2012 and all that

So here we are. We've made it to 2012 and I doubt that anyone can have failed to pick up on the millenarian prophecies for the year. Mayan calendars, fractal timewaves and astronomical alignments all point to a major shift occurring on December 21st. What, exactly, that shift will be remains unclear. Perhaps it will be a radical new form of human consciousness. Perhaps mind will finally extricate itself from matter. Time might collapse or maybe the aliens will finally step out from the shadows and usher us into the galactic citizenship we always knew was out there.

Anyone who's read Shroom will know that - how can I put this? - I'm yet to be convinced by 2012. Indeed, I recently wrote a chapter on the subject for the forthcoming book from David Luke's excellent Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series. It's not that I wouldn't welcome any of those predicted changes - I like sci-fi remember - it's just that it all smacks of Christian millennarianism to me. I find that way of thinking...unhelpful.

It is, of course, a great shame that the two architects of 2012, psychedelic guru Terence McKenna and hotline to the 'Galactic Maya' José Argüelles have both left the building and so won't be there for the great reckoning (though it's probably good prophetic practice to place the end of the world beyond your allotted three score years and ten). McKenna did have the good grace to admit he could very well be wrong, something that sets him apart from his erstwhile, and frankly loopy, partner in time.

But, of course, we should never underestimate the power of the human imagination. If enough people think that something extraordinary is going to happen then perhaps that will set something extraordinary in motion (God knows, we need it). And if all this talk about psychedelics raises their profile again and gets people thinking about them in a more critical way then that can only be a good thing. Perhaps we should harness the power of the zeitgeist and declare 2012 the Year of the Psychedelic. It can't hurt.

On the subject of which, take a look at this latest piece of research by Robin Cahart-Harris, who gave psilocybin to volunteers and looked at their brains using an fMRI scanner. It seems that what psilocybin does is reduce activity in certain parts of the brain, so perhaps Huxley was right after all?

To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system...Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of delibrate 'spiritual exercises', or though hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Aldous Huxley The Doors of Perception 1954: 12.

Using fMRI to Investigate the Effects of Psilocybin on Brain Activation and Blood Flow - Robin Carhart-Harris, Ph.D. from MAPS: Psychedelic Science on Vimeo.

Dalla and Wod in Oxford

More on Lundy

Since being back in Oxford I've had a fairly hefty pile of work to do preparing my teaching for the forthcoming semester, so not much time for thinking or musing or blogging. Sigh. But Monsieur Jacques Centime has just posted this video from our time on Lundy.

On our last day we awoke to the sound of the lighthouse thrumming to a storm force ten. Over a porridge breakfast I recalled a natural history film from the 70s in which presenter Jeffery Boswall attempted to eat a bowl of Rice Krispies in a sandstorm in the Kalahari (I may have made this up entirely for I've yet to find anyone else who remembers it). Suitably inspired, Jacques suggested we recreate this seminal moment in TV history with the following results:

Lundy

After a slightly frenetic Christmas shuttling up and down the Michael Line, visiting friends and family in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, we went to Lundy for New Year. Lundy is a three mile island in the middle of the Bristol Channel. It is difficult to get to, particularly at this time of year. You've got to want to go. Happily this was my fourth visit - I knew it would be worth it.

We were supposed to fly by helicopter from Hartland Point but the weather was against us and we were forced to spend the night in Ilfracombe, about which all I'll say is that it's seen better days.


We had to be at the ferry, the MS Oldenburg, in time to board at 5am.


The wind was blowing a force six and we headed out into pitch blackness against an incoming tide. The boat was knocked about in the swell and with no horizon to steady ourselves it wasn't long before the sea-sickness kicked in, two hours of unremitting hell. The crew were fantastic, however, and they administered to the sick with kindness and good humour. But we arrived with the day and it wasn't too long before we were tucking into a large breakfast at the Marisco Tavern, followed by what was to be the first of many sessions.


We stumbled over to our accommodation in an eighty mile-an-hour mist.



We were staying in Old Light, a nineteenth century light house that was eventually abandoned for being too tall and so quite invisible in fog.


A failure then, but we fell instantly in love with it. We climbed to the top at all times of day and night, playing music in its extraordinary acoustics, or just listening to the ever-present roar of the wind. We felt privileged, as if let in to complete some long-forgotten steampunk experiment.


When the weather cleared Old Light became the landmark it was meant to be.



For New Year we played a short set in the Marisco Tavern, then retreated back to Old Light, where, at midnight, we lit two candles, bringing the old girl back to life. In the gloom the lantern platform looked like a giant mushroom.


It was a reflective moment, a chance to be still after all the rushing around.





Over the next few days we walked the length and breadth of the island, taking perilous paths down to the water's edge.


We saw peregrines and ravens, soay sheep and sika deer. At Brazen Ward sixteen seals came swimming in to watch us, as curious of us as we were of them (apologies for the dreadful photo but you get the idea).


It was over all too soon and alas the force ten gale subsided in time for us to be helicoptered off.



In less than ten minutes we were back on Hartland Point, just where our adventure had started.


But there's a part of me that is still on the island and I'm counting the days until we can go back.

Christmas Customs

While searching for a video of the traditional Boxing Day Marshfield Mummer's Play...




...I came across the following video of a krampus festival in the alps. Unlike the (supposedly) benign Santa Claus, the krampus takes naughty children away in his bag and eats them. This is genuinely scary. Makes our English folk customs, however wonderful they are, seem a little, um, tame...

Ho ho ho

Of all the myths about magic mushrooms, the one I most wanted to be true was that Father Christmas is secretly and originally a fly-agaric munching shaman from Siberia. Alas, there's very little evidence that he was, and rather a lot to suggest he wasn't, and it turns out this myth was invented by the poet, Robert Graves, in one of his poetic flights of fancy, back in the early 70s.


But while researching Shroom, I discovered something interesting: Santa Claus and Father Christmas are not the same figure at all (see Ronald Hutton's The Stations of the Sun). Saint Nicholas, and the tradition of leaving presents for children on Saint Nicholas' eve, arrived in America with the Dutch, at their colony on Manhatten island. By the time New Amsterdam had become New York, Saint Nicholas had been quite forgotten, that is until he was revived by Washington Irving who transplanted the saint's traditions to Christmas Eve.

Irving inspired others. Most of the imagery associated with Santa (flying reindeer, chimneys and all) comes from one subsequent source, Clement Clark Moore's saccharine poem T'was the night before Christmas: the rest was cooked up by artist Thomas Nast and the advertising executives at a popular fizzy drink manufacturer (who need not be named). In other words, the modern Santa Claus is an American confection.

I've just written about my feelings towards the festive season for Spiral Earth so I shan't repeat them here, but it seems to me that everything that is wrong with Christmas is encapsulated by Santa: the consumption, the excess, the mad rush at a time when we should be still, the shmaltz and pester-power, the pretence that this is all somehow magic.

No wonder people like me need Santa to be something else, something genuinely rooted in the myths and traditions of what is an ancient midwinter festival, one that exists not to sell us stuff, but to heave body and soul through the dark days ahead. If Graves had dug just a little deeper in his quest to find re-enchantment he would have realised that he didn't need to invent a spurious shamanic tradition for Santa: he could just have drawn attention to the English figure that Santa superceded and who is more than fit for purpose - Father Christmas.

According to Hutton, people began to personify Christmas here in the seventeenth century (that's tradition aplenty). There was always something slightly unruly about Sir, Lord or Father Christmas, concerned as he was with feasting, merry-making and adult concerns. As such he appears in various seventeenth century masques and still, today, in Mummers Plays. This photo doesn't depict Father Christmas, but you get the idea...


In my imagination Father Christmas becomes a swarthy figure, crowned with holly, mistletoe and yew, carrying a double-headed axe (with which to sort out Gawain) and a flagon of magic winter solstice brew. No presents. No mad rushing about trying to meet the insatiable demands of children. No ersatz gestures. Just an ancient figure with a story or two, hoying us through the night with a fart, a joke and a twinkle in his eye. High time, then, that we rid ourselves of Santa, the gaudy imposter, and bring back the true spirit of Christmas.

And on that note, have yourselves a happy Yule. Whatever you do, may it work it's ancient magic upon you. Thank you for reading, and I'll be back in the new year for more. See you then.

Time machine

On our respective eighth birthdays my father bought me and my brother a camera each, a Kodak Instamatic (we were at that squabblesome age where all presents had to be identical). Here's a photo taken by my brother of me with my parents, somewhere on Dartmoor.


And here's one of the first photos I ever took, of Sandy our new labrador puppy, back in 1976. I know it's 1976 because that was the year of the drought and you can see how dry the ground is.


I still have the camera and for some reason or other I turned it out earlier this autumn.


Imagine my surprise when I discovered there was still a half-finished film inside. I had no idea what could be on it. And then I found out that it's still possible to get film processed, at a price, so we finished it off and took it to the printers.

This is the first picture I saw when I opened the envelope, and immediately I knew where I was.


The year was 1986. I was eighteen and had just left school. This is Susannah, my girlfriend at the time. It was early autumn and we were stomping around the fields behind my childhood home in Devon. Gap years meant we went our separate ways and I haven't seen her since (if you're reading this Susannah - hallo! I hope life did you well).

Looking over my shoulder, the shop assistant was most apologetic about the print quality. "There's dust on the lens, see. It would all look better in black and white." I smiled and said nothing. For me it's the random effects of light, age and chemistry that make these images so compelling.

Here's Susannah again, with our house behind her. Sandy died after eating poison, so that's Pip you can see in the bottom right.


We must have gone to the legendary Friday market in hippy hangout Totnes (a stronger contender for Goblin Market you'll be hard put to find) for here's a character who used to wander round with a parrot on his shoulder (and a streak of guano down his back). Someone told me he's dead now. The jangled colours make him look like a ghost.


Fast forward twenty five years and I am back on Dartmoor, but married now, another chapter of the same story laid out on a single papyral roll of film.



We take photos to help us remember, precisely because our memory is not photographic. It can't be trusted. Colours fade. Events blur. Timings become uncertain (I had quite forgotten that autumn day with Susannah - maybe it was our last together?).



But even photos, with their uncanny ability to freeze time, make ghosts of us all. We are already shades.