shazaman's blog
In the End I was cast out of the alchemists’ den, a lost mystic exile from the beats, wandering the naked streets of Basel at dawn and transmitting a lovely fix. I was high on acid, a green tab of Hofmann's bicycle wheel I had reverently acquired from the Californian High Priest nights before, high in the hotel room overlooking the tram depot opposite the Basel Congress Centre. Site of the conference diabolique with Dr. Albert Hofmann, the 100 year old Alchemist that birthed LSD - the 'Problem Child' that switched on the world.
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Now: cloudbanks are/ rolling/ blooming/ shifting overhead and as they open up and become for me everything else is doing the same – trees, cars, people, especially people.
These beautiful marionette citizens of Basel, heading of to work, rugged up against the winter chill. They are polite, cool, efficiently progressing through the basic programs of larval life. Light glistens past a woman on the second floor balcony of an apartment block as she shakes out a blanket. Down below, surrounded by layers of white, white snow, a middle-aged man is walking his dog. He waits patiently, well trained, as it sniffs a pole. They are radiating energy signatures that overlap like kaleidoscope pictures and sink deep into me.
You know this feeling, the current. A stream of energy is bubbling within you straight from the source, and the more you let go and let it rise up and blossom in/ from you, the deeper in you go. A million sensorary impressions flood the psychic networks. Atomic consciousness in the mocha blend of a Starbucks coffee.
I am drinking in the nectar of life like a bee going from one flower to the next, every moment, every visual unfolding itself before me. St Rollerskate, Beatnik of the Urban Wilderness, melting/ opening /deepening/ holding full power the strength of every moment of creation reflected in the faces streaming back at me; the sunlight; the whir and clack of the tramlines as the cable cars carry their passengers along the tracks of life - know the right number and you can go anywhere.
As I meander divine down early morning streets along the Rhine, zen moments come and go in roadside epiphanies. Facts well up from tourist guidebooks – the Rhine is a sacred river, embodying the triple-shapedpre-Indo-European goddess as a snake or dragon. Basel itself was a centre of the cult of the Celtic sun god Belenos, a city of basilisks and sphinxes. A city of alchemy, and now a city of chemistry. In the distance the Twin Towers are breathing out fire, alchemical trans-form-ation from the Novartis pharmaceutical factories. This is the spirit of Basel. This perfect, clockwork little city.
All the lost beggar beatniks of the world come floating by. I am the first and the last and the only, a modern day James Dean, rebel without an ego walking down everystreet, rugged up against the wind and surrounded by a vast symbolic ocean of information. Omega watches, Cats the Musical, food, luxuries and a flurry of advertising images flash by, gateways to other worlds and modes of being.
Suddenly I am tempted by the lower baros of illusion and desire, wild and crazy on the ergot rye derivatives, falling back into the memory of it all, another ride on the wheel…
Let me tell you a story about a 100 year old man - the Alchemist, and of his problem child, and the children of the child coming of age...
Downtown, at the prestigious Congress Centre, the name of the symposium is in two foot LCD letters on a digital billboard, framed by neon stars: “LSD – Problem Child and Wonder Drug“. LSD up in lights, the problem child made good at last. This was to be the largest international conference of LSD and consciousness issues in history. Who would've thought?
LSD: From Problem Child to Wonder Drug
A celebration of Albert Hofmann's 100th birthday
Jan 13 - 15, 2006, Basel, Switzerland
by Rak Razam
If every person who has ever taken LSD were in the same room at the same time, you might get a feeling of the cameraderie, community and consciousness that reached critical mass January 13 - 15 in Basel, Switzerland, as the the trippers of the world celebrated the 100th birthday of their spiritual father -
Dr. Albert Hofmann.
The International Symposium “LSD – Problem Child and Wonder Drug“, was, quite simply, a watershed event where the global psychedelic movement got to come up from the underground and take over the prestigious Basel Congress Centre and adjoining hotel, and tell the world that the times, they are a changing.
Over 2,000 people attended from over 40 countries, with 200 media in attendance to spread the good word. Approximately 100 cutting edge consciousness researchers, scientists, doctors, therapists, artists, writers and witnesses of psychedelic culture came from every corner of the globe to discuss that most potent of mind chemicals - LSD or d-lysergic acid diethylamide, discovered by Dr. Hofmann in 1943.
From the USA came Professor Charles S. Grob, currently conducting Psilocybin research with the terminally ill; Dr. Alexander T. Shulgin, pharmacologist extraordinaire, who has synthesized over 200 new mind altering chemicals and whom the New York Times nicknamed
It may not be a bank holiday or a day off work, but July 25th is the ‘Day Out of Time’ for the newest spiritual movement and it’s push for global calendar reform. It’s called ‘Dreamspell’, a cross between astrology and a new religion that has appropriated the knowledge of the ancient Maya and their 13 moon calendar and packaged it for mainstream consumption.
UNDERGROWTH //interview with RICHARD NEVILLE
Richard Neville has been one of Australia’s leading cultural dissidents since his student days in the early 1960’s, when he launched the first incarnation of Oz magazine that helped spawn the underground press in Australia. Oz magazine carried on in the UK as was hailed as ‘the spirit of it’s time’ by some and as ‘obscene literature that corrupted the morals of children’ by critics. This lead to an obscenity bust and the infamous trial in the Old Bailey in London that legitimized the merit of alternative media. His book, Playpower, ‘the first international book on the underground’, charted the social transformations of the 60s global counter culture, and he has been a frequent social commentator in print and tv ever since. His best selling books also include Hippy Hippy Shake, Out of My Mind, Playing Around, The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj, Amerika Psycho and Footprints of the Future. His ‘Journal of a Futurist’ articles on the current War on Terror and war in Iraq, globalisation, the re-invention of work, the consciousness movement, the new role for business in the 21st century and more provide a liberal dash of realpolitik reality expansion for these times and can be read at http://www.richardneville.com/ .
BIO
Rak Razam is a professional magazine feature writer and editor, specialising in underground and counter-culture, spirituality and technology issues.
He has written and edited for magazines and companies including Tekno Renegade Magazine (TRM), Gizmag.com, EnTrance digital magazine, Voiceworks, Paper Free Press, Zavtone (Japan), Dream Creation (UK), Mushroom Magazine (Germany), Marie Claire (UK), Sensis (AUS), See advertising, and is currently writing and editing Undergrowth magazine - Australia's premier underground culture magazine (www.undergrowth.org).
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