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.......

The Curse of Descartes

Most of us love a bogeyman - or, in these politically correct times, a bogey person. On the crudest level, this is somebody we can blame for everything that we consider to be bad in the world. More subtly, the bogey is not exactly the source of all evil, but a shadow figure nevertheless, who constellates an approach, a stage in history maybe, a weltanschauung.

For a lot of people here in Scotland, where the collective memory is long and unforgiving, a major bogey remains Superdominatrix and Oppressor of all north of the Border, Maggie Thatcher. While her dark spectre continues to hover over the banks of the Clyde and clank through the blackened corridors of Edinburgh Castle at the stroke of midnight, there is no chance of David Cameron and his buddies capturing more than a handful of Scottish votes. A complete exorcism is in order, still waiting to be performed.

For maverick disciple of Carl Jung and founder of archetypal psychology James Hillman, the bogeyman comes in the form of 17th century philosopher-mathematician Rene Descartes, along with his less famous contemporary Marin Mersenne. And with good reason. I have already written about how the Cartesian view divides the world into living subjects, complete with human egos, and the rest of the universe, dead and 'out there'. Wielding his trusty sword of mathematics, Descartes also conclusively proved that animals have no soul; imagine the status ascribed to plants, rocks and the like. Inutterably dead, pure lifelessness. Humans do possess soul and psyche, but in the true spirit of the mechanistic worldview, this needs to be located physically. Descartes finally and triumphantly concluded that the soul resides in the pineal gland.

It will not be lost on the reader that these findings of one of the fathers of modern rationalism are totally mad. But the demented ramblings of Descartes are very much in accord with the great project of secular, rational, single-waveband humanism that has moulded most of what we know as modern western civilisation. They have won the day.

Another emanation of Cartesian folly concerns the quest to discover what is truly 'real'. Following his mathematical approach, our bogeyman's conclusion was that it is my thoughts that show me to be conclusively 'me'. In contrast, sense experience especially is not to be trusted as proof - of anything, really. Remember this, when you next take a walk in the park, and see the last of the spring blossom fall to the ground, feel the wind on your skin, hear the birds as they go about their springtime business. In terms of reality, this is all highly suspect and dodgy stuff indeed.

The legacy of the Cartesian faith in mathematics as the means to probe and express reality, along with its concomitant suspicion of the validity of 'quality', can be seen in the mindset and mindspeak of our modern politicians, economists, and the rest. One such manifestation is the tendency to answer almost any given question in the language of that low-level form of maths, statistics. In the UK, members of the former Labour Government were especially prone to this particular form of sorcery. Policy and progress were expressed almost exclusively in percentage increases or decreases, numerical targets, specific dates, and so on. This IS reality as viewed through the lens of single-waveband scientific materialism. Which suits politicians and the like perfectly well since, contrary to the consensual view, figures and statistics do not demonstrate a single, objective, incontrovertible reality, but can be manipulated to prove and justify just about anything. To quote Mark Twain, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.

A sickening example of the soul-strangling effects of the post-Cartesian statistical view of the world emerged shortly before the recent election, when I took a cursory look at the various parties' policies on 'the environment'. These in the main turned out to be percentage figures for reductions in carbon emissions by particular dates. Nothing about love, care, respect, kinship, enjoyment even. Trees, rocks, birds, dolphins, all abstracted into figures; the Soul of the World reduced to percentage points on a piece of paper. Which, once more, suits the dominators just fine, as they can continue their own power agenda sanctioned by the god of the day, statistics. In truth, the only political parties to demonstrate any sense of 'environment' as directly experienced (ie outside the Cartesian box of hell) were UKIP (discourage windfarms) and the BNP (undergrounding for power transmission cables through areas of natural beauty). Does this mean that the anarcho-shamanism of Pale Green Vortex will be metamorphosing into shamanic far-rightism? Probably not. But it does demonstrate the infernal vision, the poverty of soul and imagination, that informs mainstream politics in general. Children of Descartes, born into sickness and the nexus of non-reality, we salute you.

Dominators everywhere

Dominators, dominator styles, dominator complexes: Pale Green Vortex is littered with references to these phenomena. But who and what are they?

I first came across talk of dominator culture in Terence McKenna's classic 'Food of the Gods'. He in turn had borrowed the expression from Riane Eisler's 'The Chalice and the Blade'. I finally got round to reading it....

The story goes something like this: Once upon a time, quite a long time ago, in the Mediterranean and Near East regions normally considered the cradle of western civilisation, people lived quite differently. Settled agricultural societies, at peace with one another, lived side by side. These Neolithic peoples worshipped the Great Goddess, and developed steadily their social organisations and technological prowess. Furthermore, to quote Eisler, 'Equality between the sexes - and among all people - was the general norm in the Neolithic.' This was not matriarchal society, but partnership society.

All began to change around 4200 BCE. Waves of invaders from the north and east came in on horseback. Warrior types, and with warlike male gods, slowly they subjugated the Old European groups. 'Now everywhere the men with the greatest power to destroy - the physically strongest, most insensitive, most brutal - rise to the top, as everywhere the social structure becomes more hierarchic and authoritarian' (chapter four - Dark Order out of Chaos). The day of the dominator is upon us. And the shape of western 'civilisation' has been largely determined by dominator mentality ever since.

A most important lesson from 'The Chalice and the Blade' is that there is no inevitability about the ways human societies go about things. Viciousness and dominator-style competitiveness, manifesting in power-based hierarchical forms of social organisation, is not hard-wired into our make-up, as the dominators and their one-eyed scientific apologists would have us believe. 'Warfare and patriarchy arrived with the appearance of dominator values' (Food of the Gods, intro). There is indeed a choice, but most humans are not even aware of it.

'The most important book since Darwin's "Origin of Species"', Ashley Montagu proclaims on the front cover of my copy of 'The Chalice and the Blade'. Well, it depends on who gets to read it. This is not the kind of book that official dominator channels are going to promote. Education in general, and history in particular, are most effective forms of social control. Imagine it: history lesson for the ten-year olds. 'OK kids, today we're looking at some of our ancestors. Well, unlike us, they lived happily side by side. They co-operated on many issues, didn't need armies or nuclear weapons, could go out on the streets at night, and bullying probably was unheard of. Now things are different, and you've got me.' How do you explain the supposed superiority of modern dominator-style 'progress' from that basis? You can't. Give that to the kids and the revolution will soon be upon us.

So the modern dominators had better keep quiet about the Neolithic partnership societies; they represent the death-knell of much of our modern way of life. Also best to keep under wraps what happened in the various outbursts of goddess-partnership vitality that have occasionally punched a hole in the skin of dominator culture: the witch burnings, the counter culture of the late 1960s and 1970s come readily to mind. As Terence Mckenna says: 'Dominator culture has shown a remarkable ability to redesign itself....'(Food of the Gods, chapter five). It has also cunningly developed the means to eliminate other possibilities from the arena of popular human consciousness. Brainwashing through selection and censoring of what is proferred as 'the truth'.

As it is, should we dare to look outside the dominators' box, 'The Chalice and the Blade', with its story of partnership societies, provides a myth from which to live. Not a utopia, nor a lost Garden of Eden that provokes mere nostalgia, but a vision of real possibilities, a myth to lead us on - and back to Gaia.

The Daimon's Blessing

'Know thyself' has been the maxim meted out to me by the daimon - at birth, at conception, in a previous lifetime, or in a dimension outside the consensual time- space continuum, I have no idea. Whatever, it lies outside the categories of choice, and is something over which I have little control. As examined by James Hillman in 'The Soul's Code', the daimon's calling appears to have shaped my life more than anything more conventional psychologies can come up with.

Much orthodox psychology circles round the so-called nature/nurture debate. On the nurture side, developmental psychology looks at a person from the viewpoint of the various influences on this life: parental relationships and early experiences are particularly scrutinised - familiar therapy territory. On the nature side, it's all genes, DNA, braincell chemistry: you're hard-wired and that's that. Archetypal psychologist James Hillman, however, proposes a third option, demonstrated by his 'acorn theory'. Just as the mature oak tree is already contained in the acorn, so is our personal destiny already present whan we are just little humans. Our 'calling' is to bring to maturity the particular shape, colour, flavour, of our own unique and individual acorn. And it is the daimon that facilitates the process, and with whom we must remain in contact in order to bring our life to fruition.

So the notions of daimon and acorn appear to describe (rather than explain) what has unfolded over the years of my life more satisfactorily than anything else I have come across. But to follow the daimon's calling of 'knowing myself' has involved abandoning the narrower confines of 'self' as enshrined in conventional ego psychology. To speak in Jungian terms, it has necessitated firstly a descent beyond ego into personal unconscious (including encounter with the Shadow), then entry into the collective unconscious (anima and archetypes). Still further, it has meant contact with what Jung tentatively refers to as the psychoid, and what Hillman approaches in his work on 'the soul of the world', where our connectedness with absolutely everything is brought into focus. Paradoxically, knowing yourself leads to the realisation that you are not a separate entity at all, but are intimately related to everything else. And for this leap into identity with the animal, plant and conventionally inanimate worlds, it may be necessary to leave behind Jung and his disciples, and take as guides and mentors those traditions that have not lost contact with these dimensions of reality in the first place - I am speaking primarily of so-called 'primitive' and shamanic cultures.

Attending to the call of the daimon has also led me back, into history, prehistory and beyond, in the search for origins. 'Who am I? Where do I come from?' I was on this track during my late teens when, in the quest for the origins of human nature, I read 'African Genesis' and 'The Territorial Imperative' by Robert Ardrey. In these tomes, Ardrey explores the 'killer ape' theory, stating that our australopithecine ancestors out on the East African plains evolved through cunning and learning how to kill, the implication being that violence is part of our inheritance and viciousness an ineradicable aspect of our nature.

I recall Ardrey devoting a good portion of his writings to baboon troops, which are strictly hierarchical, highly territorial, and not very kind and tolerant places to be. The lesson was not lost on me, and got me into a good deal of family trouble. I once told my father that he was acting out of a sense of head-of-family dominance. This was intended as a matter-of-fact statement, but my father took it as an accusation (probably sensing his own head-of-family dominance being challenged by a rebellious young buck), and never fully forgave me, I suspect.

As time has passed, I have come to view this search for our true nature through the discovery of our origins as a chimera. There is no starting point to our being human that defines us; nature contains an infinite number of possibilities, and we will most likely find there what our biases lead us to (as in the case of Ardrey). As an example, we can look at some of our closest non-human relatives. Chimpanzees are capable of considerable empathy and compassion, yet their lives are structured quite hierarchically, and they can be quite vicious. The chimp's closest relative the bonobo (sometimes called the pygmy chimp) is very different, however. Bonobo society functions in a far more co-operative way, with a polymorphous sexuality and generally more laid-back approach to life (the bonobo has been called the hippie ape). So a look into the past and at our non-human relatives can provide a sense of wonder and of endless possibilities. But as for finding a definitive moment that points to who we essentially are as human beings, this is a search doomed to failure.