A Harvard graduate student and researcher explores a global entheogen system, discovering their practices leading to cognitive enhancement and, arguably, the next human form.Revised Advance Reader Copy, 2017From Cambridge to Moscow, Oxford to Zürich, Princeton to Mazar-i-Sharif and Bangkok, this journal of research interviews records the lifestyles within a most rare and elusive organization, one that has evolved special gifts: advanced capacities of thought, memory and perception.
A search for the truth behind the DEA’s life imprisonment of acid's most famous martyr. Operation White Rabbit traces the rise and fall—and rise and fall again—of the psychedelic community through the life of the man known as the “Acid King:” William Leonard Pickard. Pickard was a legitimate genius, a follower of Timothy Leary, a con artist, a womanizer, and a believer that LSD would save lives. He was a foreign diplomat, a Harvard fellow, and the biggest producer of LSD on the planet—if you believe the DEA. A narrative for fans of Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind, Pickard’s personal story is set against a fascinating chronicle of the social history of psychedelic drugs from the 1950s on. From LSD distribution at UC Berkeley to travelling the world for the State Department, Pickard’s story is one of remarkable genius—that is, until a DEA sting named “Operation White Rabbit” captured him at an abandoned missile silo in Kansas. Pickard, the DEA said, was responsible for 90 percent of the world’s production of lysergic acid. The DEA announced to the public that they found 91 pounds of LSD. In reality, the haul was seven ounces. They found none of the millions of dollars Pickard supposedly amassed, either. But nonetheless, he is now serving two consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole. Pickard has become acid’s best-known martyr in the process, continuing his advocacy and artistic pursuits from jail. Pickard has successfully sued the US government because his requests for information on his case returned two blank DEA documents. But the appeals of his sentence have continually failed. The author visits him regularly in jail in an effort to find the truth.
In Lysergic, Krystle Cole describes the events that occurred in her life within the time period of 2000 to 2003. Krystle explains her involvement with Gordon Todd Skinner and William Leonard Pickard, the infamous LSD chemists who operated their lab in an underground missile silo in Kansas. This lab, after being busted and shutdown by the DEA, was reported to have been producing 90% of the world's supply of LSD. Krystle gives an account of her unique perspective regarding the part of her life she has often called "the crazy psychedelic freak show" that ensued after the Pickard LSD lab bust. Lysergic is a combination of things - it is a story of love, a story of abuse, and most of all, it is a depiction of psychedelic experiences that ultimately exerted a profound effect upon Krystle's life. Krystle recounts ingesting numerous rare entheogens such as LSD, mescaline, ergot wine, DMT, ALD-52, and 2C-I, among others. She describes the subjective effects of each psychedelic and explains how these experiences impacted her life at the time. This third edition of Lysergic contains excerpts from letters that Skinner wrote to Krystle from prison. It also has enhanced formatting and never-seen-before pictures from that time period.
This is the story of LSD told by a concerned yet hopeful father, organic chemist Albert Hofmann, Ph.D. He traces LSD's path from a promising psychiatric research medicine to a recreational drug sparking hysteria and prohibition. In LSD: My Problem Child, we follow Dr. Hofmann's trek across Mexico to discover sacred plants related to LSD, and listen in as he corresponds with other notable figures about his remarkable discovery. Underlying it all is Dr. Hofmann's powerful conclusion that mystical experiences may be our planet's best hope for survival. Whether induced by LSD, meditation, or arising spontaneously, such experiences help us to comprehend "the wonder, the mystery of the divine, in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula, in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people." More than sixty years after the birth of Albert Hofmann's problem child, his vision of its true potential is more relevant, and more needed, than ever.
A medicine with huge potential for treating Alzheimers, stroke, cancer and even Aids, the Christmas Rose (Black Hellebore) is in the process of being rediscovered by doctors and medical practitioners. Once admired by Hippocrates, Paracelsus and Hahnemann but long forgotten, the Christmas Rose is proving effective once again – both in trials and in clinical practice – for healing the serious illnesses of the new millennium. It is also being used to address many other conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder in children, delayed brain maturation, in gynaecology and for joint disorders. Written by a practising medical doctor, this book offers comprehensive treatment regimes and numerous case studies demonstrating the successful use of this important plant-based medicine. In placing the remedy in historical context, Johannes Wilkens reviews its use by significant figures over the centuries, from Adamus Lonicerus and the founders of herbalism in the Middle Ages and Samuel Hahnemann and the more recent development of homeopathy, through to Rudolf Steiner and the emergence of anthroposophic medicine in the twentieth century. Vividly illustrated with colour photographs, this pioneering work outlines the critical role that the Christmas Rose can play in treating the illnesses of our time.
The story of the beliefs and practices called 'magic' starts in ancient Iran, Greece, and Rome, before entering its crucial Christian phase in the Middle Ages. Centering on the Renaissance and Marsilio Ficino - whose work on magic was the most influential account written in premodern times - this groundbreaking book treats magic as a classical tradition with foundations that were distinctly philosophical. Besides Ficino, the premodern story of magic also features Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Aquinas, Agrippa, Pomponazzi, Porta, Bruno, Campanella, Descartes, Boyle, Leibniz, and Newton, to name only a few of the prominent thinkers discussed in this book. Because pictures play a key role in the story of magic, this book is richly illustrated.
Thirteen new stories by the celebrated writer, including two which he considers his greatest achievements to date, artfully blend elements from many literary geares.
A FESTSCHRIFT FOR STANISLAV GROF Psyche Unbound: Essays in Honor of Stanislav Grof is an extraordinary compilation of twenty-two essays that honor the pathbreaking lifework of Stanislav Grof, the world's leading researcher in psychedelic therapy, breathwork, and the exploration of non-ordinary states of consciousness. In honor of Grof's 90th birthday this year, the contributions range over the past half century - beginning exactly fifty years ago with Joseph Campbell's remarkable 1971 lecture in the Great Hall at Cooper Union setting forth the importance of Grof's findings, and Huston Smith's 1976 summary of their significance for the study of religion and mysticism, all the way through to the 2021 reflections by psychiatrists and researchers Charles Grob and Michael Mithoefer as part of the current renaissance of psychedelic therapy. In between are major essays that forward Grof's work on numerous fronts, both theoretical and therapeutic: transpersonal sexual experiences (Jenny Wade), implications for social and cultural change (William Keepin), comparative studies with Asian religious systems (Thomas Purton), the perinatal dimensions of Jean-Paul Sartre's transformational 1935 mescaline experience (Thomas Riedlinger), and parallel findings from quantum and relativistic physics (Fritjof Capra). Grof is one of the founders of transpersonal psychology and is recognized by many as having both inherited and extended the great revolution in psychology begun by Freud and Jung. His investigations of the nature and healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness led him to propose a model of the psyche which honors the full range of human experience. Unconstrained by the dogmatic prejudices of mainstream psychology and of the dominant - reductive, mechanistic, and materialistic - scientific paradigm - Grof offers a liberated, and liberating vision of psyche unbound. Grof is the author and editor of many books, including Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research; The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness; Human Survival and Consciousness Evolution; The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration; Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy; and Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science, all published by SUNY Press. As well as the following titles from MAPS: The Way of the Psychonaut: Encyclopedia for Inner Journeys (Vol. One) and The Way of the Psychonaut: Encyclopedia for Inner Journeys (Vol. Two), LSD Psychotherapy: The Healing Potential of Psychedelic Medicine, Modern Consciousness Research and the Understanding of Art, Including The Visionary World of H.R. Giger, and The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death.
