What sort of reality pertains to the subjective psyche? The reality of the inner psyche is the same reality as that of the sign. Outside the material of signs, there is no psyche; there are physiological processes, processes in the nervous system, but no subjective psyche as a special existential quality fundamentally distinct from both the physiological processes occurring within the organism and the reality encompassing the organism from outside, to which the psyche reacts and which one way or another it reflects. By its very existential nature, the subjective psyche is to be localized somewhere between the organism and the outside world, on the borderline separating these two spheres of reality. It is here that an encounter between the organism and the outside world takes place, but the encounter is not a physical one: the organism and the outside world meet here in the sign. Psychic experience is the semiotic expression of the contact between the organism and the outside environment. That is why the inner psyche is not analyzable as a thing but can only be understood and interpreted as a sign.

• psyche
• logic
• nervous system
• existential
• experience
• expression
• environment
• situation
• perception
• self
• other
• conceptual self
• semiotics
• boundaries
• biogram
• logogram
• complexes
• translation
• transformation

Few parts of the Lord's Prayer have given more trouble to the praying Christian and more scope for the exegete than the verse: \r\n\r\n>And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (Matt 6:13) \r\n\r\nThe Greek word for 'temptation', peirasmos, came in for special attention at the time of the decipherment of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was realized correctly by scholars that behind this New Testament phrase lay the Semitic word for a place for 'testing' metals, that is, the refiner's crucible. The Essenes in the Scrolls talk of the 'time of testing that is coming' using the technical word. So, here, in the Prayer, the word-jugglers have taken its Aramaic equivalent, kur bukhana', 'crucible of testing', out of LI-KUR-BA (LA)G-ANTA, the mushroom name. The resultant phrase is particularly interesting because it is almost exactly the Aramaic name of the fungus as it has come down in literature, khurbakhna' or khurbekhana' (Arabic kharbaq), attached, like so many mushroom words, to the plant Hellebore. \r\n\r\nTaking the sacred fungus, or, in New Testament parlance, 'eating the body' of the Christ, must have been a very real peirasmos, 'trial', of the body and spirit. It would have seemed no accident to the cultic celebrant that the name of the mushroom and the phrase for 'fiery furnace of testing' appeared the same. The customary translations of the powerful concept as 'temptation' is almost ridiculous, recalling youthful experiences in the jam-cupboard or behind the woodshed with the girl next door. Well might the writer of Corinthians issue the warning: \r\n\r\n>Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without critically treating his body, eats and drinks a 'crisis' upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died... (1 Cor 11:27-30). \r\n\r\nThe Amanita muscaria is, after all, a poisonous fungus. Whist not the most dangerous, its drugs have a serious affect on the nervous system, and taken regularly over a long period would in the end kill the addict. Among its drugs so far isolated are Muscarine, Atropine, and Bufotenin. The first causes vomiting and diarrhoea, and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system so that the partaker is capable of great feats of muscular exertion and endurance. The stories which came down of the fantastic strength exhibited by cultic heroes, however mythical the events described, have probably that element of real fact. So, too, the idea that the Maenads in their wild raving through the conifer forests were capable of tearing animals limb from limb, was not entirely devoid of truth. \r\n\r\nAtropine first stimulates the nervous system and then paralyzes it. It is this poison that is primarily responsible for the hallucinatory effects of the sacred fungus, but also for the muscular convulsions that must have seemed to bystanders like the demons within, wresting with the newly imbibed power of the god. \r\n\r\nBufotenin, a secretion otherwise found in the sweat glands of the African toad, lowers the pulse rate and temperature. As a result, the mushroom eater has the strange sensation of feeling his skin hot and cold simultaneously: hot in some places, cold in others. He finds himself hypersensitive to touch, light, and sound. The day following his 'trip' he will find all smells seem foul and a bad taste persists in his mouth. He feels an urgent need to urinate but is unable to do so.

• lord"s prayer
• translation
• drugs
• nervous system
• endurance
• strength
• myth
• psychedelic drugs
• chemistry
• brain chemistry
• language
• mycology
• poison

Wasson maintained a position of stern disapproval of hedonistic use of his beloved 'entheogens'‑a clumsy word freighted with theological baggage that he preferred to the common term 'psychedelic. ' Perhaps it was this attitude that caused Wasson to decide that his magnum opus, written in colloboration with the French mycologist Roger Heim, Les Champignons Hallucinogenes du Mexique, should not be made available in the 1960s in an English translation. There could have been a host of reasons, of course. The fact remains that Wasson's most important work is his only work not available in English.

• psychedelic drugs
• entheogens
• mycology
• reference point
• psilocybin
• work
• english
• attitude
• translation

The Hebrew word nabi^7, which has been misleadingly translated by the Greek designation of 'prophet', presents an extremely interesting difficulty. To prophesy in its modern connotations is to foretell the future, but this is not what is indicated by the verb naba, whose practitioners were the nabiim (plural of nabi). These terms come from a group of cognate words which have nothing to do with time, but rather with flowing and becoming bright. Thus we may think of a nabi as one who metaphorically was flowing forth or welling up with speech and visions. They were transitional men, partly subjective and partly bicameral. And once the bright torrent was released and the call came, the nabi must deliver his bicameral message, however unsuspecting (Amos 7:14-15), however un-worthy the nabi felt (Exodus 3:113 Isaiah 6; Jeremiah 1:6), however distrustful at times of his own hearing (Jeremiah 20:7-10). What does it feel like to be a nabi at the beginning of one of his bicameral periods? Like a red hot coal in one's mouth (Isaiah 6:7) or a raging fire shut up in one's bones that cannot be contained (Jeremiah 20:9) and that only the flowing forth of divine speech can quench.\r\n\r\n⁷ Transliteration from Hebrew into English is always misleading. Perhaps a better case here might be made for nbi or nvi. That its meaning was ambiguous even at the time seems to be indicated in I Samuel 9:9. See also John L. McKenzie, A Theology of the Old Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1974), p. 85.

• reference point
• bicameral mind
• language
• translation
• meaning
• old testament
• metaphor
• time
• future
• speech
• english
• theology

Mardi Gras I arrive at the beginning of February. A good time to visit, for it is the weekend leading up to ‘Fat Tuesday’, the literal English translation of Mardi Gras. In Britain we call it ‘Shrove Tuesday’ and celebrate with pancakes. In more observant times this day preceding Ash Wednesday was when the faithful said their goodbye to meat, for it signalled the start of Lent and forty days of fasting and prayer. The Latin for ‘goodbye meat’ is carne vale. Hence the word ‘carnival’.

• definition
• etymology
• latin
• holidays
• time
• prayer
• english
• translation