Making Sense of Magic Mushrooms

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifI shall be speaking at the October Gallery on tuesday 24th November, as part of the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness series, details here.


Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
Please reserve your place as space is limited.
Email rentals@octobergallery.co.uk or call 44 (0)20 7831 1618

Making Sense of Magic Mushrooms

For those who have encountered magic mushrooms, the psilocybin experience is like an ancient codex whose glyphs are at once baffling and clear. To make sense of it, each person must perform an act of translation or interpretation by which the strange is rendered familiar. But how should this be done? In the post-war period alone an original psychological framework has given way to that of mysticism, itself replaced in turn by the language of shamanism.

In this talk, Andy Letcher will encourage us to move away from the mushroom experience itself the usual province of trip-lit , to a consideration of how it has been interpreted throughout history. For, contrary to received wisdom, very few cultures have decoded the mushroom as we do. Along the way he will ask whether magic mushrooms bring genuine transcendence, or if the experiences they occasion forever bound by culture.