Category: Editorial

During the Summer of Love, first in San Francisco (1967)and then in other cities, such as Toronto (1968), where I lived at the time, it was common to take LSD offered by friends out on the street, to swallow it there and then and see what would happen.

Other than to Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and their colleagues, who let psychedelics escape from the ivory tower of Harvard, we ironically owe this turn towards youthful mass intoxication to the incompetence of the American and British secret services. They let the magic pills they administered to their test subjects, often without their knowledge and consent, escape the lab and cabinet to find their way onto the streets.

Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was one of those subjects, albeit consenting. His chaotic Merry Pranksters, a boisterous group of Korea veterans and other tough guys, were soon throwing acid parties to the tunes of the Grateful Dead, while on the East Coast Timothy Leary was busy becoming more and more of his messianic self. In 1969, he ran for Governor of California, where he had lived and worked as a clinical psychologist, and a co-founder of the Psychology Department at Kayser Berkeley Hospital. He was soon arrested and jailed. His slogan “Come Together Join the Party,” out of which John Lennon created his song “Come Together.” describes a time when freedom was claimed and liberations pursued to an unknown extent by virtue of the sheer masses of kids and others hitting the streets.

In total, from the American West Coast to India and on to Oceania, half a billion doses of LSD alone are said to have initiated an expansion of consciousness, which still echoes loud and clear today. Last year 27 million Americans over the ages of 12 (!) said they’d taken LSD in the past year. Approximately one in 50’000 need help while or as a result of tripping.

In order not to incriminate people who are hedonists at worse, the possession of small amounts of LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA needs to be regulated, as these substances are relatively safe when used responsibly.

Something else:

Starting November 25, we will be exhibiting a selection of our books and other treasures at the Walcheturm art space in Zurich. Similar to the monthly Psychedelic Salon, which has found a home in Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire, we will offer readings, and discussions with well-known local personalities, as well as a film program, in a colourful location at Walcheturm.

The library is open Wednesday through Saturday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.; the evening program takes place from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.,. by announcement. If you would like to get involved and support us, please let us know.

We will celebrate on November 18 from 6 p.m onward.

Welcome!

Susanne Seiler

Kunstraum Walcheturm, Kanonengasse 20, 8004 Zurich

https://walcheturm.ch/

 

Is it the countless lies, the corruption, war, destruction, hunger, inequality, injustice? It makes me sad to think about these things, and I think about them every day, whether I want to or not. If I were to seriously engage with the tragedies unfolding before my eyes, I would probably go mad. Am I even aware of what is going on? Isn’t everything much worse? The lies, the deception, the murders and executions, not only in Gaza, but all over the world?

It doesn’t help to dwell on events that are beyond our control. We empathise, we are angry, we feel helpless, broken – and we are glad to be far away. We feel we are entitled to be relieved and privileged, and while relief is human, privilege remains relative. People are generally fed up with our chaotic times. Their lives are less affordable, their jobs are often a drudgery they drag themselves to five days a week. Even people with good middle-class jobs and decent pay want out. At art openings and during our psychedelic salons at Cabaret Voltaire, I sometimes meet people who tend to feign a certain sense of professional optimism. Behind their masks lurks pure despair: What will become of my job? What about AI? What will become of my money, my family, my life? People on the next rung up the social ladder worry about their reputation. How do I look in the eyes of “the world”? Will I be publicly defamed and destroyed, my ego in shambles, my pride in the dust? Does anyone love me at all?

What should we all do? It seems clear that those who have enough should share with those who have less, and many people do. It is too easy to blame those who could but do not because they are so greedy and needy. For them, as for us, the question is how to make the world a better place without sacrificing ourselves. After all, any kind of commitment, from love to business, not to mention politics, requires an investment of time, money and effort that we may not have the energy or the means to make.

When it comes to difficult times, there are two tricks: if you consume less, you save money, and if you save money, you feel more secure. Give away some of that money and you’ll not only feel rich, but also good!

Nature is free and accessible to all. We call her our mother; she is the gift that keeps on giving. By spending time in the forest or the mountains, by the sea or in the desert, we show our affection and admiration for her. It responds to this love by bringing us closer to ourselves and, step by step, liberating us from everything that weighs us down. Until we feel free to dive into ourselves and recognise who we were when that was still enough.

Let’s escape from the cities as often as possible. To build a more natural and largely autonomous life together wherever possible. To love nature, our lives and each other.

Have a colourful autumn, everyone!
Susanne Seiler

Cogito ergo sum. Most of us encountered this dictum by scientist and mathematician René Descartes (1596–1650), the father of modern philosophy, as schoolchildren. Already back then I disagreed: how could I think at all without a brain? Or without a body?

This leads us to the much more difficult question of what consciousness actually is. I won’t pretend to have the answer. However, neuroscience increasingly assumes that consciousness is not a prerequisite for perception, but rather a consequence of it. Before we form a thought, we must become aware of our surroundings and engage with reality through our senses. We share this with all sentient beings. Animals and other life forms may not think like us, but they are conscious enough to survive in an often hostile environment, and they are often better adapted to life than we are, having become largely alienated from nature – including our own.

While thinking is linked to neural activity in the brain, consciousness can also occur without understanding, as in meditation or in babies before they learn to speak. The same applies to patients in a coma or on the operating table, who perceive what is being said and done around them without reflecting it. It applies to the cat enjoying a ray of sunshine, or the mouse perceiving the rustling of the grass around it, to the bird dancing in the wind, and the puma prowling through the jungle.

Could it be that we have misunderstood Descartes? Perhaps he simply wanted to tell us that thinking was his raison d’être and that without intellectual engagement with the world, he felt like a fish out of water. Does our human dignity really depend on our ability to analyse and produce, rather than springing from our being, the feeling of ‘I am’? Our perception arises from our lived experience of the world. We should use both our hearts and our minds to engage with it. Consciousness is more than thinking!

Thoughtfully Yours,
Susanne G. Seiler

 

“Utterly brilliant and inspired in every direction – writing, ethnobotany, chemistry, psychonautics, pharmacology, drug history, gardening, house building, hydroelectrics (he powered his house and village at one point with a hydroelectric system he installed), teaching, editing, and pretty much everything else you could ever find interest in. Jonathan had a gargantuan knowledge bank, skill set and even bigger heart. He will be so missed by so many.”
Hattie Wells, Psychedelic practitioner and co-director Breaking Convention

Jonathan Ott was born on 2 June 1949 in Hartford, Connecticut, where he spent his childhood with his three sisters. According to Claudia Müller-Ebeling, who knew him well, he had to overcome «familial, political, and academic boundaries and mostly limited spheres of awareness,” before studying organic chemistry at the Evergreen State College in Olympia (Washington), and later in Mexico, where he made his home.

In 1973, a fateful encounter brought him together with Richard Evans Schultes. He, Albert Hofmann and R. Gordon Wasson remained Jonathan’s most important mentors. He also collaborated with other passionate ethnobotanical researchers such as Pablo Blas Reko, Christian Rätsch and Jochen Gartz. Along with Alexander Shulgin and Antonio Escohotado, who also left us recently, he has now joined them in the land beyond the rainbow, where I hope they are having a good time together.

Among many other things, Jonathan Ott is famous for having been the English translator of Albert Hofmann’s book LSD My Problem Child, and for having co-coined the term «entheogen.» Not only was his Engish most elegant, and a pleasure to hear and read: his German was also remarkable, spoken with only the slightest accent. Other than Spanish, he was a scholar on Indigenous languages. He authored and co-authored a large number of books and articles, the most famous being his Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and History (1993), Ayahuasca Analogues. Pangean Enthogens (1984) and Hallucinogenic Plants of North America (1976). You’ll find a selection of his available writings here.

Ott was an experienced field collector in Mexico, where managed a small natural-products laboratory and botanical garden of medicinal herbs. In March 2010, his home was destroyed by arson. In a vindictive act, the books given to him by Albert Hofmann were reportedly used as fuel, meaning the arsonist must have acted with premeditated intent. Fortunately Jonathan Ott was not home when it happened.

From 1976 onward, Jonathan initiated several psychedelic conferences along with various partners, The psychedelic movements owes him more than we’ll ever know or be able to express.

The Gaia Media Foundation hosted or co-hosted him on several occasions. You’ll find his talks «The Hermit of a Latter-Day St-Anthony Entertains St Albert» (LSD80, Basel 2023), «Albert Hofmann’s Contributions to Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research» (2014) as well as an «Interview with Faustin Bray» (World Psychedelic Forum 2008) and «Albert Hofmann & Jonathan Ott on Consciousness & Mystical Experience” (Outside Dr. Hofmann’s home on the Rittimatte 2002) on our YouTube Channel. I also found him here. Keep on scrollling…

Jonathan Ott and I were about the same age. He was a warm-hearted man, and I am very sorry he’s no longer with us. He passed on 5 July; the cause of his death remains to be revealed,

In fond memory,
Susanne G. Seiler