Click Here to read the last UP!!
Click Here to read the next UP!
TURN ON COMPUTER // TUNE IN TO FREED SPIRIT OF INTERNET // TAKE OVER! \)))))(/ __,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,__ i know, i know, am a bible-cursed optimist ;] but i can't help beginning to feel glad that the "president" bush gang (and the orgs and roman xtian roots behind & beneath them) managed to "win" the last election over there. some reader at the time said something along the lines of "now his karma will swing him in public instead!." which appears to be happening. more than 50% of americans now think the war has increased the threats of terrorism - precisely what the wise knew only too well at the time. and it looks like the DowningStreetMemo, if you haven't picked up on that yet (and you wouldn't if you only read the major media) might be the one that finally does it. this really is, as i thought all along, the Dinos. Last Stand! and, like thatcher destroyed the old-Cons forever by taking them to their Extreme, so the bush gang will end UP! dumping the toxic malignancy at the very heart of the US/Global plutocracy on the Fossil Record. forever. the human species will finally have evolved beyond that stage. if the public, see, had grokked their general drift by the last election they'd have survived to fight another day. and kerry would have been forced to play along with the Old Game because a lot of people would not have seen through it yet. this way, the usurper elite are beginning to twist and turn in the full public glare as soul-resistant 'planetary citizens''who "ust can't take it any more" leak their sub-human dirty deeds one by one. like sleaze sunk the tories forever, the illegal war will be the albatross around the extreme right wing's neck, nay, their epitaph. for, mark my words, (am sometimes right, was right to warn about the Super Bug, right?) at some point not distant the networks behind them, in order to cut their losses, will unleash the media pack upon them (people will be jumping ships and bandwagons too, of course!). and those losses are so-o-o gigantic. bear in mind that the banking elites who are the true Masters of the Matrix rely on a single unbreakable policy to maintain their Magick Controlle: NEVER, but NEVER to allow their financial scam ('lending' money to poor countries, and u and me, that only exists on paper!) to be undermined by ever requiring anything less than total satisfaction for all debts. now they're starting to cave in on every side. "CANCEL A DEBT?! ARE YOU MAD?! ONCE PEOPLE GET THAT BIT BETWEEN THEIR TEETH OUR GAME WILL BE UP!" UP! (\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/) u cant understand the world without innerstanding yourself UP! 231// june 15, 2005 The Personal Goddess la- la- la- lap-toppling da system! u cant innerstand yourself without understanding the world (\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/) UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! was blind, but i can see - the psilocybin code (last week) - UP!230 - Spirit of Place (this week) - UP!231 - The Personal Goddess + One Worldwide Hashish Culture (next week) - UP!232 - The True History Of Monkey.s Magnificent Trip From The African Jungle To Outer Space . .If the Truth can be spoken so as to be understood, it WILL be believed.. (and the following week, our biggest cultural breakthrough since the earth was proved round) - UP!233 - THE PROOF! UNDENIABLE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE THAT TODAY.S CHRISTIAN CHURCH BEGAN AS A MUSHROOM-WORSHIPPING CULTURE! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! UP! *************** WEEK OF JUNE 15-21**************** SUMMER SOLSTICE COMES WITH BELLS ON Moon in Scorpio promises an intense weekend, but it can be very loving. On Monday night the Sun enters Cancer to mark Summer Solstice. A huge influx of energy envelops us for the next few days. It's time to evaluate your last six months, and make necessary changes. Religious fanaticism and resistance to occupation are likely summer themes. ****************************************************************** UP! UP! 230 The Personal Goddess contents p.04 THE DOWNING STREET MEMO - the Bush Smoking Gun p.05 Spirit Of Place// FEEDBACK p.07 The Personal Goddess . a mystical pilgrimage to Epidaurus, Ancient Healing Site p.15 Stand UP! For the Magic Mushroom! DON.T LET .EM ILLEGALISE IT! p.19 One Worldwide Hashish Culture UP! Constantly Updating Our After-Death Theology Victor Zammit, a former active Australian Judge in New South Wales, has argued that the evidence for survival after death is now so overwhelming that it would stand up in a court of law, were the evidence and contra evidence ever to be weighed up under due legal process. He even sent a letter to the Pope, explaining the basis of his findings, which were undertaken in a spirit of objective and scientific research and discovery, asking that the Vatican up date its after-death theology to take cognisance of the new findings from parapsychology and near death research, to the effect that whereas post mortem consciousness survival is upheld, the notion of eternal damnation and a fear based post mortem expectation simply does not coincide with the facts available to para-empirical researchers. Victor James Zammit, B.A.(Psych), Grad. Dip. Ed., M.A.(Legal Hist.), LL.B, Ph.D, is an attorney-at-law and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of the New South Wales and the High Court of Australia (ret.) and was raised and educated in Sydney, Australia. [International Institute For Peace Studies And Global Philosophy] UP! Hi Fraser, We gotta take down the BBC. Today was a very bad day. The referendum here in Italy about stem-cell research? Most people either hadn't understood the issue or didn't give a damn. So the fuggin' cafficks thought that if they told their membership not to vote, this would equate a victory. Fug that squared. If you care about it, tell 'em to turn out and vote .No.!! But the stupid, stupid stupid, stupid stupid, stupid/broken beeb took that to mean that the Vatican had won. Fuggin' imbeciles! What it means is that you're being manipulated, you dumbos that like to call yourselves journalists. What it means is that most Italians don't give a damn, GODDAMMIT. When will they stop drinking from the Vatican spittoon? Jerry, Italy. UP! (\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/) TEXT JOCKEY // TJ PHRASER (Fraser Clark) & THE MEDIA EVOLUTION MIXING THE TRACTS LIVE ON THE KEYBOARD @ A MEDIA-MEME RATE OF 160 IPP * * Ideas Per Paragraph TO SUBSCRIBE SOMEONE, WRITE I wanna get UP! TO fraser@parallel-youniversity.com TO UNSUBSCRIBE, HIT REPLY WITH REMOVE IN THE SUBJECT BOX (\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/) "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY... This record is extremely sensitive. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents." thus was marked what.s being called THE DOWNING STREET MEMO which detailed the results of a meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair in mid-2002.
On May 1, 2005, the Sunday Times published it. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html And the corporate media in the U.S. (and the crushed BBC) jumped in and ignored it. BUT the potentially devastating condemnation of the Bush regime's deceptions behind the invasion of Iraq, is gaining traction in Congress and in the independent media. A petition drive in support of Rep. John Conyers' move for a congressional investigation has also begun. 478,348 Signatures and Counting With a big boost from MoveOn.org, the count of signatures on his letter to Bush asking for answers to the Downing Street Minutes is 478,348 and climbing. Clearly the goal of half a million will be reached before the Congressman delivers the letter to the White House on Thursday. SIGN THE LETTER! Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy has a similar petition, and California Rep. Maxine Waters has vowed to introduce daily amendments to pending House legislation demanding Bush answer questions raised by the memo. So far there has been no official response to Conyers' letter. "They are trying to ignore the letter, but we will be back to them on this. We will continue to press this," Hinchey said. "It's outrageous. It goes against everything this country stands for." Investigative journalist, Greg Palast has called the memo the smoking gun. http://us.indymedia.org/images/2005/05/7407.jpg In part the memo read: "C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime.s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Sunday Times, 1 May 2005. Have the Washington neo-cons finally met their Waterloo? Will this be the Bush regime's Watergate? Or, will yet more evidence that the Administration is out of control be just another drop in the bucket for a seemingly disempowered, dysfunctional society? Times Herald Record Headline: COULD MEMO SINK BUSH? The front page headline Times Herald-Record yesterday, reads: "COULD MEMO SINK BUSH?. What if President Bush lied to Congress and the American people, used those lies to gain congressional approval for military action against Iraq and launched a war that killed 1,700 Americans and tens of thousands of others? That might have been a hypothetical question a month ago; it might not be hypothetical anymore. In fact, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, says the answer to the question could lead to the impeachment of President Bush. According to published reports in Britain, the Downing Street Memo details a conversation in which British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Sir Richard Dearlove, head of British intelligence, and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw discuss a meeting held with U.S. officials on Iraq. In the memo, Dearlove warns Blair that Bush had already decided to attack Iraq - months before Bush brought the question to the U.N., and while he continued to deny, both to Congress and publicly, any plans to do so. Dearlove warned that Bush sought to justify that policy by fabricating evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi links to Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. High-ranking current and former members of both the British and U.S. governments have reportedly confirmed the memo's authenticity. Until now, the story has been largely ignored by the U.S. news media and dismissed by the Bush administration. But it has prompted massive interest and widespread outrage abroad and is a hot topic on internet blogs. In the U.S., that outrage is also growing. Yesterday, the Times released details of a briefing paper written two days before the Downing Street memo: "Ministers were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal. The briefing paper warned that regime-change was not a legal option, the U.S. and Britain would find it 'necessary to create the conditions' to make the invasion legal." UP! Spirit Of Place// FEEDBACK Another splendid work of weaving consciousness spirals and deeper awareness. I'll be networking it as a forward. george douvris, greece. up! Hi there frase, Great newsletter - I went to eleusis in 1983 and it impressed me greatly&. had some interesting times there! Peace, brother, and keep up the good work&. Thomas Daffern, International Institute For Peace Studies And Global Philosophy, UK. >> do tell me/us more about your 'interesting times' at eleusis! up! >> UP! 230 population used to do a great 3 day initiation annually, a day when all were equal, walking the 30 kilometres barefoot behind a great statue of the god Odysseus. High Fraser, really enjoyed reading about your Arcadian Adventure. Do you really mean Odysseus? I thought Odysseus was the same person as ULYSSES... the king of Ithaca... famed for his craft and eloquence. Not a god. His wanderings ...for TEN YEARS...over many lands and seas on his way HOME from Troy... form the subject of Homer's ODYSSEY. Obviously you know something I've not come across. neil oram, scotland. + Forgive my imp ertinence, but surely the Athenians followed a statue of the god Dionysus up to Eleusis, not Odysseus who was a geezer who managed to get lost for 20 years on his way back to Athens from Troy! A feat hard to match if one was on foot, as Troy was reputably only on the shores of the Black Sea somewhere. Otherwise keep up the good work. You're telling it believably. nick fosbery, paris. >> oops did i say odysseus?! i meant, of course, dionysus! the dying man/god of the eleusinian mysteries. otherwise known as Iacchos, Lenaios, Bromios, Euios, Sabazius, Bassareus and Eleuthereus to name just a couple. up! You are a psychologist and a very real and true one at that. Recent papers in the scientific end of psychology simply confirm what I suspected long ago - that a lot of psychology is baloney and pseudo science. What you do and say is probably every bit as valid and more real to people. And people are what psychology should be about. You seem to help rootless adolescents and older people with identity and adjustment problems to cope with modern life. That is being a psychologist as far as I am concerned. Read about your trip to greece - sounded very interesting. About the temples and so on. But taking hash while on a voyage of objective discovery is likely to call into question the objectivity of your findings. At your age you shouldn't be sleeping outside or even in 20 euro a night hostels you should be in at least 100 euro a night hotels with a bit of comfort. You need to look after yourself. Murray Porteous, Prof Psychology, Cork Uni, Cork, Ireland. >> "looking after myself" is exackly why i do these things :) and, as for "calling into question the objectivity of my findings", well, if u r not winding me UP!, it's this fukkin objectivity that's killing us all. wait till u read The True History Of Monkey's Magnificent Trip From The African Jungle To Outer Space in UP!232!! i'd LOVE to hear your reaction to that! up! Hi Fraser, Interesting read as always, keep em coming :) About the dreams... ' that second night i had my first of many dreams. i don.t normally dream much at all. but when i stop smoking i get full blown ones with plots and all! ' THC is a hypnotic (sleep-promoting) drug _ it doesn.t differ from conventional hypnotics which reduce REM sleep (rapid eye movement) - the stages during which we dream; usually several times a night (or day ;) When THC was administered p.o. as a solution in doses of 10, 20, and 30 mg, our subjects fell asleep faster - after having mood alterations consistent with a "high." Some degree of "hangover" the day following was noted from larger doses. Another sleep laboratory study showed that a dose of 20 mg of THC given p.o. decreased REM sleep. After 4-6 nights of use, abrupt discontinuation of THC produced mild insomnia but not marked REM rebound. REM rebound may not be apparent after low doses of THC. However, very high doses (70 to 210 mg) reduced REM sleep during treatment and were followed by marked REM rebound after withdrawal. ...what this effectively means is that you smoke a lot of cannabis :D (no offence, so do I), and after prolonged periods of doing so will notice that your sleep pattern compensates for this suppression (of dreams) by rebounding, or providing markedly more REM sleep when (eventually ;D) you stop... I don't mean anything by this, just thought you might be interested in a possible explanation :) good work with the mailer, don't stop. SANE >> my hunch is that dreaming is dipping into the parts of life we keep unconscious. spiritual inner work decreases this arena. i think smoking thc (by which i mean the natural plant, not some chemical scientists "define" as the "same thing") further accesses the unconscious during waking time. thus, by night time there isn't much dream work left to do. now, soon as u stop, u get several days (or weeks, depending) of "hangover" during which, naturally, a lot of subconscious stuff can get going in the dark again. which causes the extra dreaming. does this agree with all the established facts? btw, while we're on the subject of medical science, a friend recently told me he was trying to help some research on the connection between psychedelics/ entheogens and alzheimer's, but they couldn't find any appropriate subjects. it took me a few minutes to realise what he was telling me: there doesn't seem to be any connection! in other words, people who take em (or have taken them?) don't develop alzheimer's!! my working theory is this: PEOPLE WHO DON'T STRETCH, DISSOLVE, DEEPEN AND GENERALLY EXERCISE THEIR MINDS WITH DRUGS (according to Nature.s Plan) DEVELOP ALZHEIMER'S! DO ANY OF U UPPERS KNOW ANY OLD DOPEHEADS WITH ALZHEIMER.S? AND WHAT'S THE PERCENTAGE IN THE (ab)'NORMAL' POPULATION? UP! \))))))/ __,,,,_ {ô¿ô}__,,,,__ The Personal Goddess oh, i was only& 24 hours from epidaurus only& one day away from my Heart!! by the time i left the Magic Cottage, i was determined to visit Epidaurus which my pre-greece notes described as .dedicated to the Healing Goddess. . Demeter again. my notes also said: .ancient theatre.. how wrong that turned out to be! or perhaps not, if theatre.s about some Truth being manifested through a Drama, for that.s certainly what it was! way more exciting, i mean, than any james bond drama which would have stressed me out for a year or the rest of my life - i don't call that excitement i call that hollywood. She was calling me . of this i am sure. am sure of it even if She can be defined as "merely" a Higher Principle in myself. our 2 meetings, first at Eleusis and then at Lykosouria, had unquestionably 'converted' me, and i felt i had to visit one more of Her sites to receive Her Final Message. though my mental draft of The True History Of Monkey's Magnificent Trip From The African Jungle To Outer Space was finalising in my head, there still seemed gaps which only Her inspiration/information (is there a difference in this case?) could fill. not that i had specific gaps in the True Story i was trying to reconstruct, but maybe stuff like if all these temples had been built near or in psilocybin fields, why were there no mushrooms today or why did nobody know about them? only the Goddess Herself, i felt, could tell me such things, and that.s what i was expecting to insight if i managed to get to Epidaurus. at the same time as i was determined, though, i was perfectly willing to let the chance go by if certain things, beyond my control, did not occur. i only had 3 more days, and i was committed to spending at least 2 of them in athens with our modern urban anarchist connections. so i.d have One Day, of 24 hours, from the moment my bus hit Corinth. the bottom line, really, was whether Socrates could find me enough local grass for a little skinny :) for, with that in my back pocket, i was ready (!) to encounter the Goddess again - plus face the side trip from my return to Athens which it represented. without it, there might be no Message, no Drama, in which case i was decided to let it pass. but, by the very morning of my departure, Socrates. cousin had still not checked in, and i understood only too well what a sacrifice the highly honourable and spiritual Socrates felt he would have to make; he.d have to deduct my little j from his own very low stash. for goddess' sake don't forget! but that's what he did! so i was going to Epidaurus! and we left for the bus station in their his and sophia's old green car with my little Mercury (messenger of the Gods) in the secret pocket of my camel bag. along with a half jar of halva and honey with which Sophia had unaccountably presented me. on the drive in to the bus station in the nearby tourist town, however, Soc turns from his driving and says: "issa better idea to let Sophia carry that ting, fraser. it.s, how you say, a bit hot in the town?" "Sure!" i say, never unwilling to properly value someone who's careful. i hand it over to his beautiful soul mate. "But listen, Sophia, for goddess. sake don.t forget to give it to me at the station!" we all laughed, me all too knowingly. "Don.t worry! She does this all the time." well, we were in town for a couple of hours, and once every half hour or so i reminded Sophia not to forget, and explained again, in new words (for my understanding of the Goddess was growing by the minute now that i knew i was going or She knew i was coming) how Everything hung in the Balance. till there i suddenly was. still waving at their little green car as it sped away, and remembering she.d forgotten! i'd forgotten! something golden in the light of the day extinguished itself. a minute of being less than Fully Conscious had doomed me! it wasn't the end of the world, but it was the end of my trip to the Goddess. unless they remembered! i had 45 minutes to find out as i plonked myself down at the café table where they.d dropped me. ordered a double greek coffee. (our running joke: "why do they call it greek coffee?." "because it.s turkish!" and they don't want to remember how many they slaughtered when they finally chucked the Turks out, for very good reasons am sure.) 45 minutes - but if they didn.t discover in the first 20 minutes they'd be nearly back at the Magic Cottage and unlikely to return all that way. i thought wryly of the jar of halva and honey as i sipped my "greek" coffee and tried to concentrate on what i could do to affect the outcome. telepathy? mental concentration? i tried visualising their faces, looking as if through the windscreen at their ancient/modern faces as they sped along. at which of them should i aim my thought beam? basically useless stuff like that, but what else was there in my position? breakthrough to the goddess depression mixing with lack of sleep (imagined) and down you go. not that you can ever go that low in arcady! i noticed in a mirror that a Great Frown was squatting my brow - from trying to force my thought waves towards them - or some such "rationalisation". hell, my Great Effort was even reviving the Great Headache of Lykosouria& when the breakthrough to the goddess arrived. i guess the thought that triggered it was the consideration of whether She, Herself, wanted me to come; whether She considered it would help Her Cause. if She did, wouldn.t She allow me to gettit? and that.s when it hit me. ask Her - to inform them! if She wished. wow! what a different way of looking! this new kind of Effort, soon as i tried it, felt instantly so remarkably different (so clean, so direct though i know that sounds strange) that i went almost into a state of Wonder. where before my situation had been filled with summoning up my Ego, had involved concentrating my own Will, and trying to impose MY wishes on reality (never mind actually beaming it into Socrates and Sophia.s minds!) it had metamorphosed. effortlessly, into a Surrender, a Letting Go of Me, my Will dissolving like clouds before a crisp new wave of Energy, indeed a Surrender to another Reality! melted from my face the Frown. retreated instantly the Headache. and into the vacuum flooded the sounds of vendors and a radio and gasoline smells which my .concentration had been crowding out. now i was expanding, and had a distinct flash of the very state i.d been .trying. to reach, of somehow .including. them in the same Reality as me (not in .my. reality!) and that soft ancient sunny golden light returned to my day. leaving it in Her hands to organise their remembering could also be an expansion of my own will, i saw that too of course, leaving it to a Higher part of my Mind. but whatever, it was still a genuinely new kind of Effort. and, given that THERE WAS REALLY NOTHING I COULD DO ANYWAY, i was risking nothing by Letting Go. goddess, if you feel it would be good for me, and/or You, and/or Life in general, let Socrates and Sophia return! just psychologically (excluding spirituality for the moment) it was brilliant. all ego was removed so that, even if Soc and Sophia didn.t return, i would experience much less of a bring down. i.d be much less likely to blame MYSELF in any way too. after all, i was at least as willing to accept the Goddess. judgement on whether the joint was important as the other kind (by random events?). hell, this new kind of Effort even .included. the possibility that i was better off NOT getting what i wanted. my old Efforts had involved none of that, and had obviously been an inferior form of Cause (& Effect). one part of me knew they.d come back. another knew they probably wouldn.t. then i noticed another effect. i didn.t need to give anything up! leaving it to the Goddess didn.t stop me doing whatever i.d otherwise have been doing . like beaming my thoughts at them. only the whole nature of that had changed, the whole attitude behind it. as i sipped my second coffee (there might be none for six hours) i practised whatever telepathy i could come up with, but it was no longer a strain, it felt like toying with a fiddle while Rome raged. though i was actually on the bus, my bags in the hold, and it was clearly only a few minutes before we took off, i still kept a keen-ish eye through the window in case they returned. some stoic in me was gritting its teeth to deal with the hexagram i drew for years in my youth . Modesty, acceptance of things as they are. i.d jump off the bus at Corinth and buy another ticket for Athens, simple as that, swallowing just one more piece of shit with as little complaint as i could muster. and then, all at once, their little green car pulled up alongside! you beauties! you Beauty! i shot up like a mushroom in the rain, and down the steps. Sophia handed me a big banana as i gave them both another farewell hug, the j passing hands with the banana. and the bus was off! i sat, my hand holding the little roll of herbal inspiration like a talisman. thankyou, goddess. if You did it. and i doubt that i did. see? without the Goddess, my ego would have been thinking he did it. promising more problems. after six hours through fabulous mountain ranges which i now knew (see One Worldwide Hashish Culture below) still hid secret valleys of marijuana plantations (oh, wot the xtianised tourists never see!), we arrived in Corinth an hour before sunset. only it wasn.t Corinth, it was a gigantic, out-of-town, obviously Olympics-funded, mega glass station swarming with more people than i.d seen in the past month. a nearby sign on the main road outside informed me we were 5ks from the city. on the potentially positive side, though, the junction road for Epidaurus was right beside the station, .only. 50ks away. which simultaneously knocked the slight fancy i.d had to maybe spend the night in Corinth before catching a bus to Epidaurus or returning to Athens the next day, while also giving me the opportunity to head off for Epidaurus straight away. two overworked ladies at the info counter told me the next bus to Epidaurus was in the morning. i felt exhausted. one of the girls had sounded uncertain and i joined the queue again to make sure and this time she nearly snarled the same info. the cards were not turning up for me, it seemed. what to do? pass the night in this station crowded with individualistic greeks and crooked albanians? (according to some greeks anyway) sleep outside under some trees? start hitching to Epidaurus? that added some pep. when had i last hitchhiked?! after a looong cup of coffee and a fabulously dripping cheese pie (my first food since leaving), i opted to carry my bags down the Epidaurus turn-off, looking for a place to sleep and hitching as i staggered. under a flyover, down to the entrance to another. cars zooming past at top speed down the slight incline. i saw the remains of a bit of an orange orchard just off the road and decided, that being covered, to keep hitching till darkness was complete. not with much hope, however, everyone had told me the urban greeks were lousy for lifts, though the countryfolk were much better. this, however, was as near to a CorpoStyle® spaghetti junction as you.d find outside the capital. way deeper and less conscious than that morning, i slipped the matter into the Goddess. hands, and worked at being friendly looking to the occasional cars that came roaring down the incline. after about twenty seemingly hopeless minutes one part of me started to hope i didn.t get a lift. i was tired, uninspired, the sleeping spot i.d chosen looked much more rural than i.d hoped for. i could munch a couple of juicy oranges in my sleeping bag as i smoked half the sacred joint, that would be ok i propagandised myself, after all i was 200 downhill yards into my Epidaurus Gambit. which is when i got the first of the 5 lifts that were to get me to the Sacred Goddess and back to Athens on time! with more fast disappearing money in my pocket than i.d planned . no bus fare and no hotel! i was re-inspired all over again! my epidaurus gambit it was a new, red, cheap looking Greek car, and it passed me before slowing down and then stopping. some hesitancy? i grabbed all my stuff and staggered after it. it did not reverse, which made me half expect it would take off as soon as i got close, anyone who.s hitched will know what am talking about :( it was driven, i finally concluded, by a Working Man, and his infant son. neither spoke a single word of english and i never worked out exactly where they were going. but he was one of the most careful and hence almost dangerous drivers i.ve ever seen, slowing down for every slight bend and then accelerating when the fairly empty road straightened out, though never surpassing 60ks per hour. clearly he hadn.t been driving for long. but i didn.t care! i was on my way to receive my Message! (even if night was falling and i.d probably be stranded somewhere in the country.) i did a mock rave dance several times in the first ten minutes at which my kind helper laughed happily, drinking me in like some exotic object. we drove for an hour in the gathering dusk, finally following a winding coast road over astounding cliffs and tiny, hidden inlets and developing tourist towns. ah, the pleasures of being on the road again, at 62! it.s been a deep source of strength to me since i got back that i.ve been on the road again! that i survived! you can.t know if you don.t do it, it.s as simple as that! perhaps it.s one more gift from the Goddess, calling me to get there come hell or high water? though my Goode Companion managed to get that i was heading for Epidaurus, when i think he asked why i could only say .Archeologico. which he didn.t seem to understand. certainly he.d never been there, for, by the time it was completely dark, he.d asked me several times how far it was, rotating his hand above the speedometer as he said "Epidaurus?" i guessed, for the first time, that he.d already passed his own destination, and was simply helping me along. it felt appropriate somehow. perhaps he.d been taking his son out for a spin in their brand new (middle class) car. whatever, it came to an end when he stopped at one of the few garages still open, filled up the tank which was close to empty. and then announced that Epidaurus was still 30ks away (3 fingers) and he.d have to leave me here. .here. was a lone gas station on a dead straight road that came out of the gloom and disappeared in a straight line past me into it again. a totally lousy place to hitch, and i only tried for ten minutes before giving up. a crazy dog, chained near the garage, hadn.t stopped barking since my arrival and barked even more as i set off across some rocky waste ground towards some distant bushes where i dumped my bags while i searched further for a grassy spot to spend the night. and so, under a large, spreading spruce tree and a full moon (!!!), i polished off Sophia.s half jar of halva and honey, blessed her for her foresight, then lay naked in my bag, and looked in full wonder at the starry sky above, and blessed the Greek Working Man. I WAS ON MY WAY TO THE GODDESS! i fell asleep soon enough, untroubled by dreams, and woke early with the most wonderful mood of natural optimism, clarity, and great expectations, and with birds whistling .you.ve gottit all now you.ve gottit all now you.ve gottit!. my name.s attaturk - don.t tell the greeks! the second of my 5 lifts came quickly enough . an albanian in a Lada who was heading directly for Epidaurus!!!. so easy?!!! he spoke some english and was, simply, a naturally civilised human being, of whom there are many many once you get outside the CorpoStyle Matrix. he didn.t smoke or drink and was involved in .agri science.. and on the way he told me, leaning sideways, secretively, as if afraid someone might overhear: .My name.s Attaturk.. we both laughed, and i assured him his secret was safe with me :) Epidaurus turned out to be a quaint, wealthy looking, fair sized seaside resort off the main road. there i had to allow him to buy me a very expensive coffee in a flash cafe on the promenade . he simply would not HEAR of me paying! my money being so low i acquiesced. the greek-colonel type owner, however, who seemed vaguely insulted by having an albanian and a hippy type in his swish café, informed me that, although this was called Epidaurus, the site here was .miniscule,. and that .Ancient Epidaurus. was still 15ks distant! with a definite smugness he replied to my question that there were no buses till evening now, and that a taxi ride there and back, with a one hour stay, would set me back 50 euros . impossible! god, the Greek Good Credit Bourgeoisie are the worst in the world! but i could trump him! attaturk drove me back to the main road, this time on an awkward corner going downhill. but i was feeling great. it was still early (long before i.d normally be awake) and the Goddess had clearly laid out for me a perfect summer day (by english standards i mean) for Her Final Message. vive la bourgeoisie francaise! the french couple with their baby who picked me up next were heading for the site itself! NOTHING COULD STOP IT NOW! but my heart sank as we pulled into a gigantic, anonymous car park, rammed with tourist buses of every nationality. and when we agreed to meet again in 3 hours, a huge (Roman) amphitheatre further punctured my spirits. fuggin Romans! was this all?! had they killed the Spirit of the place like they did most everything else?! this colossal amphitheatre must be the .ancient theatre. in my notes. disconsolately, but determinedly, i sought out a path that went round and up the side of the amphitheatre. someone was making a speech in german from the podium. a hundred people were scattered about the tiers of seats which could probably have seated a couple of thousand. oh, i gettit, you can hear clearly from any one of those seats. fantastic, right? a technological marvel! who the fuck cares, even i got a better system back home! and the same head space built the nuclear bombs and george bush that we have now! unpaved and clearly seldom used was the little track i found. up through thick bushes, short dumpy trees and masses of wild flowers, my .path. climbed, up the right hand side of the vast stadium which i slowly realised must have been hacked out of one side of this hill. i could still hear voices and smatterings of applause from the tourists, only now i was starting to get a great view of the rest of the valley - light purple mountains, green and brown, reminiscent of Eleusis. the Spirit of Place began to settle over me, birds chirped and hinted, bees buzzed and celebrated, butterflies sketched technicoloured lines across my green golden horizons. i passed over into the Timeless Zone at the Heart of everything, the Dream Time. i had come through! the Goddess lived! by this time i.d worked out that all the ancient pagan goddess sites had been assimilated by the .greeks. (whoever they were exactly!) and then taken over by the Romans who .supplemented. them into gigantic technical Fun Palaces for the masses. this is what 99% of the tourists went to see, totally missing the Spirit of Place issuing like a spring breeze from the weathered golden stones at the edges where the original mushroom-goddess worshippers had practised. what had been (and is) deep, personal and soul-expansive (psychedelic) was transmuted into Religious Entertainment to awe thousands of clone members of the Empire. recognise the Present in all this, it.s no longer Roman and it.s no longer Christian but it.s the same head space that.s destroying our planet? was blind but i can see! drawn on by the Goddess, further and further up the hill towards Her. more applause from the amphitheatre below and out of sight. the little joint in my shirt pocket seemed to ache to rejoin nature. what would be Her message after my Great Pilgrimage?! notice that i never doubted there would be a message, which is quite significant when i think about it now. this hill which had drawn me through an evening, a night and a morning had been a power spot for thousands of years before the .greeks.. maybe as many as 20,000 years who knew? great personal/spiritual initiations and re-births had been performed regularly here over generations. i understood now that, until Roman-Christianity completely reversed the meaning of life and spirituality, such holy places had been precisely where people went to trip out, to talk to the Gods, to Bond together as a community. qualitatively another world from the poor tourists i could hear below whose degenerated Bonding Fractal was the Football Match. some german was shouting something and others were clapping, what was that about, who cared?! the Overall Plot of my. True History Of Monkey.s Magnificent Trip From The African Jungle To Outer Space,. my attempt to fulfil my friend Terence McKenna.s belief that .If the truth can be spoken so as to be understood, it WILL be believed. was almost clear to my mind: the mushroom had triggered evolution in the Great Ape, a spiritually developed Ape-Man culture had spread around the planet, and evolution had cracked along at a worthy pace until the Great Disaster caused by the irresistible alliance of Corrupt Religion and Military Might had put evolution into reverse for 1500 years until finally overthrown at the beginning of the 3rd Millennium. i didn.t have a specific question for the Goddess. i was simply open to whatever She wished to tell me. maryjane smelled sweet and acrid at the same time, like Life? a half ring of purple-green mountains framed my unfettered view of the surrounding hills and valley. i had Arrived at my Initiation. what a trip it had been! what a great thing to do! to actually DO it! the smoke of the natural herb i was drawing into my multiversity dissolved into the wispy green surroundings like my own ego before/within the Goddess State. i knew how to surrender now, even realised that my seemingly new position had always been my actual position, despite all my ego.s efforts. do your best for that.s all you can do. but realise that, in the end, it.s not actually yours to take. it.s Hers to give, or not. ( i recalled how my socialist mum had whispered in my ear so many times: you didn.t make yourself handsome, fraser, and you didn.t make yourself intelligent; it.s what you do to serve the People which counts.) lovely grass, Socrates! thanks for your sacrifice! once to give it, and once to give me it again! everything had worked out. i was Here, in Holy Epidaurus, Home of the Healing Goddess! ready for Healing! ready for more information, ah, insight. as i screwed up the remaining tip and popped it ecologically in my mouth, there came another loud ripple of applause from the Romans below, like they were in tune with my world. after all, i wasn.t primarily here for MY interests, i was here for them, in the truest sense. if i could tell the truth so that they.d understand& when you thought of all those millions of deeply ignorant and bamboozled people being daily and more deeply brainwashed as i sat here, how many generations would it take to unwind them?! generations we didn.t have?! but the good and maybe only news was that goddess and our natural allies could free them in a single night! what WAS that clapping about? a warm dizziness came over me, the heat on my head, the high clouding through me. pink. surrender. a single bird twittering .here you go - now! here you go - now! here you go - now!. and then it happened, though it took a little while to register with me. with full thanks and appreciation to Rome MegaSounds Inc, the intensely lyrical sound of a female opera singer, sounding like she was just over the crest but which i knew a nanosecond later came from the stage at the bottom of the amphitheatre, began to sing in the most mellifluous and moving tones: .Ama-a-zing Grace How Swee-eet the Sound&. well, that was really much better. i understood what had been happening! there must be some kinda tourist .tradition. (yeah, right) that one of them prepares an announcement to deliver so all the others in the coach can hear the .wunnerful perfect reception. from all parts of the amphitheatre. gawd, weren.t those Romans great?! yeah, .Great., and Ruthless, and Lying, and Deadly, that.s exactly what they were! but the Sound, that female voice, the lines of the song to which i.d never paid much attention seeming to be emerging from just the other side of this rock. it was pretty impressive from a technical view. as my mind returned to it from its thoughts the beautiful voice reached the last lines: .Wa-as blind Bu-u-ut I can see!. about a minute after that the Significance sank in. I.d been Blind! but now I could See! THAT was the Goddess.s message! it wasn.t Information as I.d expected! She was telling me i.d already well enough cracked the Psilocybin Code! i was there already! i Understood now! i could SEE! i had finally put enough together to see the Plot, the Overall Story, and to TELL it so as to be understood! one night later, at a squat in Athens, i related, for the very first time, The True History Of Monkey.s Magnificent Trip From The African Jungle To Outer Space to 2 english ravers. they understood it! and they believed it! i.ve been committing it to paper ever since. it.s still too long, but it needs lots of footnotes to cover the big jumps that any simple story has to make, but it.s a Plot, it.s something that anyone can understand! [see UP!232] and yes, i.ve been continuing with my Personal Goddess ever since, though i don.t always remember to bring Her in. She is particularly good with computer fukkups, it.s amazing how the stress goes out of the whole thing when you decide to put it in Her hands. UP! Grey Matter, Blue Matter Some academics, such as Roger Penrose of Oxford University, argue that brains do not work in a way comparable with a computer, so any kind of simulation of the brain that is built on digital architecture and uses traditional programming techniques -- such as IBM's "Blue Brain" project -- is doomed to failure. The Economist June 9, 2005. UP! MORE IMPORTANT THAN GETTING THE YANKS OUT OF IRAQ IS THE DEFENCE & EVENTUAL CANONISATION OF THE MAGIC MUSHROOM The UK Government, in their Infinitesimal Wisdom, have outlawed fresh Magic Mushrooms. They rushed the Bill through parliament very quickly on April 7th 2005, a month before the General Election, without apparently following the correct procedures and protocols. >> i understand the 3 main parties did it in collusion, no doubt because each was threatened with being charged for being .soft on drugs. if they refused. They have turned even the fresh mushroom into a Class A drug, up there with Heroin and Crack! However, though the Bill has now become an Act and fresh mushrooms are already technically illegal, the law can't be enforced until the full legislation has been written (like exempting land owners for having psilocybe mushrooms growing on their land, and the Queen getting banged up at her own Pleasure...) Then a month's notice has to be given to traders to wind down their businesses and lay off staff. At time of writing the Home Office believe the date will be July 21st. [The change in the law will make it a criminal offence, punishable by up to 7 years in prison, to just go onto the lawns, fields and hillsides this autumn picking what Nature has to offer! While there are obvious dangers to any powerful tool, we cannot let the Government criminalise us for exploring our own minds and consciousness! At last we have a case to fight for! Naturally a lyingly unrepresentative Government, a lyingly desperate Church, and a lyingly hooligan Big Booze Business don't want the population to start thinking for itself . but, by illegalising what many believe was the Trigger for Evolution itself, they may have forced us to play them at their own game, and inadvertently given us the opportunity to reverse this particular law. ] With this Noble Intent, a number of traders, consumers and Sanity supporters have formed a campaign, Save Our Mushrooms, and a fund, the Entheogen Defence Fund (EDF), with which to initiate a Judicial Review to prevent the government from enforcing the law. They.ve appointed an excellent firm of London lawyers - Hickman and Rose - to fight the case. As a moment.s thought will convince you, all involved have fantastic enthusiasm for this Cause, many more are joining the Cause by the minute, and Hickman and Rose have great experience in Judicial Reviews and Human Rights cases. Basically, the campaign focuses on the Government's failure to follow the MDA and Government guidelines on policy-making. There.s lots of evidence from correspondence that the Home Office and ACMD ignore both, backed up the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser who said he's also concerned by the lack of transparency and selective use of advice. Much of this could be valuable evidence that Government's decision is 1. biased. 2. irrational, 2 of the criteria for a judicial review finding the decision to be illegal. EDF are waiting for a response from the Cabinet Office regarding their complaint that the Home Office has failed to follow the Regulatory Impact Assessment guidance and failed to explain why not. Other aspects of the law might have been infringed, such as Common Law, religious rights and freedoms, and EU trade laws (articles 28 - 30). So there are excellent grounds in law for tackling the decision. EDF needs to raise at least £30,000 to pay the solicitors, lawyers and the barrister to take this to the High Court, and more to take it to the European Court. The larger growers, wholesalers and retailers, obviously, are in a position to contribute quite a bit into this fund, but, as a community of users, we should be able to raise more funds for further legal action. Anthony Goodman of EDF tells us that .the most amazing network of people is forming - businessmen, lawyers, religious rights experts, drug counsellors, psychedelic therapists, shamans, doctors, psychiatrists, theologians, writers, musicians, tv producers, journalists etc - all crawling out of the woodwork to contribute their expertise to the Cause. .We need to get some messages out to the media: the bottom line is, we cannot criminalise ourselves anymore for exploring our own minds and our own consciousness, for understanding ourselves better, and understanding each other better. .Psilocybe mushrooms, and other psychedelics (including cannabis) dissolve the boundary between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, allowing us greater awareness of who and what we truly are. Our society considers this to be a crime. Of course if one has unresolved issues - and we all have a variety of anxieties, insecurities and neuroses - these will surface, and can lead to some people getting into difficulties. Such people must be helped, and cared for, but a screwed up society which discourages us to talk about our personal problems is responsible for many of the psychotic episodes some poor people experience. With guidance and support, education and health campaigns, many of these problems would simply not arise. .This society.s standard religion of Scientism and Reductionism, has stripped all meaning from Life, and humanity from health care, and we can put it back by using these powerful tools to examine how and why we bring so much suffering on ourselves and on each other. The growing and almost dominant alternative culture know the mushroom is here to take us even deeper into the realms of mind, consciousness, self and reality, but we need to speak to the media, the politicians and 'straight' society in their own terms, their own language. We need to talk in terms of using mushrooms as a tool for self-inquiry, self-understanding, self-development and self-expression. .We cannot let the Government control our minds any longer. We have to take control and responsibility for ourselves in order to live more open, sharing and caring lives, with the core values of love, understanding and community, instead of the current core value of individual self-interest. And when we enshrine the mushroom in law, the ball will start rolling, heralding the beginning of the end of prohibition. .Now we need to raise as much awareness as possible, so please forward this to any friends you have, and spread the word. If you have any help or advice to offer, please make contact at the address below.. Sign the online petition on the EDF website (listed below), and please check out the following links for more information on the campaign, the Entheogen Defence Fund and the legal issues involved: http://www.magicmushroomforum.co.uk/ http://www.entheogendefencefund.org.uk/ http://members.aol.com/paladcampaign/legal.htm anthony@supernaturalplants.com UP! Bush Gang In Full Retreat On Other War Front .The reality is, we don.t have the time or resources to do anything other than going after large-scale traffickers and large-scale growers.. McGregor Scott, US federal prosecutor. UP! (\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o the UP! is a global edutainment round-up, broadcast weekly to =[13,508]= Alternative// Activist// Zippy// Trance// New Age// Peace folks recommended to the Parallel YOUniversity// Megatripolis Dance Dept as "showing signs of life". Since recipients forward it widely to their own lists & sites, we conservatively estimate 50,000+ direct recipients. A further 40,000 read it on the YOUniversity's site. And, because of its 'mix' of 'specialist' & 'general' content, it's increasingly being posted on a variety of sites worldwide, making an estimated total weekly readership of =[275,000]= (\o/)(\o/)\(o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o london The last surviving Gana and Gwi Bushmen have taken on the might of the Botswana government, challenging in court their forced eviction from their ancestral lands and the destruction of their water supplies. After an adjournment in August, this history-making case is due to recommence in just a few weeks time. We cannot abandon the Bushmen now and must help them win. Tribal Vibrations presents Kalahari, and the launch of a series of nights in aid of indigenous communities around the world. The first party is in aid of the Kalahari Bushmen in Botswana who are currently locked in a court case with the Botswana government, fighting for the right to stay on the land they have lived on for countless generations. www.survival-international.org Gaudi (Bass Sweat and Tears), Youth (Youth in Dub), Greg Hunter (Matrix reloaded sound track) and Solar Quest (Megatripolis) reunite with Sangita Sounds (Synergy) to send ripples of indigenous vibrations through Brixton and beyond, while Disco Patrick (Planet Angel) Bingly Bongly and the Liquid Connective crew open up the dance room with energetic break beat morphing to psy-trance for the latter part of the evening with a surprise halfway through the night.& Outside under the warm summer sky a festival space hosted by the Infinity Gathering offers a freestyle rap session, open mike, open djembe drumming circle, healing zone, graffiti performance, and places to sit and chill under heated umbrellas. Food and drink will be served all night. This will be a night to remember, opening the summer season and boosting the spirit of the community. 9pm-6am (arrive even earlier for drumming circle) @ Brixton Jamm (formerly Bar Lorca) 261 Brixton Rd, £7 before 11, £10 after. UP! \)))))(/ __,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,__ the Ice-O-Later i was writing travel essays and articles for a dutch magazine, HighLife, in the late .90s when i first encountered the Ice-O-Later. an american sounding guy promised to show me an invention that employed .a whole new way of making numero uno hashish. - from the .shake. that pot farmers throw away. (actually they can.t just throw it away, growers have told me they.d almost PAY to get rid of these .trimmings. that are left over when you snip off the buds - one even told me he loads bin bags into his car and drops them on isolated street corners in the dead of night!) basically the Ice-o-Later was like a large juicer. he put in 2 kilos of sticks and leaves and dust from some grower.s floor, added a load of crushed ice cubes and, when the spinning was done, .pure THC crystals. filtered through like gold dust onto some white blotting paper at the bottom. when he applied a warm knife to the 40 grams of this gold dust he.d collected, it turned dark brown and solid instantly. and, when we puffed a tiny ball of it, wow, i coughed more cosmically and got higher than even my very first smoke in Morocco all those decades before! and most of the little ball was still unburned when we put the pipe away! remember those days, u old Uppers?! consequently i can.t remember how much he told me and how much .filtered. through in the years later, but the basic concept is that, below freezing point, the THC is melted like a sticky syrup all over the fabric of the plant, of which no amount of sieving or even beating is going to release more than half. once you.ve frozen it into crystals of pure THC, however, and rubbed the sheaves against themselves in the Ice-o-Later, damn near most of them will sink to the bottom and get filtered through. i wrote it up in HighLife as a new invention. but was it? i heard a few times that they.d been selling these tiny baggy jobs in northern california which do the same job on a manual scale. they.re pretty common now (certainly the hash is) but whether they were there before the Ice-o-later i doubt. but i.ve discovered something else. though the process might be new, the process is ancient. and then, early this year, while we were still wrestling with whether the Caravanserai Club should go to turkey, algeria or greece next, came this& by Henry de Monfreid (1935). >> today the Olympics have given each station on the route a makeover/tart-up so they all look like modern pipes and stuff, and it looked to me like it was suburbs all the way from Athens to Piraeus. About ten o.clock we crossed the canal of Corinth, cut perpendicularly through 300 feet of rock, sheer down as if it had been sawn. A shabby tramp steamer was trailing along in the bottom of this groove, filling it with dark smoke. Over the metal bridge and then we plunged anew into the mountains &. [end] no, was my immediate conclusion. a hash-producing, consuming culture does NOT overnight give up its ancient customs. here.s what i wrote in the UP! before we set off for greece :- it turns out that greece was until 1930-ish THE major supplier of hashish to north africa and europe at which point it was illegalised. but wild marijuana plants are scattered over the area and i can't believe the culture itself has died out after thousands of years. well, my research in greece has proved my gut reaction MORE than correct. first i discovered that the hash business had been large. i.ve seen fotos of hash factories at the time. one shows 3 ant size workers standing beneath a 2 storey house sized pile of marijuana sheaves, with huge locomotive type machinery nearby, presumably for crushing the grass and so on. such .war lords. (afghanistan) or mafia (italy) or clans (scotland) do NOT just pack up and go away because a bunch of generals 500 miles distant in athens say so. yes, most of the export business was clearly closed down, but the people regrouped and continued growing and smoking. through two separate contacts i made there i am now quite clear that the business/culture continues to this day . though totally unknown to the urban alternative types in athens. it does NOT cross over with that scene but remains a peleponnese custom. my best contact, interestingly also called Petros, trusted me enough to speak more openly than i.m sure he normally ever does. clearly he was, via his family, connected to the ongoing trade, and was under some kind of .mafia-style .omerta. (?) not to divulge the family secrets. if you want proof, he had an uncle in jail for 15 years for growing, and another .farmer. uncle on the run .on one of the islands.. with petros clearly honour-bound never to reveal the full story, i had to piece together snippets that he dropped. but the picture is perfectly clear. growing continues in high, hidden valleys in the mountains. .they have bear traps at the entrance to these valleys that would take your leg off.. another time he commented that .if you discovered these plantations you would not leave that valley alive.. also, during the week or so i spent with him, he often mentioned his love of horses. only quite late in my visit did i realise! for such a culture, horses are key, for getting there and for getting the stuff back down! hence i would estimate that a large minority of the people in every village in Arcady continue to puff the Sacred Weed to this day, mostly the older people but, of course, also their sons and daughters. but don.t think for a minute you.ll ever smoke any of it. here.s a tip. when a secret smoker suspects that someone he.s just met is also one (though from a different family) he usually asks if you know Vasoula. now this is a woman.s name, but it.s also a code for maryjane! so the hash culture is well hidden, and exists totally separate from the alternative greek scene. and the cops still hunt them down like it was some kind of duty. am working on the .culture-wars. theory that most of these families are .turkish., established in greece before the great clear-out of the turks, while the cops regard themselves as greek patriots, something like that. and there.s a book i.m trying to track down that describes the hashish culture around the coasts when displaced sufis and smokers would gather together in hash smoke-filled dens to make a crossover music that, some claim, was the real birth of The Blues. i.ve seen fotos of the scene, and they look wild. One Worldwide Hashish Culture? so why have i called this article One Worldwide Hashish Culture? because i reckon this culture came from a very specific area, above 5000 feet! that.s where it.s cold enough for the THC crystals to be solid. .so that the icy cold of the night should prevent the powdered hashish from coagulating afresh.. .On very cold winter days when there is a keen frost and the waxen matter secreted by the leaves has become brittle as resin.. and ask yourself why you.ve never encountered egyptian, libyan or algerian hash. they grow grass, yes, but they.re too low to have ever produced (or hence to be much interested in) proper hashish. it.s not in the cultural archive of Morocco either, which does make inferior hash for european markets. before this european influence they preferred kif, a mixture of grass and tobacco. indeed i.ve several times watched the moroccans sieve and bash their grass to make .hash., but they clearly don.t understand the culture. their mountains are simply too low, much of the thc is melted into the plant fabric, which means that moroccan hash is made up as much by powdered leaves as pure hashish. it doesn.t make financial sense to make hash from the grass . except that it.s easier to smuggle out. look at a map of the world for mountain ranges above 5000 feet. not counting the New Worlde, there.s a primary trunk of (usually purple) planetary muscle which runs from china through tibet, nepal, india, pakistan, afghanistan, iran, turkey, greece, albania and all the way to switzerland. add in ethiopia for good measure. by my theory, that.s the birthplace and, until the Ice-o-Later, the home of the hashish culture, many many generations old and a culture all on its own. (one detail.s wrong, of course. this range of mountains breaks around constantinople, no doubt caused in geological times by outbreaks of the Black Sea. then it starts again in greece.) yes, switzerland and the Pyrenees need checking next. why, for example, are the Swiss so relaxed in their attitude to growing these days? UP! NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION TRAINING WORKSHOPS FOR THE G8 & BEYOND Planning to take part in nonviolent direct action or civil disobedience, either at the G8 or beyond? Want to do more than march if / when is extended to Iran or Syria, or when the next Fallujah-style assault in Iraq takes place? Then these are the workshops for you! - SATURDAY 18 JUNE, LONDON: with Anna Jones (CAAT) and Joss Garman (Trident Ploughshares). 11am - 4pm. SOAS Post-Graduate Common Room. Meet at 10.45am, on the steps outside SOAS. (Russell Square). - SATURDAY 18 JUNE, CAMBRDIGE: 10.30am - 4.30pm, Queens College. Org. by Theatre of War. Contact Mell 07760161755. - SATURDAY 25 JUNE, EDINBURGH: with veteran US activist Starhawk. 10am - 4pm, Friends Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh EH1 2JL. Org. by the Faslane G8 Blockade team. To book a space e-mail scnd@banthebomb.org. - SATURDAY 25 JUNE, GLASGOW: with veteran US activist Starhawk. 2.30pm - 7pm. Lansdowne Church, 416 Great Western Road, Glasgow G4 9HZ. Org. by the Faslane G8 Blockade team. To book a space e-mail scnd@banthebomb.org. If you would like help organising an NVDA workshop in your local area contact nvworkshops@faslaneg8.com or tel 0845 458 8361 or contact Seeds for Change www.seedsforchange.org.uk a l l g o o d t h i n g s c o m e t o a n e n d which don't justify nuttin' U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U UP P P P P P P P P P P P P P P
www.daykeeperjournal.com
Stand UP! For the Magic Mushroom!
SAT JUNE 18 Kalahari
To get involved or for more info call Joe on 07840029425
One Worldwide Hashish Culture
Adventures of a Red Sea Smuggler
What an enchanting experience is the journey from Piraeus to Athens at sunrise. The train ran through orchards of pomegranates, and lemon and orange groves. Everywhere there were roses, fields and forests of roses. In the distance the Acropolis stood on its mountain all gilded with the rising sun, and pensive ruins here and there added poesy to the scene.
From Athens, the line immediately curved westwards round the sides of the blue and rose mountains, rising from the golden carpet of flowers&.
During the few halts we drank dry white wine with a resinous tang called carchi retzina, a sou a glass. It was delicious once one got accustomed to the bitter flavour&.
One last zigzag up the face of a blue granite wall, and we were at the top, looking down over the picturesque masses of mountains, whose tops were gilded by the setting sun, while the valleys were filled with purple shadow, and the capes and inlets of the coast stood out sharply against an immense sea which merged into space.
An abrupt change of direction, and there before us stretched the high plateaux covered with green crops, with in the distance a range of snow-capped peaks stained orange by the setting sun. We had reached our destination, Steno, six miles this side of Tripolis, the small capital of Arcadia.
A man approached, kissed Papamanoli and then me, and led us to a pretty jaunting-car drawn by a frisky pony covered with tassels and tiny bells. He had a keen, frank face, tanned by the mountain air, and was powerfully built, though without any suggestion of heaviness. He looked like a country gentleman; his calm and assured manner, the authority of his gaze, his simple dress, all bespoke the rich man, owning the soil he trod. He spoke no language but Greek.
The sun was just disappearing behind the mountains in the west, and the air, which had already been very light and fresh, became cold, for we were more than 3000 feet above sea level. Everywhere were fields of green wheat, apple and cherry orchards. I wondered where grew the magic plant from which hashish, bringer of dreams, was made.
After an hour.s drive, we reached the foot of a hill covered with heather and flowering broom. A farm with tiled roofs was set against it, overlooking the plains covered with orchards and wheat fields. The buildings were of granite, and seemed very ancient. They were as massively constructed as a fortress, with vaulted entrances, and the great flags which paved the courtyard had been worn away by the contact of countless generations of feet&
The inside of the house surprised me. It was richly and tastefully decorated, and the ancient walls housed some very fine modern furniture.
Petros went off immediately to fetch a sample of his hashish. I wondered how I was to give an intelligent opinion on it, and not betray the fact it was the first I had ever seen. I didn.t even know how the quality was indicated. I was afraid of making a fool of myself and revealing my ignorance, for after that I could be sure that all the poor stuff which had been unsellable would be joyfully palmed off on me.
I fell back on a method which is often useful. So far as possible I would remain silent.
Petros came in with a fragment of brownish matter in his hand. He immediately gave me the clue to how to test the value of his merchandise by proceeding to sniff it, and hold it up for me to sniff. Then he took a piece and rolled it between his fingers into a slender cone, to which he put a match. It burned with a tiny and rather smoky flame, and when he hastily extinguished it, a heavily perfumed white smoke rose form it.
In my turn I took a piece and went through exactly the same manoeuvres, only, having noticed how quickly he put out the flame, I on the contrary let it burn. Then in silence, with a cold and rather disdainful air, I held it out to him. He interpreted my silence according to his fears, and instantly exclaimed: .Oh, but don.t worry, I have better stuff than this. Only I thought this might perhaps interest you as it.s much cheaper..
I replied with dignity: .I have not come such a long way to buy cheap stuff. Please show me your best at once..
He vanished, and returned in a moment with a piece of the same matter, but less brittle and of a greenish hue. He went through the same gestures, but this time the flame was long and very smoky, and he complacently let it burn. That, thought I, is probably the sign of really good quality. Now I knew how to buy hashish. i declared myself satisfied, and we settled on the quantity i was to buy, 400 okes (600 kilograms) at the price of 20 francs the oke.
.Now. said he, .we.ll go and fetch the goods from the warehouse where they are stored..
Petros opened a vaulted door, behind which a stone staircase led down into the cellars. Almost at once we came to a crypt hewn out of the solid rock. In this vault, which was circular in form, sacks were piled up; this was the hashish crop of the current year. 2 workmen picked out a number of sacks, then fell on them with their sticks, in order to break up the contents and reduce them to dust. The sacks were then carried into a barn, so that the icy cold of the night should prevent the powdered hashish from coagulating afresh.
Next morning I was awakened by a humming activity which filled the house like the murmur of a beehive. In the barn into which we had carried the sacks, a crowd of workers were going to and fro through a thick dust.
In the middle of the room was a sort of table consisting of a very fine metal sieve set up on four legs. On it the hashish was being thrown in spadefuls. A big sheet was wrapped round the outside of the table legs to prevent the fine powder which fell from the sieve from blowing away. Women with their heads swathed in handkerchiefs were spreading out and sifting the powder. After this, men shovelled it into an enormous basin in order that it should be well mixed.
Madame Petros was sitting before a sewing machine, feverishly running up little white linen bags. These she passed to a woman who stamped an elephant on them with a rubber stamp. She in turn passed them to a third woman who filled them, weighed them with great care, and finally tied them up. They were then put in neat piles into a great press. When there were a certain number between the steel plates, a muscular workman tightened the vice and the sacks flattened out slowly until they were like square pancakes four centimetres thick. These pancakes were hard as wax; this is the form in which hashish is exported, and the elephant was Petros. trademark.
The hashish powder had gradually excited the men and women working with it, and they began to sing at the tops of their voices, and joke and laugh like mad things over nothing. I took part in this crazy gaiety like the rest. Fortunately the work was soon done, or I don.t know how it would have ended.
For those who are interested I shall describe briefly how the hashish comes to the state in which I had first seen it, powdered and stored in sacks in the cellar. The fields in which the hemp grows are carefully weeded and all the male plants are pulled out. The female plants which remain cannot therefore bear seeds, and the result is that the leaves become fully charged with a resinous matter. The secretion of this sticky substance is further increased by breaking off the tops of the plants as they grow. When the first leaves, the lowest ones, turn yellow, the plants are carefully cut down 4 inches from the ground, so as not to soil them with earth or sand. Then the crop is dried in the shade and stacked in barns.
On very cold winter days when there is a keen frost and the waxen matter secreted by the leaves has become brittle as resin, the dried plants are broken up by rubbing them between 2 sheets of canvas. This gives a dust made of broken leaves and the resin which is the active part of hashish. This resin gives the powder the property of forming a sort of cake when pressed, and of softening when heated.
All the farms in this district prepared hashish; it was their chief industry. Each estate had its brand, quoted on the market, and there were good and bad years, exactly as for wines.
well, if you.ve ever visited Ketama in Morocco, or any hash culture, you.ll recognise this as one of them. there.s no other way to read things like: .He looked like a country gentleman; his calm and assured manner, the authority of his gaze, his simple dress, all bespoke the rich man, owning the soil he trod.. my research before going to greece turned up that this all came to an end around 1930 due to international agreements. in greece i was told that the US had slipped the generals a large backhander to close the business down. but did it? could it?
YOUR PLANET NEEDS //YOU! This HipList grows purely by recommendation.
SO RECOMMEND SOMEONE 2DAY!!!!!!!!!!
TO DEBATE ANYTHING in the UP!, visit the GroupMind Debating Board on
WWW.PARALLEL-YOUNIVERSITY.COM
YES, YES, SEND US EDUTAINING NEWSN VIEWS no need to ask! :-)
FOR MORE FRASER ON RAVE CULTURE & THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT VISIT http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/fraserclark/
TO UNSUBSCRIBE, HIT REPLY WITH REMOVE IN THE SUBJECT BOX
U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U UP P P P P P P P P P P P P P P
