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Recent Reviews
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Pharmako/Dynamis: Stimulating Plants, Potions & Herbcraft
by Dale Pendell
Publisher:
Mercury House 
Year:
2002 
Reviewed by Gwyllm Llwydd
7/26/2007

The book is a cornucopia of arcane his/herstories of plants and their effects on human civilization. Information swims through these pages—information untold and unrevealed, except for the most curious amongst the connoisseurs of plant inebriants. Information to get lost in… information to find yourself in… information that reveals secrets… information to set a course for distant shores with… [ read more ]

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Ibogaine: Proceedings of the First International Conference
by Kenneth R. Alper and Staley D. Glick (Eds.)
Publisher:
Academic Press 
Year:
2001 
Reviewed by Thomas Lyttle
7/20/2007

The First International Conference was held in New York City in 1999, and this book collects the proceedings, plus more. Adding to pharmaceutical and toxicology research is new information regarding therapies that use ibogaine, including traditional Bwiti therapies, various encounter and shock therapies, dream therapies—even amateur therapies using ibogaine in uncontrolled doses, based on self-help models. [ read more ]

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Sex, Drugs, Einstein & Elves: Sushi, Psychedelics, Parallel Universes, and the Quest for Transcendence
by Clifford Pickover
Publisher:
Smart Publications 
Year:
2005 
Reviewed by Mark Pesce
7/9/2007

Across eleven chapters, Pickover cuts a wide swath with his literary machete, hacking through such subjects as language, DMT, machine elves, Terence McKenna, his hometown in upstate New York, book publishing, the virus theory of language, Einstein, God, transcendence, the Big Crunch, and, oh yeah, Burning Man. ... Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves isn’t so much a coherent narrative as a pastiche of thoughts, a stew where nearly everything – including a porcelain kitchen sink – has been tossed in. [ read more ]

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A Psychonaut's Guide To The Invisible Landscape
by Dan Carpenter
Publisher:
Park Street Press 
Year:
2006 
Reviewed by David Arnson
7/8/2007

Each of Carpenter’s chapters contains numerous descriptions of encounters with what seems to be an internal ecology of the mind. If nothing else, even if you take Carpenter’s writing with a grain or even a boulder of salt, this makes for some very interesting reading on at least a science-fiction level, like some DXM remix of Flatland or A Voyage to Arcturus. [ read more ]

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Shaman, Jhankri and Nééle: Music Healers of Indigenous Cultures
by Pat Moffitt Cook
Publisher:
Ellipsis Arts 
Year:
1997 
Reviewed by Jay Yasgur, RPh., MSc.
7/2/2007

The background that Moffitt Cook provides is “just enough,” and one can listen to the musical track without feeling mentally overloaded or taxed. The accompanying CD consists of 18 representative songs that each particular shaman uses. [ read more ]