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This article introduces and explores issues regarding the question of what constitute valid forms of development knowledge, focusing in particular on the relationship between fictional writing on development and more formal academic and policy-oriented representations about development issues. 11|28|08 |
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The new clock at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, was designed by horologist Dr John Taylor. The face is plated with gold and it is said to have cost a million pounds to make. It is partly a tribute to John Harrison, an 18th century English clockmaker who solved the problem of longitude. He also invented the "grasshopper escapement," hence the freaky grasshopper thing which moves with every second and "eats" the time as it passes. The clock was unveiled by Stephen Hawking last September. 10|21|08 |
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Michael Tilson Thomas conducts "the drunken Taoist fairy land of 'Das Lied von der Erde'." A review by Erik Davis. 10|17|08 |
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We have a real, innate desire to see our dreams come to life. Video games can help us understand our potential to become the gods and myths of our imagination. A blog by Stephen Hershey. 9|27|08 |
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The maker of El Topo and The Holy Mountain gets initiated by Zen masters and singing vulvas. A review by Erik Davis. 9|21|08 |
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This year was my – cough – twelfth Burning Man, and my time there was, for once, dominated by continuity rather than novelty. An account by Erik Davis. 9|9|08 |
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The use of Google is changing the neuronal architecture of our brains, paving the way for a new definition of humanity. 9|9|08
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partners with local communities throughout the developing world to provide quality educational opportunities by establishing libraries, creating local language children's literature, constructing schools, providing education to girls and establishing computer labs. Through the opportunities that only education can provide, the non-for-profit organization strives to break the cycle of poverty, one child at a time. 8|21|08 |
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Especially with elections ahead, most political parties try to spice their soup with a greater or smaller pinch of xenophobia. Only the Greens and the Liberals try it the other way around: they try to spice with xenophilia. Probably this explains their modest successes. Instead of salt they try soap for their soup, and as any cook could have told them, this is no appropriate measure to attract customers. 8|21|08 |
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The one and only High Energy band, formed in 1990, at the same time, and in the office next door to the World Wide Web in Geneva, Les Horrible Cernettes – "The Horrible CERN Girls," are today idols for physicists and computer freaks all over the world, and whose promotional image is the very first photo on the web.
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is a participative research project. We invite artists, architects, designers and sociologists, studying in the most prestigious universities in Europe, to tell stories about our cities in the form of 3 minute-long documentaries. The project is a challenge to a generation that’s changing the way we move around Europe and the way we interact with media, a generation living low-cost. We’re verifying their presence as it redefines the geography of our imaginaries. 7|17|08 |
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Collage filmmaker Craig Baldwin’s new movie, Mock Up on Mu, is a madcap hyper-meditation on magick and mind control that takes place in a hallucinogenic California spliced together, literally, from B-movies, self-help infomercials, UFO cable access shows, and aerospace promo films. Actually Mock Up on Mu is about a lot of things, too many probably, but the core story it tells—or rather, the story it allegorizes into a SciFi agitprop ADD fantasy—is one of the core narratives of the California spiritual underground: the almost operatic tale of JPL rocket scientist Jack Parsons. A review by Erik Davis. 6|9|08 |
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In Antero Alli's surrealistic new film a sleep-deprived theatre director undergoes hypnotic regression to stop a reoccurring nightmare and unexpectedly participates in an ancient dreamtime ritual that sends him through the labyrinths of madness and transcendence. Inspired by the radical ideas of French playwright Antonin Artaud, the filmmaker also borrows from Rimbaud's poetics of delirium for the "deliberate disorientation of the senses" to achieve a series of altered states. In Alli's own words, "Cinema is a drug. If some movies put us to sleep like tranquilizers and others jack us up like triple espressos, The Invisible Forest is a 100% organic, user-friendly hallucinogen." 6|13|08 |
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is the only international organisation supporting tribal peoples worldwide. It was founded in 1969 after an article by Norman Lewis in the UK's Sunday Times highlighted the massacres, land thefts and genocide taking place in Brazilian Amazonia. Like many modern atrocities, the racist oppression of Brazil's Indians took place in the name of 'economic growth'. Today, Survival has supporters in 82 countries. It works for tribal peoples' rights in three complementary ways: education, advocacy and campaigns. 6|9|0 |
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When it comes to LSD, Edward Rothstein has to confess: I inhaled. But he inhaled like so many other denizens of the 1960s and early ’70s, whether they actually took the drug or not. He inhaled because one couldn’t fail to inhale. LSD — its aura if not its substance — was a component of the air one breathed. This hallucinogen infused the exhalations of musicians, philosophers, advertisers and activists. 5|28|08 |
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At the age of 102 years, Albert Hofmann died peacefully in the early morning, 29th April 2008, in his home near Basel, Switzerland. Still the weekend before we talked to him, and he expressed his great joy about the blooming plants and the fresh green of the meadows and trees around his house. His vitality and his open mind conducted him until his last breath. Gratefully and lovingly we grieve for an outstanding scientist, an important philosopher, a dear and true friend, and our member of the board. 4|30|08 (dah) Obituary
The abdication took place on Friday, 9 May, 2008 in beautiful sunny spring weather with Albert’s family, relatives, and some of his close and loyal friends from near and far. A most harmonious farewell.
Condolences: Book of Remembrance.
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Those of you who hated the slow pace of "What the Bleep" and "The Secret", but liked the idea, might be interested to know that Headspace Studios, located in Cape Town, South Africa, has finally completed "Cognition Factor". Featuring more than 20 of the most important minds of our age, the movie is about a cyberpunk's search for enlightenment, during which the viewer is taken through a narrated virtual world in search of answers to the "Big Five" questions relating to the human experience. 4|23|08 |
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When Leonardo DiCaprio was a young boy, he used to play hide-and-seek in the overgrown gardens of a Hollywood Hills mansion owned by the family of the visionary British author Aldous Huxley. Now, 30 years later, the star of Titanic and The Aviator is paying back the hospitality by putting his Hollywood muscle behind the first big-screen production of Brave New World, Huxley’s most enduring novel. 4|16|08 |
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is the story of the influential Canadian artist and mystic Brion Gysin (1916-1986), and his amazing invention, the dream machine, which he believed would revolutionize human consciousness. Featuring greats like William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin (in archival footage), singer Marianne Faithfull, rocker Iggy Pop, singer/artist Genesis P-Orridge of Psychic TV, poet John Giorno, filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and artist/turntablist DJ Spooky, FLicKeR is a hypnotic documentary that asks fundamental questions about an individual’s freedom to dream and create. 4|2|08 |
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Stanley Kubrick seems to be the kind of artist everyone wants to have pinned, yet slips out of every critical grasp. Interpretations of his work tend toward the extremes: Kubrick has been called a right-wing propagandist and a left-wing militant, a misogynist and a feminist, a fatalistic cynic and a quasi-religious optimist. Few directors have attracted so much vitriol, adulation, controversy and analysis. Kubrick's own silence about the meaning of his films, combined with his notorious reclusiveness and his disregard for "social responsibility" before critic, church and state, only added to his mysterious aura. 3|7|08 |
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In early January, dozens of people in the small town of Stephenville, Texas witnessed a mysterious phenomenon in the evening sky – intensely bright lights that many believe were a UFO. Yet stranger still was the media frenzy that followed. Is the sudden mainstream interest in UFOs a sign of something deeper emerging in the public consciousness? 2|18|08 |
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Happy 102nd Birthday Albert Hofmann!
Although the birthday celebration this year was overshadowed by the recent death of his beloved wife Anita, the celebratee welcomed an illustrious group from all over the world on the occasion of the first legally permitted LSD-assisted psychotherapy study in Switzerland after some 35 years. Rick Doblin from Maps (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), USA, main sponsor of the study, Amanda Feilding from the Beckley Foundation with Jamie Neidpath, England, writer and journalist Mathias Bröckers, Germany, from Switzerland psychiatrist Juraj Styk, and psychiatrist Peter Gasser, head of said study, and both representatives of SAEPT (Swiss Medical Association for Psycholytical Therapy), Zen priest and animal protection activist Vanja Palmers, who supported the study financially, publisher Roger Liggenstorfer with Chris Heidrich, and Dieter Hagenbach from the Gaia Media Foundation. The many guests not only congratulated Albert Hofmann on his birthday, but also celebrated that his "problem child" finally "found his way back to legal application in medicine," in the words and much to the satisfaction of the discoverer of LSD. 1|11|08 |
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Stanislav Grof was invited to a weekend think-tank held on January 26 and 27 of 2005, at Tomales Bay Institute in Point Reyes Station, California. The meeting was convened by Tomales Bay fellows and writers Jonathan Rowe and Peter Barne; additional participants were filmmakers/storytellers/story analysts Jim Bonnet, Gene Hines, John Korty and Cornelia Durrant, Susan Strong from the Metaphor Project, and Jason Salfi from Earth Island Institute. The question discussed was: "What is the implicit narrative/drama or myth that is framing the public arena these days and what new counter-narratives are needed?" Stanislav Grof is one of the key speakers at Gaia Media's World Psychedelic Forum next March. 1|11|08 |
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is an experiment of bringing divergent streams together by attempting to bridge various issues of the 21st Century around cognitive liberty, consciousness expansion, indigenous issues, environmental activism, workers concerns; as well as new and emerging visual arts, poetry and other forms of expression. Now Earth Rites is proud to announce their Third Online Edition of "The Invisible College." 12|21|07 |
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Anita Hofmann-Guanella 1913 - 2007
On 20 December 2007, Anita Hofmann passed away peacefully in the presence of her husband Albert Hofmann, discoverer of LSD, in their house near Basel. She suffered from a heavy arthrosis for many years, only to bear with analgesics, which by the time weakened her more and more. She was married to Albert Hofmann for almost 75 years, who she first met when skiing in Arosa, Switzerland in 1934. As the mother of their four children, she always supported the research of her husband. She accompanied him when he visited the famous shaman Maria Sabina in Mexico, after Albert Hofmann has synthesized psilocybin, and took part at the mushroom ceremonies. As an exceedingly charming and humorous lady, she was a most generous host for so many visitors from all over the world. 12|21|07 |
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Laura Archera Huxley, a lay therapist, author and widow of Aldous Huxley, who shared his vision of human potential and devoted the nearly five decades since his death to preserving his legacy and helping others -- particularly children -- achieve happiness, died on 13 December at her home in the Hollywood Hills at the age of 96. 12| 17|07 |
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In a unanimous vote, the Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association has approved a strongly worded statement supporting legal protection for patients using medical marijuana with their doctor's recommendation. 11|23|07 |
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Paul Levy has written previously about the importance of the archetypal figure of the "wounded healer", a figure who alchemically transforms the energies of her wound into fuel for the fire of realization. In this article Levy wants to explore another, related archetype, that of the artist. Both artist and healer are able to express the deeper archetypal energies operating in their individual psyches, and, thereby, to be both in-formed and transformed by them, ultimately transforming the collective unconscious of humanity at large. 11|5|07 |
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According to a British report which ranks individuals according to their "genius factor", Albert Hofmann, the 101-year-old Swiss chemist, best known for synthesising LSD in 1943 in Basel, shares the top spot with British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who created the world wide web at the CERN in Geneva in 1989. 11|1|07 |
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Stanislav Grof, M.D., renowned researcher into non-ordinary states of consciousness, was honored as this year's recipient of the Vision 97 Award at a ceremony in Prague. Below is a description of the award, in the words of its founder, former Czech President Václav Havel, followed by Doctor Grof's acceptance speech. 10|29|07 |
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Roll up, roll up - ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and foes - welcome to the unparalleled, the unexpected, the perfectly paradoxical, the grotesquely beautiful, the new-fangled world of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA). |
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Even without an apocalyptic world scenario, humanity has already passed an event horizon that is drawing it from one attractor to another. This end of conventional history involves a morphological distortion of our time in space, one that alters both our bodies and our body-politic. Outside becomes inside, as microtechnologies enter our bodies through MIT's celebrated "wear-ware," and international terrorists enter our old territorial twentieth-century nation state space. At the same time, inside becomes outside as consciousness becomes an endosymbiont inside a global noosphere of networked computers. In this meta-historical crossing of within and without, a singularity appears and traditional culture dissolves, and the residues of melted cultures become religious toxic wastes in fundamentalist violence everywhere: Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Sikh. A contribution by William I. Thompson. 10|24|07 |
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goes to Christopher Weeramantry, Sri Lanka, for his lifetime of groundbreaking work to strengthen and expand the rule of international law, to Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, Kenya, for showing in diverse ethnic and cultural situations how religious and other differences can be reconciled, even after violent conflict, and knitted together through a cooperative process that leads to peace and development, to Percy and Louise Schmeiser, Canada, for their courage in defending biodiversity and farmers' rights, and challenging the environmental and moral perversity of current interpretations of patent laws, and to Grameen Shakti, Bangladesh, for bringing sustainable light and power to thousands of Bangladeshi villages, promoting health, education and productivity. 10|12|07
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has been hearing the music for a long time. His track record includes hundreds of published articles, dozens of published short stories, one published book with more coming, several thousand speeches, and – in a former incarnation - hundreds of sermons, all original, all unique. 10|5|07 |
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has released the first in a series of short animated films presenting new ideas on global consciousness shift and techniques for social and ecological transformation. Daniel Pinchbeck has been collaborating on this with brilliant animators and filmmakers. Their initial episode, "Toward 2012," introduces the project, explaining concepts from Pinchbeck's last book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, in his own voice. 9|25|07 |
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is a visionary multi media artist. Working with computers he creates artwork that is completely mind blowing. High Times magazine labeled him an "artistic mastermind." 9|21|07 |
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The story starts in the early 1960s with a young dock worker named Jude (played by Jim Sturgess) who travels from his home town of Liverpool, England to America in search of the American G.I. father (Robert Clohessy) he has never known. While in America he falls in love with a sheltered American teenager called Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). When her brother Max (Joe Anderson) is drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, they become involved in the anti-war movement. The film is constructed as a musical, with the actors expressing themselves by singing compositions written between 1963-1969 by the members of The Beatles. 9|19|07
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The fantasy worlds of William Gibson's Eighties novels were uncannily prophetic, but where does the sci-fi writer go for inspiration when the future catches up on us? More than 20 years after he coined the term "cyberspace", he talks about the shape of things that came to pass. 8|29|07
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These discussions challenge unexamined beliefs and ideas received
from culture, religion, education, and the media, and propose how we
might attune more deeply to innate knowing and the wisdom of human
instincts. Five Talks with John Lash. 9|3|07 |
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Mesopotamia is widely believed to be the cradle of civilization, but
a growing body of evidence suggests that in addition to Mesopotamia,
many civilized urban areas existed at the same time - about 5,000
years ago - in an arc that extended from Mesopotamia east for
thousands of kilometers across to the areas of modern India and Pakistan. 8|15|07 |
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Alex Grey is a visionary artist specializing in spiritual and psychedelic art inspired by entheogens and mystical experiences. His oeuvre spans a variety of forms including performance art, installation art, sculpture, and painting. An interview. 8|13|07 |
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is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain; as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man's Land. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. 8|3|07 |
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was created as a not for profit expression to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are. 8|1|07 |
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How the science fiction master created the template for our looser, hipper, more pluralist world. Despite his visions of near-immortals and cryogenic sleep, he didn't live to see it. He died in 1988, mourned by millions of readers who saw him more as a father or a guru than merely as a spinner of captivating tales. 7|29|07 |
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Initiatory techniques and rituals have been an essential part of human cultures for tens of thousands of years. In tribal and aboriginal societies, initiations serve a number of different purposes. On one level, rites of passage create a threshold between childhood and adulthood, marking a major life boundary. Daniel Pinchbeck on the learning to communicate with the spirit worlds that lie beyond the limits of our physical senses. 7|23|07 |
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Telektonon: The Game of Prophecy, a boxed Mayan-calendar board-game mind-virus that was released in 1995 by Jose Argüelles. Old school New Agers will remember Argüelles as the guy responsible for the harmonic convergence of 1987, but these days he is best known for his belief that the year 2012, the end of the Mayan Long Count, forebodes an epochal transformation of time and life on this planet. 7|19|07 |
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Digital Africa is here with a mega-mix about the multiple rhythms and languages of Africa, from the record collection of Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky. 7|7|07 |
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The story of The Matrix (1999)—probably the most elaborately plotted action movie ever made—is authentically Gnostic. It is in fact, and way beyond "The X-Files," "Gnosticism reborn." Wherever exactly Andy and Larry Wachowski hatched their demonically inspired and wickedly effective pop parable about the enslavement of modern man to the machine, they have come up with a genuine original. It's an amazingly coherent blend of Philip K. Dick, H. P. Lovecraft, Jean Baudrillard, messianic prophecy, apocalyptic lore, martial arts mysticism, and technological paranoia. 6|9|07 |
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| is made up of various peoples from all over the world, coming together to offer what we can to bring about the shift of consciousness in these times. It strives to bring the knowledge of our various traditions, both native, and modern to a new synergy that benefits all beings, all consciousness be it animal, plant or mineral. Just as spirit is everywhere, so shall we be. 6|11|07 |
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in its architecture and design. It is what could be called 'frozen music', a little like cryogenics. The music has been frozen in time by symbolism, it was only a matter of time before the symbolism began to 'thaw out' and begin to make sense to scientific and musical perception. 5/23/07 |
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It's obvious that the US war on drugs, the longest war, is another war they're not winning. It's gone on for 75 years and, like the war on terror, it's been pursued with fatally counterproductive strategies. If Washington doesn't alter course, it could last forever. There's now a chance, albeit slim, that things could change. (4/9/07) |
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is a declaration of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society for the 21st century. (3/29/07) |
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is now live. The Pilot Project concluded on 25 March, and the beta version of the "better free encyclopedia" is open for general reading. (3/27/07) |
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If you weren't there, you probably wouldn't believe it. But way back at the start of the 90s, people at the edge of the emerging digital culture talked about Virtual Reality (VR), the idea that we would soon interact in shared 3D worlds; as much as, if not more than, they talked about the internet. R.U. Sirius interviews Virtual Reality developer Jaron Lanier. (3/25/07) |
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presents free books for free minds. (3/17/07)
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Mystic Family Circus is a non-profit multi-cultural collective of over 400 performers, artists, visionaries, and educators. Their mission is to activate a conscious, peaceful, and sustainable culture through performing arts, community building, creative expression, and education. (3/13/07) |
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Its mission is to provide humanity with an international institution of higher education for peace with the aim of promoting among all human beings the spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, to stimulate cooperation among peoples and to help lessen obstacles and threats to world peace and progress, in keeping with the noble aspirations proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations. (3/7/07)
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