Sometimes one needs to return to the real world and escape all the concrete.
I spent last night at the shelter in the Arboretum. It was surprisingly cold out, even though the weather report said it wasn’t supposed to get below 37F and I was sleeping in a 30F bag. I didn’t encounter the cougar that I hear lives in there, but a few owls did come out. Surprisingly I also heard people walking around in the middle of the night.
Today I finished reading Ralph Metzner’s Sacred Vine of Spirits: Ayahuasca.
Ayahuasca (which translates to either “vine of the dead” or “vine of the spirits”) is a hallucinogenic tea, native to South America and used there for shamanic healing purposes since pre-history. Also known as caapi, hoasca, yagé, natéma, mihi, kahi, pinde, and dapa, the brew is made of the bark of the vine Banisteriopsis caapi (which itself is also known as Ayahuasca) and (most commonly) the leaves of Psychotria viridis. Psychotria viridis is what contains the dimethyltryptamine (DMT), making the mixture hallucinogenic, but the DMT, when consumed orally, is made inactive by monamine oxidase (MOA). Thus the bark of the Banisteriopsis caapi is used for its MOA inhibiting property, allowing the DMT to take its course. Most interestingly, DMT is almost identical in structure to Serotonin, a neurotransmitter produced throughout the brain and responsible for “higher functions of behavior, such as planning and other time-related events.” Serotonin is eventually deactived by the same thing that deactives DMT, MOA. So, one could consume only the bark of the Ayahuasca vine (or any other MOA inhibiter) and receive a similar psychoactive active to that produced by DMT. (Apparently some antidepressants take this route.) Terence McKenna, in many of his recordings, fondly referred to the Ayahuasca brew as “brain soup”, since nothing in it is not naturally in your body.
As another interesting aside, there is DMT in your body right now (the human body naturally produces it), yet, in the United States, it is illegal to possess without a DEA license. Go to jail.
The first 100 pages or so of the book goes over the scientific, medical, and psychological properties of the tea, providing for more knowledge on the brew than I thought possible to know. The rest of the book is devoted to various first-hand experiences with Ayahuasca – all of which are excellent. I recommend the book highly for anyone remotely interested in Ayahuasca, psychology, or medicine.
(During my reading of this book, the U.S. Supreme Court came very close to recognizing Ayahuasca as a religious sacrament.)
TV encourages mass passivity, burns images permanently into our brain that are chosen by an elite few and trains people to accept authority. Television limits and confines human knowledge. It accelerates our alienation from nature and leads to its destruction. Television homogenizes those who watch it, making the population more efficient cogs in the economic system, making the population easier to control. Television is inherently antidemocratic--furthermore it aids the creation of societal conditions which produce autocracy, and it dulls our awareness that this is happening. Television, as a technology, is inherently biased towards these effects--they cannot be eliminated by better management or better programing. Oh, and it causes cancer too.
The truth is that for the first time we are bereft of a positive vision of where we are going. This is particularly evident among kids. Their future is either Road Warrior post-apocalypse, or Blade Runner mid-apocalypse. All the futuristic computer games are elaborations of these scenarios, heavy metal worlds where civilization is crumbling into something weird and violent (but more exciting than now). The Afterculture is an attempt to transmute this folklore of the future into something deep and rich and convincingly real. If we are to pull a compelling future out of environmental theory and recycling paradigms, we are going to have to clothe the sacred in the romantic. The Afterculture is part of an ongoing work to shape a new mythology by sources as diverse as Thoreau and Conan and Dances with Wolves and Iron John. The Afterculture is not "against" the problems of our times, and it's not about "band-aid solutions" to the grim jam we find ourselves in. It's about opening up a whole new category of solutions, about finding another way of being: evolved, simpler, deeper, even more elegant. Even more cool. Even very cool.
(Did you know 60% of anything you put in your skin will go into your bloodstream?)
Today was my Soap Alchemy class. We made cold process soap with palm oil, coconut oil, and olive pomace oil. One batch we put in lavender, the other peppermint. Right now, the soap looks like this:
In 48 hours it will harden and I’ll take it out of the mold (paper cup). Then, in 30 days, the lye will have completed mixing with the oils and I’ll have soap.
Here are the recipes Suzanne gave us:
Cold Process Soap Materials: -Stainless steel pot (8-12 qt, no aluminum) -Scale (measuring in ounces preferred) -Glass jar (gallon size -- check for cracks before use) or 4-8qt stainless steel pot -Wooden spoon (used for soap only) -Soap molds - no aluminum, cast iron, or teflon -Soap base oils, lye, water, herbs, spices, essential oils. Directions -Measure lye and place into glass jar or small stainless steel pot. Add cold water and stir until lye is dissolved. You may choose to wear eye protection and rubber gloves. The water will get very hot (180F). Be careful of the rising steam, as it is caustic and irritating to the throat and lungs. Set aside to cool to room temperature (may put container in tub of cold water). -Melt oils together on high heat in stainless steel pot. Remove from heat (do not let smoke), set aside to cool to room temperature (may put pot in tub of cold water). -Pour lye solution slowly into oils when the lye solution and fats are room temperature. -Stir constantly until mixture is thick and creamy with a "pea soup" consistency: approx 15-20 minutes -Stir in essential oils (1/2~1 1/2 oz) and dried herbs and spices with the amounts to your preference. -Pour into molds. -Cover and keep warm. Place in a draft free warm area for 48 hours. -Remove the soap from the molds. If there is any difficulty removing the soap from the molds, place them in your freezer for 24 hours. Run warm water over the bottom of the molds, the soap will slide out easily. -Cut and let cure in the open air for 30 days. 2 Basic Soap Recipes Recipe #1 40 oz. Palm Oil 25 oz. Coconut Oil 20 oz. Olive Pomace Oil 32 oz. Cold Water 10 1/2 oz. Lye Recipe #2 40 oz. Coconut Oil 45 oz. Olive Pomace Oil 32 oz. Cold Water 10 1/2 oz. Lye
The above is for cold process soap. Hot process soap – which we didn’t make in my class today – takes a little more effort up front, but is usable in a few hours, instead of 30 days.
The recipes will make about 25 bars of soap.
It’s important that you acquire Olive Pomace Oil – not just Olive Oil or Pomace Oil. This is the third pressing of the olive.
Suzanne, my instructor, uses an oak mold which she first lines with parchment paper.
Lye, contrary to Fight Club, will not burn you. It dries your skin, which will cause itching. Simply rinse it off with water and pat dry.
...collapse strips us of who we think we are so that who we really are may be revealed. Civilization's toxicity has fostered the illusion that one is, for example, a professional person with money in the bank, a secure mortgage, a good credit rating, a healthy body and mind, raising healthy children who will grow up to become successful like oneself, and that when one retires, one will be well-taken-care of. If that has become your identity, and if you don't look deeper, you won't discover who you really are; and when collapse happens, you will be shattered because you have failed to notice the strengths, resources, and gifts that abide in your essence which transcend and supersede your ego-identity. In a post-collapse world, academic degrees and stock portfolios matter little. The real question, as Richard Heinberg so succinctly puts it is: Do you know how to make shoes? ... ..collapse will decimate our anti-tribal, individualistic, Anglo-American programming by forcing us to join with others for survival. You may own a home outright with ample acreage on which you have produced a stunning organic garden, have a ten-year cache of food and water, drive a hybrid car, and live a completely solarized life, but if you think you will survive in isolation, you are tragically deluded. Collapse dictates that we will depend on each other, or we will die. ... For millennia, many indigenous people have described the demise of civilization we are now witnessing as a purification process: a time of rebirth and transformation. Their ancient wisdom challenges us to face with equanimity the collapse that is in process; that is, to hold as much as humanly possible in our hearts and minds, the reality of the pain the collapse will entail, alongside the unimaginable opportunities it offers.
More on drinking from plastics.
