventional system of psychology ignores the spirit, the soul, the living consciousness that is found within each of us that flows through the imaginal realms.
00:25:11 ►
And so the imagination, the realm of fairy, is dismissed as simply escapism or delusion or made-up nonsense.
00:25:21 ►
Now that’s not to say that people don’t go into psychosis, but I’m not speaking of
00:25:25 ►
that here. I’m speaking to a function that is innate in each and every one of us. Now Carl Jung
00:25:34 ►
wrote, we cannot realize another world ruled by other laws. The reason being that we live in a specific world, which has helped to shape our minds and
00:25:47 ►
establish our basic psychic condition. We are strictly limited by our innate structure,
00:25:54 ►
and therefore bound by our whole being and thinking to this world of ours. Mythic man,
00:26:01 ►
to be sure, demands a going beyond all that.
00:26:08 ►
But scientific man cannot permit this.
00:26:13 ►
To the intellect, all my mythologizing is futile speculation.
00:26:19 ►
To the emotions, however, it is a healing and valid activity.
00:26:29 ►
It gives existence to a glamour that we would not like to do without, nor is there any good reason why we should.
00:26:41 ►
The mushroom may well be our answer not only to help us heal, but also to open the inner doorway to the vast terrain of the psyche,
00:26:49 ►
the realm of fairy, an inhabited place of yet-to-be-met intelligences.
00:26:57 ►
Speaking of which, one of my clients called me after a profound mushroom experience.
00:27:07 ►
She felt she’d lost a part of herself over the years in her partnership role, and she was seeking a light within, a deeper sense of purpose and selfhood. As she fell into the mushroom trance, she sensed the presence of
00:27:15 ►
a feminine being, and this being revealed herself as a gossamer-wingeded woman and she carried a guiding and motherly quality and was immensely kind.
00:27:28 ►
My client told me she spent the better part of her journey with this being who proceeded to tell
00:27:35 ►
her that she had been with her throughout her life and was waiting for this moment to reveal herself
00:27:41 ►
and that she would provide wise counsel and comfort for this woman moving forward.
00:27:49 ►
They spoke of many things during that journey and later when my client spoke with me,
00:27:53 ►
she was deeply moved and visibly, visibly transformed. That experience enhanced her purpose as a mother, and her intention to homeschool her children has morphed into a desire to accrue more knowledge with which to share and encourage other parents who are also wanting to homeschool.
00:28:28 ►
figure felt like a familiar and cherished presence and I could see that my client had touched the realm of fairy and through her engagement with one of its inhabitants had returned filled with
00:28:33 ►
inspiration and a greater sense of purpose and appreciation for who she is as a woman.
00:28:42 ►
Interestingly, she took the mushroom a second time shortly thereafter, and we were both
00:28:48 ►
surprised when she reported the same winged woman returned to her. And that experience for her
00:28:57 ►
cemented the connection she felt with this being and their conversation continued and the journey focused on her
00:29:07 ►
unfoldment as she continues on her path and now my client lives her life with a powerful sense
00:29:16 ►
that she is never alone that a magical being has her back and is guiding her wisely
00:29:27 ►
being has her back and is guiding her wisely. However, this is not something she would share with just anyone, of course, because the majority of folks in our society would consider her
00:29:35 ►
delusional. And no doubt, the psychiatric community would be more than glad to diagnose her with a
00:29:41 ►
condition and dope her up with drugs. And yet she is quite
00:29:45 ►
grounded and sane, and she has deepened as a person. In fact, she is more mature now and more
00:29:54 ►
sure of herself. She no longer feels lost and insecure. She’s been shifted by two journeys into the lush forest of her psyche with the powerful assistance
00:30:07 ►
of our ancient mushroom friends. And so this reminds me of my own experience during my
00:30:15 ►
first year of mushroom journeys when I entered on what became a monthly high dose year of journeys.
00:30:27 ►
And so this particular one,
00:30:29 ►
I entered the journey completely heartbroken and bereft.
00:30:34 ►
And I was lying alone in silent darkness.
00:30:37 ►
And as the mushroom took hold of me,
00:30:39 ►
I said, please be gentle with me.
00:30:42 ►
I come to you with no skin left, just my broken heart.
00:30:49 ►
And with eyes closed, I saw a white orb moving toward me,
00:30:53 ►
and then I realized it had wings, and I realized, that’s a white owl.
00:30:58 ►
And it flew to me and morphed into an exquisitely beautiful woman with long white hair and piercing blue eyes
00:31:08 ►
and a dress of luminous white owl feathers. And she said, I am white owl. I am your medicine,
00:31:16 ►
and I will work with you, daughter who longs. And she said, you will be birthed tonight from daughter who longs to daughter who knows.
00:31:26 ►
And that began a journey into the realm of fairy that I will cherish for the rest of my life.
00:31:35 ►
And it shifted me away from the younger, grasping daughter who longs
00:31:41 ►
and pushed me over a threshold onto the path of wise woman. White Owl became my
00:31:50 ►
tutelary spirit and she continues to guide me today as I walk the path of the medicine woman.
00:31:58 ►
And so I write about this in great detail in a book I wrote, Love and Spirit Medicine.
00:32:04 ►
It’s a little different from the
00:32:06 ►
majority of books on the subject. It is a woman’s telling, and we tell it very raw and vulnerable,
00:32:14 ►
and it details my journeys into the mythic realms, if you will. Now, how do we handle the experience of other intelligences in the realms of the imaginal?
00:32:28 ►
Clearly, both Tolkien and Jung opened themselves to the experience, and in so doing, they were enhanced by it.
00:32:37 ►
The information delivered by the magical inhabitants of that realm served those men with extraordinary wisdom and knowledge that continues
00:32:46 ►
to inform us today. In his book Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, Jung wrote, quote,
00:32:54 ►
Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are
00:33:01 ►
things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life.
00:33:08 ►
Philemon represented a force which was not myself.
00:33:13 ►
In my fantasies, I held conversations with him,
00:33:16 ►
and he said things which I had not consciously thought.
00:33:20 ►
For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I.
00:33:24 ►
He said I treated thoughts as it was he who spoke, not I.
00:33:28 ►
He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself,
00:33:33 ►
but in his view, thoughts were like animals in the forest,
00:33:36 ►
or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added,
00:33:39 ►
quote, if you should see people in a room,
00:33:42 ►
you would not think that you made those people up,
00:33:44 ►
or that you were responsible for them. He confronted me in an
00:33:46 ►
objective manner and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do
00:33:53 ►
not know and do not intend. So I have been on a personal wisdom quest through my journeys in the
00:34:02 ►
mushroom realms and I’ve apprenticed myself to
00:34:05 ►
the mushroom teachers for over seven years now. And this has linked me to the innermost realms
00:34:13 ►
of my psyche, the realm of fairy, with its endless array of characters. Thomas Sheridan describes
00:34:20 ►
this as, quote, generating the gods or rather invoking the higher forces of my own ancestral archetypal forces present within me.
00:34:30 ►
I love that.
00:34:32 ►
So when I take the mushroom, I slip into a deep trance state where I feel the presence of other intelligences, and I instinctively know they are benevolent.
00:34:46 ►
intelligences and I instinctively know they are benevolent. There’s a sense of familiarity as if we are old friends separated by the veil of forgetting. I feel these intelligences enter my
00:34:55 ►
body and they speak through me in poetry. This is a very ancient form of shamanic practice, and it has long been the domain of women.
00:35:07 ►
For example, the seers and oracles of the Norse tradition, the vulva, and the Greek prophetesses.
00:35:16 ►
Today, this experience would, of course, no doubt be pathologized, so it requires an intrepid spirit,
00:35:23 ►
with an open mind, a little courage,
00:35:26 ►
and one who is free from the chains of societal conditioning.
00:35:30 ►
And I would add also one who is emotionally grounded with a good handle on their sanity.
00:35:35 ►
So the beings I meet while in mushroom trance can be found in dreams as well.
00:35:43 ►
Ronald Keith Salmon wrote of them saying this, quote,
00:35:47 ►
the creatures who visit us in dreams carry within them an invitation to re-enchant our lives,
00:35:55 ►
to participate in a greater reality. If we treat them as powerful strangers and ask permission to know them and be known,
00:36:08 ►
they may begin to share with us their intimate secrets.
00:36:12 ►
Secret intimacies not readily available through our collective pool of knowledge,
00:36:18 ►
not through our myths, not through our stories, not through any of our scientific textbooks.
00:36:26 ►
Through these secret intimacies, our dream creatures offer an invitation
00:36:31 ►
to re-establish an accord with the natural world.
00:36:38 ►
Now, our ancestors were in touch with both the seen and unseen inhabitants of that natural world.
00:36:44 ►
And in the introduction to the book,
00:36:46 ►
Young on Nature, Technology, and Modern Life,
00:36:49 ►
it reads, quote,
00:36:50 ►
modern man goes about things backwards,
00:36:53 ►
depriving himself of nature’s inherent guidance and wisdom,
00:36:56 ►
which presents itself regularly in dreams, visions, and creative fantasy.
00:37:09 ►
And so I’m going to share a personal, intimate story with you.
00:37:16 ►
It’s a story of how I am called to the mushroom realms, and I’ll share a bit of my own experience in those realms. But first, a little background. Seven years ago, my first year of mushroom journeys, as I said, developed into a monthly foray
00:37:27 ►
into the worlds of the mushroom, where I encountered very strange beings that began
00:37:32 ►
to teach me things. And they offered me insight on the wounds I’d experienced in my life,
00:37:39 ►
helping me to see the deeper teachings of those experiences. They dropped clues about the system we’re in,
00:37:47 ►
interestingly, and they directed me to the study of law and contract of all things.
00:37:53 ►
And they continue to teach me about the power of the mind, and they are hammering into me the
00:38:00 ►
importance of the mind and taming the dragons of my thoughts. And now they are teaching
00:38:07 ►
me magical things, you could say, how to work within this electromagnetic field in which we
00:38:13 ►
find ourselves. And the cool thing is I will pick up a book later and I read something in this book
00:38:19 ►
about a certain way of doing that kind of thing. And I realized, wait a minute, I just had that
00:38:25 ►
conversation with the beings two months ago. So it’s a nice confirmation. And so I have formed
00:38:31 ►
relationship with these beings. And they are the enchanted characters that inhabit the forest of
00:38:38 ►
my psyche. And I’m not crazy. I’m simply in touch with something that our mechanized world tells us is not real and therefore of no value.
00:38:50 ►
I communicate with these beings and when they speak, I listen.
00:38:55 ►
For they have imparted in me a profound connection to spirit,
00:39:01 ►
along with cherished wisdom and guidance that has deepened me as a person and informed
00:39:07 ►
the work that I do with my clients.
00:39:11 ►
And so Monday, April 23rd of this year, I got into bed around 10 o’clock, and as sleep
00:39:17 ►
beckoned and I was entering a different mindset, poetry began streaming into my mind. And I recognized a familiar quality that
00:39:28 ►
I have come to cherish from the inhabitants of the realm of fairy. And so I reached for my digital
00:39:35 ►
recorder and I laid back down and I let the words flow through me. And this invitation came streaming
00:39:42 ►
through me. This is what they said.
00:39:45 ►
And I just speak as I’m speaking now.
00:39:47 ►
And it comes through.
00:39:49 ►
You will come play this weekend.
00:39:52 ►
And we will dance with our fair friend.
00:39:55 ►
We wait patiently for you.
00:39:58 ►
When timing’s right, we will imbue your mind with good spells that we cast.
00:40:03 ►
To help you raise your vessel’s mast
00:40:06 ►
and steer your ship to waters clear.
00:40:09 ►
Daughter, know you’ve naught to fear.
00:40:13 ►
Take our hands as we take yours
00:40:15 ►
and steer your ship to magic shores.
00:40:19 ►
The good folk call you Friday night
00:40:21 ►
to tell you that your future’s bright.
00:40:24 ►
Though you fret and worry so,
00:40:27 ►
we will say you’re in the flow. Just be calm and let it come, and then get ready for some fun.
00:40:34 ►
You are in a sea of change. It is time to rearrange the rooms within that mind of yours.
00:40:41 ►
Your ship will land on distant shores. Though we’ve receded from the minds of
00:40:48 ►
many races, many kinds of folk who once knew us so well, so many stories they did tell, and though
00:40:56 ►
it seems we’re gone forever, we advise you, daughter, never let yourself forget our folk use that good mind to invoke along with mushroom magic there
00:41:07 ►
we’ll come in with greatest care and open doors within your mind once locked yet now we can unbind
00:41:17 ►
not only your spell others too there will be more than a few human beings, fair and wise, who can see with open eyes
00:41:28 ►
and hearts as well, the good folk we, who you once knew as the fairy. And so before you hit the hay,
00:41:37 ►
we want you to know today that we are walking by your side and your good heart gives us good pride.
00:41:45 ►
We are entering your dreams.
00:41:48 ►
We are coming through in streams.
00:41:50 ►
More poetry you will recite.
00:41:53 ►
Until then, dear, we bid good night.
00:41:58 ►
So I had no prior intention of doing the medicine that following weekend,
00:42:05 ►
and it just so happened that I was going to have my home all to myself.
00:42:09 ►
And then there was a big, fat full moon in Scorpio that weekend as well.
00:42:14 ►
And so I ate five dried grams in the darkness of my bedroom, and I traveled inward.
00:42:23 ►
And what came through was a message that was both personal and collective
00:42:29 ►
from the inhabitants of the mushroom realms and so like the seers and the poets of old,
00:42:36 ►
I will share with you an excerpt of what came through and I share it in the spirit of
00:42:41 ►
returning from the realms with a message for those with ears to hear.
00:42:47 ►
And it is my hope that it will touch and inspire you and deepen your own connection to the
00:42:53 ►
imaginal realms that live within you.
00:42:56 ►
All right, so this began and I fell into the realms.
00:43:00 ►
It was exquisitely beautiful.
00:43:03 ►
And so I just lie there with eyes closed with my recorder whatever
00:43:06 ►
comes out gets recorded and then i transcribe it and so they said wise folk once knew our power
00:43:15 ►
well this is stuff they do not sell deep in trance we have you now. This one is a holy cow. We’ll deliver you your rhyme. You will get it in
00:43:27 ►
good time. We once were known to your good folk. We the ones you have invoked. You can feel the
00:43:36 ►
resonance. Tonight you’ll with the fairies dance. In your circle all alone you’ve got us on the telephone.
00:43:47 ►
Not a dose you often take.
00:43:53 ►
Now you’re thinking of a snake, serpent that it can deceive.
00:44:02 ►
But also it was known to Eve as one foretelling, giving sight, one helping to see the light.
00:44:09 ►
Yes, it’s been forgotten here, and we are resurrecting seers, eyes to see and ears to hear, and not to fall into old fears. Changing history, you could say, calling now a
00:44:18 ►
higher play. The true intelligence is found beneath you in the holy ground.
00:44:26 ►
The earth, a metaphor for you, and so do not be so confused.
00:44:33 ►
True intelligence is found growing up from sacred ground,
00:44:39 ►
living wisdom bound to earth, a new era you will birth.
00:44:50 ►
bound to earth, a new era you will birth. What of Tolkien, I ask? Fairy man in human mask?
00:45:00 ►
The hand of Faye, he knew it well. His stories, oh, they really sell. You see, when people hear a truth,
00:45:07 ►
they can detect it like a sleuth. It’s still recognized in heart. It’s still possible to start, to bring good folk back into life, away from suffering, toil, and strife. This place,
00:45:15 ►
it can be found. It lives here in hallowed ground, in the mind, the holy temple. You are given just a sample of a place that can be birthed, bringing
00:45:26 ►
beauty to the earth. We do not seek to possess, for if we did, it would be a mess. We simply offer
00:45:34 ►
our good counsel. Take it all, or just an ounce will satisfy. Yes, just a drop. In your mind,
00:45:42 ►
we’re like a mop that can absorb the detritus and sweep aside nevertheless.
00:45:49 ►
And help you birth an overused word.
00:45:53 ►
But do not think that it’s absurd.
00:45:56 ►
We’re speaking now, the feathered birds opening doors that once were shadowed.
00:46:01 ►
Opening the ground that’s hallowed.
00:46:04 ►
That’s been hidden hidden well cared for
00:46:07 ►
time to open up that door cleaning up your temple fine helping you to see divine though that world
00:46:15 ►
it hurts to watch that good place to see it caught and snared in what’s a spider’s web but we say time does flow and ebb and what would seem a dark
00:46:28 ►
earth’s spell will meet its end all will be well this a promise of a kind that you don’t easily
00:46:36 ►
find but feel it daughter oh such peace to be felt by all so sweet peace of mind is what they call it.
00:46:47 ►
This our hope that will befall it, this a place where life can be,
00:46:52 ►
overseen by good folk we who had to go forth inwardly.
00:46:58 ►
So while they’ve poisoned outer plains, beneath the ground we’ve rearranged,
00:47:07 ►
and we continue stirring soil, this we thinks a worthy toil and when good soil is stirred on earth it will produce a heavenly birth
00:47:15 ►
opening doors of good hearts wise clearing dust out of their eyes attic windows opening bringing sunshine we’re hoping lighting
00:47:27 ►
up the darkest places where one sees the friendly faces exist there too we hold your hand good folk
00:47:36 ►
from a distant land rescue mission if you will we will stay with you until your temple’s cleaned, your soil is fertile. We’ll unlock
00:47:46 ►
the serpent’s girdle so you all can once more breathe. And in your minds, you will conceive
00:47:54 ►
a place of beauty. We repeat, but it’s important that you greet the face of beauty with respect. When you do, you will connect. But this connection, this one’s true.
00:48:09 ►
It’s one that lives inside of you. A mystery, a prism’s vast, you do steer this vessel’s mouth
00:48:17 ►
with what we’d call integrity. It’s curious how we’re ignored and now earth’s children they get bored if not ensnared
00:48:27 ►
in their device for they are caught like wretched mice but we will not give up on you good children
00:48:36 ►
of the earth so few left there with eyes that see and yet more waking presently. Holding you in poetry,
00:48:49 ►
opening third eye to see you’ll have control of the wheel.
00:48:52 ►
Those who torment, they will heal,
00:48:55 ►
for it’s a game of words they play.
00:49:00 ►
But we can best that we the fae in whatever language use, we can come in and infuse a kind of oil change for your car, helping you navigate the hour.
00:49:08 ►
Your car is a 98, a 17, a starry gate, fun to think, a gate that walks, a gate that loves and
00:49:17 ►
likes to talk, an open gate for love and truth. We, the folk of perpetual youth, playing with those words of yours, helping
00:49:27 ►
you to laugh at chores. Some levity we bring to you, for this gate has been much abused.
00:49:35 ►
Imagine that abandoned gate that for so long none knew its fate. A long forgotten gate of old, but old great stories have been told
00:49:47 ►
in languages too many to count.
00:49:50 ►
For this is an infinite fount of life force
00:49:53 ►
living wondrous here.
00:49:56 ►
Life force giving birth to years of multitudes diversified,
00:50:00 ►
most of which prefer to hide,
00:50:03 ►
but living there just the same,
00:50:05 ►
the mind of beauty far from plain, and yet its many planes survive,
00:50:12 ►
and they will do more than just thrive.
00:50:16 ►
We work the clocks of distant suns, spinning with a gentle hum,
00:50:23 ►
influencing the narrative.
00:50:25 ►
Let us please give claritive, good mindsets to Earth’s good folk.
00:50:30 ►
Tonight, daughter, you invoke healing to this earthly plane
00:50:35 ►
so good Earth folk will regain their senses and their dignity.
00:50:39 ►
We say the Earth, it will be free.
00:50:42 ►
That’s our vote, we cast it so we have worked tirelessly helping those
00:50:50 ►
with eyes to see to open hearts to wise ones we will help turn this earth this good garden
00:50:57 ►
helping those whose hearts have hardened helping those good folk to wake and the sorcerer’s spell to break. Remember in your Catholic school,
00:51:07 ►
with their dogma and their rules, they caught you whispering, called you out,
00:51:12 ►
asking your good friends about fairy stories they might hold. Oh, daughter dear, you are quite bold
00:51:19 ►
playing with those silly nuns who could use a little fun. Well, well, you are waking now.
00:51:28 ►
And this one is a holy cow.
00:51:33 ►
So that is just an excerpt from what was three hours of this.
00:51:40 ►
So what does one do with that?
00:51:45 ►
So I first transcribe it, and then I pour over the words, and I feel into the metaphor, symbolic meanings.
00:51:56 ►
I let the message speak to me, and feel for its nourishment. And if I feel it is appropriate and has a relevant point to make,
00:52:08 ►
I will sometimes share these words in the hopes, again,
00:52:12 ►
that they will uplift and inspire.
00:52:15 ►
And I’ve had a few people say, you know, that it reminds them of,
00:52:21 ►
that gives them a sense of the mushroom and how it speaks to them.
00:52:26 ►
And so in the words of Dr. Lance Owen, quote,
00:52:30 ►
What of the visionary, the one who really does go into the place of fairy and have an experience,
00:52:36 ►
a reality they perceive as objective, as real, as independent of their own conceiving creative self?
00:52:43 ►
They are also hermeneutics,
00:52:46 ►
bringing back from the experience a word.
00:52:50 ►
They’re translators.
00:52:52 ►
And so the mushroom provides a bridge
00:52:55 ►
to the imaginal realms for those of us
00:52:58 ►
raised in a mechanized world.
00:53:00 ►
It offers us a chance to enter into conversations
00:53:03 ►
with elements found deep within the mystery of our psyche.
00:53:09 ►
And so, I encourage everyone, use your imagination.
00:53:17 ►
Spend time there, whether we’re eating mushrooms or letting our minds wander unhindered by external influences.
00:53:24 ►
eating mushrooms or letting our minds wander unhindered by external influences, and spend time in nature and see magic in everything. Venerate the spirits of nature
00:53:35 ►
and hold them as precious. Cherish them. Our connection to the mystery returns when we engage them.
00:53:46 ►
And so I will finish with one last quote from our beloved Tolkien,
00:53:53 ►
who said, quote,
00:53:55 ►
The land of Faerie is wide and deep and high.
00:54:00 ►
In that land a man may perhaps count himself fortunate to have wandered,
00:54:05 ►
but its very mystery and wealth make dumb the traveller who would report.
00:54:11 ►
The fairy gold too often turns to withered leaves when it is brought away.
00:54:17 ►
All that I can ask is that you will receive my withered leaves as a token, at least,
00:54:23 ►
that my hand once held held a little fairy gold.
00:54:27 ►
Thank you.
00:54:28 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
00:54:36 ►
I hope that you picked up on something Shana said early in her talk, and I quote,
00:54:41 ►
Our state-run Prussian education system, which is worldwide, by the way, And I quote, Well, that’s something I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about lately,
00:55:00 ►
and I suspect that you’ve also noticed the fact that, well, the education system, at least here in the States,
00:55:05 ►
is mainly organized to condition young people to a life of spending the best eight hours of their days being forced,
00:55:13 ►
well, either by a teacher or by the economics of needing a job,
00:55:17 ►
of being forced to spend those most precious hours of your life each day doing things that, well,
00:55:23 ►
that really have no lasting meaning to you other
00:55:25 ►
than to provide a paycheck. And I’m not knocking the teachers and school administrators here.
00:55:31 ►
The vast majority of them go way above and beyond the requirements of their jobs
00:55:36 ►
so as to better equip our children for the world that lies before them. Unfortunately,
00:55:42 ►
that world no longer seems to be able to provide a satisfactory life for most
00:55:47 ►
people. But it’s the system that we must work to change, my friends. Simply changing the people
00:55:52 ►
who are operating the system ultimately doesn’t fix a thing. So how do us ordinary people go about
00:55:59 ►
making any significant changes to the existing system? Well, I sure don’t know.
00:56:06 ►
During my life, I’ve worked within the system,
00:56:09 ►
trying to change things from the inside,
00:56:11 ►
and I’ve marched and demonstrated against the system as well.
00:56:14 ►
But nothing that I’ve done so far seems to have made any actual improvement.
00:56:20 ►
And that’s why, for at least the last 20 years or so,
00:56:24 ►
I’ve mainly lived my life in the underground,
00:56:27 ►
basically just ignoring most of the rules and regulations that the ruling elite have put in place.
00:56:33 ►
So I don’t have any words of wisdom for you if you’re looking for ways to change the system.
00:56:39 ►
The only thing that I’ve come up with for myself is, well, I just ignore it as best I can. Of course,
00:56:46 ►
if you have young children that you have to worry about, and you maybe have a mortgage and a car
00:56:52 ►
payment and credit card bills, well, you just can’t quite ignore the system just yet. The best
00:56:58 ►
you can do, I guess, is to smile, get to a festival or conference whenever you can, and frequently repeat to yourself,
00:57:06 ►
illegitimate non-carborandum.
00:57:09 ►
In other words, don’t let the bastards grind you down.
00:57:14 ►
Now, on a cheerier note,
00:57:16 ►
I’m happy to report that Joshua Marker is about to release
00:57:20 ►
a commemorative box set edition of Ann and Sasha Shulgin’s important books, P. Call and
00:57:26 ►
T. Call. And if you’re new to the salon, you should know that the titles of those books are actually
00:57:32 ►
acronyms that stand for phenethylamines I have known and loved, and tryptamines I have known
00:57:38 ►
and loved. And while I already have copies of both of those books, I have to admit that if I was still going to work every day in my old corporate job,
00:57:47 ►
I would for sure buy a copy of this commemorative collection just for the photographs alone.
00:57:54 ►
Joshua has spent a couple of years putting together this edition of these two classics,
00:57:59 ►
and they include hundreds of candid photos,
00:58:02 ►
from Sasha as a Boy to Ann and Sasha’s Courtship, to photos of candid photos, from Sasha as a boy to Anne and Sasha’s courtship, to photos of testing
00:58:06 ►
compounds, the orange 70s couch, and much more. Plus, there are a couple of dozen essays from
00:58:13 ►
friends and colleagues of the Shulgens. Now, there’s going to be a release party on the 8th
00:58:18 ►
of October at Moe’s Books in Berkeley, and that’ll be a great opportunity to get the autographs of many
00:58:25 ►
psychedelic luminaries who are all going to be in one place. And in addition to Ann Shulgin,
00:58:30 ►
John Hanna and David Presti will be speaking, and there’s also going to be a roundtable discussion
00:58:36 ►
with the contributors as well. So if you’re close to Berkeley on the 8th of next month,
00:58:41 ►
Moe’s Books will be a great place to find the others. And for now, this is
00:58:46 ►
Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends.