shazaman

Forget the war on terror: global military has been engaged in a decades-long campaign to find chemicals that can control the mind, and 50 years after their first experiments it seems the battlefield of the brain is once again front and centre, writes Rak Razam...



According to the US Centre for Strategic Command, the US is presently engaged in a campaign of "Full Spectrum Dominance" in all fields of existence – land, water, space, cyberspace, etc. – and now the realm of the mind itself. Yet the military's interest in psychoactives has been long and sustained. During the height of WWII the OSS, the wartime precursor to the CIA, began the search for a truth serum they could use in intelligence interrogations. In 1945 the US Navy Technical Mission reported that Nazi scientists experimented with mescaline on subjects at the Dachau concentration camp. After the war the U.S. Navy began investigating mescaline itself under the guise of Project Chatter, and for the next three decades they engaged in experiments with mind-altering drugs in an attempt to crack the secrets of the brain.

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.

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.

In the classic 1936 propaganda movie 'Reefer Madness', a good young man is seduced into the ways of "marihuana… the new drug menace which is destroying the youth of America", and descends into a nightmare of crime, rape, murder and eventually madness. According to the movie, now a cult classic on the stoner circuit, 'Marihuana is... [a] drug – a violent narcotic – an unspeakable scourge... ending often in incurable insanity." Well, at least they got the last bit right. Over seventy years since the first wave of marijuana demonising, the “incurable insanity” has well and truly set in with politicians worldwide, and shows no sign of abating. Around 39 per cent of our population are reported to have tried the devil's weed, and crop sales are worth an estimated $5-8 billion Australia-wide. With the clash between official rhetoric and the cultural experience as wide as ever, a fresh wave of ‘Reefer Madness’ is sweeping our nation, fuelled by stories of mind-bending ‘hydro’ cannabis and drug war clichés that hide deeper-seated issues.

So I call up the prophet Raël on Skype, talking to him over the internet in far-off Switzerland, where he’s staying in some chalet or something while he pushes ahead with his mission to preach the word of the aliens to save us from Armageddon – if, like, we live righteously and stuff, and give Raël the money to build an embassy for their arrival.

Raël’s assistant has the sweetest, sexy French voice. Her name is Li-Li. She sounds delectable, and if that’s really her avatar on the Skype dial screen she's a hot, caramel-skinned honey. If I was dialing up the Pope, or the Dalai Llama, or any other global religious leader it might be wrong to think lewd thoughts about their personal assistants, but this is Raël, man, ALL his personal assistants are gorgeous, and at the core of his religious teachings is a simple recipe of free-love and feelgood vibes. Like, if I was there in the chalet I’m sure he ‘d be offering me Li-Li and a one-way ticket to the mothership, he’s just that kinda guy. So don’t be so hard on him, y’know, I mean all people with just one name are a bit weird – Cher, Madonna, Prince, Raël, it comes with the fame, I guess, or the enlightenment.

Friday morning, day one - "Hippies, hippies... they want to save the world but all they do is smoke pot and play frisbee!" – Eric Cartman, South Park


I wake to the sounds of a cluster of Japanese girls camped next door, their voices mixing with Spanish, German and thick Aussie accents. Renegade soundsystems pump out thumping electronic beats that fill the dusty air. The ever-present doof doof doof of the music is so ubiquitous you eventually forget it’s even there. We’ve run out of beer, but it was only a slab between three thirsty blokes and it should have been expected. All around us party crew are camped next to their vans and cars, an endless gypsy village covered in layers of dust. The camps touch upon each other in every direction, a vast, fractal tent city that folds in on itself like architectural origami. It reminds me of the way insects make their homes, of a hive consciousness. North American tipis and flags of all countries are mixed in with ancient symbols and psychedelic images. It looks like civilization after the fall, after the oil peaks and the power shortages kick in.

I’m here with my friends Matty from Byron and Kaptain Khaos from Paris and a slew of aging dancers that have come out of retirement to celebrate the 10th anniversary Rainbow Serpent Festival, a four day celebration of “soul and technology”, according to the organizers. Here in Australia the outdoor party scene has been flourishing for over a decade at bush ‘doofs’ (named after the bass beat of the electronic music), where ‘doofers’ revel in Trance music, community and enhanced states of mind. “Since the first gathering in 1998, Rainbow has become a popular annual get-together for thousands of like minded people,” says Frank Venuto, one of the festival’s founders. Rainbow Serpent is a landmark of the Global Trance music calendar, where semi-retired doofers like myself mix it up with the young turks of the dancefloor and the old hippies that can still shake it.

Kevin Furnas was a Western shaman from San Francisco who had been training with ayahuasca and other plant medicines for over a decade. He dieted extensively with plants at the Sachamama Ethnobotanical Gardens retreat outside Iquitos for nearly two years, receiving knowledge and wisdom from the plant doctors directly. He was an ayahuasquero and vegetalista in the Amazonian tradition, performing healing ceremonies with ayahuasca and other plants.

50 years ago a New York banker’s trailblazing story of participating in a holy, age-old ritual in the mountains of Mexico with Indians who “chew strange growths that produce visions” was published, sparking off the psychedelic revolution of the 60s and a new horizon for neuroscience today


May 13, 1957, during the height of the post-war Eisenhower years, an article written by the influential banker and amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, 'Seeking the Magic Mushroom', was published in Life magazine, part of the Time-Life stable. In homes across the nation, everyday Americans weathering the poles of luxury capitalist growth and communist menace were rocked by the strange article, part anthropology and part-adventure narrative, that introduced proof of a hitherto speculative practice by indigenous Mexican Indians, who "chew strange growths that produce visions". A serpent was set loose in suburbia. The chain of events Wasson’s story unleashed popularised knowledge of altered states of mind and, some say, was the first spark of what was to become the psychedelic revolution. Now, fifty years later, Westerners are still seeking the ‘magic’ mushroom, as the time-honored sacrament of Mesoamericans comes out of the fields and into the medical fold as a valuable tool in the burgeoning field of neuroscience.

We're 45 kilometres out of Iquitos, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, in the great green web of nature with our native Shaman, Percy Garcia. He has the boyish enthusiasm of a physical education teacher, which is reinforced by his western garb - Nike sneakers, tracky dacks and soccer shirt, but he's been trained since he was a boy in the world of the spirits, and of the great plant medicine - ayahuasca.

The night is alive with the sounds of insects and animals, like a constant hum of electricity. The maloca - a wall-less jungle hut - is lit by candles and mattresses litter the floor for the gringos to crash on as their bodies surrender to the pull of the medicine, and their spirits soar.

Percy's gotten changed into his ceremonial garb, a curious mish-mash of western clothes and indigenous bling bling that visually sums up the changing nature of Amazonian shamanism. Jaguar t-shirt, silk spotted pants and trainers, a feathered parrot hat with blue, red and yellow feathers around his forehead, offset with Christian rosary beads and a chacapa leaf fan in one hand.

He sits behind a makeshift altar, a wooden box covered with an intricate, geometrical patterned cloth that the local Shipibo Indians weave to represent the patterns one sees on ayahuasca. The altar is covered with ceremonial objects, little rainbow bead dolls, wooden cups, giant mapacho cigarettes filled with organic jungle tobacco, Nicotinia rustica, a smoke that cleanses and purifies and banishes bad spirits. Percy's got about a hundred mapacho cigarettes on the altar like he's expecting a horde of demons tonight, or he's having a stoner party with Cheech and Chong as the honoured guests. And last but not least, in plastic two litre San Luis water bottles, a thick, dark brown liquid - ayahuasca, the 'vine of souls'.

"Last summer about 1:30 in the morning I was about 50 metres up [a sit in Ferntree forest] on a very big tree. A logger climbed up on top of the machine cabled to the sit and jumped on the cable. It flipped me over like a pinball machine, threw me into the tree and left bruises and stab wounds all up this leg - it was one massive bruise. And there I was hanging upside down with everything I had in the sit gone, and I'm screaming 'f--- offff... help, camera, camera!" Everyone else is 150 metres up the hill and I'm alone without a torch in the pitch dark, half way up a tree - and I'd just attached the safety, I mean, just, seconds..."