It Was Twenty Years Ago
Basel, Switzerland
In remembrance of the greatest psychedelic conference ever held, I’ll be posting some photos and other items my wife and I have preserved from those heady days at the
Yes, I was there and gave 3 presentations, one of which I will post in part 2 of this series. For another, I teamed up with Carl Ruck:
Introduction to the conference
The author being greeted by conference organizer and program manager Dieter Hagenbach (Tom Roberts looking on)
…more to follow.
A big thank you from the Gaia Media Foundation for your memories. The conference was our brainchild.
Both of its organisers are no longer with us, but we're still around with our bilingual newsletter (see gaiamedia.org/english) and our yearly events on Bicycle Day (see bicycleday.ch). We also have a large library, revolving around psychedelics, consciousness, shamanism and ecology, and we're hoping to find a place in Basel for an LSD museum, including our books, of course. Where's the billionaire who'll help us finance this? (You can reach us through the newsletter, of which I am the editor.)
Dieter Hagenbach, seen in the pic above, passed in 2016. Co-organiser Lucius Werthmüller followed early 2018. The foundation is presently presided by Dieter's step son, neo-psychedelic artist Kerim Seiler (see kerimseiler.com), aka as my son. :)
I am looking forward to seeing more...
've sketched out a few memories of the conference, might put on my Substack too. Was going to use the same title, but you beat me to it. Great to be back in touch. We ought to have a real conversation about all this. I've learned a lot of things that cause me to suspect most everything we know about the modern history of psychedelics is a convenient and misleading narrative. After smoking some very nice hashish at the Eleusinian mystery ruins this last equinox, it occurs to me that by the time the Mysteries were established on the mainland they were already institutionalized and corrupt. the real Mysteries are much older. Actually began to think this two year earlier when Carl and I, and Mark Hs Hoffman hiked up to Euripides' Cave. Yes the 89 year old immortal made it up there just fine, with his cane and the two of us supporting him..... lots of stories yet to be told. And what about Alan Piper's research into St. Peter's Snow? Doesn't that make you wonder?