"Scream For Me, Long Beach!"

...and other consciousness alterers.


Doorways, trilithons, shadow terminators on the moon.
Spirals, endless penta- and hexa-grammatic knots, fractals.
Drums, sistrums…incense, darkness.

Facilitators into a shamanic state of being.

The altered states of consciousness we are capable of are many, but most of us just don’t get to a fraction of them over our lifetimes.

This is where facilitators come in. Plant facilitators may include Artemisia, Salvia Divinorum, psilocybin.

I keep a wary distance from the vegetation, myself, due to personal history and tendencies. But there are other ways.

The San of the Kalahari used rhythm and chant as a most effective route to the Otherworlds.

I’m learning to talk and chant myself down – or up – to the destination of my choice in navigating the shared space of our consciousness.

But Bruce Dickinson, centre stage (and sometimes swinging from the rafters) for Metal band Iron Maiden in 1985, created that magical doorway , and even today you can witness it , as a video copy was made of the gig(s) at Long Beach, California.

Me? I’m no Metal Head. Really.
But I’d be a fool or sensorily numb to fail to appreciate the shamanic field which was opened up between audience and musicians on that occasion.

I would even be prepared to hazard that Enochian Calls were being used on a couple of those sets, along with the corny old Anubis/Osiris/Bast images – it wouldn’t surprise me, and I know that more than one British musician has experimented with them. You know, altered states are about, and emanate from, a hel of a lot more than just illegal substances and/or alcohol. We can train ourselves to Take Ourselves There, but very few people seem inclined to try – probably, and I speak from experience here, out of fear.

Is this why we follow along like lambs to the slaughter as our governments/churches/peers strive to strip us of every last means of exploring consciousness ? As we knuckle under to mindless ditties created with mass entrainment in mind, hum along to airs designed to make us crave anything but our personal freedom, and learn the words to only those government-sponsored anthems we’re supposed to know, please tell me there are some of us left with spirit and soul enough to reopen the spaces of mystery which are our birthright.

Or don’t tell me anything – I’d probably rather not know.