I recieved an email from my physicist friend Nick Herbert (see prior post) this morning with a report on the Sacred Elixers Conference put on by my "Astral Twin" Michael Crowley. Since nobody asked me to speak there, I stayed home but was happy to hear about it from Nick. I’m going to post an excerpt with photos and rest of what he sent in the post continuation area.
NIck begins "Here’s my report on the sacred elixirs conference. Missed you there. The rest:
Just returned from a day at the Sacred Elixirs conference in San Jose. Connected up with many old friends and picked up new gossip about others. All presentations were top notch and full of good info. One unusual feature of this conference were 1/2 dozen POETS as entertainers–Drugs & poetry. now why didn’t I think of that? The poets were uniformly exciting, original and connected with the audience in great ways. Sherri Crockett told me that the day before one of them (Cliff Anderson) performed a poem while standing on his head. I guessed this was the result of the Poetry Slam movement in which poets shamelessly compete for votes from the audience and discover/invent many non-verbal attention-getting devices. The poets at the Elixir conference were experts at attracting attention to themselves–good shamanic examples–get you out of yourself and into the ritual chant/dance/trance.
At the end of the day Cliff Anderson came up to me , admiring some poems I had published in a drug magazine (that earned him a free copy of "Physics on All Fours") and then he asked if he could perform for me (and the beautiful lady who happened to be standing next to me outside the auditorium) a poem he wrote called "Bell’s Theorem Blues." It was flattering to be recognized as a POET by a fellow practioner of the art rather than as a physicist. So I said: "Sure, Go ahead." In best Slam tradition he begain to rant in front of the auditorium about how his parents told him to "grow up" and "face reality" but looking at physics he found that "reality is crazy". Does that mean that he has to go crazy? If reality can be in two places at once, if reality connects instantly across space and time, does that mean he has to do that too? If this is reality, how can i get real? shouts Anderson. His performance was hilarious and I went off singing to myself with joy.
Hit of the conference was my friend Earl Crockett’s presentation (he got me a ticket) on "a new elixir" in which Earl described his adventures in Baja California discovering a pictoglyph-covered cave and an alleged cactus that was ingested by the inhabitants (who predated the Indians–Earl speculates by thousands of years). He shared the stage with Alexander Shulgin who told of how he analyzes new chemical compounds and how Earl’s "new elixir" (cooked-up cactus) was indeed a brand new kind of psychedelic.
Note on photos from Nick: The top one is Cliff Anderson and the bottom one is Alexander T. "Sasha" Shulgin and Earl Crockett. Read the rest in the contiued area
Sasha outlined the four basic types of one-compound psychedelics and then described ayuasca which is a two-compound psychedelic–1) a DMT analogue plus 2) an MAO inhibitor to prevent the first from being destroyed. There are many varieties of ayuasca that differ in the plant substances that provide these two components–that is, many different plants that carry DMT and many plants that carry MAO inhibitors. THere is even something called "pharmauasca" which is not derived from plants at all but which is simply synthetic DMT (in a capsule) and synthetic MAO-inhibitor in another capsule.
Earl’s cactus was different from all of these–it contained a lot of MAO inhibitor but no DMT. (DMT, says, Shulgin is found everywhere in nature but never in cactuses). Instead in Earl’s cactuses there were mescaline-like substances that have no psychoactive effects on humans–by themselves. Shulgin’s guess is that the presence of the MAO-inhibitor in the cactus protects the mescaline-like molecule from degredation and hence permits it to act on the brain in a mescalin-like way. So Earl’s cactus is indeed a "brand new elixir"–a heretofore unexplored two-compound psychedelic for which Shulgin coined the term "cactouasca". CACTOUASCA–You heard it here first.
THe only elixir I sampled was sniffing "essence of water lily" which one expert presented as the prime psychoactive substance of the Egyptian dynasties–very convincingly I might add. It was a nice pleasant scent with no noticible psychoactive effects. One lady in the audience reported adding dried water lily powder to wine and achieving the greatest orgasm of her life. (THere was a very brisk sale of dried lily powder after her testamonial). Water lily looks like it may have great potential as an accessible mind-altering substance not likely to be banned. (it’s major active ingredient seems to be some sort of opiate.)
However at supper time I decided to look for a good taco joint in downtown SJ and wandered down the plaza where I found some sort of night ceremony just letting out at Saint Joseph’s Catholic church–and there were street food vendors outside to service the parishioners and their children. Wow!
Mexican street food. There were two carts–one that served some kind of fried pastry. I’ve never had much luck with Mexican pastry and one cart that served boiled corn on the cob on a stick. I tried the corn. She asked me if I would like mayonnaise on that. Si! This was applied with a brush.
Cheese? Si! (this is ground chedder cheese). And then all that splashed with chili sauce.
It tasted a lot better than it sounds–all this for $2.00.Wonderful event. The Montgomery theater was a good venue–sort of mock Moorish/art Deco architecture perfectly suited to talk about opium eaters and the search for transcendence.
much love
Nick
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