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Cabaret Voltaire

The Psychedelic Salon Zürich
Florian Elliker: Psychedelics and Cannabis. Experiences and Meaning in Everyday Life
Florian Elliker, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Together with Niklaus Reichle, he founded and leads the research collective “Unexplored Realities”.
Zürich Cabaret Voltaire Spiegelgasse 1 | Thursday, 9 May | 6-9 pm | CHF 15/10

The Psychedelic Salon Zürich
Peer-to-Peer Psychedelics with Luisa Trujillo and Nizzy Steiner
To register, please contact Luisa here.
Zürich |  Cabaret Voltaire Spiegelgasse 1 Wednesday, 29 May | 18.30 – 20:30 h 

@ gaiamedia lounge
The Psychedelic Salon Basel
Roger Liggenstorfer: A Dive into the Myths of Absinthe
Roger Liggenstorfer, the grandson of an absinthe bootlegger from the Jura and co-founder of the first (legal) absinthe bar in Switzerland, will take you into the world of the green fairies. You’ll learn why absinthe was banned in the first place and what’s up with the story that the legendary spirit has a psychedelic effect.  .
Basel | gaiamedia lounge | Thursday,16 May | Hochstrasse 70 | 6-9 p.m. | CHF 15/10

Related
Ayahuasca Healing, Science and Indigenous Knowledge
Organized by the Chacruna Institute
Online Course  | 1 April – 8 July 2024

Heart Mind Institute 
Rewiring Your Brain World Summit
Online | 7 – 13 May 2024

Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics
New York City | Academy of Medicine | 8 – 11 May 2024

CannaTrade
International Hemp Fair and Festival for Business People and Consumers  – since 2001
Zürich-Oerlikon | Halle 622 | 24 – 26 May 2024

Exhibition The Culture
Explores the deep impact of Hip Hop on contemporary culture
Frankfurt | Schirn Kunsthalle | until 26 May 2024

good to see

good to hear

End of the Day (from the film Anonymous Club)

Courtney Barnett

Courtney Melba Barnett (born 3 November 1987) is an Australian singer, songwriter, and musician. “End Of The Day is a meditative, slow-burning and beautiful record, prioritising atmosphere, tone and texture over traditional song structures and melodic hooks. It's a fearless and stunning turn for an artist who built her formidable reputation through profound lyricism and riff-based fireworks.” (Bandcamp)
Milk Records

Psychedelics II – My Apothecary Light

William Brittelle
Producer and Grammy-winning composer William Brittelle, a creator of hyper-text and multimedia, is an avid collaborator. He has worked with a number of artists across multiple disciplines, including Roomful of Teeth, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Bryce Dessner (The National), Son Lux, Oneohtrix Point Never, A Far Cry, Lower Dens, Duran Duran, Wye Oak, Dirty Projectors, Kanye West, and the Seattle, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Alabama, Grand Rapids and North Carolina Symphony Orchestras, the Basel Sinfonietta, the Nu Deco Ensemble, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
New Amsterdam Records

Underdressed at the Symphony

Faye Webster
Born June 25, 1997, Faye Webster is an American singer-songwriter from Atlanta, Georgia. Underdressed at the Symphony is her fifth studio album. It  "builds upon the frameworks she’s established and pushes them to their limits.” (Exclaim!)  She evolves a familiar intimacy within her songwriting skills on the album, blending catharsis and humor over a sonic palette of multiple genres like "indie rock, country, and R&B. The album has been well-received by music critics.
Secretly Canadian

Tiny Desk Concert

RAYE
Rachel Agatha Keen (born 24 October1997), known  professionally as RAYE, is an English singer-songwriter. Her debut studio album, My 21st Century Blues (2023) was released independently to critical and commercial success, and won Album of the Year at the 2024 BRIT Awards. The South London-bred singer-songwriter had finally made her way to NPR headquarters, her signature cherry-hued pin curls full of bounce and a radiant smile spread across her face. RAYE exudes the confidence and abilities of a veteran vocal powerhouse.
NPR Music

Prelude (from the forthcoming album Fearless Movement

Kamasi Washington
Armed with a tenor saxophone and endless ambition, musician and bandleader Kamasi Washington returns with what he calls his 'dance album'. Since the release of the triple album The Epic in 2015, Kamasi Washington has become a
acclaimed talent of modern jazz. His latest LP, Fearless Movement, is a self-produced odyssey and manages to maintain a blistering accessibility despite its length of almost 90 minutes. A whole host of other artists support him in this feat..." (Liam Casci for The Skinny)

goodnews editorial

bicycle day

Eighty-one years ago, on April 19 1943, Albert Hofmann and his laboratory assistant Susi Ramstein – the first woman to take LSD – cycled from Sandoz headquarters in the Basel Wettstein district to Bottmingen, the suburb where the chemist lived with his family. Hofmann had intentionally taken LSD for the first time about an hour earlier.

Since 2018, the Gaia Media Foundation has been inviting people to retrace the approximately four kilometer route he took with the help of young Susi, while recalling Albert Hofmann’s many spiritual adventures and Susi Ramstein’s courage as the first tripsitter.

We’ll meet on Friday, April 19 at the gaiamedia lounge from 4 p.m. onward, in the back yard of Hochstrasse 70 (see below). Leaving at 5 p.m. sharp for the Novartis Campus whence we’ll cycle to Bottmingen to see the house where Albert Hofmann lived, albeit only from the outside. From there, we return to the lounge around 6 p.m. for a Happy Hour with psychedelic music from the Sixties and Seventies as well as some snacks.

Non-locals can rent a bicycle here or here.

Those wishing to participate in the program of our partner, the Swiss Psychedelic Society – Eleusis – has organized for the occasion at OstQuai, in the former cargo port of Basel, near the German border, will leave the lounge around 7 p.m. The party includes a collective experience, a talking circle, and, from 8.30 p.m- onward, ecstatic dance as well as a concert. Everyone is welcome. Tickets can be purchased here.

We are counting on as many of you as possible. Please let us know if you’ll come along for the ride and for our Happy Hour so we know how many participants to count with. The Happy Hour finishes around 9 p.m. or when the last attendants will have left.

We are looking forward to being with you

Marion Neumann                                                                                  Susanne G. Seiler
Member of the Board                                                                            Editor
Gaia Media Foundation & Eleusis Society                                           gaiamedia goodnews

P.S. You’ll find us at the gaiamedia lounge, Hochstrasse 70 (behind Basel’s SBB station, tram stop Peter Merian), every Thursday afternoon from 14 – 18 h. Welcome!

good to read

Forbidden Wisdom. Revelations about Psychedelic Substances at the Source of Spiritual Traditions

by Stephan Schillinger

Drawing on the work of American scholars as well as scientific and historical evidence, the author shares his reflections on the origins of spirituality and the great religious traditions that followed. Thoroughly and extensively sourced, his account explores groundbreaking questions and assumptions about the nature of reality and psychedelic experiences, leading to the expanded states of consciousness he proposes as the very origin of spiritual feeling. Stephan Schillinger is a french author in the field of spirituality. He has been exploring transpersonal psychology, shamanic traditions and expanded states of consciousness for over 20 years.
Amazon

John Szwed Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith

by John Szwed

He was always broke, generally intoxicated, compulsively irascible, and unimpeachably authentic. He was an anthropologist, filmmaker, painter, folklorist, mystic, and walking encyclopedia. He taught Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe about the occult, swapped drugs with Timothy Leary, had a front-row seat to a young Thelonious Monk, lived with Allen Ginsberg, was admired by Susan Sontag, and was one of the first artists funded by Guggenheim Foundation…
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux

Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder

by Salman Rushdie

The author, on whom the Iranian government issued a fatwa in 1989, is known to have barely survived an attempt on his life, in 2022, losing an eye and the mobility in his right arm. That makes it all the more heartwarming that the famous author does not allow himself to be blinded by the hatred with which he was persecuted. On Stephen Colbert’s talk show on April 16, he quipped: “Puritans are people who are terribly worried that someone, somewhere might be happy” and: “Fanatics have no fun!” (SGS)
Random House

Karos

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Kairos tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets a married writer in his fifties named Hans. Their passionate yet difficult long-running affair takes place against the background of the declining GDR, through the upheavals wrought by its dissolution in 1989 and then what comes after. With enormous sweep, Erpenbeck describes the path of two lovers, as Katharina grows up and tries to come to terms with a not always ideal romance, even as a whole world with its own ideology disappears.
New Directions

Thorn Tree

by Max Ludington

A single mother, Celia leaves her young son Dean for weeks at a time with her father, Jack, who stays at her house while she’s on location. Jack and Daniel strike up a tentative friendship as Dean takes to visiting Daniel’s cottage, but something about Jack seems off. He is not the harmless grandparent he pretends to be. This dark story unfolds o the sound of the Grateful Dead, and the secrets that both Jack and Daniel have harbored for fifty years.
St. Martin’s Publishing

good to discover

CocoonWeaver
Fun and easy to handle, this app helps save thoughts and turn them into writing. It offers the ability to stream into categories such as a diary, dreams, ideas, things to remember or thingd to do, news, stories and many more. Available for Apple or Android, it’s fun and easy to handle.

Acid Dreams – The Great LSD Plot 
Narrated by Rhys Ifans. BBC Postcast Series

good to know

Cannabis
psychoactive | Truthdig | 30 March
Legalization had been a great success

Cannabis in Germany
psychoactive | Marijuana Moment | 1 April
Legalization has taken effect with people smoking and dancing in the streets

Coming to a clinic near you
psychoactive | The Globe and Mail | 5 April
LSD, ecstasy, magic mushrooms soon to be legal in Canada

Cannabis In Switzerland
psychoactive | Swiss Info | 5 April
Selected users permitted to buy in selected pharmacies In Bern

Nova Festival
psychoactive | New York Times | 8 April
Psychedelics and trauma during the Hamas attack

Identity
psychoactive | Morocco World News | 12 April
Morocco unveils official logo for legalized cannabis products

Lineage
culture | Live Science | 13 April
Ancient Indigenous lineage of Blackfoot Confederacy goes back 18,000 years

Expect the unexpected
psychoactive | Newsweek | 15 April
United Arab Emirates to become 2nd country to legalize psychedelic therapies

Next question please
psychoactive |  Reuters | 15 April
Not all Germans smoke cannabis, Chancellor Scholz reassures

Narco state
psychoactive | France 24 | 16 April
Mayor of Amsterdam wants to regulate cocaine and ecstacy to defeat trafficking

On the rocks
psychoactive |  Church of the Eagle and Condor | 22 April
Agreement on use of ayahusca as a sacrament reached with federal authorities

Therapy
psychoactive |  Psychedelich Health | 24 April
How clinicians impact patient outcomes in psychedelic therapy

Am I only dreaming?
psychoactive |  The Psychedelic Blog | 26 April
Dreams & psychedelics

good to meet

Plants of the Gods
Part 1 — Ayahuasca and Tobacco Shamanism: an Interview with Ethnobotanist Dr. Glenn Shepard

Transform Drug Policy Foundation
An independent, UK-based charity working nationally and internationally towards a just and effective system of legal regulation for all drugs.

DanceWize
Harm reduction and help for psychedelic, and/or spiritual emergencies at festivals and other peer meetings are a necessity wherever people get together in large numbers.

partner

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