Culture

029: Build Entheon with Alex and Allyson Grey /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is May 24 2016, and we are discussing Building Entheon with Alex and Allyson Grey.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook. Thanks for listening.

Topics:

  • Entheon is a place to discover the divine within
  • Why build a psychedelic temple?
  • BuildEntheon.com – Almost to the stretch goal of $200K
  • Entheon is a 12,000 sq ft building, three floors including a gallery of international visionary art
  • Prehistoric artifacts document early cultures who made art and had a relationship with entheogens
  • “It’s important for our psychedelic sacramental culture to have evidence that in our generation there were people who valued love, unity, spirituality, and peace over commerce and war.” - Allyson Grey
  • LSD is derived from ergot fungus, which shares similar characteristics with psilocybin mushrooms.
  • Allyson recommends Robert Barnhart’s movie, A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin. (We have interviewed the producer and discussed the film on Entheogen.)
  • Visit BuildEntheon.com to support the campaign! Check out the amazing original works of art and other rewards.

028: Intro to Entheogenic Comedy with Matteson Perry /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is April 3rd, 2016 and we’re talking about Entheogenic Comedy.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook. Thanks for listening.

We’re delighted to be talking with Matteson Perry, writer and performer based in Los Angeles.

We start with a quote from Bill Hicks.

Matteson has a humorous memoir coming out on May 24.

Topics:

  • Comedy as an Entheogen
  • Laughter is an involuntary response, requires no thought.
  • Some people are just funny. Even just adjusting a mic stand.
  • Andrew Dice Clay
  • Jerry Seinfeld’s theory of comedy: getting an audience to laugh at joke is like getting them to jump across a ditch
  • George Carlin
  • Steven Wright a.k.a. Bucky Goldstein
  • Mitch Hedberg: “I used to do drugs…. I still do, I used to too.”
  • Jon Stewart, carrier of Carlin’s torch
  • Missed satire: the Steven Colbert effect.
  • Comedy is tragedy avoided; or, comedy = tragedy + time
  • Storytelling as quasi therapy
  • Lincoln jokes vs. JFK jokes
  • When you laugh so hard you cry
  • The Psychedelic Yawn can yield entheogenic tears, discussed in episode 025: Psychedelic Medicine Trials with Participant Kirk Rutter.
  • “Kids” movies: entheogens for everyone!
  • In Living Color, Kevin’s “gateway drug” into Entheogenic Comedy.
  • Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

024: A Microdose of Alex & Allyson Grey /  by Joe

Today is January 24, 2016, and we have for you a microdose of Alex & Allyson Grey.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook. Thanks for listening.

We’ll begin with a quote from the New York Times: "Alex Grey's art, with its New Age symbolism and medical-illustration finesse, might be described as psychedelic realism, a kind of clinical approach to cosmic consciousness. In it, the human figure is rendered transparently with X-ray or CAT-scan eyes, the way Aldous Huxley saw a leaf when he was on mescaline. Every bone, organ and vein is detailed in refulgent color; objects and space are knitted together in dense, decorative linear webs."

Psychedelic, inspired by entheogens

Best known for the Sacred Mirrors series

CoSM, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors: “The Mission of the Chapel of Sacred  Mirrors,  CoSM,  is  to  build  an enduring sanctuary of visionary art to inspire every pilgrim’s  creative path and embody the values of love and perennial wisdom.”

Alex’s art is featured by Tool, Nirvana, The String Cheese Incident, Meshuggah, and the Beastie Boys

Alex and Allyson’s shared journey, visioning the same image, painted by Allyson as Jeweled Net of Indra and by Alex as Universal Mind Lattice

021: Psychedelic First Aid with Special Guest, Sara Gael of MAPS and the Zendo Project /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is December 14th, 2015, and we are discussing the Zendo Project with special guest, Sara Gael, Harm Reduction Coordinator for MAPS.

Find the notes and links for this and other episodes at EntheogenShow.com. Sign up to receive an email when we release a new episode. Follow us @EntheogenShow on Twitter and like EntheogenShow on FaceBook.

Our guest, Sara Gael, has been involved with the Zendo Project since its inception in 2012. Since then she has helped coordinate harm reduction services at festivals all over the world including Burning Man, Afrika Burn, Envision Festival, and Lightning in a Bottle. She is also an intern investigator in the Boulder, Colorado Phase II Clinical Trial of the Safety and Efficacy of MDMA-assisted Psychotherapy. Sara works as a psychotherapist in private practice and received her Master’s in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology at Naropa University.

Topics:

  • What is the Zendo Project?

  • Zendo is billed as Psychedelic First Aid for Festivals & Events: “The Zendo Project provides a supportive environment and specialized care designed to transform difficult psychedelic experiences into valuable learning opportunities, and even potentially offer healing and growth. In turn, our work reduces the number of drug-related hospitalizations and arrests.”

  • Safe Space

  • Talk through, not down

  • Sitting, not guiding

  • Difficult is not bad

  • What type of training does the “sitter” or “facilitator” receive?

  • Benefits of human contact, touch

  • How to volunteer with Zendo

    • Volunteers are needed for Burning Man, Afrika Burn, other festivals

  • Sara discusses experience in the field at Burning Man, BOOM, Cannabis Cup, etc.

  • How does Zendo work with medical and other support services

    • KosmiCare at BOOM in Portugal, where drugs are decriminalized, provides a glimpse of a post-prohibition future: their efforts are sponsored by the local government and festival, and they include onsite testing of pills.

    • Erowid Center helps bridge the gap with EcstacyData.org which features pill testing results database, in addition to the psychoactive vaults of Erowid.org.

  • What’s the deal with folk remedies (bananas, oranges?)

  • Nice things that smell good, art supplies, beautiful space, pillows, blankets, tea – your Psychedelic Grandma’s house

Resources:

020: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, second half /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is December 9, 2015 and we are very excited to feature a special interview. This is the second half.

It is our great pleasure and honor to welcome Earth and Fire Erowid!

Topics:

  • Kevin and Earth reminisce about Burning Man 2007, the “Eclipse/Man-Burn-Early Year”

  • What was Burning Man like in 1995?

  • Fire tells the story of a Burning Man purist in 1995 who had stopped going since there were people there she didn’t know

  • “radical self-reliance” and community reliance

  • Earth asks Kevin: “did you carry out your own poop?”

  • When they moved to California in 1994, Earth worked remotely for his dad’s tech company; what was working remotely like in 1994?

  • Earth started New College in Sarasota, FL, the same year Rick Doblin graduated; Fire joined the next year. (Rick’s wild time at New College in the ‘80’s described in Acid Test by Tom Shroder)

  • Earth and Fire discuss their friendship with Sasha and Ann Shulgin and the famous Friday night dinners

  • Erowid becoming an educational nonprofit in 2008

  • Erowid’s Library

Support Erowid!

And be sure to catch the first half of the interview.