Green, Green, or............ Green?

Skim the posts in Pale Green Vortex and a fair whack will reveal themselves as being demonstrably 'green', 'environmental' or 'ecological'. Why, then, do I baulk at so much that is presented under these terms; indeed, consider some 'green people' to be among the most dangerous of humans? The topic has already been broached (eg in 'Coming Out' in October 2010, and 'Manna From a Hot Heaven' in June), but for further amplification I shall now bring to my aid a few personal sources of inspiration.

First off, I am not alone in feeling at odds with some of these 'green folk'. In the 'Gaia-Sophia' section of the Metahistory website, John Lash issues this disclaimer: 'The Gaian orientation of this site does not imply that the earth needs to be saved from the human species by an elite programme of social engineering, eugenics, and depopulation...... Site author John Lash does not approve the theory of human-made global warming..... In the Gnostic perspective of this site, Sophia, the embodied wisdom of the earth, is the saviour of humanity, not vice-versa. The earth will take care of herself no matter where divine paternalism and the global psychosis lead the human species.'

For further elucidation, I returned to the first ever episode I listened to of Shamanic Freedom Radio. It's in the archives for October 2009: Christina Oakley-Harrington talks at the October Gallery in London about the three 'sub-communities' she distinguishes under the broad banner of 'environmental'. She refers to the 'psychedelic/consciousness community', the pagan folk, and the 'practical/ecology movement'. She states that, despite superficially having much in common, these three groupings seem not quite at ease with each other. As a practising wicca priestess, Christina identifies firmly with the second of these, and describes through a series of amusing anecdotes how she is unable to explain her beliefs and practices to her chamomile-drinking, organic veg-growing, fervently-recycling mother, who clearly fits into the 'practical ecology' mould. For the record, the spirit of Pale Green Vortex finds great affinity with some of the 'psychedelic/consciousness' people; feels reasonably at home with the pagan folk; but is increasingly at odds with the third bunch.

The history and perversion of the 'practical environmental movement' is related by Peter Taylor on Red Ice Radio, 13/2/10. He talks about how environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the RSPB (bird protection, for any who are unsure) took up climate change as a great danger, and have resolutely refused to reconsider the dodgy evidence for this purported peril; how Greenpeace 'jumped into bed' with UN committee IPCC, despite UN committees always having been 'the bad guys'; how, over time, environmental organisations have got bigger and wealthier, therefore recruiting people with good organisational skills rather than necessarily a real love for the environment; and how they nowadays demonstrate classic corporate behaviour, being primarily interested in performance targets over and above other concerns eg the true environmental impact of large-scale windfarms.

Thus, the mass environmental movement has embedded itself successfully into the cultural and political mainstream. It has become part of the dominator culture. This is nowhere clearer than in its specific support for multinational energy corporations pushing windfarms onto beleaguered local communities, and its general espousing of global socialist-totalitarian agendas as 'solutions' to perceived environmental problems. The erosion of personal, local and national freedoms seems to mean nothing in relation to the greater good of 'fighting the enemy'. Recent happenings through the aegis of the UN at Cancun are one recent example, in the name of 'saving the planet' and 'fighting global warming'. This is all hogwash that many environmental groups are actively colluding with. The real aim appears to be the creation of a creeping global authoritarian governance over a planetary species of guilt-ridden, low carbon, sheeple. In a telling aside, and in the same vein, in her talk Ms Oakley-Harrington mentions the 'practical/environmental movement' seeing as 'the Other' 'the hideous rest' (that's you and me, by the way). Enough said.

To return to 'Metahistory'. In the section entitled 'Planetary Vision Perverted', John Lash writes 'To claim that humanity can or must save the planet is the delusional arrogance of people suffering from the global psychosis, including New Age visionaries who support that claim.' This is indeed the hubris that infects the environmental movement. In reality 'we', the human species, are wonderful but tiny in relation to the total grandeur of the Earth, and greater splendour still of the Sun and the wider universe. To contemplate this prospect is far more discomforting, and just a wee bit scary, compared to the hubristic philosophies of our environmental groups. The solution? Or should we say the corrective? According to Metahistory, it consists of 'egoless and rapturous bonding with the earth, irrespective of human purposes.....this saves us, and nothing else.' More prosaically, but on the same lines, Christina Oakley-Harrington says the pagans would exhort the practical environmentalists to talk to the sea, not just sort the rubbish.

On Pale Green Vortex, real environmentalism is direct, sensate (and occasionally supra-sensate). It involves an immediate experience of contact, communication, connectedness, and non-difference with the world surrounding the subject; it will embrace whatever means are required to help effect such a change, and bring humans back to their true relationship with all else. It implies a radical alteration in consciousness, with an intimation of all-pervading sacredness (which is not the same as saying that everything is sacred). This is certainly not brought about by staring at cherry-picked statistics on a computer screen all day, or by saving the planet through destroying its beautiful contoured surfaces with mega-industrial windfarms. Jim Morrison's famous words, once an inspiration to environmental action, can now be used to protest against the actions of so-called environmentalists hell-bent on destroying the beauty of the Earth all around us: 'What have they done to the Earth/What have they done to our fair sister?/Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her/stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn/tied her with fences and dragged her down.' Thanks, Jim.

Practising the Dark Arts

It was during the late 1970s, a period I may speak of as my Buddhist apprenticeship, that I was told about the Dragon's Head, Snake's Body. The term refers to a person with a highly-developed mental and rational faculty, but underformed emotional self and poor physical awareness. At the time that I came across it, the description was aimed primarily at certain Buddhist academics and scholars, whose fierce intellect was used to argue and defend all manner of dubious standpoint. The image is more apposite still today, however: we live daily under the constant spectre of the Dragon's Head, Snake's Body.

I am thinking primarily of the majority population of our current scientific and academic communities, a cartoon depiction of whom would portray a bulging brain wobbling atop a pimple-sized body. I have some first-hand experience of these malformed serpentine creatures, having passed some, in their fledgling form at least, in the darkened corridors of Oxford University during my undergraduate days. More recently, personal need has compelled me to delve into their dark world more deeply than I would normally wish to do, in the attempt to shed light on various shady goings-on that have been the subject of several previous blogs.

Various tools are available to analyse the reptilian hybrid - Jung's study of psychological types comes readily to mind - but, most simply, Dragon's Head, Snake's Body is not whole or complete. It takes one part of the human psycho-physical organism and treats it as the finished product. Unfortunately, this bloated rationality has no consciousness of anything else, particularly of what is often motivating it in the first place (unacknowledged emotional and physical drives and instincts, giving rise to unconscious initial standpoints and prejudices). As such, Dragon's Head, Snake's Body activity simply cannot be trusted.

These reflections come to mind as the carrion creatures gather in Cancun, Mexico, for another round of global warming scaremongering, along with 'let's see who we can screw for some more big bucks, and take away a bit more of their personal liberty in the process' in the name of the 'save the planet' chimera. A trawl of relevant blogs and websites shows a veritable plethora of statistics that finally give the lie to the fantasy of scientific objectivity. The endless to-ing and fro-ing of apparently contradictory data demonstrates mainly that you can prove anything you want; look long and hard enough, and the statistics will be there to back you up. The one clear fact shining through all of this is that global climate remains poorly and only partially understood. The people who we should be worried about are the scientific and political reptiles who would have us believe otherwise, claiming that anthropogenic global warming is an undisputed fact and an unprecedented danger, and that we should adopt all manner of drastic measure immediately or we'll all be doomed. This is dark sorcery indeed, the weaving of malefic spells.

And, because of our own predispositions, 'weaving a spell' is precisely what scientists, academics, and politicians are able to do. Science is the current religion, the means by which truth is apprehended; scientists are vessels for that truth, in the same way that priests and men of the church once were. Given our own faith in science as the means by which the world is to be understood, we modern folk are extremely vulnerable to the words, suggestions, and sometimes manipulations by the science-priests. Dress a notion in the cloak of data and statistics - any notion - and there will be people who will believe it. Given the already-discussed lack of self-knowledge of most of our reptilian friends, the danger increases twofold. And given the fatal conjunction of power (politicians, big business) and faith (scientists) in modern times, which replicates the conjoining of power (the State) and faith (the Church) in times gone by, we have a perilous and manipulation-prone condition indeed.

The general populace is fair game. How many times do newspaper articles and BBC Breakfast newsbites begin with the phrases: 'Scientists have found......','Academics have discovered....', 'In a report released today......', 'New research suggests....'? This is all magic, infecting the minds and hearts of people without their normally even realising it. Treat these magic incantations with the utmost caution, I beg you. The safest ways to avoid being a victim of these mind-warping dark arts is simply to turn off the television and stop buying the newspaper.

To repeat: science is a modern religion. It encompasses a belief system, a way of looking at the world. It is not infallible, and nowhere near a complete picture, especially in the stripped-down version, defined by the confines of rational materialism, that forms its mainstream. A cursory investigation of ancient and medeival western socieities, along with extant shamanic cultures, is all that is required to demonstrate that ways of looking at the world other than modern rational materialism can exist, and in their own ways serve a society quite well. Any modern believer who protests that our system is 'the truth, the whole truth, and the only truth' is repeating the same mantra that was used by the medeival priesthood. And, by the way, laying themselves open to the dark sorcery of the current age.

P.S. The photo is of Prof Phil 'Climategate' Jones, from the University of East Anglia, who has no connection whatsoever with the practice of the Dark Arts as described above.

The Many Hues of Autumn (well, a few....)

Anyone who prefers highland Scotland to remain a place of (relatively) remote lochs, unspoilt moorlands, and wild mountains, rather than become an industrial junkheap littered with useless metal-and-plastic wind turbines should visit the stopcorriemoillie website (stopcorriemoillienow.co.uk) and register their objection to the Highland Council (it's easy through the website). A rubbish heap of flailing windsticks has already been approved in the area: now Eon, the energy-and-government-subsidy company, wants to build another one immediately adjacent. Together, these two industrial sites will create a mass of industrial sprawl at one of the major gateways to the deep north-west Highlands of Scotland, clearly visible to all who enter. They are part of Chief Reptilian emissary Salmond's grand plan to make Scotland into the 'Saudi Arabia of renewables.' This is clearly his main desperate grasp at fame on the world stage. More likely, he will go down in history as the man who destroyed the Highlands, even outdoing notorious characters such as the Duke of Cumberland. Write to Highland Council by November 22nd; not long to go. But every objection makes a difference.

Apart from this, Pale Green Vortex points its distinguished readers in the direction of two recommended pieces of listening. For a taste of the fine work of Neil Kramer, you could do worse than go to his 'Cleaver' site through the link on the right, and his interview on Vantage Point Radio, September 27th. And for a (very) personal and impassioned blast about another major theme on Pale Green Vortex, drug laws, listen to Opaque Lens, aka Niall Murphy, in the 'DMT roamcast' , the October 27th presentation on Shamanic Freedom Radio. A special treat awaits those who listen to the beginning of the following episode: Mr Lens reads out a letter written to him in response to his own travails by yours truly.....

Sometimes I think the Control System and its emissaries are getting increasingly desperate. Busts and general harassment of headshops and online vendors of mimosa hostilis - perfectly legal, even within our current restrictive framework - are pathetic, and laughable apart from the fact that it is real people whose lives are intimidated. Similarly, thanks in part to the tireless work of James Delingpole, Christopher Booker, et al, the huge scam surrounding the proliferation of wind farms, and the dodgy foundations of human-made global warming theory in general, are coming more into the limelight. The Control System continues with its extremely unenvironmental policies regardless, hurrying along until general opinion makes them inoperable. Our softly softly totalitarians won't give up without a fight, but their actions suggest that they are up against it, and they know it.

The Bad Trip: Migraine

It's 4.30 am. Several hours of sleep are terminated by an internal projector screening trauma-tinged scenes from the previous day. I am unable to turn it off; this is not a good sign. More ominous still is the vague but unmistakeable gnawing indigestion in the pit of my stomach. I consider medication but am uncertain, and can't be bothered anyway. I turn over and attempt to banish the discomfort by conscious relaxation.

Two hours later, Martha gets up. I inform her that I am suffering from a semi-migraine. It's not long before 'semi' can be removed from the equation. A headache has moved into a familiar spot to the right of my temples, and the nausea has intensified. The outside world begins to shut down, and I am plunged into an interior cinemascape of vivid fantasies: a procession of people from the distant past, sexual images dating back forty years. They eventually fade away, leaving me in a dark, still space, painful and exhausting. The headache is less severe than sometimes - I do not need to groan in anguish. The nausea is more problematic, however, and I feel afraid. I know the pattern. I shall not be free of the pain until the entire process has played itself out completely.

Seven hours later, I am retching from deep inside my intestines. 'Please come out' I implore, as the slowly growing but obstinate clenching sensations refuse to reach their conclusion. The earlier phases, hours before, are easy to handle, coming from the stomach proper. Each successive series of convulsions emanates from a deeper point, however, and nothing can stop it. I try to relax and stay quiet in bed, but this is not always the best thing. The sound of Martha walking downstairs is enough to disturb my false equilibrium and bring on another session of necessary retching. Once the final bodyquake has issued from a spot way below the belly button I recognise the signs immediately, and can once more look forward to a future.

For mild migraines, a medicine called Migraleve can relieve the symptoms. Working in classic symptomatic medicine style, it contains painkiller for the headache and an anti-nausea ingredient for the gut. I also have a pill entitled Sumatriptan. If taken in time, it is like magic, cutting off the symptoms and permitting me to go to work, climb a hill, or whatever. I am not fond of Sumatriptan, however, and use it sparingly. Sumatriptan works by narrowing the blood vessels which dilate during a migraine through the agent of serotonin. It can leave me with a muddy feeling the day after, as if a mysterious but necessary psycho-physical process has been artificially cut off. Temporary relief, but no guarantee that it is beneficial in the longer term. In contrast, a migraine allowed to run its course may leave me feeling light, purified, and refreshed.

It is fair to say that, behind its armoury of medications, orthodox medicine does not understand what migraine is at all. It can wax lyrical about symptoms and dealing with the effects, but that is all. It is strange for ones life to be overwhelmed from time-to-time by a condition which root is unknown, but you get to live with the fact. My own experience over almost two decades points to migraine being a disturbance in the energy field, but this is not the kind of statement that has conventional medical researchers jumping up and down with excitement. There is probably somebody out there - in a village in the depths of the Amazon rainforest maybe, or deeply versed in the arts of acupuncture - who actually knows. My own task is simply to become more proactive, and discover what is out there in the first place.

Coming Out

(The photo is of James Delingpole, blogger extraordinaire. His writings, along with the copious links contained therein, are probably the best source of information on the subject I write about below. His is a blog for the Daily Telegraph - an unlikely resource for Pale Green Vortex, it may be thought. But a voice of truth cannot be ignored, whatever its origin.....)

'Coming out' is a term once the preserve of homosexuals. To come out required considerable courage, putting at risk relationships with family and friends, endangering chances of success in the workplace, and invoking the spectre of social estrangement and hostility, violence even, from those who regarded your position as wrong, wicked or sinful.

Today, a new object has emerged as the butt of a blind prejudice which, in some circles at least, seems deemed acceptable. This is the Human-Made (Anthropogenic) Global Warming sceptic - AGW sceptic for short. Think I'm exaggerating? Ask Peter Taylor, subject to vicious ad hominem attacks from former colleagues in Greenpeace and the like, following his work questioning the validity of the AGW theory (and, remember, it is a theory, a hypothesis, not a proven fact). Ask David Bellamy. Ask a host of scientists who have in essence put their livelihood at risk by daring to question the received wisdom of AGW. No manner of insult, abuse, half-truth, lies, and attempt at suppression, is out-of-court in dealing with these renegade and extremely dangerous individuals. It often falls to retired members of the scientific community - no longer needing to toe the line in order to get funding for their work - to blow the whistle on the pseudo and false science that fuels the AGW juggernaut.

The nasty side of the AGW camp really came out in the recent scandal surounding the 10:10 snuff movie. 10:10 is a movement aiming at reducing our carbon footprint by 10% every year. In a nutshell, its video nasty (involving such luminaries as Richard Curtis of 'Love Actually' fame, Gillian 'X Files' Anderson, and members of Tottenham Hotspur football club) portrays sceptics getting gorily blown to pieces for their doubts. Remarkably, this was intended to be rather funny, which in itself says something about the mindset behind it all. Think for a moment. Could a similar movie be made and purport to be a jolly laugh if, instead of AGW sceptics, it was blowing up Jews? Or members of the Taleban? Or homosexuals? I think not.

Another giveaway to the dark side of the Warmist agenda is the appelation given to those who dare to disagree. They are termed 'deniers'. Ring any bells?

So I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and hereby declare myself an AGW sceptic. After a fair bit of weighing up the evidence, and while not doubting that human activity must have some effect on global climate, I seriously question the claim of its overriding significance.

My own credentials for taking such a stand are not so hopeless. I undertook some study of the theoretical mechanics of human activity's influence on climate at Oxford University during the 1970s, decades before the topic hit the mainstream. More recently, I was one of those who read James Lovelock's apocalyptic 'Revenge of Gaia' and began to get worried. However, as the years have passed, I have come to see how economic, political, and academic power-and-money agendas have usurped the cause, twisting the matter beyond belief. The result has been the birth of a new religion, Warmism. And, as often happens with religion, it is built on shaky ground. In this case, the belief of the faithful is based on dodgy, selective and sometimes manipulated statistics; amateurish computer models; and an ideology that, ironically, is rather life-hating.

The philosophical paradox is that these so-called environmentalists fail to see the greater environment at all. They are a cross between Old Testament believers, seeing humanity as the centre of everything, and pre-Galileo scientists, who missed the bigger environmental picture altogether, and the greater significance of that huge golden mass around which our little Earth circles. Psychologically, the cult of AGW feeds on a sense of the innate wickedness of human activity, which in turn has its roots in the doctrine of Original Sin. Financially, AGW is the fraud and scam of the age, meaning big bucks for the few and higher taxes for the masses. And politically it is an excuse for further fear-mongering to justify more interfering with peoples' lives and eroding any remaining vestiges of democracy.

More to be said, more to be said.........

Summer's Almost Gone...

Wake Up!

There are some who influence our lives as models fit for emulation. Others simply burn brightly, dazzling and disturbing briefly with their incandescence, before leaving this theatre of life exhausted, the light extinguished seemingly before its proper time.

Into the latter category steps one-time poet and singer with the Doors, Jim Morrison. Some portray him as the great rock god, the lizard king, heir to the mantle of Rimbaud; others as a drunken, debauched caricature of rock music excess. Both are probably in their way correct. But it is in celebration of the lizard king that we come today.....

Jim Morrison's life is sometimes depicted as a tragedy. From first flickerings of success to death in a bathtub in Paris in six short years. I am inclined to read things differently, however. There is a certain 'rightness' about the trajectory of that meteoric life: every note, every one-night stand, every confrontation, each and every shot of whisky, have their place in a story that could be nothing else but short and sharp. It is as if the gods took as a vessel for communication a particular human life and, once done, discarded it by the wayside. It could be no other way. There is only so much daemonic frenzy a human soul can bear and pour forth before it burns out. The same goes for those others who came incandescent, before the fire was extinguished at an early age: Mozart and Schubert; Raphael and Giorgione; Shelley and Keats. Morrison joins their noble ranks. This is the Romantic reading, at least.

At a certain point in his onstage career, Jim Morrison took to berating the audience at the beginning of a concert:'Wake up!' he would yell into the midst of the collective candyfloss. And, while forcing people to awake from their psychic slumbers cannot be done, there's no harm in politely suggesting that maybe, just maybe, they are wasting away in the unwitting throes of a deep unconscious sleep.....

Forty years on, and the collective somnolence continues, now aided and abetted by all manner of socially-sanctioned tranquilisers, the like of which make diazepam seem like a pick-me-up tonic. Today's dumbers and downers come in the form of new technologies, all of which perform the major function of keeping us asleep and blocking the mental pathways into those most dangerous of territories, personal introspection and self knowledge. Take the texting and mobile phone culture: designed to keep the user incessantly occupied, hopping, skipping, and jumping, but always on the surface of things. Info bytes:'I'm on the train.' Never enquiry about the condition of the soul. How many people cannot venture beyond the front door without their constant companion clutched hard in their hand? Next up: multi-channel television and computers. So much information, all there at the push of a key or a button. Total convenience, instant distraction. Ten minutes to spare: time to skim a few dozen channels, check the sports results, the latest celebrity news. Anything to escape that most dangerous and frightening of all things - stopping, being still and experiencing what is really going on. I know: it happens to me. Nowadays, I need to make far more effort to stay still, do nothing, just 'be', than fifteen years ago. I am not immune to the grasshopper mentality which has infected the whole of western 'civilisation' with a collective attention deficit disorder.

And what about digital cameras and home video? The ease and cheapness of digital photography mean that it is now possible to compile a full record of a holiday for family and friends without actually experiencing a place at all! Notice how people no longer stop to directly sense their surroundings. They simply get hold of the camera and click. The non-experienced present exists merely as a potential record of the past.

All of this serves to create a fast-moving, surface-defined mentality that takes itself as the norm so much that it does not even consider slowing down as a possibility. And this mentality of zappy stimulated dissatisfaction generated by full deployment of these modern technologies then feeds into the apotheosis of Control System strategies....... shopping.

Walk into the indoor shopping mall, and the narcosis is complete. Even those who normally go about life with a sense of vital purpose soon acquire the glazed eyes, the slow, soporific way of moving, the massaged brain, the softly-softly idiocy that are prerequisites for hardcore shopping. The population finally reduced to the narcoleptic dream state in order to fulfil its major functions at the service of the Control System: spend/consume and shut up.

While it may be untenable to conceive of this unfolding of modern technologies as part of an active conspiracy, still they are tools and devices that have the full encouragement of our current Control System and its emissaries. Do not think that a technology is neutral. If in doubt, imagine the opposite. A technology that enables people to reflect, slow down in order to become more aware, to go deeper into themselves and the world around them. As a result, they become more interested in matters of spirit and soul, less enthralled by Saturday afternoon shopping and the acquisition of consumer goods. Do we imagine dominator culture happily tolerating such a thing? Actually, such a technology does exist. It was discovered in the 1940s, developed in the 1950s, and popularised in the 1960s. It is called LSD. See what the Control System thinks of that.

The mass sleep of modern uncivilisation would bring no pleasure to Jim Morrison's soul (or souls: he toyed with the notion of being entered as a boy by the several souls of Native American Indians he saw newly dead in a road accident. 'Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding/ Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind'). Wake up!

Over the Rainbow: the 2nd ARC Convention

I had vowed not to go to the 2nd ARC Convention. Once more the venue was Bath, far away. Being such a busy and obviously important person, I didn't have the time for such a luxury, and I didn't have the money either. Then I saw the line-up of speakers, and changed my mind.....


ARC - Alternative Research Community - is the brainchild (or soulchild, more like) of the seemingly indefatigable and infinitely good-humoured Karen Sawyer. One of Karen's many remarkable qualities, fully in evidence over the weekend, is that nothing appears to faze her. The mikes don't work: no problem. Computers crash: a mild expletive before she's up there on the stage joking, helping to sort things out. Karen actually introduces the weekend in front of a large picture of Sheela Na Gig, ancient representation of the eternal feminine, and a portal into another reality, the deeper reality of the event to come. Then she starts to sing/chant primordial sounds, and a communal shift in consciousness seems to take place. It is not so much HER singing, as allowing herself to be the vehicle for an archetypal dimension to make itself known through her. The atmosphere is electric; the weekend has been blessed by something sacred.


The first main speaker on Saturday morning is Michael Dunning. He has come to talk to us about, er...... a tree. Now, while I derive a good deal of personal sustenance from the non-human world - a skim through this blog will make as much obvious -, I harbour doubts as to whether he can maintain the interest of all of us for ninety minutes by talking about his relationship to a tree. The arboreal manifestation in question is the yew, a magnificent plant that reaches both upwards into the sky and downwards deep into the earth. Michael relates the rich mythology connected to the yew, and his own healing from serious illness through lying for long periods beneath its mighty boughs. I am entranced.


Next up is Peter Taylor. I am extremely grateful to Peter for his presentation at the previous convention. Alarm bells had been ringing for some time, as I witnessed weird things in the so-called green movement: lies, half-truths, support for big business destroying the natural world in the name of saving the planet, with zero respect for the sacred nature of things. Then I heard Peter speak on the 'corporatisation of the environmental movement', and I realised that my own instincts had been correct: much that passes itself as 'green' is a sham and a scam, absorbed into the dominator culture mainstream. This time round, Peter ends by talking about his own spiritual work, transforming energy and consciousness through the chakras, starting at the base and moving upwards. His message seems to be 'no transformation of self, no real change of the world.' He appears invigorated by this part of his presentation. I recommend finding out more about Peter's work on climate and the non-greens on the holistic channel and on Red Ice.

Afternoon arrives; enter Michael Cremo. The 'alternative research' giving its name to the convention is that which the 'information filter' imposed by mainstream dominator culture deems to be unfit for general consumption. This is work, often involving years of painstaking investigation, that does not sit comfortably with the belief and value systems that form the basis of our current non-civilisation. Michael's 'forbidden archaeology' is a classic case, calling into question as it does the orthodox Darwinian view of human origins. Michael's claim is that fully human remains have been discovered that vastly predate those normally recognised as being the earliest, findings that have been rubbished and discarded purely because they do not conform with the conventional belief system.

By the time Kenn Thomas takes centre stage to take us through the incredible amount of detailed investigation that goes into conspiracy theories, an imbalance has already occurred in the energetics of my chakra system, with a concentration of energy in the upper chakras (experienced less esoterically as a brain being immersed in a deep fryer). I am unable to follow clearly, but two vignettes leave their imprint. Firstly, there is a hilarious clip of Timothy Leary being 'interviewed' by a right-wing madman on American television. Then, as part of Kenn's tribute to recently deceased Jerry E. Smith, we see Jerry in full flow, describing the two main groups who wield power over our modern culture. There are the Banksters, who we are all familiar with; and there are the Water Melons, referred to on Palegreenvortex variously as eco-fascists and green Stalinists. Water Melons: green on the outside, red on the inside. Brilliant. And, while the Banksters and Water Melons appear superficially to be at odds with each other, they are actually part of one and the same system.

While those of infinite energy dance the night away to Karen Sawyer and Dirty Dog, I retire early to my room, to absorb the day's proceedings. Sunday morning, I am fresh and early for education, entertainment and participation from Nick Clements as he leads us into aspects of shamanism in modern times. The pace remains more relaxed with Ellis C. Taylor's tales of encounters and experiences with what we can loosely call the paranormal: time shifts, orbs, and others. For some this might appear ridiculous in the extreme. To me, it's pretty much business as normal. And that's either worrying or consoling, depending on which side of the fence you've decided to put up your tent.......

It is at the beginning of the final afternoon panel session that something begins to click. Someone asks 'Where are the women?' to the team of biological males lined up on the stage. Sitting to the side, Karen leaps up immediately, talking about male and female as literal physical embodiments being less the point than masculine and feminine energies (I am paraphrasing wickedly here, by the way...). She takes a good look at the array of goodly gentlemen on the stage before pronouncing that, in her experience, they have all recognised the feminine within, so the feminine energy has been well represented during the course of the weekend. What's more, she does not consider herself as a 'masculine' woman, but nevertheless requires access to that kind of energy, to organise conventions such as this for example.

A light begins to dimly flicker. Feminine as personal realisation, masculine as active principle for that realisation. My mind drifts off towards the koan that has followed me intermittently over the past thirty five years, and right into the palegreenvortex, appearing all over the shop either implicitly or explicitly: 'How to make the revolution? The demonstration or Zen?' It begins to vaguely dawn that, as so often, the answer to 'either/or' is in fact 'both/and'. 'Zen', personal transformation, and 'the demonstration', aka directed action in the world, are not opposites but compliments. Each needs the other for its complete fulfilment. For a Milarepa, directed action may be accomplished simply by seeding the collective unconscious with the power of your positive thought-forms. For most of us, a more mundane manifestation is required as well. The question is put further (by me, in truth): is there a place for direct action? Peter Taylor opines that yes, there may be a place, but the emphasis must be on our own transformations. And he is right. For me, the implications are clear. Write and protest about windfarms and drug laws, as manifestations of a reality I feel deeply inside. But remember that this is not the main story: it is an interface with mainstream dominator reality, and too much cannot be expected from this. Most importantly, take up the shamanic rattle, go deep into my own soul and the soul of the world, and travel wherever the journey may beckon.

I awake on the sleeper train soon after the sun has risen. I open the slight cabin window. A hillside of heather stretches upwards, before meeting a sky of pristine early morning blue. The gods and goddesses of the Scottish Highlands have woken to greet me. A tear wells up in my eye.

Encounters with Dangerous Drugs

During 2009, in the U.S.A., the drug escitalopram was prescribed 27,698,000 times (figures from International Marketing Services). This made it the second most popular of all the 'psychiatric' pharmaceuticals, outgunning such well-known drugs as Prozac and Diazepam (Valium).

I have my own experience of this commonly-taken, apparently very useful, psychoactive substance. It was, I think, in 2002, during my final years of living in London. I had, in truth, outstayed my welcome in the Big City, and it showed. With 25 years of Buddhist meditation and practice behind me, I had nevertheless transmuted into a walking dictionary of modern stress-related disorders. I was sort-of able to manage it all, but eventually decided to pay a visit to my G.P.: not with any particular wish for him to do anything about it, but more because, as the cliche goes, it's good to talk - to someone, even the local G.P.

He welcomed me into his surgery. I took a seat, and began to regale him with details of my various discomforts. To my surprise, he became animated as I continued to talk: I had no idea that migraines and intestinal irregularities could cause such interest. By the time I had concluded my tales of urban malaise, he was positively bouncing up and down on his chair. He reached over and plucked a scrappy little piece of paper from beside his computer. On it were written several questions, so vague and general as to be meaningless. I answered them as best I could, after which the doctor turned to me and pronounced triumphantly:'G.A.D.!' Noticing the puzzled expression on my face, he expanded. 'Yes, G.A.D. Generalised Anxiety Disorder. By chance, we have just the thing for you here. We are trialling a new drug to deal with this very disorder. Would you like to join?' Now, taking prescription tablets for psychological difficulties was completely out of character, against all my ideas and theories about life,and the last thing I would imagine to be effective. So I said 'Yes.'

Within a few days, the escitalopram was doing its thing. Now, at last, I'd really got something to feel worried about! It seemed to have triggered a genuine generalised anxiety. I sensed that large areas of my consciousness were being closed off, and that what remained consisted of large, empty holes. Worst of all was the fact that I seemed unable to access my memory banks, which was particularly tricky since I was supposed to be teaching English language to people from abroad. Even the most basic piece of vocabulary was almost impossible to recall. One particular class was a fairly advanced one, studying for an examination that included aspects of physical geography. A student popped a question: 'What do you call it when rocks come down a mountain, for example after heavy rain or an earthquake?' I stood in front of the class, searching desperately down the empty corridors in my mind for an answer. At last something came to me. 'Avalanche' I declared proudly. Two French-speaking students in the class looked at each other doubtfully. 'Isn't that for snow?' one of them eventually piped up. 'No' I answered, looking him straight in the eye. 'In English it's different. We use "avalanche" for rocks as well.'

Soon I was back at the doctor's surgery. 'Please take me off the trial' I begged deep from within my state of babbling wreckhood. The doctor called in a senior colleague and, solemn-faced, they witnessed me signing off the escitalopram wonder drug trial. The fact that they looked so pissed off made me suspicious: did it mean that my experience wouldn't count in the final analysis of the drug? Surely 'reduced the subject to a total nervous mess' was a significant finding in evaluating the effects of escitalopram. Did my experience count in the final statistics? If not, the figures are warped.

I walked through the park on my way home. Being free of the escitalopram curse, I felt like singing to the tress in my state of semi-satori. What's wrong with a touch of anxiety, anyway? It's the natural response of any non-enlightened mind to the dualistic world it appears to inhabit. And I remembered a word: landslide.

During the course of this particular incarnation, I have had occasion to encounter a variety of psychoactive substances, ranging from sugar, coffee, and alcohol, to a number about which the U.K. Home Secretary is less enthusiastic. Sometimes this has been for fun or relaxation, sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes for reasons of gnosis, and sometimes for a mixture of all three. In the case of quite a few of these psychoactives, I have felt that too large a dose, or frequent consumption, would be unwise from the point of view of either mental or physical health. However, besides escitalopram, which seriously challenged my ability to function mentally at all, there is only one substance which I sensed could have truly blown me apart .......

It was probably 1975. Having graduated from Oxford University, I was now engaged in something far more meaningful, and living in a commune that I had helped to found. Carlos Castaneda was all the rage. Like many people around me, I was reading his books about the Mexican shaman sorcerors Don Juan and Don Genaro; unlike a lot of others, however, reading was not enough for me. Maybe supplies of acid had temporarily dried up, I do not remember. Anyhow, I turned to Castaneda's books for psychedelic shamanic wisdom. Three main plant teachers appear in his tomes. Peyote cactus was nowhere to be found, not even on a reconnaissance to Kew Gardens, and I was unfamiliar with the magic psilocybe mushrooms native to British pasturelands. The third, clearly weirdest and least predictable, plant was readily available, however. Datura stramonium, aka jimson weed, could be purchased from the local chemist as a remedy for asthma. I bought a green tin of powdered leaf over the counter, and knocked back a couple of spoons of the vile-tasting stuff.

Some time later I was sitting with my fellow commune members having dinner. Unfortunately, I was unable to swallow anything, since my mouth was so dry that all the moisture in the food was immediately sucked out. People and objects around me dissolved into a blurry mess; rather than the sense of ego-softening and connectedness that can come with classic psychedelics, there was just sensory confusion. It all became too much. I decided to give up for the day, and staggered to my bed.

As I lay down, it seemed that everything was closing down except for the basic automatic processes of the body, such as breathing. My friends were justifiably concerned about me, and came to check up on my state. Apparently, I was standing stock still on the landing near the bathroom, completely oblivious to their presence. They returned thirty minutes later, to find me still there, motionless. Then something changed, and I momentarily regained awareness of the world around me. 'I'm going to the toilet' I announced boldly, then dashed into the bathroom.

Two days later, a friend called in for a chat. He was still a blur in front of me, and I feared that I had suffered permanent damage to my eyes. My trepidation proved unfounded, but the episode was a great teacher to me. I learnt the need for respect for psychoactives, and for life in general. That this life, so precious (as Buddhist texts teach us), is fragile; approach with love and reverence.

Nowadays, there is no excuse for the jimson weed misadventure: excellent sources of education and information are out there. Read about datura stramonium on Erowid, and you will know not to mess with this particular plant, unless you are a highly experienced shaman. Meanwhile, western society is sufficiently lacking in soul and vital life force so that millions of people resort to escitalopram and the like to stumble their mind-numbed way through the day. At the same time, huge numbers of folk languish in jail for selling or taking substances that are statistically less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. Hats off to Angus Mcqueen for his recent excellent three-part documentary 'Our War on Drugs' on Channel Four. As predicted on this blog, it takes Channel Four, rather than the biased BBC, to come up with a hard-hitting series that effectively tears global drug policies to shreds. Watch it if you can, it's a rarity, a highly recommendable and in places poignant piece of education on mainstream television.

Body Politic

The time has come to tear up and throw away all the markers on the political landscape that I grew up with. Socialism, Conservatism, Communism; left-wing, right-wing: all are now obsolete, and irrelevant to current conditions - in the UK for sure, and most likely for the rest of the western world. The political arena of today is defined very simply: Control System versus the Rest. It is a stark dualism of which even the Gnostics would have been proud, apart from the fact that it is based on pragmatic factors rather than ontology.

The collapse of the old distinctions could have been predicted long ago, when Labour, traditionally defender of the poor and down-at-heel, became New Labour and, under the dark magic of the Blairite grin, started hobnobbing with the rich and famous, while the rest of us just plodded on. New Labour happily oversaw and encouraged the emerging celebritocracy, along with related get-rich-quickers of the banking and big business worlds. Eventually Blair took his smirk off elsewhere, leaving Brown to fiddle while the fantasy banking world that he had helped to create started to burn all around him.

Control System versus the Rest: an elegant forces-of-darkness against bringers-of-light scenario. Even a year ago, I didn't see things much like that at all. Two visitors from Germany told me matter-of-factly that democracy doesn't exist, which I took as a bit of a blanket statement, and one which puzzled me. It was only when I began to dig more deeply that things started to click. I suppose that sufficient passion for a given subject is required before the time and effort necessary is devoted to getting beneath the skin of what the television headlines tell you. In my case, the invasion of the windfarms and UK drug policy were the triggers for the collapse of my old world view. What I began to discover was that reality was completely at odds with the 'information' dished out for public consumption by politicians and most of the mainstream media. The variance could not be put down simply to personal and reasonable differences of opinion, either; reality really was totally different. There was either a great deal of wilful ignorance going on, and/or a hidden agenda of some sort. Slowly, bits of the jigsaw puzzle began to fit together, until a picture of active collusion, if not exactly organised conspiracy, started to emerge. A collusion between politicians, the media, the world of big business and finance, maybe others: those whose aim is to maintain power, wealth, and control for themselves and themselves alone; who feel the right to dominate. Welcome to the Control System.

Uppermost in my mind of late has been the invasion of the wind turbines, following Mega-Disaster Minister of Energy Chris Huhne's pronouncement that we shall be seeing more of them soon. This is the real environmental catastrophe confronting us, not the various chimera rolled out by the not-very-Liberal and not-at-all-Democratic Huhne. Interestingly, in these days when the Anthropogenic Global Warming camp are having a bit of a hard time - even Guardian readers are expressing some doubts - he played down the 'save the planet with a turbine' line, instead mumbling something about safeguarding national energy supply. Total nonsense, since the one way that can't be done is through a source of energy that is intermittent, and completely unpredictable and unreliable.

I have written already, in 'Manna from a hot heaven', about the lack of credibility to the invasion of the wind farms. It has no reasonable justification whatsoever. It serves two unspoken purposes, however. Firstly, lots of money for Control System bigwigs through indirect subsidies and high energy prices. Secondly, the menace of Anthropogenic Global Warming provides a good excuse for fear-mongering, an excellent weapon in the fight to increase control over people's lives, and a reason to circumvent the fragile vestiges of democracy in the name of 'saving the planet for our grandchildren.'

Various internet sites rail ferociously against this stuff. References to 'Green Stalinism', and even more talk of 'eco-fascism'. Strong terms but on reflection, and after consulting a dictionary, I find them not greatly exaggerated. On orwelltoday, Green Stalinism is defined as 'a planned economy in the name of environmentalism.' 'The consequences are the familiar Soviet ones: centralised decision-making and localised devastation.' That is it precisely. And these 'familiar Soviet consequences' are exactly what our Control System emissaries have in mind, be it Huhne, Second-in-Command Corporal Clegg (whose wife, by pure coincidence, works for a wind farm company.....), partners-in-crime the Millibands, or the Not-so-Green Party's Caroline Lucas.

Control System gets full backup from its various organs of miscommunication and spreading of lies to the rest of us. Two deserve special mention. First off, the BBC. I am fed up with hearing the refrain (thankfully less common in recent times) that the BBC is somehow superior and more trustworthy because it doesn't depend on courting advertisers, and is therefore more independent. It is NOT independent! It depends on licence payers' money, which in turn depends on continued consent from the government. Which more-or-less defines what the BBC's agenda is. Take UK drug policy as an example. It is completely untenable, and could be destroyed with ease in next-to no time, should the BBC decide to do so. Strangely, our national broadcasters have thus far failed to rise to the challenge. Instead, when the opportunity arose, around the time of the Professor Nutt fiasco, they dealt with the good man's impeccable logic in perfunctory and derisory fashion. Hidden agenda of complicity with the government is clear for all with eyes to see. It has been left to Channel Four to dish the dirt in a hard-hitting three-part documentary on the 'war on drugs', starting this week. And, back on the wind, read for yourself James Delingpole's blog on 'BBC; official voice of Ecofascism.' By the way, ever wonder why the once-ubiquitous David Bellamy no longer does his much-loved nature programmes on BBC? He dared to disagree with Central Control belief system on global warming: made into a pariah because of his inconvenient views. Yes, the BBC: Control System propaganda machine par excellence.

The other Control System stooges I would like to highlight are resident at the Met Office. A look at the 'climate change' section on their website shows it to be a hotbed of lies, half-truths, deception, and opinion expressed as fact. Example: Question: 'Are you sure there's a link between temperature rise and CO2?' Answer: 'Yes. Temperature and CO2 are linked. Studies of polar ice layers show that in the past, rises in temperature have been followed by an increase in CO2. Now, it is a rise in CO2 that is causing the temperature to rise.' Er, excuse me, but the logic of this would baffle even a demented walrus. Go to your GP and tell him or her: Eating cheese was followed by my having migraines. Now, my migraines are causing me to eat hunks of cheddar. You will be told to stop wasting limited NHS resources, or sent to see a shrink.

All this would be laughable, except that it is nonsense churned out as propaganda in a shameless attempt to dupe the public in what are serious matters. In the meantime, protesters on the Lammermuir Hills in southern Scotland made a giant heart from stones on the hills as an expression of their love for the places they say will be devastated by a proposed wind farm. Ah yes, love! How quaint! How cute! How often do our pseudo-environmental Control System advocates speak of love, and of beauty? Caroline Lucas, Brave New Green World MP for Brighton, speaks of targets, not love and beauty. Such talk makes Control System people distinctly uneasy; it's not in their ball park. 'Green' is now a mental abstraction, an ideology used to justify all manner of terrible thing, and to manipulate people by playing on their fears. Certainly not a matter for the heart and the soul.

It's weird: leap outside the Control System box, and you find yourself in unlikely company. A seemingly disparate bunch of alternative culture people, disaffected Tories, conspiracy theorists, real liberals, psychedelic people, and the rest. All have in common a sense of being marginalised by the diktats of the Control System. I'm not the only person to feel a trifle confused: in an interview on Red Ice Radio, Peter Taylor talks of how he used to feel that he was 'left', but now finds himself agreeing more with what some people 'on the right' are saying. And the best thing I can find to read in mainstream media is James Delingpole's Daily Telegraph blog!

In the meantime, it befalls us to act, however clumsily or imperfectly. As James Hillman, in his 'time capsule for the year 2100' reminds us (see youtube), we are in part political animals: political, not in the debased dominator sense, but in its true, noble meaning, as being related to public affairs. Our soul is not ultimately separate, but is connected to and part of the world around us. To repress its horror and sense of injustice at what goes on outside the shell of our individual body is the same as to repress any other constituents of our mind. To be fully human means to act in defence of the true and beautiful in the world of which we are part. Brothers and sisters, take up your hearts, souls, and pitchforks! The world needs you......

Religion is Psychedelic

Education is one of the major weapons of mind control available to dominator culture. Seen in this light, the British National Curriculum is a most effective tool, enabling those in power to determine quite precisely what our young citizens should be taught; what they should and should not know and believe to be true. One book unlikely to find its way onto any course of Religious Studies is 'Supernatural' by Graham Hancock: it might give the kids all sorts of inconvenient ideas.

What is ignored by scientists and academics as a topic for study can be as revealing as what they endlessly research. Two such ignored mysteries readily come to mind. One is the seemingly unfathomed question of the origins of religion and the spiritual. Another - which, we shall see, dovetails neatly into the riddle of our sense of the religious - concerns human anatomy in general, and the human brain in particular. With regard to the latter theme, it would seem that the human being of 100,00 years ago was anatomically identical to our 21st century specimen. This fact extends to the brain, in terms both of its size and its complexity. In other words, everything we are mentally capable of today, our ancestors of that time should have been likewise. For most of the intervening time, however, nothing much seems to have happened - an enormous time gap exists between the appearance of the modern human skeleton and behaviour that is deemed fully human by we moderns.

Suddenly, and without prior warning, we get the great cave paintings of Peche Merle, Cosquer, Fumane, and the rest, between 20,000 and 35,000 years ago. No gradual evolutionary path leads to these astonishing eruptions of artistic vision and accomplishment, at least as far as current evidence shows. They appear as if out of nowhere, and with a degree of artistic skill that amazed Picasso, among others. They are also the first signs we have of anything beyond a most rudimentary imagination, which again seems to manifest fully formed, as does a sense of cognisance of supernatural forces and spiritual dimensions. A closer look at these paintings shows their content to be bizarre. Alongside half-naturalistic animals, the paintings teem with therianthropes (half-human, half-animal beings), people transforming into animals, wounded men, and extensive patterns of dots, lines, and arcs. What on earth is going on?

As the earliest expressions of complex artistic imagination, let alone a sense of the broadly religious, you would think that these paintings are uniquely significant in helping us understand what it is to be human. Yet their meaning has remained elusive. Earlier theories, such as hunting magic, have been thoroughly discredited, and most scientists have moved on to less enigmatic subjects - and ones that are more likely to attract research funding....

Enter Graham Hancock and his 700-page tome. His investigations lead him from these magnificent cave paintings of prehistory onto the almost modern rock art of the San people in South Africa. He is subsequently drawn in the direction of European fairy lore, the psychedelic shamanism of Africa and South America, modern encounters with UFOs and abductions by aliens, and the experiences of volunteers in Dr. Rick Strassman's groundbreaking research with the powerful psychedelic DMT.

His remarkable conclusion is that all these peoples and situations, disparate in time and space, are nevertheless expressions of the same core phenomena. They keep on cropping up, regardless of culture: weird alien beings, therianthropes, transformations and shape-shiftings, wounds and surgical procedures, patterns of dots, lines, and other entoptic phenomena. It appears that these are all universals to the human condition, somehow hard-wired into our very being. And that they can be accessed through entering into what are called (rather unsatisfactorily) 'trance states' or 'altered states of consciousness' (a.s.c.'s). The means for exploring such states are various, and have been used by shamans and others since time immemorial: meditation and yoga techniques, psychedelic (entheogenic) plants and substances, sensory deprivation, fasting, trance-dancing, flotation, and sleep deprivation are some that immediately come to mind.

If this scenario is not already bad news for pontiffs, archbishops, imams, and other leaders of organised hierarchical religions - that religion most likely has its origins in a.s.c.'s accessed by hallucinating shamans in caves 35,000 years ago - then things are about to get far more uncomfortable. The obvious next question any half-intelligent humanoid is bound to ask is: how did our Paleolithic ancestors get to experience these a.s.c.'s anyway, all of a sudden after thousands of years of apparent cultural stagnation? While difficult to prove conclusively, the most likely contender as a means for significant numbers of a population to access such states would be a psychedelic plant of some kind - for our European ancestors, this could well have been the liberty cap mushroom, psilocybe semilanceata. The possibility of a fungal contribution to the evolution of human consciousness was made more speculatively by Terence McKenna in 'Food of the Gods'; Graham Hancock's treatment of the subject is more thorough and convincing, however. It seems that, in any given human population, around 2% of people have a natural ability to enter altered states. For the rest of us plebs, we need help in one form or another, and our Paleolithic ancestors may well have discovered that the swiftest, simplest, and most reliable means was through ingesting the sacred mushroom.

Unburdened of the prejudiced moralistic clutter and inhibition that blight our modern monotheistic-based cultures, most extent shamanic peoples appear to use pretty much whatever thay can get their hands on in order to enter altered states, including plants that are potentially far more hazardous than any psychedelic psilocybin-containing mushroom. Whatever, it is worth considering for its far-reaching implications: the major catalyst for our human sense of imagination and spirit may well be growing in a field or grass verge near you right now!

For anyone interested in the human endeavour beyond the pathetic confines of the western dominator pig trough (apologies to our porcine buddies), 'Supernatural' is pretty much a must-read. If Mr. Hancock's 700 pages seem a bit daunting, believe me, they are not. But you could always listen to his excellent lecture at October Gallery in episodes 27 and 28 of Shamanic Freedom Radio (see my 'sites on the web' list for the connection).

(photo by G. Mueller, from Erowid)

Musings From the Fringe

During the week following the solstice, while most of Britain was basking in sunshine, and with even Glastonbury escaping its traditional soaking, Martha and I were enjoying the grey clouds, intermitttent drizzle, and fresh cooling breezes of the far-flung islands of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides. Take a look at a map. These islands are on the very fringe of the Eurasian landmass with all that implies. And on the edge of our familiar universe is what they sometimes feel like.

Lewis: a vast sea of peat topped with scrubby heather constantly racked by the zephyrs of the North Atlantic. Callanish: to those with ears to listen, Neolithic wisdom still speaks from the stones, whose essence no photo is able to capture. Luskentyre, Seilebost, West Berneray: enormous swathes of sand, stretching into the middle distance, dazzling the eyes when the sun deigns to shine.

Out here, on the perimeter of the monolith we call western civilisation, it is easier to conceive of life and world beyond the confines of that suffocating dominator complex. The lull of the dark ocean, constantly breaking on crystalline shores or against contorted rocks, its slow and steady rhythm punctured only by the occasional cry of a sea bird. The Stones, each displaying unique and fantastic patterns in the ancient Lewisian gneiss from which they have been wrested, and whence they have been quietly radiating their message for millenia. The slow yet measures cycle of life of flowers and birds on the machair, the sandy, windblasted marine hinterland. After a while, these begin to nibble away at your soul, imposing a slower and more spacious rhythm. Alongside this process, life deepens and opens up, and individual consciousness strains to expand to the further horizons of the Hebridean skies. An invitation to the perimeters, to give up the narrowness of self-obsession, and to embrace instead the greatness and fullness of existence.

It's when you get on the bus that you remember where you are: Radio One is playing as the theme tune for our journey past remote farmhouses and lochans embedded in the ocean of rock that is South Harris. Here in the Outer Hebrides, where for a moment life beyond the grasp of global non-culture can be savoured, still the mainstream must make itself known somehow. On Monday, on our way back to the mainland via the ferry to Ullapool, I notice an old lady reading a magazine. The previous day she was most likely perusing the Bible in a Free Presbetyrian church in Stornoway, fearfully fuelling her sense of guilt and chiding herself for her sins. Today she is reading about the private (or not-so private) lives of Cristina Aguilera, Jordan, and Britney Spears. I struggle to grasp the relevance of these 'celebrities' for the grey-haired lady from Lewis, but there it is for all to see. Alternative culture internet sites teem with articles about global conspiracy, the New World Order, forthcoming one-world government and a single global economy. No need to look to the future: it's with us right now, in cultural terms at least. The globalisation of culture, along with media as its prime means of dissemination, is a necessary element in the dream of world domination. Culture creates the mindset. For culture, read brainwashing. Stornoway, Stepney, or Singapore, it's all the same. Cristina Aguilera's the one. Or, for the boys, football.

So in the Outer Hebrides, the sense of remoteness from the mainstream, though fragile, is palpable, an increasingly rare experience in the modern west. Brussels, Westminster, Holyrood, all seem gloriously irrelevant. Yet they are not. For these sinister centres of power, it is vital to extend their grubby tentacles into every nook and cranny of the Empire. The dining room of the Bed and Breakfast on Harris overlooks a dark sea loch set deeply into the grey rocky hillscape all around. The lady running the establishment tells me how she is unable to put up benighted travellers on the sofa or the floor, because it would be breaking the rules, and she fears word getting back to the Inspectors, who would remove her four-star rating. This is the legacy of the New Labour nightmare of soulless bureaucracy, happily imitated by Scottish Parliament. Highland hospitality blown to pieces. Rather die of hypothermia on the doorstep than sleep on the sofa, risking the wrath of Big Brother's henchmen, the Inspectors. One World, or One Europe at least, even out on the fringes, where the Atlantic relentlessly batters the coastline, and the main sounds are the cries of gulls and oystercatchers. Faceless, soulless, creeping death.

Passing through the splendidly wild and rocky landscapes of North Harris, I cast my eye in the direction of a hill called Muaitheabhal. Soon it will sport a cluster of metal-and-plastic wind turbines. Love and connectedness coexist in the core of my soul alongside a seething anger, which is sometimes tinged with a sense of despair. Another thirty-turbine project is proposed near Stornoway. There seems no end to this onslaught on the spirits of the landscape by dominators in suits. The talk nowadays is of 'consultation with local communities', though precisely what this entails remains to be seen. Plus what the BBC, in its own biased euphemistic language, refers to as 'money contributed by wind scheme operators.' Translated into realspeak, this amounts to bribes offered to hard-up villagers for messing up their lives. The Coalition is now talking of institutionalising this bribery through lower council tax bills for communities that agree to the invasion of their locality by wind turbines. This is actually no different to the sort of thing that makes our modern middle-classes recline in horror if it happens elsewhere, or as part of history. Giving Coca-Cola to indigenous Amazonians in exchange for their land, or their souls in the form of religious conversion. It was one of Carl Jung's great insights that we are nowhere so blind as in the centre of our own egos, a principle that holds collectively as much as individually. It's easy to condemn when it's 'out there', 'other'; far less so when it's happening in our midst.

Small communities may accept these shameless bribes from the pimps in suits, and I can understand why. Probably too late, they'll realise their mistake, and what they have lost by selling off their soul. In addition, tourists will stop coming, the local economy will suffer, while the dominators in suits in their centrally-heated offices hundreds of miles away will rub their grubby mitts at another mission successful.

To finish on a more optimistic note, a few words of beauty from the artist Alice Starmore. I know little about her, except that she was born and grew up among the peat and heather of Lewis, and she has exhibited her work at An Lanntair, the rather smart Arts Centre in Stornoway. The exhibition is dedicated to Mamba, an acronym to describe Lewis. To some it is 'Miles and Miles of Bugger All', but to Alice it is 'Miles and Miles of Beauty Astounding.' 'North Lewis is the largest undisturbed blanket bog in Europe' she writes. 'Its importance as a rare and special habitat is equivalent to that of the Serengeti or the rainforest of Brazil.' 'For many islanders the moor is a part of their soul....... The catalyst for creating the Mamba exhibition was the realisation that there are people, some in positions of considerable power, who have no regard for the moorland and think of it as a bleak and empty place which has no value other than space to be exploited. The exhibition shows that it is neither bleak nor empty....... Mamba is about precious landscape and the life within it. Step into that landscape and look, for there are wonders to behold.....' Thanks, Alice.

Manna From A Hot Heaven

The theory of human-generated global warming has been a godsend to politicians and corporate big business alike. It seems only yesterday that talk of climate change was considered the domain of fringe environmentalists and anti-capitalists who dared to critique the unlimited benefits of oil- and coal- based modern societies. Then someone turned a switch, and realised there was money to be made here. Another switch was turned, and somebody else saw how climate change had great potential for fear-mongering and mind control. And so we arrive at the current situation.

If modern dominator culture is expert in anything, it is hijacking ideas and movements that arise counter to their own aims, and corrupting them to suit their own purposes. The mainstream of 1960s 'psychedelic culture' is one such example; interestingly, the British counterculture of the 1970s proved less susceptible to being sequestered, and was really beyond the pale, a fact which resulted in the enormous Operation Julie acid bust of 1977. Once we realise that renewable (which is not necessarily 'green') energy developments are not, in the main, about saving Polynesians and polar bears, let alone providing a better world for our grandchildren, but about making money and maintaining power, then everything falls into place. We understand why the number one consequence of global warming fear has been, in the U.K., the proliferation of large-scale wind farms constructed by multinational corporations, rather than local and domestic initiatives for energy production. In dominator cultures, power and money are concentrated into the hands of the few in the typical hierarchical pyramid. And the last thing these people want is for the mass of the population to be empowered in any way and take responsibility. Their role in the grand scheme of things is to watch television and shut up.

It also becomes clear why the emphasis is on greater generation of energy, rather than energy efficiency and decreasing consumption. I cannot imagine the Bilderburg group of highly influential people, meeting earlier this month in Spain, looking favourably on anything that involves decreases in consumption. Continued economic growth is the name of the game - the media screams at us every day that without it we are all doomed - so energy efficiency, with its concomitant fall in consumption and profits, is a very bad thing.

Armed with the fear that the theory of human-generated global warming provokes, the Control System is able to justify all manner of preposterous claims. The esoteric and convoluted scheme of Renewable Obligation Certificates, through which energy companies are effectively subsidised by taxpayers so that they can reap handsome profits from expensive wind energy, is one obvious and obscene example. Carbon, a word that has taken on the mantle of Jungian-style environmental Shadow, can be used as an excuse for higher energy prices and special taxes. The apocalypse that will be upon us if we don't invest heavily in large-scale renewables projects is used to justify ripping apart the countryside of Britain and covering it with monstrous metal-and-plastic turbines. The fear-and-guilt trip is a favourite ploy of the dominators.

Other sinister events surround the topic. There is seeding of the public unconscious with the need for wind farms: notice how frequently, when the phrases 'climate change' and 'global warming' are used on television, a photo of a wind turbine is flashed up at the same time. Former Energy Minister Ed Miliband's infamous comment that opposing a local wind farm is socially unacceptable. Practices that are undemocratic and of dubious legaity used by councils to rubberstamp wind farm proposals. More locally, the display in Inverness Museum that claims wind farms are 'vital to reduce carbon emissions': opinion presented as fact. I objected to the display, receiving a grammatically correct but ultimately anodyne reply. I decided to let the matter go, but am having second thoughts.

All of this is softly softly totalitarianism. I use this long word deliberately, and mean it literally. Politicians and economic bigwigs would have us believe that the debate is over, on wind farms in particular and human-generated global warming in general. More sinister happenings come to mind. When the Chief of the U.K. Meteorological Office appeared on mainstream television a few months back, in the middle of the climate email fiasco, to reassure us that the entire scientific community agrees that this type of climate change is taking place, and that it is without the slightest doubt a great threat, my antennae went into overdrive. Either he is extremely ill-informed, or he is lying through his teeth. Who is holding the gun to his back, I wondered. Watch Peter Taylor's brilliant scientific presentation to cut through the hype, the counterfeit consensus, and vested interests. Go to the 'Our Planet' section on holisticchannel.org.uk He does not doubt that human activity is affecting climate, but believes that its influence is fairly small compared to other factors.

Meanwhile, groups such as the John Muir Trust and Mountaineering Council of Scotland, who have fought tirelessly to protect wild places in Britain from the juggernaut of wind farm industrialisation are, I suspect, facing a dilemma. Invaluable though it has been, their work has borne modest fruit, as evidenced by the continued building of these Shrines to Mammon among hills, moorland and mountains. Unlike the 'developers', these groups have kept painstakingly to correct procedure, and spoken eloquently with the voice of reason. Unfortunately, this approach has little impact on a process that is fuelled by far darker forces. Will they become more militant? In a sense, the situation requires meeting head-on, confronting on its own terms somehow. A recent letter in one of the main hillwalking magazines called for direct action; last weekend, a demonstration was held against a wind farm in the Lammermuir Hills, south-east Scotland. More people are waking up to the con that is upon them. What effect this awakening will have remains to be seen. Maybe it's time to invoke the aid of the nature spirits, for their own good and for ours........

Confrontation

Modern texts often refer to it by the estate names of Fisherfield and Letterewe. I prefer the traditional and far more evocative appelation of 'the Great Wilderness'. On his pioneering 16th-century map, Timothy Pont simply scrawled 'Extreme Wilderness' over the area, and for long afterwards its contours and outlines remained mysteries to human civilisation. I once met a man at a bus stop on the Wilderness's perimeter. He had just traversed the region. Sunburnt and in mud-caked boots, he was a bag of nerves, as if he had encountered ghosts and aliens on the hills, a culture shock more severe than a week in southern India. It's that kind of place ......

I get off a bus on the rising arc of a lonely country road. Three cars are parked in a lay-by, and I cast a wistful eye in their direction as I take my short, sharp leave of the comforts and knowns of the human world. I have visited the Great Wilderness before, but never through this, its eastern portal. Dark evening clouds hang stubbornly over the hilltops; the loch is still and sombre as I tread the silent path along its shores. Soon the eeriness of this long, dark Scottish summer's eve begins to press in on me. A sound in the heather makes me jump; it's only a crow. Black outlines of crags and precipices in the heart of the Wilderness ahead catch my eye, and I momentarily wonder why I am here at all. I could, instead, be eating dinner at home, with convivial company and a glass of wine, before retiring to the sofa and the latest alternative culture podcast.

As well as tranquility and peace, the joyful release of tensions, the bliss of the separate self dissolving into infinity, the path of self-knowledge seems to involve confrontation, fear, being up against it. To go beyond the confines of normal egohood and consensus reality is scary stuff. What lies on the other side of the door? And what ego willingly relinquishes its control and power to a wider reality? Tantric Buddhists seek out this confrontation with the limits in cremation grounds at midnight, and by invoking wrathful deities. It's there is shamanism: 'A person who wishes to understand something about shamanism must first of all experience their own death. This is an arduous task! ...... The person who has not already died once as a human being cannot understand anything about shamanism.' (Christian Ratsch et al, Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas). In the arts: 'You scared yourself with music, I scared myself with paint, I drew 550 different shoes today, it almost made me faint' (Lou Reed and John Cale on Andy Warhol). And in serious entheogenics: 'DMT sometimes inspires fear - this marks the experience as existentially authentic ..... A touch of terror gives the stamp of validity to the experience because it means "This is real." (Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival).

At 9 p.m., with the sombre twilight full upon me, I take a sharp turn right around the prow of a hill and enter a broad but deep strath (a Scottish river valley). People have been here before - there is a reasonable hillpath - but I feel that I have stumbled into a secret, hidden fairytale land. Small groups of deer peer down at me from the hillside. Some run away, while others just gaze, still, silent, and curious. Suddenly, a blue spectre appears out of the gloom of the valley below me. I eventually make out a man. He is considerably older than me, extremely suntanned, wearing a striking blue rain jacket, and is walking rather slowly. It will be midnight before he reaches the roadside, but he is unconcerned: the skies of northern Scotland won't get completely dark at all on this June night.

More deer retreat from the water's edge as I head towards a level spot near a stream flowing into the loch. Beginning to erect my simple tent for the night, I notice a larger herd, thirty or more, grazing on the hillside a mere two hundred yards away. By the time I have pitched my shelter and look up, they have melted into the hillside and the night.

Here, for this short time, the rules of the game are changed; I am no longer king of the castle. Me and the rest of creation are on level terms, and it is a strange, unsettling feeling. I have my mobile phone, but here there is no signal. I have a tent against the rain, and a sleeping bag to ward off the cold. The deer have a coat to keep out both damp and cold, however, and it doesn't rustle noisily in the wind like my tent, keeping me awake. My ego wants to recoil, to retreat into the rigid shell of its own superiority, but a basic sense of justice and honesty inside me fights the tendency. I breathe out, relax, and allow the natural democracy of the valley to take me over.

I try to sleep, but the unfamiliar rhythms of this secret place make it difficult. The never-ending twilight penetrates the thin film that is my tent. And in truth the valley is full of noises at one hour before midnight. High-pitched sounds of a waterfall in one direction, constant gurgles from the stream in another; a cuckoo singing insistently into the deep twilight; all manner of other creaks, sighs, and rustlings. I go outside to see. Nothing, in this dimension at least.

A battalion of midges greets me when I emerge the following morning, and the dark clouds of yesterday continue to hang ominously over the tops and ridges of the mountains. I ascend a strange stairway of smooth, angled rocks towards the weird world of the summits. At one point I see a solitary deer below, standing quietly on the rocky pavement. What moves her to be there, alone and watching?

I continue upwards, and the silence of the mountain fog envelops me. Strange presences announce themselves in the gloom, elusive shapeshifters. I climb over two mountain summits with these ghostly gods for company. Then, en route to the third and final peak, the clouds dissolve into nothingness, and the world around me is transformed, radiant and bejewelled. Light plays on the surface of lochans sunk deep into the earth's crust, and every contour of distant crags and hillsides stands in sharp outline. Confrontation passes, consciousness expands to far horizons, a thin skin separates this wide place from infinity.......