Burning Mantis:
The Secret Connection Between Burning Man & Praying Mantises
by Luminous on Apr.21, 2009, under Burning Man, Psychedelics
If you’ve experimented with tryptamine indole psychedelics enough, then it’s happened to you: “The little dose that could.” The little dose that could catapult you into hyperspace; could drop you down the rabbit hole into wonderland; could convince you that you’ve already died and that the Earth is a gothic-themed hell realm. It happens.
On one such occasion, I swallowed maybe 1.5 grams of powdered, encapsulated psilocybe mushrooms. A modest dose to be sure. And yet the mushrooms have an entelechy of their own that defies weights and measures. I had experimented previously with much stronger doses of this particular batch. Yet this time, I was transported to a nightmarish realm and “shown” horrible visions.
Most of my trips are very spiritual. I have lots of Buddha themed trips and Native American flavored trips, but this was markedly extra-terrestrial.
I was shown a world of giant insects. I saw as they did, with multiple eyes and with the ability to visually perceive electromagnetic frequencies extending into the ultra-violet.
These insects looked like praying mantises, but also somewhat like grasshoppers (locusts) or crickets. There was a hierarchy and some insects were slaves. The mantis creatures that were in charge were infinitely more evolved than humans. They could read my mind and could control my body and my emotions with sound waves. They could, with their voice boxes, instantaneously cause limb paralysis, anxiety, sexual arousal, feelings of being in the presence of the divine, or total existential terror simply by uttering the correct vibration, as though my whole bodymind were nothing more than a kazoo in the hands of master flautists.
I was also psychically “taught” several things.
1.) I was taught that our world leaders are controlled by these extraterrestrial or interdimensional insects.
2.) I was taught that our terrestrial, garden variety insects play a more pivotal role in the web of life on this planet than we do—by far.
3.) I was taught that humans shoud eat insects rather than mammals, birds, and reptiles to fulfill our protein needs as much as possible.
4.) I learned that sound can be used as a weapon.
5.) I learned that much of modern electronic music is extraterrestrial in origin.
6.) And I learned that Burning Man is slowly evolving into a festival in which the mantis creatures are worshiped!
When I came down from my trip, I did some research and found some interesting things. I found that our government has been using “USWs” or Ultrasonic Weapons for about a decade now. The government can cause panic attacks, paralysis, and even death (at close enough range) with USWs.
I also learned that insects are a totally viable, more humane, and less gruesome souce of protein.
And while I didn’t find anything like conclusive evidence for the existence of large, super-intelligent mantis creatures, I was SHOCKED by the frequency with which psychonauts report encounters with such creatures—usually on mushrooms or DMT.
And I also learned a number of interesting things about mantises at Burning Man.
For one, mantises are a perennially prevalent art theme on the playa. I had only been once and was not aware of this.
Secondly, I was astounded to learn that mantises are one of only several living organisms (that are large enough to be visible to the naked eye) that are ever found on the playa. Apparently, the mantises are blown to the playa from a frog pond several miles away. I hadn’t known this prior to my “vision” either.
Lastly, I was especially disturbed to see this poster advertising the 2007 San Francisco Decompression. Look how mantis-like “The Man” is! Check out its eyes and “wings!” And what are we to make of this mantis symbolically towering over a scorched Earth? Does Larry Harvey worship interdimensional mantises? Has he duped 40,000 Bay Area hippies into inadvertently worshiping extraterrestrial locusts? Are these beings to be our overlords?
It’s hard to say for certain.
What is certain is that I will be on the playa every year until I give up the ghost …or the mother ship comes. Either way, I have an ominous feeling that I’ll encounter the mantises again.
40 Comments for this entry
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"Life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." ~Virginia Woolf
April 21st, 2009 on 11:36 am
have you seen this video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PORxJCF-Mg
April 21st, 2009 on 11:48 am
Yes. I have. =) nice link.
April 21st, 2009 on 6:45 pm
I was looking up the etymology of Mantis and found:
from Gk. mantis, lit. one who divines, a seer, prophet, from mainesthai “be inspired,” related to menos “passion, spirit” (see Mania)
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mantis
April 22nd, 2009 on 11:37 am
That’s great. Weird that we named these insects “praying prophets.”
April 22nd, 2009 on 4:34 pm
April 22nd, 2009 on 5:38 pm
That’s awesome. Most numinous. Escher is the man!
April 23rd, 2009 on 8:59 am
Hello Sean,
It’s Talia. I remember those insects very well. In fact I have amazing memories of spending this night with you, Alexis, and Blake. We must have walked for miles and miles..(”looking for DrumnBass”) HA! I wasn’t looking for anything that night… I was completely content hanging out with the “town drunk”, the mayor, away from the mothership.
T
April 23rd, 2009 on 5:11 pm
(To clear up some confusion, the above Talia is from Calistoga and is not the Talia from Campbell who I dated for several years. Neither is the Blake she mentions my good friend Blake from Castaic)
That was a great night, Talia! The whole playa floor turned into the skin of a giant snake or turtle or something. And the air was thick like soup. And you could tell that the earth, the stars, the moon, the blackness, the whole damn thing–everything that is–is ALIVE. Thanks again for the mushrooms, etc. The ones I had were weak. But yours weren’t! ~The Town Drunk
April 26th, 2009 on 5:06 pm
This dude seems totally nuts, but I thought it was relevant to your post. This guy claims that
“The energies unleashed by the pagan festival [burning man] are becoming uncontrollable. There is a theory that all of this is leading to a mega-Burning Man Ritual in September of 2012 to welcome, human sacrifice-style, the return of Kukulkan, the mayan feathered serpent deity in 12-21-2012.”
Seemed similar to what you were saying, even though I got the idea that you were being at least partly tongue in cheek, whereas this guy seems totally serious.
Also this guy is clearly NOT a burner whereas you state that you are. But anyway, you can read his whole post here:
http://holyspiritvictorious4ever.blogspot.com/2008/03/possible-burning-man-link-to-nyc-crane.html
May 2nd, 2009 on 10:00 pm
This is from Graham Hancock’s book, Supernatural:
“Curiously, the insect form of alien that is most frequently seen by UFO abductees is the praying mantis, with its long body, upright posture, triangular face and large black eyes. Kaggen, the shaman god of the San in Africa, also most frequently takes the form of a mantis.” (2007, p. 153)
May 14th, 2009 on 11:05 am
Also…
This is Timothy Leary’s subjective account of what he felt and saw during his second DMT trip with Ralp Metzner in 1966. Get a load of this!!!
“ There squatting next to me are TWO MAGNIFICENT INSECTS… skin burnished, glowing metallic, with hammered jewels inlaid… richly costumed, they looked at me sweetly… dear, radiant VENUTIAN CRICKETS… one has a pad in his lap and is holding out a gem-encrusted box with undulating trapezoidal glowing sections… questioning look… incredible… and next to him MRS. DIAMOND CRICKET softly slides into a lattice-work of vibrations… DR. RUBY-EMERALD CRICKET smiles…
Eyes close… back to dancing workshop… joy… incredible beauty… the wonder, wonder, wonder… thanks… thanks for the chance to see the dance… all hooked together… everything fits into the moist, pulsating pattern… a huge grey-white mountain cliff, moving, pocked by little caves and in each cave a band of RADAR ANTANAE, ELF-LIKE INSECTS merrily working away, each cave the same, the grey-white wall endlessly parading by… infinity of life forms… merry erotic energy nets…”
This is from ‘Programmed Communication During Experiences With DMT (dimethyltryptamine),’ which originally appeared in the eighth issue of Psychedelic Review, 1966 by Dr. Timothy Leary
May 16th, 2009 on 8:42 pm
Luminous -
When did you have this experience and what made you decide to post about it now if it happened a while ago?
May 18th, 2009 on 12:55 pm
First of all, hats off to Chronic for the Graham Hancock and Tim Leary info. REALLY interesting. I saw Graham Hancock speak at Entheon Village at Burning Man…two years ago I think. Ford Prefect is really into his books, too.
Seeker: I just think it’s fun to connect dots and draw connections where no connections probably exists. It’s a skill I learned writing college papers. =)
I was just shocked after my mantis experience to learn how prevalent mantises are in the collective unconscious of the psychedelic underground.
May 20th, 2009 on 9:35 pm
Actually, I thought the list of things you were “psychically taught” may have more significance than one might believe.
Actually, I’d like to know more about the mind control in the government. What did they say? I’m curious.
May 21st, 2009 on 9:36 pm
http://www.socyberty.com/Folklore/The-Grasshopper-Locust-Cricket-Cicada-and-Mantis-in-Religion-Myths-Mythology-and-Folklore.246487
May 24th, 2009 on 4:53 pm
Great link, Seeker. Thanks for your continued participation in this blog.
My psychic lesson in extra-terrestrial technology had more to do with how aliens have taught the government to use sound as a weapon, as in USWs. I’m sure our government has many effective mind control mechanisms (most notably television) and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of these mind control mechanisms are extra-terrestrial in origin. However, my mushroom trip vision merely showed me that electronic music (specifically drum n’ bass and electro house) and sonic weaponry were not of this world.
I look forward to your continued comments and insights.
June 11th, 2009 on 10:00 pm
this is all very interesting. check out the link below, it provides a short account of many others’ experiences with mantids and the apparent archetypal role they play in the underground unconscious
http://diseyes.lycaeum.org/fresh/mantis.htm
June 13th, 2009 on 6:23 pm
Super badass. Much obliged.
November 12th, 2009 on 11:45 am
Hello!
You may want to check out Aldous Huxley’s “Island”. It’s a great book overall but I’m recommending it to you because in the very last chapter the main character takes a mushroom trip while listening to Bach and at first everything is bliss, he has his eyes closed and just flows with the music, finds nirvana, etc etc etc. But, a while after opening his eyes, the trip starts descending into hell because he sees (guess what guess what?) PRAYING MANTIS FORNICATING. And then the female eats the male’s head and in the eyes of the tripper that represents all the horror and suffering in the world.
Great Hug to you
PS - if you like Burning Man I’m sure you’d love Boom Festival, it’s in Portugal. Amazing! http://www.boomfestival.org
November 14th, 2009 on 4:31 pm
No way! I did not know that! Thank you so much for posting this crazy info. I love Aldous Huxley and am a I am a HUGE fan of Heaven and Hell and The Perennial Philososphy (which are both nonfiction) in particular. I started reading Eyeless in Gaza but couldn’t get into it. I just recently read (in Rational Mysticism by John Horgan) that Huxley wanted to write a more optomistic, utopian novel (than the pessimistic, distopian Brave New World) after his joyous experimentation with mescaline. That’s crazy about the mantises. What do you think it all means???
I will read Island this week. For sure.
And yes, I heard Rick Doblin talk about Boom 2008 at Burning Man 2008! I’ve been looking into going next year. The idea of having water nearby and of being able to party Burning Man style without all the dust is tempting to say the least. It’s tantalizing.
It’s a dillema. Do I spend the $1300 on plane ticket to Lisbon or do I buy a sweet 8-seater artcar for Burning Man?
Two Questions for you: Do you live in Portugal? And do you know of any other worldwide psychedelic gatherings in the same eschelon as Boom and Burning Man?
Thanks again for posting!
November 17th, 2009 on 3:05 pm
Oh shit! Listen to this…this is from Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi! I meant to post about this when I first read Yogananda, but I was living in the boonies without internet (or running water for that matter) and I was still lazy with post-burning man bliss. And my back went out and…. Anyway…this is AWESOME:
“Among the fallen dark angels expelled from other worlds, friction and war take place with [PRANIC WEAPONS]* or MENTAL MANTRIC VIBRATORY WAVES. These beings dwell in the gloom-drenched regions of the lower astral cosmos, working out their evil karma”
Are all the “astral planes”… are they all right here in terms of space-time? Is Heaven just a found emotion hiding somewhere in the night? Christ says “The Kingdom of God IS on eath and Men do not see it.” That was one of Joe Campbell’s favorite quotes. Is Hell right here, too? Are these various archetypal planes and platonic realms, and the ancestral lands of the dead and of ghosts…are all these just like T.V. frequencies? You know what I mean?
Is it possible, just as all the various FM waves drfift through your T.V. or radio, even though it is only tuned into one channel, that, in a similar way, all the heavens and hells in the cosmos are right here right now and that vajrayana and tantra and various raja, kundalini, and kriya yogas–including psychedelics–sort of change the channel in terms of what our brains tune in to? Sometimes the fickle raja yoga of eating mushrooms launches you up into the higher astral cosmos–and othertimes you only get enough lift to launch into the lower psychesphere and you don’t have the velocity to escape the pull of…of purgatory?
Is that what the mantises are? Are they demons from the lower astral planes working out their evil karma by controlling, subduing, manipulating, and destroying each other with prana–with the psychic, intentional, etheric equivalant of sound waves?
“They could read my mind and could control my body and my emotions with sound waves. They could, with their voice boxes, instantaneously cause limb paralysis, anxiety, sexual arousal, feelings of being in the presence of the divine, or total existential terror simply by uttering the correct vibration, as though my whole bodymind were nothing more than a kazoo in the hands of master flautists.”
Was I in purgatory…or… hell? Creepy.
These reptiles people talk about…and the insectoids. Are they demons? Are aliens and demons and angels and fairies all similar beings….are they “astral beings”–beings from the here and now, but from other channels, other frequencies?
My head is spinning. It’s just crazy at this point…all the confluences. Huxley. Leary. McKenna. USWs. And now Yogananda? And the Burning Man thing? Some weird ass Mothman shit going on, I tell you.
*Some clarification from Yogananda:
Sri Yukteswar used the word prana; I have translated it as lifetrons. The Hindu scriptures refer not only to the anu, “atom,” and to the paramanu, “beyond the atom,” finer electronic energies; but also to prana, “creative lifetronic force.” Atoms and electrons are blind forces; prana is inherently intelligent….mantra…chanted seed-sounds discharged by the mental gun of concentration. The Puranas (ancient shastras or treatises) describe these mantric wars between devas and asuras (gods and demons). An asura once tried to slay a deva with a [mantra]. But due to mispronunciation the mental bomb acted as a boomerang and killed the demon.
I have reverted back to Yukteswar’s phraseology. I think “pranic weapon” is truer to what Yogananda was trying to communicate than “lifetronic bomb.” He was trying too hard to comunicate in English concepts. If anything, “psychic ray” would be a better metaphor as it accounts for the intentional and directional nature of pranic weaponry. “Bomb” is too connotative of sloppy, indiscriminite destruction. And the whole notion of “lifetrons” was just Yogananda’s way of stressing the objective (UR) reality of these subtle energies. But I think emphasizing the intentional (UL) origin of these rays/waves is more important. Prana travels across the psychic networks connecting one conscious being to another, both beings existing in a greater field of shared consciousnes, what Alex Grey calls a “mind lattice.”
And if the notion of gods and demons fighting with words seems silly because…I mean sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me, therefore they really shouldn’t hurt demons and GODS…we need to remember that, as Ram Dass says, “Sanskrit is a conscious language–that is, the VIBRATIONAL SOUND of each word is supposed to do something to your NERVOUS SYSTEM.” So it’s not the “concept” portion of the mantra that is the primary source of power. It’s not the “signified” for all of you Philosophy dorks; it’s the “signifier,” itself; it’s the spoken sound that has the power. So while words–in terms of concepts–may never hurt your body (certainly concepts can hurt our egos, our conceptual selves, which in turn could obviously have psychosomatic reprecussions on the body), vibrations absolutely can hurt your body directly. Cases in point: tsunamis, earth-quakes, and Gamma Rays.
November 19th, 2009 on 1:59 pm
I have to say one more thing about all of this. I have had some weird-ass roomates in Los Angeles and up North in Humboldt County. I had a roomate who claimed to have killed someone once. I had a roomate who was literally the international spokesperson for “Furries”–people who dress up in furry mascot uniforms and then give each other hand jobs. But my weirdest roomate was a schizophrenic. On the second night that he lived in my house, he heard the voices of extraterrestrials telling him to do terrible things. In order to stop their voices, he took a rock that a caveman might have used as an axe and he smashed the sharp end into his third eye as hard as he could. Luckily, a local policeman found him in the park before he bled to death. He walked right up to the policeman and said, “I am the archangel…and I don’t want to hurt anybody.” Now, here is my question: is schizophrenia what happens when your brain/mind complex tunes into frequencies that it’s…not supposed to? Was this roomate, in some sense, possessed? Was he tuned into a channel where dark, fallen, demonic beings of the lower astral channels were able to communicate with him? I mean, I think we’re jumping the gun if we conclude that the beings he heard were non-existant simply because the right medications (lithium and so on) prohibit him from hearing them. If I drank wood alcohol and went blind, that wouldn’t mean that the ugliness of the world had merely been a figment of my imagination all along, now would it? There is this interesting argument concerning psychedelics. What are they? What do they do? Some people call them “hallucinogens.” But others argue that that’s not quite right. They don’t really make you hallucinate, per se. Other people call them “entheogens” because they reveal your own inner divinity. Others, like Terrence McKenna, think that’s white-washing it just a bit considering the vast diversity of possible psychedelic experiences. Stan Grof, who just came out with a book called “LSD: Gateway to the Numinous” calls psychedelics “holotropic” because they turn us or move us toward wholeness. Some still call them “psychomimetics.” That’s how they were known a while back–because it was thought that they mimic psychoses. Now, I think it’s only fair to admit that at least some of the time, in at least some people, psychedelics do in fact mimic or trigger psychotic episodes. But that brings us back to square one: What are psychotic episodes? Whatever they are, they are related to the brain. But all of experiential reality is related to the brain! Just because there are neurological corrolaries for various altered state experiences, including entity experiences, that in no way rules out the possibility of there also being non-neurological (externally extant, objectively real) corrolaries, such as…well, such as aliens, ghosts, and demons. Fucked-up thought, huh?
November 20th, 2009 on 9:18 pm
Some related thoughts from Gloria Feman Orenstein:
“Shamanism teaches us that everything has a spirit and that via a variety of shamanic practices, humans can make contact with the spirits of the…dead…Over time, one can begin to see the shape of the agency of other-worldly spirits upon events in this world…Through the spiritual journey, Shamans pick up vital information from other realms, in much the same way that we get our news from abroad via satellite and TV.”
That seems to echo what you were saying about being tuned into different channels and about the dead existing on other frequencies.
And some thoughts from Mircea Eliade:
“The shaman specializes in a trance during which his soul is believed to…descend to the underworld…It will easily be seen wherein a shaman differs from a ‘possessed’ person, for example; the shaman controls his ‘spirits,’ in the sense that he, being a human, is able to communicate with the dead, [with] “demons”…without thereby becoming their instrument…Psychopaths or not…shamans are expected to pass through certain initiatory ordeals, and to receive an education that…transforms the candidate from a possible neurotic into a shaman recognized by his particular society…And recognition as a shaman is bestowed only by the whole community and only after the aspirant has undergone the initiatory ordeal.”
So maybe your friend who is “neurotic” or “psychotic” is definitely “possessed.” But maybe he is just a shaman who didn’t receive the appropriate education and initiation from his culture. =)
November 20th, 2009 on 11:07 pm
I was dosed on the playa with some mescaline (I think) and I was really tripping through the playa and I saw the “MAN” for what he was, an alien mantis overlord! It was very non threatening and somewhat comforting.
Viva la Burn!
A.Shamus
November 21st, 2009 on 1:41 pm
No way! Crazy! I’m telling you. There is some weird burning man/mantis connection. I’m glad I’m not the only one who realizes this. But in what way is a MANTIS OVERLORD comforting or nonthreatening?!?!? The Man-tis used his pranic mind-control rays on you. That’s the only explanation. =P
November 21st, 2009 on 6:26 pm
Hey so here’s a potentially interesting synchronicity for you. I just read all the stuff on this page before watching the movie “Funky Forest” which I had no idea what it was but it got recommended to me. And in the movie there is a passing reference to a mantis, a guy in a furry costume who get a “hand job”, and the use of sound as a weapon for mind control. Not sure what that means, just passing it along.
November 22nd, 2009 on 3:32 am
You wrote:
“Was he tuned into a channel where dark, fallen, demonic beings of the lower astral channels were able to communicate with him?”
I think, yes- something like that. Psychedelic drugs can open us up to dimensions of reality that are usually hidden from view. However- most (if not all) of us do not have the training to understand or control what we are shown. Combine this with the usual situation of taking drugs in an “impure” environment (paganism, lawlessness, jealousy, immaturity, etc.)- and it tends to open up the doors to a channel where mean (though not directly harmful these days) spirits can and do play jokes on us.
There is no “mantis overlord”, and any knowledge you would get while accepting such a premise is simply negative spirits giving you something semi-valuable in order to take something of greater value (your clear perception of reality, ability to raise a moral, healthy family, etc.)
This is at least the Jewish/Kabbalistic view as I understand it. It’s more complicated than this- but any *attempt* to tune into a cleaner, less dangerous channel would have to at least involve this important intention: take the drug with the intent of doing something positive with the knowledge when you return (e.g. where to give charity, how to control anger, etc.) Look at the story of the 4 Rabbis who went into the Pardes (spiritual dimension). Only Rabbi Akiva went in peace and returned in peace. In other words- he came out okay because he went in knowing what he wanted to take out of it. More info at http://www.thetrugmans.com/trugman_audioclasses_kabbalah.php
November 22nd, 2009 on 12:38 pm
M: Thanks for posting. Weird, weird, weird. I think “what it means” is that the person who wrote Funky Forest must be someone from my life–or from my graduate screenwriting program–who stole my life! Bitches. I’m going to IMDB right now to get to the bottom of this!
Omnivibe: Thank you as well. I honor and dig the groovy, kabbalistic insights. Please keep bringing them. I think the real bottom line with these mantises is that no one really knows what they are. Are they demons? Ghosts? Extra-terrestrials? Inter-dimensional beings? Archetypes of the collective unconsciousness?
In any instance, I appreciate your sentiments that people who screw around with the supernatural without “working on themselves” are magicians rather than mystics and are likely to reap the whirlwind. Maybe that’s what bit me in the ass with those mantises. The only thing I am proud of is that I kept up my courtesy to, and sense of humor around, the other psychonauts in the house even when I was in the darkest depths of locust-creature infernal realms.
November 24th, 2009 on 1:28 pm
Noia: Many thanks! Interesting passages for sure!
These are from Stanley Kripner’s “Conflicting Perspectives on Shamans and Shamanism”:
Taking a psychohistorical perspective, DeMause (2002) proposed that all tribal people “since the paleolithic regularly felt themselves breaking into fragmented pieces, switcghing into dissociated states and going into shamanic trances to try to put themselves together” (p. 251). Accoding to DeMause, shamans were “schizoids” (p. 250) who spent much of their lives in fantasy worlds where they were starved, burned, beaten, raped, lacerated, and dismembered, yet were able to recover their bones and flesh and experience ecstatic rebirth…
The American Psychiatrist Julian Silverman (1967) postulated that shamanism is a form of acute schizophrenia because the two experiences have in common, “grossly-non-reality-oriented ideation, abnormal perceptual experiences, profound emotional upheavals, and bizarre mannerisms” (p.22). According to Silverman, the ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHAMANISM AND CONTEMPORARY SCHIZOPHRENIA in Western inudstrialized societies, is “the degree of cultural acceptance of the individual’s psychological resolution of life crisis (p.23)”.
December 25th, 2009 on 2:58 pm
Hey There! I found your blog by googling “extraterrestrial mantises.” I’ve become increasingly interested in the mantis creatures in the last few months.
Anyway, I’m re-reading “The Invisible Landscape” by the McKenna brothers. There is some insectoid stuff later on in the book and I will be sure to pass it your way when I get to it. For now though, I thought I’d add a couple of sentences to your thread that pertain to the relationship between shamanism and schizophrenia.
“The shaman and the schizophrenic both seem to possess a greater access to unconscious processes than the ‘normal’ individual. While the schizophrenic is spontaneously inundated and often overwhelmed by these processes, the shaman, through the practices of his ‘techniques of ecstasy,’ is able to INTEGRATE THEM INTO CONSCIOUSNESS and to maintain access to them without suffering disintegration. If some fundamentally similar molecular process is responsible for the release of unconscious contents in each case, then the figure of the shaman is worthy of study for his ability to trigger and control the process” (p. 6).
I love the site and will leave more comments to this post when I can! Merry Christmas!
December 29th, 2009 on 1:39 am
Your mantises sure sound like demons to me.
Revelation 9:
And there came out of the smoke LOCUSTS upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
January 2nd, 2010 on 11:39 pm
Jen: All hail Terrence, huh? I think he was the greatest psychedelic philosopher ever–over Huxley, Grof, Leary, Dass…everybody.
Paul: Yeah, brother. Could be. Again, my thinking is that all of our terms, like “demons” fall short of really explaining who or what these beings are. One person’s “demon” is another’s “alien,” someone else’s “troll” or “goblin” and yet another person’s “archetype of the collective unconscious.” It’s hard to say which model is most accurate.
But if we adopt a New Testament lens, then yeah, I agree with you: the mantises I saw were demons.
February 2nd, 2010 on 2:12 pm
Okay…last one about schizos. I really want to find the part about mantises, damn it!
“In each of these situations, experimental tryptamine psychosis and shamanic trance, what is involved are alterations and inhibitions of normal amine levels in the brain. The shaman manipulates this bizarre region for culturally valid reasons and with techniques of proven efficacy. The schizophrenic is an unwilling victim, a traveler through what, to him is a terrifying landscape. Using analytical premises and…operational constructs, we sought to carry ourselves, as modern humans, into the same numinous landscape and to offer a report of interest to empirical investigators.” ( p. 107)
May 3rd, 2010 on 2:20 pm
Hi to all - I research a very esoteric but pivotal field of science called Cultural Entomology. This type of work - the parallels and connections between humans and insects - is the crux of my work. I have sent out inquiries to my friends around the world asking for their stories, but I haven’t queried the psychedelic community yet (I am a burgeoning psychonaut - A, DMT, Ganja, Ayahuasca and Shrooms, Two-time Burner). Praying Mantises guarded a giant golden palace in my first Vine Ceremony. I would love to open this dialogue with a wider swath of the Psychedelic community and start gathering more stories about serendipitous interactions with insects. In fact, I am moving towards conducting scientific research and including entheogens. There is sooooo much more going on here than you might currently expect.
May 3rd, 2010 on 5:31 pm
To B: Sorry to play dirty. Life’s a bitch. Or maybe it’s a female mantis that fucks you and then eats your skull (a la the vision at the end of Huxley’s Island). Your suggestion to take this little conversation elsewhere is, for now, rejected (and deleted) as unappealing to the moderator of this conversation for reasons which should be both obvious and self-evident. I may consider posting your info in the future…hell, maybe I’ll give you a free full-banner advertisement. Maybe I’ll pay you to write an article for this site.
For now, tell us more. Tell us the “soooooo much more going on than we [realize or] expect.”
Inquiring minds are dying to know.
Type away. I just bought more disc space and bandwidth (on pace for between 100,000 and 250,000 unique visitors this year). You have no space limitations and you can feel free to be as technical and “in-depth” as you wish. I think the people who visit this site and post here are pretty bright.
In terms of arguing for this forum as the place to continue the conversation–you found it, didn’t you??? You’d be surprised how many people visit this particular page.
And I want to run my voyeuristic scopophiliac eyes over the textured nuances of all that is said about psychedelic, insects, demons, angels, and inter-dimensional beings. I want my piece of the information pie. Accountants, Lawyers, Realtors: This is a country run by middle-men. Try and cut us out and see what happens when you mess with us.
So for now, if you have something earth-shaking to say, say it here!
Everybody Else: If you have a question for an eminent cultural entomologist, ask it here!
And now for the weather.
May 4th, 2010 on 2:02 pm
On the topic of good vs. evil insectoid demons: the world of invertebrates, fungus and bacteria - for the most part - denote the “otherness” of life on planet Earth. For most of human history, these groups of creatures were mostly unknown, ignored or misunderstood. Their life cycles are so completely un-human, that their mere presence was associated with darkness, evil, and sickness. Many people are programmed deeply in our culture to think insects have an agenda against us, but in fact, we need them more than they need us. (Re: Luminous retelling of the things he learned from the Mantids).
So, I would suggest that the insectoids are not demons, but rather creatures working in perfect order with the structure of the cosmos, beyond the trappings of human emotions.
What I would like to learn is if anyone has entered the altered states with the intent to communicate with the insectoids, rather than “bumping” into them. To ask specific questions, draw correlations with the Earth-bound insect world, discuss the intimate origins and co-evolution of plants and insects. Also, if anyone with any biological background has studied specifics about mantids or other insects, and then tried to address that information with the insectoid beings.
I am going into this space this weekend. I will report back anything apropos.
May 5th, 2010 on 12:36 pm
Here is a little ditty by a prominent writer on the Reality Sandwich scene. She describes being taught new Yoga moves by a benevolent teacher. As the author explains it.
“And so began what can only be described as a yoga asana lesson taught to me by a startlingly large praying mantis-like creature during an ayahuasca ceremony in the Peruvian Amazon.”
http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/515
Again, large insectoids can be guides and teachers as well.
May 28th, 2010 on 5:13 pm
Hello again - after two ceremonies and many corroborating conversations, I find that the interaction between sacred vines and insectoid entities - often involved in exploring, examining or somehow interacting with the human body - is a nearly ubiquitous experience. I can only say again that the entities are purely benevolent, noting to be afraid of.
For me this time around, it was being hoisted onto a carpet of beetles that carried me in a certain direction, although the movement was not physically apparent. It was similar to how the ship sailed across the sand on the backs of crabs in the movie “Pirates of the Carribean.” (Please forgive the coarse pop culture reference).
I am starting to catalog these experiences, so please feel free to share whatever stories you might have - involved ceremony or not -about transcendental experiences with insects.
June 10th, 2010 on 1:58 am
Hi!
This is VERY interesting…I’m subscribed to a shamanism list in spanish.
First, many entheogenic practitioners tell of encounters with physical mantises just before/after the entheogenic experience (my experience too). And…a mexican curandera told us in the ciberforum that she was told by an scholar that there is, at least, a Greek coin from the Eleusinian Mysteries with a drawing of a praying mantis…
June 11th, 2010 on 2:03 pm
THAT is fascinating. If you just tied mantises + tryptamines to the ANCIENT GREEKS, which I think you did, that’s pretty badass…in a super CREEPY way.
P.S. If anyone wants to contact Eminent B–an actual cultural etymologist-to offer their thoughts about the mantis phenomenon, the email is eminent_b@gmail.com/eminentb@gmail.com.