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See www.mindstates.org for our current data.
This page is retained for archival purposes. | ||
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mind states oaxaca The state of Oaxaca in Mexico is infamous due to the (re)discovery of several powerful entheogens in use by shamanic healers in the Sierra Mazatec area, including Psilocybe mushrooms and Salvia divinorum. In particular, the town of Huautla de Jiménez attracted those interested in discovering more about the native use of these visionary plants. Oaxaca City is the first stopping point in Mexico for many wishing to take the beautiful 6-hour scenic drive through a multitude of ecosystems to the Sierra Mazateca. In Oaxaca City, curendera María Sabina clearly holds the status of a folk hero—one can even find T-shirts with her face on them sold in the city square! Oaxaca is a great little city, with delicious food and drink—including of course the chocolate and mezcal they are famous for. While you’re at it, be bold and try out a taco with salted and toasted chapulines (fried grasshoppers); definitely "beer food." But whatever you do, be sure to sample several of the various regional molé dishes. The locals in Oaxaca City are friendly, and there is a ton of art, both traditional and contemporary. It is home to the world’s largest, longest-running open air market, and of course a trip to the amazing Zapotec ruins at Monte Albán will be part of the adventures during the Mind States Oaxaca seminar. To make the most of your time in Oaxaca City, we suggest that you purchase a guide book, which will provide you with an abundance of information about the sights and activities available. Click here for ticket information. Click here for a tentative schedule and descriptions of talks and presentations.
Spend a week in an intimate, relaxed setting, having stimulating conversations with the following presenters: | ||
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 | • Deirdre Barrett teaches psychology at Harvard Medical School. Her latest book, The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use their Dreams for Creative Problem Solving—And How You Can, Too, describes Nobel Prize-winning experiments and literature coming from dreams. Her earlier books, The Pregnant Man and Other Stories from a Hypnotherapist’s Couch and Trauma and Dreams, present lessons learned from exotic disorders such as multiple personality, false pregnancy, and post-traumatic nightmares. Dr. Barrett’s work with post-traumatic nightmares in Kuwait following the Gulf War has just been published as a chapter in The Psychological Effects of War on Civilians, and she is also the author of numerous professional articles and chapters on dreams, imagery, and hypnosis. She has served in the past as president for the Association for the Study of Dreams, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Dreaming. Her lectures have been presented in locales as diverse as Kuwait, Israel, Holland, and the Smithsonian, and she is a frequent media guest for shows such as NBC Today, NPR News, Voice of America, and the Discovery Channel. | |||
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 | • Bruce Damer was raised in British Columbia, Canada, but he eventually relocated to Silicon Valley. He now lives at the Ancient Oaks Farm homestead in the Santa Cruz mountains with his love, Ms. Galen Brandt. Besides collecting vintage computers and raising pigs, the duo explore the frontiers of virtual worlds, immersive VR, and virtual community cyberspace. In the early 1980s, Damer wrote some of the first graphical UI software for PCs, leading a team at Elixir Technologies and Xerox to build a rendition of the Xerox Star interface now used worldwide. Damer moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1991 to work on establishing one of the first software laboratories behind the former Iron Curtain. There he also helped initiate a network of high-tech companies and sponsored one of the first post-cold war salons for the arts. Relocating to California in 1994, Damer—along with anthropologist Jim Funaro—established the Contact Consortium, with the goal of catalyzing a new type of cyberspace: virtual worlds with living humans represented inside them as “avatars.” The Consortium hosts conferences and sponsors the Biota.org project, which ponders the meaning of (artificial) life in digital networks. Damer wrote the book Avatars: Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet, and his organization’s work has been featured widely in world media and scientific publications. Damer currently serves as CEO of The Digital Space Commons, an innovative non-shareholder licensee/member “chaordic” style corporation engaged in projects such as modeling future missions to Mars for NASA and working with Adobe on its Atmosphere 3D world platform. See www.damer.com for more information. | |||
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 | • Erik Davis is the San Francisco-based author of TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information, which has been translated into five languages. Davis is a contributing editor for Wired, and has written for magazines including Trip, Bookforum, and The Village Voice. He has also contributed essays to numerous book anthologies, including Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics, Rave Culture and Religion, and Disinformation’s Book of Lies. Some of his work can be accessed at www.techgnosis.com. | |||
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 | • Alex Grey is a visionary artist best known for his depictions of the human body that “x-ray” the multiple layers of reality, revealing the complex integration of body, mind, and spirit. His paintings have been featured on the cover of albums by the Beastie Boys, Nirvana, Tool, and The String Cheese Incident, in Newsweek magazine, on the Discovery Channel, rave flyers and sheets of blotter acid, and have been exhibited throughout the world. His books include Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey, his philosophical text, The Mission of Art, and the recent Transfigurations. Sounds True released The Visionary Artist, an audiotape of Grey’s art, philosophy, and vision practices. See www.alexgrey.com and www.sacredmirrors.org. | |||
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• Allyson Grey is a visionary artist who combines the elements of Chaos, Order, and a Secret Writing into her abstract sacred geometry. She has BA and MA degrees in Fine Arts, and has exhibited solo shows at Stux Gallery and O.K. Harris Gallery in NYC, among others. Commissions of permanent public works include a 24-foor mural at the First Bank of Lowell, Massachusetts, and her paintings are collected by corporations and individuals. Living in Brooklyn, NY, she paints and collaborates with her husband Alex Grey and their daughter, actress Zena Lotus Grey. See www.allysongrey.com. | ||||
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 | • Jon Hanna is a freelance writer, editor, and graphic artist. He holds a BA in Fine Arts, has written for Heads, High Times, The Resonance Project, Morbid Curiosity, Entheogene Blätter, Erowid, and has a regular column titled “Sources” in The Entheogen Review. He is the author of the Psychedelic Resource List (fourth edition), and recent editing projects included the book Ketamine: Dreams and Realities by Dr. Karl Jansen, and a guest co-editing stint with Sylvia Thyssen for three special issues of the MAPS Bulletin—one that focused on the intersection of “Psychedelics and Creativity,” one that dealt with “Sex, Spirit, and Psychedelics,” and the forthcoming “Rites of Passage: Kids and Psychedelics” issue. | |||
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• Manuel Jiménez (tentative) is an 84-year-old artist and curandero living in Arrazola, a small city at the base of Monte Albán in Oaxaca. Jiménez is the renowned wood-carver who created los animales, the brightly-painted wooden animals and mythical beasts exported from Oaxaca. After his art was discovered in 1957, and popularized via export to the USA, his style of carving was appropriated by many others, raising his entire village out of poverty and creating an art form that is appreciated worldwide. Jiménez is a deeply spiritual man, holding a mixture of Catholic and traditional beliefs. Although he is internationally known for his art, it is less widely known that he is also a faith healer. For the Mind States Oaxaca seminar, Jiménez will be speaking to, and answering questions for, small groups from our gathering on a daily basis, from his home and art studio. These field trips will also provide a wonderful opportunity to see the multitude of psychedelic wood carvings sold by countless artists producing similar work in Arrazola. | ||||
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 | • Jonathan Ott is a prolific and highly regarded writer, translator, publisher, reviewer, and pundit on virtually every aspect of entheogen botany, chemistry, pharmacology, bioassay, culture, history, and politics. The term entheogen itself is most closely attributed to him; he was one of the people who helped coin it, and its propagation as a meme is due in large part to its use in his books. Ott has also produced and co-produced numerous conferences and seminars on entheogens over the past 25+ years. Ott was the translator of Albert Hofmann’s 1979 LSD—Mein Sorgenkind (first published in English in 1980 as LSD: My Problem Child), and he produced an English translation of On Aztec Botanical Names by Blas Pablo Reko. Articles and excerpts of his books have been translated into many other languages. His writing has appeared in numerous journals, and he is co-editor (with Giorgio Samorini) of the bilingual publication Eleusis: Journal of Psychoactive Plants & Compounds. | |||
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• Daniel Siebert is a pharmacognosist, ethnobotanist, educator, and author. He has been researching the visionary plant Salvia divinorum for over twenty years and was the first person to work on the human pharmacology of salvinorin A and to clearly identify this compound as the primary psychoactive principal of the plant. He has studied S. divinorum in its native habitat in Oaxaca, Mexico, and has worked with it under the guidance of Mazatec shamans. His work appears in scientific journals and other publications. Siebert is the creator of the Salvia divinorum Research and Information Center web site. This was the first Internet resource to focus exclusively on information about S. divinorum and it continues to be the most comprehensive. He is also the founder and moderator of Sagewise, a closed-membership e-mail discussion forum for S. divinorum researchers and professionals, and its predecessor, Salvia, which was the first on-line S. divinorum discussion forum. Siebert was featured in the 1998 television documentary Sacred Weeds, which aired on channel 4 in the United Kingdom. His comments and opinions on S. divinorum have appeared in USA Today, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and numerous daily newspapers in the United States, as well as in several other countries. Similarly he has discussed the plant on CNN, Fox News, Telemundo International, and many local television stations. He is currently completing work on Divine Sage, his comprehensive book about Salvia divinorum. | ||||
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• Ann Shulgin is a researcher and writer who—for a time, while they were still legal—worked with psychedelics such as MDMA and 2C-B as a lay-therapist. Her unique insight into the beneficial effects that psychedelics can have is invaluable. With her husband Sasha, she has co-authored the books Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved: A Chemical Love Story (PIHKAL) and the long-anticipated sequel, Tryptamines I Have known and Loved: The Continuation (TIHKAL). She is currently working on her third book with Sasha, tentatively titled Book 3. | ||||
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 | • Sasha Shulgin is a pharmacologist and chemist who has synthesized and bioassayed hundreds of psychoactive compounds. He has written the book Controlled Substances: A Chemical & Legal Guide to Federal Drug Laws, and along with his wife Ann, he co-authored the books PIHKAL and TIHKAL. His most recent book (with Wendy E. Perry) is the massive reference tome The Simple Plant Isoquinolines. He also spends his time fielding questions at the “Ask Dr. Shulgin” web site. | |||
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 | • Allan Snyder received the Marconi Prize—"the world's foremost prize in communication and information technology"—in New York City, December 2001. Bulletin/Newsweek magazine describes him as "agile, playful, audacious, inventive, [he] leaps across boundaries, making unexpected connections, juggling a dozen trains of thought at once." Snyder's controversial hypothesis that the extraordinary skills of savants (like Dustin Hoffman's character in Rainman) can be turned on by turning off part of the brain with magnetic pulses is featured in The New York Times, the Times of London, the Discovery Channel documentary Savants, the BBC documentary Fragments of Genius, Barbara Walters 20/20, and Discovery magazine. Alan is the director of the Centre for the Mind, and holds distinguished professorships at two universities. He writes for the popular press and frequently appears on radio and television. Previously, he was a John Guggenheim Fellow at the Yale School of Medicine and a Royal Society Guest Research Fellow at Cambridge University. He has degrees from Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University College, London. Dr Snyder is a fellow of the Royal Society of London and the recipient of its 2001 Clifford Patterson Prize. | |||
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• Martha Toledo was born in San Miguel Chimilapa, Oaxaca, Mexico. Her photography has been exhibited in several solo shows in Mexico and Germany, as well in group shows in Mexico, El Salvador, and Italy. It has also appeared in publications such as Revista Private, Revista de Antropología Social del Ciesas, and Revista Identidades. Toledo was the recipient of the 20012002 FONCA grant and the 2003 FOESCA grant. She has managed a gallery and lecture/demonstration series by artists from Mexico, the United States, Europe, and Asia, in “Jardín,” Juchitan. As well, she founded a library and reading program in an annex to “Jardín.” Currently, Toledo hosts a radio talk show that covers cultural events and regularly invites children to discuss literature. | ||||
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Each ticket is $1,200.00 per person. Price includes admission to all lectures and field trips, accommodations (a single space in a double-occupancy room), access to the swimming pool and all other hotel amenities, and delicious Mexican breakfasts and lunches (vegetarian and vegan available). Dinners are not included, but group reservations will be available at a variety of restaurants throughout the city each night, so that we will be able to sample the world-famous cuisene of Oaxaca City. Airfare and transfer to the hotel (about ten minutes by taxi) are not included. Ticket purchases are non-refundable. Early registration is suggested. Space is limited, and our last conference sold out in advance. Sorry, the seminar is sold out. CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR MAPS RAFFLE WINNERS! To join our e-mail list to receive periodic updates on this seminar, and information about other conferences and events, send an e-mail with the word “JOIN” as the subject to:
Woodcarvings shown above are by Jesus Ramirez. | ||
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