Calea Zacatechichi

[Starship, take me]

Zacatechichi Logfile #1
Fragment 1 of n

I stepped out of my house one late night.  Cool summer air and quicksiver starlight glinting off Earth's outgrowths.  I knew from plenty of experience not to waste time and get down to business.

I shook off gravity and pushed off with my feet, sending me leisurely drifting off the planet's surface.  This was no time for idle sock-fuckery, so I accelerated to what must have been several miles per second to get clear of Earth.  I knew all the numbers on the size of the cosmos, but how could a person prepare their mind for flying through the great void a la Clark Kent?

This time was ground-defying.  Flight through telekinetic propulsion was no problem for me, but I had never been clear of the Earth's gravity well before.  I had always intended to get away from the psycho-chimps for some galactic sight seeing, but things had never fallen into place.  Earth still loomed in front of me, awesome in the extreme.  I flew out thousands of miles to get some perspective on my brand-new stomping grounds.  I caught sight of the Moon and buzzed over to get a better look.  Then I got a brilliant idea and called up the Aeon to locate Mare Tranquilis. 

I touched down near the site where some soldiers from Terra had landed before I was even born.  Now it was my turn.  I let the moon's gravity take hold and started walking around.  Chuckling as I saw my footprints being laid down next to some large bootprints, I was surprised to actually hear myself laugh out here.  Sound must be vibrating through my tissue.  I put a few handprints in the dust and drew smiley faces before walking over to the ancient American rag.  I examined the 50 Pentagrams, contemplating the Empire.  I seized the thing and pulled, summoning up some extra reserves of strength.  It ripped free and I held it in front of my ear-to-ear grin for awhile before sending it tumbling through the vacuum.  I knew I couldn't dawdle, so I called up the Aeon again.  It delivered an inscribed apple of gold several feet in diameter next to me and I gazed at my awe-struck mug.   I wanted to leave another artifact before I left.  I negated gravity and jetted over to the American Space-ATV and dropped a Bugatti Veyron next to it before setting off towards the sun.

I knew faster-than-light speed would be necessary so I invoked Eris and set off at over a million miles per second, transmitting my mantra all the time.  Everything seemed to be holding up, since I noticed no warping of space or time that would FUBAR my fun.  I saw a solar flare as I got closer and dived through it as light blinded and surrounded me.  I got past that quickly before turning out against the galactic plane to get a star's eye view of the Milky Way.  I upped my speed even more and waited as I traversed the inky dark.

After awhile, I was far out enough to see the stars stretched out beneath me.  Snow and shattered Geodes.  The Aeon let me know where to find some intelligent life, and I took off for a place over 65,000 light years away.

I got there, eventually.  I barelled straight through the atmosphere towards the coastal area of an alien continent.  A corona of air turned to fire and signalled my arrival.  I had to augment my vision to pick out a piece of prime planetary real estate.  I picked up some features that didn't look natural and changed velocity accordingly.  By the time I hit the roof of the bulding, I had slowed down enough to only crash through three stories.  I got up, dusted off and walked down the hall.  I was nonplussed since the place looked like a derelict apartment building of the type found back home.

The doors in this building were all boarded up or lost to time.  I made my way out of the building and into the world at large.  The roads were novel -- curvilinear and plain old linear streched of varied material going up, down, left, right, in, out.  Some routes rose up to the sky, some helixed into areas unknown. 

Problem was, I didn't see any signs of life at all.  The world was a waste/wonderland.  I started walking down a straight, fairly wide stretch of road.  Old habits die hard, I guess.  After walking for awhile, I stopped and looked around again.  I went over to some of the more interesting looking patterns when the eruptions began and I met the Blue.

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Alright, this is what I've got so far.  Writer's block struck for awhile and I left out a bunch of stuff, especially at the end.  I'll try to expand this one and write up some more experiences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calea_zacatechichi
http://www.erowid.org/plants/calea_zacatechichi/calea_zacatechichi.shtml
http://www.iamshaman.com/eshop/10Expand.asp?ProductUID=1468&ProductCode=DHL-1OZ
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EDIT:
I'm cross posting this story I wrote awhile ago, now that PD is back.  This is basically the best recollection I have of an incredible dream I had while using Zacatechichi.  I recently listened to a podcast discussing chaos theory and I've been thinking about two points that were mentioned:

1.  Dreams are incredibly non-deterministic and not governed by mathematics.  I've manipulated gravity at will in dreams, as the above story shows.

2.  The idea that people are reshaping the world, or their experience of it, through language.  An example would be programming languages or Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I've managed to lucid dream exactly 3 times in my life. Once, the first time, by accident and twice whilst trying. If this stuff helps with dream recall I need some. I can only find vegtable form for sale on the net. Any idea where I could look for seeds?

Awesome story too. Where you going to go with it? Have you had any interesting conversations in there?

[Triple Zero]

me too, two or three times .. one time i realized i was dreaming, the people around me disagreed, so i flew away.

another time i played with Tom Jenkinson's (squarepusher) bass guitar, which was extremely cool since i can't play any instrument IRL, but in my dream i was owning the fuck out of it

the other time (first time) i half-woke, but sunk through my bed, so i realized i was dreaming, decided to fly (seems like the most logical thing to try -- if you can fly, you're probably dreaming) knocked over a glass of orange juice standing next to my bed (ah, details), swooped right through my wall and ceiling (no clipping mode FTW) flew a bit more, noticed a robed woman standing way down below on the fields, then scenes switched and i lost lucidity.

all three times i succeeded i had read some texts about lucid dreaming before going to sleep, and possibly did some relaxation exercises described therein, but i think what helped was mostly conditioning/imprenting of some sort.

[Starship, take me]

Any idea where I could look for seeds?

Yeah, Google turned up a few places.
http://grow-shop.co.uk/wg_2090.html
http://www.dopesuche.de/headshop.php?head_grow_seed_smartshop=1_14_eng
It looks like it's pretty hard to cultivate from seed, however.

Growing Calea from seeds is a difficult task, the most common way to grow it is propagation from cuttings. The Calea plant likes full sun, good drained soils and a lot of irrigation. A good soil mix for calea cultivation is: 1/3 Of a rich substrate, 1/3 vermiculite and 1/3 of humus.

Propagation from seeds can be tried with the following method: Sow the seeds in a pot with the soil mix indicated as above. Don´t cover the seeds, moisten the seeds with water and cover with a plastic bag. This little greenhouse needs from 4 to 6 hours of light to germinate. If the seeds dry out during this period, the plants will not germinate.

Awesome story too. Where you going to go with it? Have you had any interesting conversations in there?

I did meet one being after crash landing on the planet.  Unfortunately, I can't recall much of what happened in the latter part of the dream.  I guess I could embellish it by adding some fiction into the account.

another time i played with Tom Jenkinson's (squarepusher) bass guitar, which was extremely cool since i can't play any instrument IRL, but in my dream i was owning the fuck out of it

That sounds like a real thrill.  Maybe I could see if I can direct one of my dreams into something like that in the future.

I think I might have a knack for lucid dreaming, because I can recognize being in a nightmare.  Since a very early age I would blink my eyes rapidly (in the dreamworld), then my eyes in the real world would snap open.

[P3nT4gR4m]

First time I did it I'd never heard of it. Spent the next couple of days trying to explain it to people but it didn't make sense. I was running with a coupe of my mates, through the english corridor at school when I suddenly realised I wasn't at school anymore. I was about 18 by this point. I pretty quickly sussed out I was dreaming and decided to test it by opening a cupboard door, whilst anticipating a field of golden wheat behind it. Don't ask me why I thought of that and not cameron diaz's home-dungeon, I kinda thought the same thing when I woke up but sure enough there was a field behind the door and the last thing I remember is running into it, pissing myself laughing.

Second time was years later when I'd found out about it and read some stuff. I was in some bizarre kind of race where me and a bunch of folks were in some kinda bizarre race in gated pallet trucks, through a huge redwood forest. "Why the fuck are there redwoods, I never been out of scotland?" I thought to myself, then I sussed it out. I climbed a tree, stepped onto a wooden platform, high in the canopy, and picked up the les paul that was leaning on the stand next to the amp. I heard the devils rubbery wings flapping as he descended to land behind me, while I was kneeling down, plugging the jack into the guitar. Time to cut heads, like in the movie Crossroads, but with better special effects.

Third time I was in some kind of post apocalyptic slum of burning wreckages that had once been houses. Kinda reminded me of london during the blitz. I'd been in this same scenario for what seemed like ages, constantly gaining lucidity, only to lose it moments later when something caught my attention. I remember clearly, whilst not lucid, complaining to some dude I'd met in one of the squats, that I was really into the idea of lucid dreaming but couldn't do it reliably. (this was my subconscious rubbing my nose in it) He turned and looked at me like he was totally pissed of and roared "That's because you cant control it yet!" at me. That was funny as hell when I woke up.

[Triple Zero]

one technique i read about for retaining lucidity is "spinning", basically twirling/spinning around really fast in your dream, gets you back to focussing on yourself. all the scenery is usually distracting pulling you back in / out of control.

another thing, but maybe that's just for me, is focussing on tactile sensations, because somehow those seem to be under-represented in my dreams, until i pay attention to them, then they're real as anything, for example the wind in your face while flying.

then again, i only did it three times, so my experience might not be very significant.

it's an interesting topic, i should try it more, get some more use out of those sleeping hours.

on a related note, in case you guys haven't seen the movie "waking life" yet, you really should.

[Bhode_Sativa]

I've done it a couple of times.  It's fun.  A technique I've used is to mark a dot on your hand and every time you see it you think "I'm awake" and then when you dream and catch sight of your hand, the dot is missing and you realize you're dreaming.  Most of the time when I lucid dream though it's more of a half-way thing, where I'm not really sure I'm dreaming, but I am sure I don't like the way the dream is turning out, so I rewind it to the point I want to change, then fix it the way I want.  Fun stuff.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I've done it a couple of times.  It's fun.  A technique I've used is to mark a dot on your hand and every time you see it you think "I'm awake" and then when you dream and catch sight of your hand, the dot is missing and you realize you're dreaming.  Most of the time when I lucid dream though it's more of a half-way thing, where I'm not really sure I'm dreaming, but I am sure I don't like the way the dream is turning out, so I rewind it to the point I want to change, then fix it the way I want.  Fun stuff.

But how does it save the dolphins?

Focus, man!  Focus!

[Bhode_Sativa]

My opinion on one particular aspect of life does not encompass the whole of my existence. 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

My opinion on one particular aspect of life does not encompass the whole of my existence. 

Then you hate dolphins.

[Starship, take me]

one technique i read about for retaining lucidity is "spinning", basically twirling/spinning around really fast in your dream, gets you back to focussing on yourself. all the scenery is usually distracting pulling you back in / out of control.

I used this technique after smoking Zacatechichi one night.  I was basically in a hypnogogic state and started spinning around counter-clockwise.  This "spinning" launched me into a non-dimensional space where I was flying around with fractal-light shows going off all around me.

another thing, but maybe that's just for me, is focussing on tactile sensations, because somehow those seem to be under-represented in my dreams, until i pay attention to them, then they're real as anything, for example the wind in your face while flying.

I find this to be the case in my dreams, too.  I've occasionaly had dreams with all tactile sense and no visual sense, though.

on a related note, in case you guys haven't seen the movie "waking life" yet, you really should.

I have that movie on DVD and once watched it with a head full of 6 hits of acid.

[Triple Zero]

ok so obviously cause i've been thinking a bit about this stuff lately, yesterday i dreamed about having lucid dreams 
so i dreamed that i could control my dream-in-my-dream (which was something about me and my gf as tombraider, "this is just a dream so you can handle these badguys since you are lara croft, but perhaps it would work better if you'd wear these shades, just in case") .. but i wasn't really in control cause i was only dreaming that i was.

the weirdest shit my head comes up with, really..

[Triple Zero]

bump, minus two