From Terence Mckenna's Non-Ordinary States Through Vision Plants

"We're playing with half a deck as long as we tolerate that the cardinals of government and science should dictate where human curiosity can legitimately send its attention and where it cannot. It's an essentially preposterous situation. It is essentially a civil rights issue because what we're talking about here is the repression of a religious sensibility. In fact not "a" religious sensibility, the religious sensibility. Not built on some con game spun out by eunichs, but based on the symbiotic relationship that was in place for our species for 50,000 years before the advent of history riding priestcraft and propaganda. So it's a clarion call to recover a birthright, however uncomfortable that may make us. A call to realize that life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego and its fear of dissolution in this mysterious mama matrix which is all around us and which apparently extends to infinity and where our historical future actually lies. This is the other thing..

It is now very clear that techniques of machine-human interfacing, pharmacology of the synthetic variety, all kinds of manipulative techniques, all kinds of data storage, imaging and retrieval techinques, all of this is coalescing toward the potential of a truly demonic or angelic kind of self-imaging of our culture. And the people who are on the demonic side are fully aware of this and hurrying full-tilt forward with their plans to capture everyone as a 100% believing consumer inside some kind of beige furnished fascism that won't even raise a ripple. The shamanic response in this situation I think is to PUSH THE ART PEDAL THROUGH THE FLOOR."

Terence Mckenna: Culture is not your friend

Culture is not your friend, it's an impediment to understanding what's going on. That's why to my mind the word cult and the word culture have a direct relationship to each other. Culture is a cult and if you feel revulsion at the thought of somebody offering to the great carrot, just notice that your own culture is an extremely repressive cult that leads to all kinds of humiliation and degradation, and automatic and unquestioned and unthinking behaviour.

I mean the American family is what keeps American psychotherapy alive and well. This is a cauldron for the production of neurosis.

Part of what psychedelics do, is they decondition you from cultural values. This is what makes it such a political hot potato, since all culture is a kind of congame, the most dangerous candy you can hand out is candy that makes people start questioning the rules of the game.

From the lecture: "Into the Valley of Novelty"

INCOGNITO (Wigs and costumes in Tiatre)

I was looking at the Tiatre portraits for the well known fashion designer Wendell Rodricks who is working on his book on Goan costumes. I came up with an interesting set of character transformations the Tiatre actors underwent using wigs and costumes.



Though some of these transformations are subtle, others could be at the extreme ends of the spectrum, even going as far as cross dressing.



Click Here for Slide show