Albion Dreaming
Albion Dreaming

Author: Andy Roberts

Publisher: Cyan Books

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13:

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Contrary to popular belief, LSD is much more connected to Britain than it is to the USA. This engaging book looks at the use of LSD in British society, from its arrival in 1952 to the present day. It provides a hidden history of a controversial drug and how it permeated British culture. The author explores LSD's use by the medical profession in treating a variety of psychological and mental problems. At the same time, The Ministry of Defence believed they were on the brink of harnessing LSD as a battlefield incapacitation drug which would enable wars to be won without loss of life. But LSD's popularity rose with its use among the British counterculture, from the 1950s beatniks through to the late 80s acid house parties. At its height, when it was legal, LSD affected the lives and philosophies of significant individuals (politicians, scientists, writers, educators, entertainers, artists, journalists) as well as ordinary people for good and bad. This book is the first to explore LSD's amazing influence on British culture and society.

The Journal of Albion Moonlight
The Journal of Albion Moonlight

Author: Kenneth Patchen

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 1961

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780811201445

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A chronicle of violent fury and compassion, written when Surrealism was still vigorous and doing battle with psychotic "reality," The Journal of Albion Moonlight is the American monument to engagement.

Operation Julie
Operation Julie

Author: Lyn Ebenezer

Publisher: Y Lolfa

Published: 2012-08-02

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 1847715737

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The history of one of the world's biggest drugs networks that was active in mid-Wales in the mid-1970s. In a rural laboratory near Tregaron pure LSD valued at millions of pounds was produced and seized; this lead to an interesting and notorious criminal case. Reprint; first published in August 2010.

Divine Rascal
Divine Rascal

Author: Andy Roberts

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1907222782

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A biography of a key figure in psychedelic history: the man who turned Timothy Leary on to LSD. Of all the figures associated with the history of LSD there is none more enigmatic than Michael Hollingshead. Appearing as if from nowhere, he turned Timothy Leary on to LSD in 1962, and was influential in Leary's years at Harvard, Millbrook, and beyond. A Zelig-like character, Hollingshead was a key player in London's early LSD scene. In 1965 he went to London to establish a cultural beachhead for Leary's LSD philosophy at the World Psychedelic Centre in Chelsea. Following a spell in prison, where he dosed KGB spy George Blake, he continued to pursue adventures with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, established a psychedelic commune, created the first electronic I Ching installation, published an underground magazine, and spent time in Nepal, before dying a mysterious death in Bolivia in the 1980s. Psychedelic trickster guru, or conman and charlatan? Exactly who Hollingshead was and what his motives were remain unclear. Some believed he was working for the secret services, others that he was just a Leary wannabe, his aspirations destroyed by his deviant personality and addiction to alcohol and opiates. Divine Rascal is the first reliable biography of one of psychedelia's key figures, without whom the trajectory of LSD in the world would have been radically different.

High Culture
High Culture

Author: Christopher Hugh Partridge

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 0190459115

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Humans have always been fascinated by drugs and altered states. Despite the risk of addiction, many have used drugs as technologies to induce moments of meaning-making transcendence. Beginning at the close of the eighteenth century, this book traces the quest for transcendence and meaning through drugs in the West through the modern period.

Wish You Were Here
Wish You Were Here

Author: Will Romano

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1493050761

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The mid-'70s were a time of reckoning. It was also an era of paradoxes, of record making and record breaking, of sold-out shows, and, in the minds of some, sell-out artists. Critics, who once exalted the shamanic characteristics of rock stars, launched full-frontal assaults on mainstream music icons and their tendencies toward overindulgent artistic visions. Amid this confusion, psychedelic and progressive rock pioneers Pink Floyd, unlikely messengers in uncertain times, unleashed their 1975 progressive rock milestone, Wish You Were Here. Refusing to buckle under pressure, Floyd looked inward to produce Wish You Were Here, a conceptual, self-referential album that spoke of spiritual depravation, mental absence, and industry corruption, while, perhaps inadvertently, reflecting the general madness and societal malaise of the mid-'70s. Created in the spirit of camaraderie, Wish You Were Here waged war against the system, better known in Floydlandia as “The Machine ” while paying tribute to a fallen hero and victim of the industry – the creative force fundamental to the band's existence, Syd Barrett. As our world was racked by unsustainable overseas military conflicts, governmental scandals, political assassination attempts, and a near-total erosion of the public trust, Pink Floyd emerged victorious, responding to this external dissonance with their ultimate band statement. What a strange, complex moment in time to have generated a classic. After 1975, Pink Floyd would never be the same – and neither would we.

The Bones of Avalon
The Bones of Avalon

Author: Phil Rickman

Publisher: Atlantic Books

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1848877897

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The first book in the Dr. Dee series of Tudor thrillers, about the astrologer royal to Queen Elizabeth I—a brew of compelling storytelling, devious politics, witchcraft, and necromantic arts It is 1560, and Elizabeth Tudor has been on the throne for a year. Dr John Dee, at 32 already acclaimed throughout Europe, is her astrologer and consultant in the hidden arts—a controversial appointment in these days of superstition and religious strife. Now the mild, bookish Dee has been sent to Glastonbury to find the missing bones of King Arthur, whose legacy was always so important to the Tudor line. With him is hardly the safest companion—his friend and former student, Robert Dudley, a risk-taker, a wild card, and possibly the Queen's secret lover. The famously mystical town is still mourning the gruesome execution of its Abbot, Richard Whiting. But why was the Abbot really killed? What is the secret held by the monks since the Abbey was founded by Joseph of Arimathea, uncle of Christ and guardian of the Holy Grail? The mission takes Dee to the tangled roots of English magic, into unexpected violence, necromantic darkness, the breathless stirring of first love, and the cold heart of a complex plot against Elizabeth.

The NASA Conspiracies
The NASA Conspiracies

Author: Nick Redfern

Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser

Published: 2010-12-20

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1601636792

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A journalist specializing in conspiracy theories examines the US government’s role in censoring information about the space program and alien lifeforms. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration—NASA—was established on July 29, 1958. Ever since that day, NASA has been at the forefront of efforts to explore outer space, resulting in the Apollo missions to the moon, the Skylab space-station, and today’s space shuttle. But behind the open face of NASA, there is a much more mysterious world. NASA has been linked to a wealth of high-level cover-ups, including: Claims that the Apollo moon landings of 1969 to 1972 were faked as part of an effort to demonstrate military and technological superiority over the former Soviet Union. NASA’s role in hiding the truth about the controversial face on Mars—which many believe to be a carved structure, created in the remote past by long-extinct, indigenous Martians. NASA’s deep and longstanding involvement in the famous UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947. Deep Throat—like NASA sources that have attempted to blow the lid on NASA’s most guarded secrets concerning the U.S. Government’s interactions with aliens. The NASA Conspiracies throws open all the doors that the Space Agency has kept closed for so long.

Entheogens and the Development of Culture
Entheogens and the Development of Culture

Author: John A. Rush

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Published: 2013-07-30

Total Pages: 673

ISBN-13: 1583946004

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Entheogens and the Development of Culture makes the radical proposition that mind-altering substances have played a major part not only in cultural development but also in human brain development. Researchers suggest that we have purposely enhanced receptor sites in the brain, especially those for dopamine and serotonin, through the use of plants and fungi over a long period of time. The trade-off for lowered functioning and potential drug abuse has been more creative thinking--or a leap in consciousness. Experiments in entheogen use led to the development of primitive medicine, in which certain mind-altering plants and fungi were imbibed to still fatigue, pain, or depression, while others were taken to promote hunger and libido. Our ancestors selected for our neural hardware, and our propensity for seeking altered forms of consciousness as a survival strategy may be intimately bound to our decision-making processes going back to the dawn of time. Fourteen essays by a wide range of contributors—including founding president of the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology of Religion section Michael Winkelman, PhD; Carl A. P. Ruck, PhD, Boston University professor of classics and an authority on the ecstatic rituals of the god Dionysus; and world-renowned botanist Dr. Gaston Guzma, member of the Colombian National Academy of Sciences and expert on hallucinogenic mushrooms—demonstrate that altering consciousness continues to be an important part of human experience today. Anthropologists, cultural historians, and anyone interested in the effects of mind-altering substances on the human mind and soul will find this book deeply informative and inspiring.

The Psychedelic Policy Quagmire
The Psychedelic Policy Quagmire

Author: J. Harold Ellens

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2015-08-18

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 1440839719

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Edited by two preeminent scholars, this book provides coverage of the policy issues related to the increasingly diverse treatments, practices, and applications of psychedelics. Hallucinogenic substances like LSD, mescaline, peyote, MDMA, and ayahuasca have a reputation as harmful substances that are enjoyed only by recreational users committing criminal acts. But leading international researchers and scholars who contributed to this book hold that the use of psychedelic substances for health, religious, intellectual, and artistic purposes is a Constitutional right—and a human right. Based on that conclusion, these scholars focus on policy issues that regulate the use of psychedelic drugs in medicine, religion, personal life, and higher education, arguing that existing regulations should match current and anticipated future uses. This volume has two parts. The first surveys research on the use of psychedelic drugs in medicine, religion, and truth-seeking, following these topics through history and contemporary practice. The second section treats government policices that regulate the psychological, physiological, biochemical, and spiritual aspects of research and experience in these fields. The Psychedelic Policy Quagmire: Health, Law, Freedom, and Society challenges medical and legal policy experts, ethicists, scientists, and scholars with the question: How can we formulate policies that reduce the dangers of psychedelics' misuse and at the same time maximize the emerging diverse benefits?