https://www.lockedinthecellar.com

On one hand the pineal gland is just one of the many glands that make up the body’s endocrine system, but it’s also known as the “third eye” of mystic visionary traditions in cultures across the globe — the so called “seat of the soul.” It turns out that the pineal gland is photosensitive just like our actual eyes and that the gland produces a number of compounds associated with sleep and dreaming. This weekend I happened across this fascinating article that describes the evolution of the pineal gland, the role it plays in regulating our bodies’ day and night rhythms and the affects that various psychoactive substances and cannabis have on this special spot in our brains…

We know that multiple different regions of the brain are involved in the subjective experience of being high. The pineal gland is just one tiny link in an extremely long and complicated chain, which stretches between some of the most basic and fundamental parts of the brain (and the pineal gland can definitely be classed as basic and fundamental, as almost every living vertebrate possesses one) and some of the most advanced, such as the neocortex, which only exists in mammals.

However, the pineal gland has repeatedly been associated with the biosynthesis of important natural compounds related to sleeping, dreaming, and dream imagery. The presence of these compounds in the pineal gland is one of the most important reasons that so many view it as the “seat of the soul”, or a key to “spiritual enlightenment”. Without a doubt, the most famous of these compounds is N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, more commonly known as DMT.

It’s actually somewhat controversial as to whether or not the pineal gland is responsible for synthesizing DMT in humans, but there is significant evidence to suggest that it is the case. DMT and related compounds tryptamine and bufotenin have been found in human urine, and DMT itself has been shown to be synthesized in the pineal gland of the rat brain. A closely related compound, 5-MeO-DMT has been found to be synthesized in the human pineal gland, but thus far, it has not been proven that DMT itself is too.

In any case, it certainly appears that the pineal gland is very much involved in the production and/or processing of substances that are well-known to be involved in helping to create “dream states” when we are asleep. Thus, there are many theories that the subjective experience of getting “high” from cannabis, hallucinogens and other psychoactive drugs also involves this subjective creation of a “dream-like” or otherwise altered reality.

This is a long read, but a good one. Check out the whole piece at the link above, but first, here’s Terence McKenna on The Third Eye…

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Counter Culture posts.

When my Dad was reading OMNI magazine back in the 1980′s I was just a little kid. I didn’t know that it was published by Bob Guccione or that OMNI was a visionary science magazine that hit a sweet spot between inspired scientific speculation, imaginative short science fiction, and the cutting edge of technology and research to create a publication that always felt like it had been published the day after tomorrow. OMNI has had a strange and somewhat troubled life online, but fans of the magazine now have some reason to celebrate. Here’s The Verge with the skinny…

Omni Magazine was an enormously influential publication that ran from 1978 to 1995. Created by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and wife Kathy Keeton, it featured interviews with scientists such as Freeman Dyson, art from the likes of H.R. Giger and Chris Foss, and original fiction from established science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov and newcomers like William Gibson. The original magazine went digital in 1995, but shuttered in 1998. In 2013, Jerrick Media resurrected the magazine in an online format called Omni Reboot.

Until recently, back issues of Omni Magazine were stored on the Internet Archive, for readers to page through at no cost. The collection of issues was taken down a couple of years ago, but it’s now back online on Amazon.com.

Click through The Verge link to access the magazine on Amazon. In the meantime here’s a mind blowing playlist featuring “Inside the OMNI Vault” — a series of portraits highlighting the mind expanding visual artists who brought OMNI‘s features, interviews and essays to life…

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more book posts.

This year we commemorate 60 years of Rosaleen Norton’s art and pioneering occultism. Norton was an Australian witch and a visionary painter born on October 2, 1917. We’re jumping the gun by remembering Norton’s contributions to art and magick at the beginning of spring, but maybe we’ll plan multiple posts counting down to Norton’s autumn birthday. Here’s a bit from the Witchcraft and Witches site…

Her paintings and drawings for the most part were depictions of the gods, demons and other entities with whom she claimed to communicate, the god Pan being her personal favourite, full of grotesque detail and writhing, interlocked forms. By 1951, she had become well-known as an artist around Kings Cross, the bohemian centre of Sydney, where her murals adorned cafés and galleries traded briskly in her popular and provocative works.

However, in August 1951, four of her pictures were seized by the police and Norton was prosecuted on the allegation that her works could “deprave and corrupt the morals of those who saw them”, and that they were inspired by works of medieval demonology. The next year, a book of her pictures and poems by her young boyfriend Gavin Greenlees, published by Walter Glover, was banned as an obscene publication, and was only re-published in the more liberal atmosphere of 1982.

Due to her notoriety, she soon became a favourite with the tabloid press, which began referring to her as the “Witch of King’s Cross”, and dark stories of witchcraft, black masses, sexual magical rites and Satanism began to appear regularly in Australian newspapers and magazines, and Roie Norton became a household name. Throughout the 1960s, she was notorious as the supposed head an active coven of witches in King’s Cross, although the coven never really amounted to much more than a few masked friends gathering in her small flat for occult talk and the occasional friendly ritual.

Here’s a super informative video about Norton despite the robot voice…

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Counter Culture posts.