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Breaking Convention (BC) is a biennial international multidisciplinary conference on psychedelic consciousness. (Not to be confused with “Breakin’ Convention”, which is an international festival of hip hop dance theatre at Sadler’s Wells…)

Dealing with “psychedelic consciousness”, this conference has much of interest for any psychonauts of a chaos magickal persuasion; i.e., those who use altered states as one way of exploring trance/magickal awareness, or as a tool for improving the efficacy of reaching gnosis. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of certain plants and other substances to affect awareness.

Nigh on four years ago, I attended the first BC, held at the University of Kent in Canterbury, as I thought I might meet some interesting people and hear some cool talks. I knew only three of the hundreds of people who would be there, and arranged to go with a friend of mine so I wouldn’t feel too alone (and, to share the B&B costs…). Cut to three days later; I had not stopped talking with a vast range of people for the entire time I was there, and I had met some now very dear friends. To take a rest between all the socialising I occasionally escaped into the lecture theatres, and had my mind entertained/ affronted/ expanded by such a range of topics that only an hour spent pouring over the conference program with a magnifying glass could possibly give you a hint of the incredible diversity of subjects and approaches.

I had been unsure of what the atmosphere of a scholarly conference on psychedelic research would be like, but any concerns were set to rest immediately upon entering the main lecture theatre for the inaugural address, to find every person greeted with a smile and a large colourful flower; the hundreds of smiling faces and the fun of deciding what to do with these monsters instantly put us all at our ease (I put mine in my hair). During the conference we heard from activists, artists, practitioners, scientific researchers, archaeologists, magicians, freaks, writers, shamanic types, festival goers, historians, musicians, philosophers… of course many of these categories were far from mutually exclusive.

Flower power, changing minds since the year dot

BC had me in its grip, and I wanted more; at the second one, at Greenwich University in London in 2013, I had the cheek to present a talk myself (“Psychedelics as a Tool for Directing Cognition to Enhance Embodied Awareness of the Kinship of All Life”). The atmosphere was once again buzzing with intellect, amazing tales, meetings with long lost friends I had not realised I knew, sunshine, beautiful words, some, er, Art, and several forays out into the high streets of next-door Greenwich for quality food and coffee. The excitement peaked on the Sunday evening with a last-minute, several hour long performance in the entertainment space by Hawkwind members (Nik Turner’s All Stars, that is), which blew me away. And I’m not even a Hawkwind fan…

The third BC takes place at Greenwich again, in the glorious surroundings of the Old Royal Naval College, in July 2015.

The conference proceedings which are published after each BC, are a veritable cornucopia of important writings about psychedelics, and the potential uses they have in many arenas of human existence. From curative medicines (as we in the westernish cultures would stereotypically imagine a medicine) to tools for appreciating links when analysing vast datasets (as more than one scientist/academic/professional could tell you), via a wide ranging landscape of clinical tests, stories from the jungle, personal accounts of moving events, chemical intricacies of our marvellous organisms, cultural and social uses we have and are discovering anew, all feature.

And whilst all present may not have agreed on many things, they all held high regard and mutual respect for this multi-faceted tangled web of an Indra’s net within which we found ourselves, marvelling at the thousands of universes we share.

I have learned at BC11 and BC13 of psilocybin research, both the subjective and objective accounts of what happens when you put volunteers in an fMRI machine. I listened enthralled to tales of how psychedelic insights had advanced the contributions of intrepid psychonauts in both their theoretical and practical fields of study, over many decades. I was told of how gut fauna influence our moods, by chemically influencing our neurochemistry. I tried hard to understand some talks which veered off into a vague meandering through what I could not quite count as science, and I got some value out of the effort that took me. I loved one Sunday morning, hours spent hearing of Ayahuasca from so many angles, from an art therapist, a shaman, enthusiasts, patients. I conversed with dozens of fellow attendees, sprawled outside on the lawns, queued on the stairs to get in, squashed together in the sauna like auditoriums (there was a heatwave, the buildings are all listed so have no AC; plans to ensure more open windows are afoot this time round, if we are blessed with similar weather!).

I perused the stalls of artworks, and books, and helpful leaflets. All in all the scholarly presentations are the core of this event, but without the fleshing out of them with the surrounding culture of a, well actually very much NOT a festival, definitely not; maybe, what one would wish for in an idealised version of a festival, where all are thoughtful, active, kind, and a sense of community grows each time, as we recognise faces and memes from years past.

It has to be said that to my mind the most valuable parts of these presentations often concerned the sensible attention paid to the set and setting of therapeutic usage of psychedelics, whether in a laboratory or shamanic context; unsurprisingly the bare medicine has very different effects compared to the medicine with added inputs, and all the speakers seemed clear about the importance for successful healing to occur of creating narrative around the central experience, as well as the innate physiological efficacy of some substances. Taking mushrooms alone, will not necessarily stop your PTSD overnight… Attending a conference like this does of course showcase the success stories (a much needed balance to the incessant negativity of last century’s media coverage), but it should be considered that like any other drugs, psychedelic substances are neither good not bad in and of themselves; rather it is how we use them, and other factors, which contribute to the outcome of any trip. Even the ubiquitous alcohol can damage lives if misused by susceptible individuals. So, the more we can research, and share our research across disciplinary boundaries, the better for all.

Several panels/ symposia on different topics are scheduled, watch the BC website for more details of these as the date approaches. BC has always sold out in advance, so if you think you need to go, buy your tickets as soon as you can. Tickets are not yet available… keep your eyes open for more breaking news!

I love BC, as you can tell, so I feel it only fair now to say that others may have found its somewhat ad hoc approach towards self-organising structures as the best model a tad unprofessional. It was at times hard to find rooms, the programme was difficult to make sense of, and the talks were not all scintillating (including mine!). To focus on these minor imperfections however would be to miss the point of the event, in all its lively joy at meeting with others who do the same work all over the world.

For chaos magicians, who are by and large people who have a great interest in the theories and practices of how and what consciousness/awareness does in creating our worlds, research into psychedelic consciousness surely forms a pool of knowledge we would be dumb to ignore. Investigating the perturbations of neurochemistry provides one window into the mechanisms of thought, identity, mood regulation, and so much more. Going to BC provides a rich mine of information at the very least, and for many, a greatly enjoyable journey.

BC15 confirmed speakers include:

David Nutt
David Nichols
Robin Carhart-Harris
Rick Doblin
Amanda Feilding
Roland Griffiths
Daniel Pinchbeck
James Fadiman (Skype)
Stan Grof (Skype)

[Source: personal communication with BC committee.]

There will be in excess of 130 speakers over the three days of the conference. While some speakers are invited, a second tier of presenters are invited to submit their abstract asap, deadline 28^th March.

“Abstracts must be pertinent to the overall theme of the conference: the mechanisms, uses and implications of altered states of consciousness, particularly those occasioned by psychedelic compounds and practices.”

Breaking Convention has achieved registered charity status, as of earlier this year. Congratulations to all those behind the scenes, who continue to work so hard between the biennial eruptions of the visible fruiting body!

As a charity, to keep costs low and increase the strong sense of camaraderie, the conference requires a few dozen highly motivated volunteers to help organise and inform the delegates. If you are interested in being part of this dynamic crew please apply online now.

To apply for either of these opportunities, see the relevant section on this webpage:

http://2015.breakingconvention.co.uk/participate/

You will also find there forms for those wishing to submit: visual art, music, film, workshops, performance or installation art. The cultural aspects of psychedelic consciousness both inform and complement the more purely research aspects.

In a time when near daily media reports emerge of favourable ways to apply psychedelic consciousness, and the issue of drug legislation commands considerable attention, BC15 looks set to include some lively discussions, and ground breaking presentations by the world’s top researchers, practitioners, and thinkers. Be there, or…

(NB Talks should all/mostly be filmed, and will be put online subsequent to the event.)

For the Gnostics, our relationship with our body has not always been an easy one. The problems of pain and impermanence that played such a central role in the development of Gnostic dualism, most likely originated in their experience of the body within the natural world. In previous posts we spent time thinking about how theodicy, or the problem of evil, contributed to the evolution of Gnostic cosmologies. If disease and death demonstrated the imperfection of the demiurge’s realm, then it would seem likely that the strategies of either asceticism or antinomian excess were evidence of a potentially hostile attitude towards the body.

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?

While we may concede that many Gnostics viewed the divine pneumatic spark as being trapped within the material realm, as contemporary magical practitioners exploring what we might learn from them, I believe that it is wise to pay attention to what they did as much as what they may have believed. Often the ‘lived experience’ of what people actually did can help us gain insights into the complex relationship that they had with apparently straightforward ideas.

Dance like the Pleroma’s watching

In the Gnostic scripture “The Acts of John” we have a really interesting description of ritual dance and liturgy that is alleged to have taken place during the last supper:

So he commanded us to make a circle, holding one another’s hands, and he himself stood in the middle…..

I will pipe, dance all of you! Amen….

An eightfold power is singing with us. Amen

The whole universe takes part in the dancing. Amen

He who does not dance, does not know what is being done. Amen.

The Acts of John Section 94-95.

Some scholars believe that this is most likely a ritual text that was part of the style of worship employed by the Johannite community. In seeking to fathom the myth of incarnation, it is hardly surprising that we are met with the possibility of Jesus and the apostles using their bodies to move, both in celebration, and to dissipate the mounting tension of what was to come.

It may seem like a somewhat obvious point to make, but generally as human beings the realisations and ecstasies of the mind and heart bubble over into these bodies we inhabit. Personally I would question the true depth of any revelation that did not impact upon all dimensions of our being.

Even if we chose to limit our attention to phenomena within the Christian tradition, we can consider traditions such as those of the Shakers and the Pentecostals, and the role that movement and dance had as people sought to express a form of gnostic experience that moves through and beyond intellectual insight alone.

As someone exploring the Gnostic material through the less orthodox route of a Chaos Magically inspired form of Witchcraft, I find that dance and improvised movement have been highly beneficial in helping me process what might be going on:

“One of my personal routes to accessing such gnosis has been through the use of dance and shaking states. In seeking to loosen the tensions and defenses that often get located in what Wilhelm Reich described as “body armour”; I often have a sense of a deeper instinctive knowing emerging in and through the body. When I move in response to the music my self-consciousness slowly melts away. This type of “shape-shifting” may well relate to the way in which the body allows us to process aspects of the self that the conscious mind struggles to make sense of. Interesting research is beginning to explore this territory, and it may be the “darker” more instinctive drivers of the early or “reptilian” brain get processed more effectively when we actively engage the body. As I dance I often feel that in my messy embodiment, I am making sense of my early and deepest drives (for more on this see “The Compassionate Mind” by Paul Gilbert and Peter Levine’s work on trauma).” SD, What We Find Ourselves Doing…

For those interested in exploring this territory further I would recommend Bradford Keeney’s book “Shaking Medicine”. Also worth checking out is Alkistis Dimech’s site which provides a brilliant example of a contemporary magician making use of dance and movement.

Ritual Space

The very act of ritual speaks to and through our bodies via symbol and movement, set within space and time. By making use of colour, light and sound we engage the senses, and vibrate words through our flesh. Even the most apparently dualistic Gnostics made use of baptisms and the Eucharist as a way to bring God into the body. Rarely do we rely on cognition alone, rather we anchor experience through the sensual. Perhaps part of the answer lies in bringing a greater degree of awareness to what we experience in the body?

The type of alchemical process that I’m seeking to describe at a microcosmic level is similar in many ways to the dynamic interaction that occurs between the Pleroma, Sophia and the demiurge within Gnostic mythology. However much the Gnostic myths might highlight the dilemmas experienced by inhabiting human form, we must also remain mindful to the reality of a sensual ritual praxis that provided a more creative and lateral approach to exploring how the mysteries of the divine might be experienced right here and right now. Often the rich theatre of a ritual and the items on an altar reveal as much about a tradition’s theology as does a ‘scriptural’ text.

Hopefully such reflections will link in nicely with the third part of this practice series which will look at working with the heart within a Gnostic context.