Basement Shaman Blog

My 10,000 Foot Confession

I have a confession to make, well to be precise, I've two confessions. A couple of weeks back when the Basement Shaman gang was out on a collecting trip, I was actually playing hooky. Instead of boarding a plane bound for tropical locales in South America, my plane was bound for Denver, and my eventual destination was for a magical town tucked high up in the Rockies of southwest Colorado. The town was Telluride. Once a rough and tumble mining town that was nearly deserted in the 70's, but infused with new life when the terrific Telluride ski resort ski area opened later in that decade. This tiny town condenses a cosmopolitan world of culture, food, music, theater, sport and hip, alternative lifestyles into a unique package. The reason for the visit was to meet up with some very good friends and celebrate a special birthday all while catching some of last great spring skiing in the high mountains.

Now imagine, if you will, the effects that a flatlander like me encounters when suddenly your body goes from near sea level conditions to 10,000 feet. Some altitude sickness is the inevitable outcome for most people who undertake such a shuttle. If you've never had altitude sickness, well, it's not very fun. Severe headaches, shortness of breath, muscle cramps, fatigue, gastrointestinal distress, diffculty sleeping and general malaise are a few things you can expect. A day of skiing can be an exercise in utter exhaustion. Through in a few alcoholic drinks for aprés ski, and it's a recipe for a brutal hangover.

My friends all struggled the first few days trying to get acclimated. I outskied everyone, including some of the bunch that were twenty years younger than me. I recall the clan stopping numerous times on the way down the trails to quiet thighs racked with the burn of anaerobic exhaustion. I remained untired and quite happy. Here's my second confession: I began taking a course of the marvelous adaptogenic herb known as Rhodiola rosea about two weeks prior to the trip. Rhodiola's effects are pretty transparent. You don't feel overtly stimulated or wired in any sense. It's not until you push yourself into the extremes of exertion, or lack of sleep, or any other situation that would normally be fatiguing that Rhodiola suddenly shines. And unlike some other performance enhancing drugs, Rhodiola is actually beneficial to your body. As an adaptogen it is able to regulate and balance a wide range of bodily functions, including enhancing the body and brain's use of oxygen.

Researchers in the former Soviet Union made numerous studies of Rhodiola's beneficial effects. The plant was regularly prescribed for cosmonauts, special forces, fighter pilots, olympic athletes, and heads of state. Rhodiola eventually was used in many hospitals and psychiatric wards to great effect. It's only been recently that the western world has begun to take notice of this miraculous plant.

Landing into Happiness

touchdown from a field collecting expedition...flights delayed all along the way...tired, and feeling obliged to post...here it is, just a timeless moment to allow being to simply be-- unadorned...to all, may you know happiness and the root cause of all happiness

andy @ the basement shaman

The Clock of the Long Now

Having just arrived from a field expedition in remote places where I was deliciously disconnected from cell phones, wireless networks, e-mail and the accelerated pace of post modern life, this entry was chronically put off, and approached with resistance. I asked what's going on here? After some thought, I realized it was my own psychological resistance to jumping back into a frenetic pace of living.

Now most people might assume running The Basement Shaman is a really mellow gig. The truth is that while I wouldn't trade it for anything else, being of service to a community at large can be demanding. Folks expect to get their "stuff" quickly and on time. While our business is based on the fundamental wisdom of nature and the humans who have sought to tap into its broad intelligence, sometimes we too get stuck in the trap of acceleration and myopic thinking.

Quick thinking is praised, but what about slow thinking? I mean really slow, long-term thinking which takes into account a distant future? A brilliant project was conceived by the foundation of the long now. The group built a clock to mark time on a scale never before considered. In essence this clock turns a 24 cycle into a 10,000 year cycle. It "ticks" once a year, has a century hand, and the "cuckoo" comes out once evey millenium for the next ten thousand years. You can check out the clock at the science museum in London

The "godfather" of ambient music, Brian Eno, was commisioned to come up the the unique "bell chimes" for the clock, and these are available on CD at the Long Now Foundations website. We just joined as charter members in support of the Long Now Foundation, and believe it has much to offer the world. We encourage you to visit their site. Let us know what you think!

Happiness,
Andy @ The Basement Shaman

The End of the World as We Know It

In my last post I made mention of the late, great psychedelic, transdimensional ombudsman, Terence McKenna. Terence produced some of the most eloquent descriptions of the sort of deep, hyperdimensional space humans can encounter via two of his most favorite entheogenic substances: psilocybin mushrooms and DMT. One of the postulations that enraptured McKenna for much of his career was the concept of eschatology, or some sort of ending to the way of the world as we know it.

The idea of end states, or the ending a major cosmological cycles traces far back through human history. The ancient Mayan and Toltec cultures were obsessed with codifying immense cycles of history in their art and architecture. Mayan astronomers and mathematicians pointed to the year of 2012 as the end of a great epic, cosmological cycle over 5000 years long and the beginning of a new time, perhaps unrecongizable by past standards. A great source of this info is to be had be following the work of the Mayan Archaeologist and researcher John Jenkins. The great Aztec society ellucidate a great prophecy concerning the ending of the 5th Sun, and the birth of a 6th sun. The epochal change so frightenened them they are said to have made over 70,000 human sacrifices to stave off the change.

In today's post-modern era, fundamentalist Christians await the second coming of Christ and the complete annihlation of the world as we know it now. Simultaneously scientists provide more and more evidence of a profound shift in the balance of nature on planet earth, and warn that unchecked consumption and materialism are rapidly, and perhaps irrevocably changing the planet.

It seems that eveything is speeding up. Moore's law state that the rate of change of technology can be described by a curve. Estimates are that the speed and power of computers doubles every 18 months and some estimates say that caluclation power doubles in as little as 7 months. This makes us wonder will the "clock speed" of human consciousness keep pace with the very tools it is producing?

The human species seems surely at a bifurcation point, a point of choosing between making an evolutionary leap into a higher level of consciousness and a more integrated and sustainable way of living on this finite planet or shrugging our shoulders and slouching into the darkest and most excrutiating depths demise of the species. As writer Marshall McLuhan noted humans have spent most of their time as if "driving a car using only the rear view mirror as a guide". Perhaps now its time to look to the ever present now and make choices based upon what lies on the road ahead.

A brilliant new book which covers this potential flowering of human consciouness has recently been released by author. His book 2012: The Return of Quetzacoatl covers all this territory with great alacrity and depth, and you'll find it offered on our own site under the sound and vision section.

If you can't tell by now, we at the basement shaman are unabashed agents for a positive change in human consciousness which will bring greater happiness, harmonly and sustainability to our planet and all the sentient beings which inhabit it.

Ode to a Shamanic Bard

Well we've toally blown past Saint Patrick's day with good intent to make brief mention of one of the most productive, provocative and mind stretching spokespeson for the the psychedelic/entheogenic movement. Terence McKenna was a jewel-tongued writer, poet and explorer of extraordinary states of being. Perhaps it was his Irish genes which gave him the ability to spin yarns that had a way of eventually cracking open the bounds of everyday reality, freeing you to enter a territory out there that is vaster and weirder than you can ever suppose. Terence elucidated some of the most strange and other-w0rld concepts with the mastery of his other Irish countryman such as William Blake and Keats. One of our favorite McKenna quotes iS:

The Denial of the magical,
The Transcendental,
The Transdimensional,
The Mysterious,
The Weird,
Has left us playing with half a deck.

So happy Saint Patrick's Day, Terence! We miss you dearly!

Happinesss,andy@the basement shaman

photo courstesy of Bruce Eisner (1997) Psychedelic Culture: An Interview of Terence McKenna by Bruce Eisner. Psychedelic Island Views Vol: 2 no. 2 "Terence McKenna's vision of a future culture." Illustrator: photo: Jay Blakesberg; pp.4-10,14; More information: http://www.bruceeisner.com/writings/2004/09/psychedelic_cul.html.

p.s. the self-tranforming, bouncing ball, mult-faceted jewel-like basketball encounteted in the DMT space say hello and tip a pint of Guinness for ye all. Check some of Terence's titles on our site at www.basementshaman.com/aliendreamtime.html

Happiness.
andyi

Ode to a Shamanic Bard

Well we've toally blown past Saint Patrick's day with good intent to make brief mention of one of the most productive, provocative and mind stretching spokespeson for the the psychedelic/enthegenic movement. Terence McKenna was a jewel-tongued writer, poet and explorer of extraordinary states of being. Perhaps it was his Irish genes which gave him the ability to spin yarns that had a way of eventually cracking open the bounds of everyday reality, freeing you to enter a territory out there that is vaster and weirder than you can ever suppose. Terence elucidated some of the most strange and other-w0rld concepts with the mastery of his other Irish countryman such as
William Blake and Keats. One of our favorite McKenna quotes iS:

The Denial of the magical,
The Transcendental,
The Transdimensional,
The Mysterious,
The Weird,
Has left us playing with half a deck.

So happy Saint Patrick's Day, Terence! We miss you dearly!

Happinesss,andy@the basement shaman

Analog or Digital?

The question has been posed, is the Basement Shaman analog or digita? The answer is resoundlingly...analog! You might well ask then what about this very digital-based medium your using to run this blog. Yes, indeed we've intermediary converters, and perhaps the system as a whole is really a complex hybrid: analog/digital, hardware/wetware/greenware...yet our favorite stereo incorporates a good old school tube amp, lovingly made by the great folks at manleylabs.com, a California-made analog wonder called the Stingray.One spin of your favorite cd's played through this amp with allow you to hear things you've never heard before. By the way what's in rotation on your players cd, IPods, and turntables?

All this tech talk whirls about me on this sleepless night. I think of the calculus of consciouness, a calculus of love.What about a description for some continuous function that separates you from me? What is the refresh rate of human consciousness? Can we setup an ƒ(x) function to create a map? Shall it be some sort of non-linear integral? Very, very ¥∆ stuff.

Let's here from the mathematicians, code writers, poets and musicians.

"Now If a 6, turned out to be 9, well I don't mind. I don't mind.
If all the hippies, cut off all of their hair, I don't care. I don't care."

Jimi Hendrix from the song If Six Was 9

West Walks East

Our friend Ginger treks around the world to find unique indigenous artifiacts, folk art and sacred objects. She's as a member of the Fair Trade Association, and sshe works hard to find piece that will promote fair trade. Each year we give her our special wish list, and then we wait for months as the cargo trickles in via ocean freightliner.Ginger always surprises us with her eye for objects of exceptional beauty, priced at very fair levels. We in turn, try to offer you the same. Many of our art and ritual objects would cost several time their price at trendly galleries from Santa Fe & San Francisco to New York City and Paris.

This year Ginger traveled throughout Nepal, India & Tibet. In all of her years of experience at visiting the cultures of the high HImalaya. The situation in Tibet is dire. The Chinese government has already destroyed innumerable Buddist temples, sacred objects, art, text and more. It's clear that the Chinese government is intent on wiping Tibet, it culture, religion and most warm and wonderful people off of th planet. We regularly contribute to the International Campaign for Tibet at www.savetibet.org

So stay tuned as we'll be sending out an e-mail announement of some of our new offerings within the next couple of weeks.

The Terrrible Taste of Dreaming

Ah yes.
Calea zacatechichi is undoubtedly on my short list for the most bitter and vile tasting botanicals on the planet. It's a wonder that the natives of of the highlands of Mexico are able to kick back the stuff as a tea...then again many of the indigenous names for the plant point to the bitter truth. Consider the Nahuatl "chichicxihuitl" meaning "bitter plant" or better yet "zacate de perro" or Mexican for "dog grass". About 10 grams of dried material brewed as a tea and taken thrice daily, is said to do the trick.

We've heard all manner of amusing ways to take the bitter tea. Some swear that by using minimal water, they can toss back the dreamer's liquid brew and bypass the tongue. Others say just add copious amounts of honey, sugar, or agave nectar and beat back the bitterness. A few purists say the flavor is part of the experience, and why fight it? Some dreaming cognoscenti say that a mixture with high cacao content dark chocolate does the trick.

We're considering making a neat, encapsulated material, yet somehow can't help that wer're whimping out. Let us know what you think.

p.s. another plug for the south african dream plant silene capensis....lot's of good activity, with a very palatable, easy going gastronomic demeanor.

happiness,
andy @ the basement shaman

Dream Work

Among our most popular offerings at The Basement Shaman include products which in some way relate to the dreaming realm. While it seems many of you already know about the Mexican "dream herb" called Calea zacatechichi, it seems another very qualified "dream herb" is being overlooked. The plant is called Silene capensis, or the "Xhosa dream herb". It is used among South African diviners as a very powerful tool to enter special realms during sleep.

In addition to these botanicals we've also a number of outstanding audio courses on dreams and lucid dreaming, and very soon hope to unroll some electronic tools to further the exploration. If you know of any interesting tools or techniques, please share them with us all.

Happiness,
andy @the basement shaman