Journalism

Richard Neville looks back at the war in Iraq on its 5th anniversary and discusses the failure of mainstream media and such sites as YouTube to convey the full spectrum of horrors committed by occupiers. Puppy tossing is a metaphor of psychopathic breakdown. Neville compares those who rely on conventional news sources to the prisoners in Plato's cave - ill equipped to see what's really happening. And as for the instigators of the invasion, why are they still at large?

Like mushrooms which push their gleaming tops up through moist pats of poo and decaying matter, so too tipis, domes and tents of all descriptions appear virtually overnight in fields and open spaces across the Earth. A particular strain of the human species occupy these clusters of temporary dwellings. Whether these humans have gathered for the sake of music, dance, art, expression or sheer celebration, they have had enough cause to take leave of whatever routine existance they may normally maintain, to make it to an outdoor event - commonly known as a festival, that which I have come to define as a Planetary Gathering.

As they begin their magick rite, the sky clouds over and darkens. A cold wind sweeps the top of Glastonbury Tor, the legendary British power spot where ley lines converge and primal dragon energy is concentrated. Four altars are set up with wooden poles forming triangular spaces, littered with talismans. Inside the circle between the altars step 12 people, a ragtag collection of pagans, gypsies and travellers that represent the source races of humanity. As a brilliant zig-zag flash of lightning breaks the clouds, Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule steps into the circle followed closely by two others, their six arms waving like a spider, spinning, measuring and cutting the thread of life. The initiates are pierced through their chest and sewn together with a string web, then anointed as they sing a range of tones to activate their chakras, the energy centres running up their spines. This was the ‘13th Tribe’ weaving, a boggling ritual to unite the warring races of humanity and connect to the earth, and you haven’t seen anything yet…

What the fuck, you’re probably thinking? Here’s the deal: the world is stranger than you believe. And one of the strangest of the strange is Australia’s own Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule. He’s a ‘chaorder magickian’ who dabbles in invoking Godforms, mutating his own body, travelling the astral realm, and manifesting his will in any number of exotic rituals across the world, from Uluru to the pyramids in Egypt. But tonight we’re sitting round an open fire in a concrete backyard in a dilapidated share house in Brunswick, in the suburbs of Melbourne. There are ley lines here too, but the power lines overhead are more evident. A life-sized, hand-carved clay statue of the Goddess Kali is here with us, terrifying Kali with her eight limbs and long rolling tongue, adorned with skulls round her neck and a belt of human hands.

1 > Metaraving: Bright Lights and Sweet Spots

Burning Man, the annual festival held on the vast canvas of an ancient lake bed (called the "playa") in the Black Rock Desert, northwestern Nevada. As an unparalleled universe of radical self-expression and non-dogmatic ritual initiated on San Francisco’s Baker Beach by Larry Harvey and Jerry James in 1986, Burning Man would become, following its transition to the Black Rock Desert in 1990, an outlandish pilgrimage center for alternative art and performance communities in the Bay Area, the West Coast, across the US, and around the world. The event is backed by decades of Californian freaklore. In his discussion of the “cults of Burning Man”, Erik Davis (2005: 17) outlines “cultural patterns” manifesting in this “promiscuous carnival of souls, a metaphysical fleamarket, a demolition derby of reality constructs colliding in a parched void”. Refractions of Californian spiritual counterculture more generally, these milieus of participant gravitation—the Cult of Experience, the Cult of Intoxicants, the Cult of Flicker, the Cult of Juxtapose, and the Cult of Meaningless Chaos—are cultures of performance and praxis overlapping with on-site vibe tribes, and their variant styles.

Dennis McKenna is one of the leading figures in the global psychedelic and scientific communities investigating plant entheogens and indigenous plant medicines. He was involved with the “Hoasca Project” studying ayahuasca usage by members of the Church de Vegetal and recently issued the manifesto “Ayahuasca and Human Destiny”. Along with his late brother Terence, Dennis co-wrote the book “The Invisible Landscape” which revealed their psychedelically influenced insights into the nature of reality and spacetime they received during “The experiment at La Cholerra” in South America in 1971 (later recounted in Terence’s book “True Hallucinations”). Here, he talks at length about what happened at La Cholerra and how that influenced his later work with ayahuasca.


Rak> Dennis you received your doctorate in 1984, so you’ve been studying plant entheogens for over twenty years now professionally. I’d like to backtrack just a bit to talk about how you got into the psychedelic and plant sacrament culture. In your brother Terence’s book “True Hallucinations” he details your adventures into Amazonian shamanism, could you tell us a bit about those times and how you and Terence began?

DENNIS> Right. [True Hallucinations] was Terence’s book but I was one of the main subjects in it. We wrote together a book in 1975 called “The Invisible Landscape” which we were co-authors on. That was an attempt to kind of lay out in scientific terms and make sense of our experiences at La Cholerra. But True Hallucinations was more like a novel version of that. The Invisible Landscape was like a pseudo-scientific screed in a way, and True Hallucinations was more like a travel novel of our adventures in the Amazon kind of thing.

Darpan is a healer, musician, performance artist, and vision quest facilitator in the Northern Rivers area of NSW and probably Australia’s best-known authentic shaman. He was inspired to explore ayahuasca, the South American hallucinogenic vine by the late Terence McKenna and has devoted himself to learning the ways of this most potent spiritual activator and using its wisdom to heal and enlighten a wave of Western spiritual seekers. Undergrowth’s Kathleen Williamson, Rob Bruce and Des Tramacchi caught up with Darpan to discuss the burgeoning ayahuasca culture and what it means for a planetary re-connection…

"Sure, something's 'fighting' 'it' and you may try to ignore 'God' like it's some game, but that's just some crap John Lilly came up with because it is the elemental mind tunnel cocaine flies in on, and addicts get a god complex like they own 'the place'."
-quotes from poster RAMACHARAKA on Bluelight.ru


Ketamine is a relative newcomer to 'the scene,' making its mark first on the cyberpunkadelia crowd in the early 80's as "Vitamin" or "Special" K (or just K). It is officially used as a pediatric and veterinary anaesthetic, and because of this is mainly available via pharmaceutical diversion. On 'the street' it is sold either as liquid in sealed ampules for injection, or as a powder which is usually dried out from the liquid vials and then cut. Ketamine is one of the main adulterants in 'ecstasy' tablets and this has led to rather embarrasing situations for me and many others in the past (like passing out after doing lines in a lecture theatre and being woken up by my lecturer with my credit card, a rolled-up dollar bill, and half an uncrushed tablet still sitting on the desk. Oh what I would give for my tolerance to be that low again...).

All artwork by Oli Dunlop

Beginnings: Reckless experiments with Brugmansia x candida at Mum and Dad’s…

When I was about eleven years old I found a pamphlet warning of the dangers of common poisonous plants in Australian gardens. I found the whole subject morbidly fascinating. I committed the information to memory and described the plants and their toxic side effects to anyone in my family who would listen. My eldest brother had delved into occultism, so when I explained to him that one of the plants in the pamphlet, Datura X candida (popularly known as “Angel’s trumpet” on account of the large, perfumed, trumpet-shaped flowers) caused “hallucinations,” he informed me further that such plants had been used by witches in the compounding of hallucinogenic ointments that caused the illusion of flight in those who rubbed themselves down with the drug dissolved in fat and soot. My curiosity went into override, but try as I might, I couldn’t find a single specimen of Datura X candida to further my investigations, so I put it “on the back burner” and misspent most of my remaining youth in other ways.

Taking the top off the saucepan was like lifting the lid on the last four years. That was the last time I’d smelt this abominable odour, the last time I’d attempted to drink cactus juice. I screwed my face up in anticipation. I knew what was coming but I had to remind myself it was a short-term sacrifice (the pollution of my tastebuds) for a long-term gain (up to sixteen hours of orbiting the stratosphere). It was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

The OxyContinues...

OC20s, OC40s, OC80s, percocets, lortabs, fentanyl lollipops for the kids, methadone, morphine, codeine, HEROIN. Yes, the nefarious scourge of constipating pain-relieving euphoric drugs in the opiate family knows no boundaries in the world of labels and drug slang... and certainly has an uncontained and spectacularly diverse fan base, from Rush Limbaugh to the CIA.

Hook me up with an Oscar, bro! If it's alright could I pop round to visit Harry, if he's in..? Can't wait till Sister Morphine comes back to town. Fuck you up like a Percocet, let's find us some panacea at a Mexican pharmacia! Yep... the nurse who loved me has apparently also loved ALL the other guys too.