The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series presents:
Making Sense of Magic Mushrooms
Dr Andy Letcher
Tuesday, 24th November, 2009
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL -
http://octobergallery.co.uk/events/index.shtml(Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). – email:
rentals@octobergallery.co.ukRSVP so that we can anticipate numbers – Please book in advance by
credit card to guarantee a place or pay on the door.
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available
For those who have encountered magic mushrooms, the psilocybin
experience is like an ancient codex whose glyphs are at once baffling
and clear. To make sense of it, each person must perform an act of
translation or interpretation by which the strange is rendered familiar.
But how should this be done? In the post-war period alone an original
psychological framework has given way to that of mysticism, itself
replaced in turn by the language of shamanism.
In this talk, Andy Letcher will encourage us to move away from the
mushroom experience itself – the usual province of trip-lit –, to a
consideration of how it has been interpreted throughout history. For,
contrary to received wisdom, very few cultures have decoded the mushroom
as we do. Along the way he will ask whether magic mushrooms bring
genuine transcendence, or if the experiences they occasion forever bound
by culture.
Andy Letcher is a freelance writer, academic lecturer and folk musician
living in Oxford, UK. He lectures at Oxford Brookes University and Bath
Spa University on subjects as diverse as neo-Paganism, shamanism, and
theory in the Study of Religion. He is the author of the critically
acclaimed Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom and Mad
Thoughts on Mushrooms: Discourse and Power in the Study of Psychedelic
Consciousness, published in the journal Anthropology of Consciousness.
Known for his iconoclastic style, and with doctorates in both Ecology
and the Study of Religion, he challenges us to question received wisdom
about psychedelics and psychedelic history. A prolific song-writer,
tunesmith and exponent of English Bagpipes, he fronts psych-folk band,
Telling the Bees.
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