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These were
dark days
in 1943,
I imagine
the smoke
of the ovens
of Auschwitz
psychically
wafting over
Switzerland. |
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St. Albert and the LSD Revelation Revolution
Alex Grey
On January 11th, 2006, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD,
Dr. Albert Hofmann, turned 100 years old. The birthday celebration
was an elegant gathering of family, friends and colleagues
held in Basel, Switzerland at the Museum of Cultures. My wife Allyson
and I were invited because of our association with psychedelic culture and
participation in a Symposium later that week. Distinguished guests at the
birthday gathering spoke in German, but even monolinguistic Americans
could understand the reverence and enthusiasm shown in speeches praising
Dr. Hofmann as a scientist and a sage. A reception followed where
invited guests mingled and toasted. Allyson and I greeted many old friends
and made some new ones. I was intrigued to learn that none of the members
of Dr. Hofmann’s large family or any of his relatives, except for his
wife, had ever tried LSD. The good doctor has always steered away from
advocacy, yet has come to feel that some kind of divine intervention
or destiny did play a role in his discovery.
I was especially glad to see Stanislav
Grof, M.D., and H.R. Giger because they
could not be in attendance at the Symposium.
Stan Grof is the leading psychiatric
researcher, having led over 4,000 LSD
psychotherapeutic sessions, and premier
cartographer of the spectrum of consciousness
that LSD gives a person access to.
Grof has commented that LSD is a tool for
exploring the mind in the same way that
the telescope gives one access to the
celestial realms and the microscope gives
one access to the world of the cellular,
molecular and atomic. He has also included
in all his research some amazing
drawings and paintings by LSD patients
and fine artists that help describe the
various altered states of awareness.
Grof has used Giger’s work in many of
his books, such as Realms of the Human
Unconscious and Beyond the Brain. When
I asked the obvious question to Giger as to
whether LSD had made a difference in his
own work, he would only say, “Oh no, no,
it is against the law, it is forbidden!”
I guess you’ve got to respect a man’s
privacy. Though I do admire artists like
R. Crumb and Keith Haring who admitted
they used LSD and that it was critical in the development of their own style. That
is the way Allyson and I feel regarding our
own work. The next day we and some
good friends visited the Giger Museum,
which is an astonishing, in-depth immersion
into the artist’s unique visionary
shadow realm. You have to be a bit
determined to find Giger’s castle in the
small and beautifully Swiss alpine town of
Gruyere. We enjoyed seeing the biggest
collection of his work ever on display. The
dark galleries felt filled with the demons
of modern life, a festering biomechanical
psychosexual orgy of predators and
victims. On an upper floor Giger exhibits
some of his collaborative works with
several artists and then has several
galleries filled with his own art collection,
which includes Joe Coleman’s amazing
Charles Manson portrait and a few
beautiful originals by Ernst Fuchs. No one
leaves without getting a drink at the Giger
Bar. Gaudi meets Gunter Von Hagen.
To honor Dr. Hofmann’s centennial, a
three-day LSD symposium was held
January 14, 15, 16 in Basel, Switzerland.
Leading scientific, psychiatric, pharmaceutical,
legal, artistic, mystical voices spoke
on the various physiological, personal, social and spiritual impacts of LSD. Dr. Albert Hofmann
spoke the first and last evening and was showered with
praise and applause by over two thousand attendees (we
also sang, “Happy Birthday to you”). Hofmann was
swarmed with fans wherever he went, and one of the
Symposium announcers said, Dr. Hofmann apologizes that
he will not be able to sign everyone’s book, because he
explained, “I’m no longer 90.”
Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound in 1938,
while researching
ergot derivatives as a
chemist for Sandoz
Pharmaceuticals in
Basel. The substance
was tested on lab
animals with no
interesting results, so
like hundreds of
similar test compounds,
investigation
of this drug was
abandoned.
Yet, in 1943, at
the horrific height of
WWII and shortly
after Fermi made his
discovery that led to
the atomic bomb,
Hofmann had a “peculiar presentiment”
to re-synthesize
LSD. These were
dark days in 1943, I
imagine the smoke of
the ovens of
Auschwitz psychically
wafting over
Switzerland.
Hofmann said that
never before or since
had he any similar
“presentiment.” His
remix of LSD-25 in
April of 1943 was
when he discovered
the psychological
vortex of acid. He experienced overwhelming fear of dying
and feelings of having left his body and later, heavenly
kaleidoscopic visions. The first LSD trip, April 19, 1943, is
also widely known as “Bicycle Day” because of Hofmann’s
wild bike ride from his lab to his home through the streets
of Basel, full of perceptual distortions, not knowing
whether he would ever return from his madness. The last
element I painted on the portrait was a little bike riding
Hofmann, and in honor of the good doctor, I was on LSD
as I painted it.
In my portrait of Dr. Hofmann, the eye of transcendental
spirit in the upper left hand corner of the painting
releases spiralic streams of primordial rainbow spheres of
potential, one of which becomes a compassionate alchemical
angel, whose tears drip down to anoint or “create” the
LSD molecule that the doctor holds in his hands, and a
demon, here identified with Nazi power, tugs or pushes at
it. LSD opens a visionary gateway to the heart, as shown
by the spiral of fractally infinitizing eyes resembling the
stripey eye-spheres
of the molecule,
swirling into the
center of the chest.
On St. Albert’s
shoulderblade is a
portrait of
Paracelsus, the
Alchemist of Basel,
500 years ago, who
is credited with
founding modern
Chemistry, yet his
alchemical goal was
to discover the
Philosopher’s Stone.
Alchemy was the art
and science of the
transmutation of the
elements, like
turning lead into
gold and the identifi-
cation of the soul of
the alchemist with
the chemical transformations
as a
metaphor of their
journey to enlightenment.
Modern
Chemistry took the
psyche and mystery
out of the material
weighed and
measured world,
reducing the world
to a heap of atoms.
LSD brought psyche
back front and center to the chemical material world, that
is partly why I believe that LSD is the Philosopher’s Stone,
the discovery of which, also in the town of Basel, is the
result of an alchemical process put in motion by the great
Paracelsus.
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I tried
to put in
a few lesser known
psychedelic stories,
like the
Pittsburgh Pirate,
Dock Ellis,
who pitched a
“no-hitter” on acid
and said there were
comet trails
on every ball. |
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I put a lot of LSD personalities and symbolism in
the aura of Dr. Hofmann. Some of these people were Dr.
Hofmann’s friends, like Aldous Huxley, Gordon Wasson,
Maria Sabina, and Richard Evans Schultes, each of whom
had a special connection to psychedelics. Huxley wrote fearlessly about the psychedelic experience
in The Doors of Perception and Heaven
and Hell, which also talks about visionary
states and works of art. His dying wish
was to be injected with 100 mcg. of LSD
and this was noted by his wife Laura to
assist his transition. Gordon Wasson
brought the magic psilocybin mushrooms
to the world by attending the Mexican
curandera, Maria Sabina’s sacred mushroom
healing ceremony, then writing
about it in Life magazine. Hofmann later
analyzed the mushroom and distilled the
previously unclassified psychedelic,
psilocybin.
I put the classic folks in like Timothy
Leary, Ram Das, Ralph Metzner, Grof, Ott
and McKenna. I tried to put in a few lesser
known psychedelic stories, like the
Pittsburgh Pirate, Dock Ellis, who pitched
a “no-hitter” on acid and said there were
comet trails on every ball. An article
originally appeared in The Daily Mail
(London) on Sunday, August 8, 2004,
with the headline, “Crick was high on LSD
when he discovered the secret of life!”,
explained how Francis Crick used it for
creative thinking, in this way unraveling
the structure of DNA, the discovery that
won him the Nobel Prize. Directly under
Crick is Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel
Prize for Chemistry in 1993 for his
invention of PCR, a method for detecting
even the smallest amount of DNA in
ancient materials. “Would I have invented
PCR if I hadn’t taken LSD? I seriously
doubt it,” he says. “I could sit on a DNA
molecule and watch the polymers go by. I
learnt that partly on psychedelic drugs.”
One of the best summaries of the
mystical impact of acid was George
Harrison’s Rolling Stone interview from
1987. In it he says, “For me, 1966 was the
time when the whole world opened up
and had a greater meaning. But that was a
direct result of LSD. It was like opening
the door, really, and before, you didn’t
even know there was a door there. I had
such an overwhelming feeling of wellbeing,
that there was a God, and I could
see him in every blade of grass. It was like
gaining hundreds of years of experience
within twelve hours. It changed me, and
there was no way back to what I was
before.”
The LSD Symposium could be a
turning point in the story of this amazing
molecule, as the subtitle of the conference,
“From Problem Child to Wonder Drug”
suggests. Thousands of people from all
over the world came together to discuss
the proven possibilities of LSD in psychotherapy,
spirituality, the arts, for creative
problem-solving in all fields, and how LSD
was misused and abused by the CIA, and
also by many people seeking a recreational
high who catalyzed their own latent
psychoses.
Yet, as has been proven in the Good
Friday Experiment and in follow-up
studies, psychedelics can evoke a mystical
experience and bring a person closer to
God. Even if only a glimpse of the infinite,
a person never forgets that encounter. The
hope is that such a vision of unity can help
bring people to care more for themselves,
each other, and our world. I believe that
taken in the proper set and setting, LSD
can be the right medicine for humanity’s
ailing and alienated soul. God help that it
find a more fair legal and spiritual status
around the world in the 21st century. One
of the most intensely beautiful moments
from the trip to Basel came when Dr.
Hofmann generously signed the back of
my portrait of him, adding also the date of
his birthday and the LSD formula. He
wagged his finger at me and in Germanicsounding
English said, “You’ve got the
eye!” He agreed to sign an edition of 50
prints to help fund scientific psychedelic
research through MAPS, and to assist our
cultural center in New York City, the
Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (www.cosm.org).
Forty-nine of the portraits have been sold,
and print 1/50 will be auctioned online in
October 2006. St. Albert and the LSD
Revelation Revolution will be on display
in the Chapel. Please come visit.
This article previously appeared in
Juxtapoz Art and Culture Magazine,
www.juxtapoz.com/
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