Table of Contents
Cover by Michaelangelo Title Page by Steven Child Introduction
Editors
5
Michaelangelo Jonah The Goat Michaelangelo Kelly Jean Egan Rickey Lee Bauman Jessamyn Cuneo Michael Warren Grant Steven Child
11 15 24 28 34 36 38 40
Sonya Genel Sonya Genel Daniel Williams-Baumgart Jeremy Atkins Daniel Williams-Baumgart Amelia Anne Sandy Michaelangelo Matt Adams Sonya Genel Marc Seestaedt Sonya Genel Jeremy Atkins Michaelangelo
4 9 10 11 14 21 22 26 29 30 35 37 39
The Writings: Into the Endless The Police are on the Playa In Light of Living Language Purge The Brain Elephant Loves Elbow Joyride Dreamers
The Pictures: Mushroom Muse Cycles Man In Flight Whalestem Jereme Untitled Guardians of the Mirror Two-Face 1 & 2 Compulsive Innards 2 Lifestrips: Construction Houses Moksha Garden Columbian Totem
Artist Bios Credits
41 44
Introduction “If you open the sense wide enough, the vision follows.” -Colin Wilson
The term Entheogenesis is not yet a commonly used one. But at this stage in human development, when the necessity for spiritual growth has become so apparent, it is fitting to shed some light onto the concept. Stemming from Greek, Entheogenesis translates as “creates god within” or “becoming god within.” It is a personal experience in which the shell that surrounds our ordinary awareness expands, cracks, and is permeated with extra-ordinary meaning. While Entheogenesis plays out on the stage of the personal, the production isn't limited in cast to ourself. It transcends that “shell,” that meticulously manicured selfidentity, to awaken numinous awareness, which is universal, divine and well beyond the reckoning of egomade constructs. It is akin to a sudden and surprising idea. Only one would realize that in actuality this idea had been there all along waiting for activation, like a wick awaiting a flame. Suddenly, there's light where once there was darkness. If darkness limits our potential of greater vision, from where does it descend? To draw a parallel between Entheogenesis and Colin Wilson's concept of “affirmationconsciousness,” the darkness of our minds is a state when thought-patterns have “congealed” and are no longer “free and fluid.” Myriad things happen: wind blows through the trees, great works need undertaking, there’s a touching
scene on the subway. But who cares? The darkened mind is too sluggish and self-concerned to care or even perceive these things. Our meta-physical map of reality has become fixed and stagnant, and it is the entheogenic experience that allows it to be altered and updated. Many aspects of our life, in fact, become imprinted or automatic; a series of steps, thought patterns, exits and entrances which become unconscious; probably for the sake of our sanity and survival. So it follows that the Entheogenesis is temporary, but its meanings and lessons expand out into our mundane, every-day existence. It is the appropriate counterbalance; the process of breaking away from the norm, albeit for a short while, and becoming newly aware. It can easily be compared to sort of “vacation,” during which, as Wilson writes, “there is a startled recognition that the world is huge and very beautiful, and that this fact had become totally concealed from my consciousness by habit.” An artist must be accustomed to this sort of respite from the mundane, if he or she is to explore the ideal, weave with the fabrics of existence, and communicate the reality of non-reality. Numerous examples of the entheogenic experience fill the pages of this ‘zine. For example, let us examine Jonah the Goat's piece, The Police are on the Playa. Throughout the piece there are gigantic splashes of affirmation-consciousness. We are told to reinvent ourselves, see what is typically unseen, and to sleep where we would never sleep. We are shown unabashed freedom. Moreover, grounded in all of these unexpected flights of language there is a shining presence of honesty and conviction. A few examples:
“Look around with new eyes amazed shocked, choked with emotion” “To add the orange wings to the butterflies. The sadness that is also life, Fills the coiffures of the forest and the skies,”
There are also secondary elements that surround these affirmations like locusts, with an intention to hurt, control, and “darken.” The root of this limitation lies in the fear of Entheogenesis; the fear of light; an abhorrent desire to remain the king of a dim kingdom, rather than be a pauper in an infinite realm. The Judge in Jonah's piece, “who decides fate in Nevada,” embodies this lonely king, “Yelling out in fear 'This is my world!' and 'This is my life!'”
And he is followed by a long succession of lesser judges; the people who “declare you illegal,” the people who throw you out of bars and the “aliens of Ruination” seen from the planet mars. We see that it is also the American mainstream, “...watch as America drives past you scared and lonely In the cold suburban night.”
Despite this adversity, however, Jonah refuses to give up. And therein lies another strength of the piece: he provides a solution to this dichotomy. Give bread crumbs to students, he recommends, and dollars to the rich, give
what you can and accept what fortune comes to you. Finally, he says to the Judge, “Die a little, Judge, Feel the pain and the beauty, Be poor, free, and in-love,”
He asks for empathy. He asks for understanding. After all, is that not a judge's duty? This judge, the “king,” is unable to do this, revealing the disadvantage of alienating oneself from the entheogenic experience: one-sidedness, complacency, numbness, and ultimately, ignorance. The final advice, placed in the mouth of a would-be Enlightened Judge, closes the piece sagely: “And I will learn from you I will learn to the very best of my heart’s throbbing most Though today I may stand so very low…”
Endeavoring to keep the bonfire burning,
SynergyZine
I had nothing but time on my hands, and love in my heart. The ticks of the clock draining my blood, the talk of heart, a communion with god. Love and time make the world go round. And love turns the hands of the clock into open arms. My friends became lovers and I left them behind, rolling around in each other's embrace, making heart-shaped crop circles in the unified field. I walked with the hawk to the sea to see the path that lay ahead of me, the path of beauty, and the path that's slain instead of me. Many lifetimes on the shoreline, seeming endless/ wandering lifetimes on the shoreline of the friendless. It became obvious that there was nothing for me to do but to wander through the beauty on the beach, in the headlands, out of reach. I was wandering on the other side of the Golden Gates, taking leave for a day of the city at bay. They call this place the Marin headlands. And Mar-in speaks to me of the inner seas. I wandered, a creator through the creation, the endless creation. It was hard to distinguish whether the living sculptures around me were made by man or by nature, but up close they proved to be just piles of dirt, of sand and stone and plant-life made. I fell in love scanning the dune-side like paragraphs of narratives unfolding in colorful syntactic sensations with the blossoming bottom line of purple, which was lavender, but whose name I could rarely remember, praising her interchangeably as "Lilac" and "Violet", but loving her scented essence as dearly by any other name. I picked up a feather and found a dead gull. I placed the feather upon its lifeless body and marveled at how futile but genuine my offering had been. I wandered through my endlessness like the star of Charlie Kaufmann's adaptation of the Smurfs. I wandered like the
painter through his painting and contemplated languidly this path, this walk of life and beauty and art, endlessly, the endless beauty stretched before, around and after me. You could say that I, who aspires to become an entheogen, was in those sighing moments an anti-the-present. I had always wandered this path, this, my endlessness; this, my life in the Altered States of America, this my destiny. Gradually my sighs gave way to shines, when atop a dune I gazed out over the ocean and the slowly setting sun, the waves of the inner sea rolling in, endlessly, like the image on a postcard from eternity, always sent out, always returned to sender, endlessly. How could you ever crave for anything? It said on the back. Does not the entirety suffice thee? By the time night had fallen, and the endlessness seamlessly rolled on towards morning, I found myself the writer, wandering through his own unfolding narrative and the syntactical nature of reality--the author seeking original syntax. Below my feet endless asterisks rolled by, grassy footnotes to the stars. I marveled at how well put together the design was, the sky folded upon the earth, as above so below, and just as I, the aspiring finalizer of infinity, began to grow weary of the flawless beauty, as I grew tiresome of the endlessness, I looked up from the grassy stars that fleeted below my feet. I looked up at a sign, a red hexagon which beckoned me to "stop" and above it rose the full moon like a full stop, marking the punctuation of my day, rising over the Golden Gate bridge of the city kept at bay, reflecting on the waters of I-don't-know-what-to-say. And I said, "you shouldn't have," with a content smile of fulfilled fatigue, as if to decline the overbearing present. "It's too much. You shouldn't have..." And of course, like there had never been a choice, I accepted the gift.
The Police are on the Playa True story: There is a judge in Nevada who has the power to put Jeffrey into jail, For a few hits of acid and the dandy ruffles of his dumpstered theater coat-sleeve. There is a judge who decides fate in Nevada with his dumb gavel homophobia And toxic childhoodYelling out in fear “This is my world!” and “This is my life!” And We are told to close our eyes, smile, lean back and fall, And it is this abused angry glowering old man face, Who will catch us, protect us, Decide our fates. So they say… Well, I say, keep your hands away and for once put your feet upon the ground. Grovel in this dirt rub it on your face. Beg your Mother for all you don’t understand. Cry your tears be ashamed of your dry cheeks. Walk through the mirrors of a thousand faces. Try on every costume and clothing. Prance the halls of congress in a tutu and tights, And embrace the American Flag like a lover, penetrateFuck, fight, and cry in her arms. Sleep out in Golden Gate park, The greatest bed in all of San Francisco, Nestled in the stars and the stripes, Until the police rustle you from your dreams and declare you Illegal And look down upon you
as you pick free food from the garbage cans of Arizmandi’s Bakery. Then hold your belly laughing... sick of the thrown out bags, 20 lbs of bagels, dry bread and crumbling pizza. Enjoy Judge! Enjoy this country! Hop rails trucks countless cars. Laugh out in wild deserts, make films, friends, Revolutions and pot lucks, Play mind games declare “Madness! Finally!” Throw bread crumbs at college students. Dance amidst the carnival say “we have won!” Only to Discover your heart and shake from the glory and the sorrow, Look around with new eyes amazed shocked, choked with emotion— Then watch as America drives past you scared and lonely In the cold suburban night. Hardened shakes her head At hobo-thumb shivering with cardboard sign prayers for a 1998 Toyota Camry dashboard heater, And a ride to Mendocino. Go to India and know what its like to be broken. Go to South America and Know what its like to be free. Go to Africa and know what its like to love and be killed. Go to Mars of the Imagination and know what its like to see this earth crawling with the Aliens of Ruination. Go to your body and scream out in tongues throw everything to the street corner on garbage day and begin anew from the soil the soiled soil of Soleil the Sun King. Go to hell and win 5,000 dollars at the craps table. Go kill yourself with whiskey and pain pills.
Wake up in the morning and decide everything is always heaven, And that you’re just not one of the angels. Go to Los Angeles, California and breathe in existential terror. Speak philosophy to money, cry out of breathe. Laugh, laugh, laugh at it all 'til you hyperventilate and have to leave, Don’t go back to Los Angeles. Tell your grandfather you’re forever justified before the heart of man, Then step into a cheap space suit and wander the streets of San Francisco, Press your hands against the glass of diners till the glass fogs and everybody sees, Enter the home of your friends unexpectedly, Stand alone uncertain and honest, Your friends silent scared on living room couch stoned and drunk. Don’t know about the boy in the bubble saint of Arizona mesa Tenochtitlan and coyote leaping into forever skies, And besides your face bubble is beginning to mist— Become a born again Christian, A Devout false laughing Buddhist, A controlled Yogi with your third eye and your fight from the guts. So mellow placid, Find Christ again, say “yeah, he’s a pretty rad guy!” Or “he’s one of the lizard people, from the star of the Palladians” Believe everything and scream at the top of your lungs, don’t give a fuck about nobody. Believe nothing and scream at the top of your lungs, don’t give a fuck about nobody. Rise and fall in mortal triumph, say “I am immortal” in the next moment kill yourself. Nothing makes sense anymore and all of the seeds of love we plant
come clashing their methamphetamine jaws, Hungry for your Soul! Hungry for your Mind’s Eye! Hungry for your… Heart! Chomp! Chomp! Fly like there’s no tomorrow and find after the worst has been said that there is more. Talk about the future like your plans for dinner, Love it, need it, believe it 100 percent, Bat not a single eye lash when none of it comes, And be happy beautiful in awe and holy astonishment, Before the latest card of god, the shuckster street magician. Say hushed flooding with blood and sadness, “I am in love.” Travel with the Jugtown Pirates and Chris Jeffries, Drink sidewalk slams 40’s smoke drink eat what you can find, Heroin too, Sing songs at the tourists passing by. Hand out dollar bills to rich people. Cry on subways high on acid. Speak in low Johnny Cash Voice: “It occurs to me that the smartest man in the world, Would be a pretty lonely fella.” Get kicked out of bars for smelling dirty. Even though you’re on stage in the middle of your only songGet kicked out of Haight Street Hippie Hotel, For giving free food to the customers. Be a bad person as well as a good person. Make no apologies. Strip shirt off. Play accordion. Shout memes like poison honest and also full of lies. Hitch hike with sweet innocent smile. Need ten bucks and a ride to Austin, Texas. 22 years of starting over,
And the first glimpse of your baby girl, Who will not know you, Maybe you’ll be dead. Be a game show host for the revolution. Strut in plaid pants ridiculous desperate. Full of life and illumination, Sell the sixties not-for-profit. Broker dreams with flyers and pamphlets. Tell people you’re Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassidy, Hunter S. Thompson, Bob Dylan, the devil himself. Be always wrong about everything and find it all turned up just right. Embrace the chaos as your wife plead at her feet and her iron high heels. Let it dig into your skin, cut bleed, “I can’t take this anymore!” “I don’t want this!” “Don’t do this to me!”, “Love meAnd the pain comes, it will always come, To add the orange wings to the butterflies, The sadness that is also life, Fills the coiffures of the forest and the skies, Rains down on you in buckets and warm hands stroking your body. A million beautiful blessings upon your naked chest, “Personally, I’m a skeptic!” Kisses, kisses, raw foods pies salads and turkey, A circle of beautiful friends gathered round together, Breathing each breathe into the revolution and our prayer, our lover’s prayer-
Die a little judge, Feel the pain and the beauty, Be poor free and in-love, Burn everything even the heavens and the earth BURN THEM! And still cry out from below the ash “I am so rich” And Don’t hurt him, Leave my friend alone, Because even then you haven’t the right, Will never have the right, To look down upon a bursting falling body, And say anything but “thank you” And “I am sorry” And “may you walk out of this court house free, As the blessed moment you walked in,” And “I will learn from you, I will learn to the very best, of my heart’s throbbing most, Though today I may stand so very low…” Do not hurt him judge—I promise you We are innocent.
In the Light of Living Language Beyond the ra'dio-sensitive flesh is the vibratory light informing trance-formation. At this rate free will can be achieved. The human body is as a crystal channel to be in-fluenced and out-fluenced by all surrounding spirits, animal, vegetable, mineral and beyond. Capable of becoming what we behold, what we aspire for is clarity above all. What separates us, if not elevates us above these beings, is the creative capacity of language by means of which we are able to grasp and re-create events in our likeness and relay the rumors of reality to One and Other. In this same sense we were created in the likeness of the Living Language, and in the fashion of a champagne fountain streaming down a pyramid of glasses, the infinite echoes of Meta, cathedralled god of Meta may be heard. I could muse infinitely in devotion to this deified fractal. By inversing with the mother of the ten thousand things, it’s easy to remove oneself from that source, talking all the way to the sister-in-law of the ten thousand things. A simple adjustment can tune us back in cue, requesting for instance the Sister-in-Lore of the ten thousand things, and wham! We're back on track. Humans are reflective, if not mimetic beings. Insects taught us the rudimentaries of social organization and architecture. We adorned their blueprint with imagination. We navigate the roads in exo-skeletal vehicles and build towers like termites. We borrowed designs from fish and built boats and oars and became water-borne. We went on to adorn those boats with imagination. By feats of imagination, we influenced cats and dogs with our wizardly wills to become domesticated and in return they taught us of, respectively, affection and loyalty.
Now begin imagining yourself - a being of imagination. Let your imagination be the measure by which to define your nature. This is the nature of Hallucination. A projected future is held before you like a carrot on a string, a face-filled vision for you to aspire towards. Bask in its glory, content as the cat-goddess Bast purring in her father's light. There is a distinct purring to The Light's communication, indeed. In Dutch a cat's purring is called spinnen, which means to weave--like on a spinning wheel. In a different context the word means spiders. I've let the thought cross my mind, that when a cat purrs it weaves with the sound a web of light upon which to project itself to distant star systems and reel in realms of infinite comfort to bestow upon the earthling lingering, servant of the fur. Similarly, under the inside outfluence of Ayahuasca, the sensational MerKaBa wriggling loose from its corporeal confinements, identified its passing as "sprryling" before rocketing me into another dimension. Sprryling signified a multidimensional many-textured expanse that thrilled through my veins and through my being like strings of self-illuminated beads jerked from the heart. Braille braids of sacred neon geometries moved past my feeling heart-fingers like textured snakeskin landscapes. The feeling of ones and zeros running like sandy beads through the timely fingers, analogued beautifully the rise and fall of the cicada's sonic cycle, which enthralled me so on those existentially romantic nights in Brazil, when loneliness would often come to visit and we'd have wonderful conversations. It always saddened me when she left.
Purge The medicine’s churned up demons from deep, old fissures. They're swimming in my stomach and she's urging me to splatter. Finally, late into the night I'm splayed out in the dark cabin. Composure abandoned, I choke into the silence, into the shame, heaving heavy shackles into a bucket of vomit.
The Brain Man holds his peachy-pink brain out in front of him. Often he asks, “how did you come to be?” There, before him, all portions can be seen. He has a better view, a clearer picture. His eyebrows rise as he admires the folded clump known as imagination. It overlaps. Dense and saturated with the juices of dreams, images, and language. Had man a better sense he would stick this portion in his mouth to taste and explore its richness and sweetness. But man fears this would do damage to his brain. So instead, he continues to quietly observe and ask it questions, crafting explanations and creating reasons. Because the brain is clever, however, it remains inactive and silent, unwilling to give away clues that would destroy the delicate threads connecting it with Mystery. When man is tired, he is ready to put the brain down on his coffee table. However, sometimes he freezes in this movement and stares in awe, as the brain fires an array of multicolored thoughts. This is a supremely pleasing and a joyous occasion. Though never lasting long, the man returns and from the folds known as logic, the brain reminds man, “you are sane, don’t worry about a thing, you are sane.”
Elephant loves elbow velvet tongues push cinnamoncoated chemicals swollen throats leaden eyelids shut mind: no white-hot want of ghosts escapes the iris severed lobes swirl & slip down amber trenches crested hope chatters teeth, hair: windblown cobwebs scattered organs, lava snacks rage & fill gnashing hollow insides fall up art, drip-drop disaster leaks from fingertips as hands that can’t crack eggs write sonnets for the sleepless drug(love)sick
Joyride Brief peaks through gathered reeds with hands slow and direct parting the green. Face sliding between into the black and cluster’ d stars, into the trickling streams then rising deluge from the fat faced moon’s warm-rain rays. Tears gather eyes well into the release of oblivion’s swell as velvet yawns smooth the clumps – 2nd chakra unclench, expand, engorge. Cosmic body conduit, orgasmic central nervous station synergistically set aflame. Wiggling strings wielding chaos webs, hot acid bath swarming skin, entropic matter seeping seeing matter being pulled apart again. Rent clock in a basket spinning reassembled resembling mine semblance. My corporeal topsoil soiled, purged, sluiced in dripping moon juice, unfurled. Water and dirt made my muddy heart pump like goat skins stretched tight with might into the snarling rhythmic night. Teeth clenched & bared, warrior mask initiation. Surging, pulsing, overwhelming; a lover’s invocation. An escape from headspace mausoleum, where you share beds with the dead and forget you’ve ever seen the clouds spread. Discontent to play hide and seek with Argus, rather peering soft his ghostly lens: Silver haired vision, you’ve taken me through the glass once again. Crumbling roses fill our hands as we sway to the mellifluous urban orchestral band, hammers and
Artist Mini-Bios Michaelangelo: Michaelangelo was born in The Netherlands to a dawn of the imagination, but slept late, waking around the fall of man. Luckily he had a keen recollection of his dreams regarding a fall reversal. He is the author of a number of works, including a seance fiction collection and a number of inner-children's stories. He is also a painter, photo-and videographer and the (co-) founder and vocalist of the astral orchestral bardic rock band Morph Dwarf and the psychosomantric mirage band TheaTerRa. www.snailconvention.com
Sonya Genel: Born in Russia and raised in Boston, Sonya hails from the East Coast with wanderlust in the heart. After art school, she drove west, learned to climb mountains in the Wyoming, and eventually ended up in San Francisco where she now lives pursuing her elusive purpose in life. Making frequent escapes to places with rivers & trees, she spends most of her time makes things with her hands, teaching yoga and ecstatically dancing. www.SonyaGenel.com www.SonyaYoga.com
Marc Seestaedt: Born 1979 on the Baltic Sea Coast, Marc lives and works in Berlin as a photographer, freelance artist and social worker. His slice-of-life graphic stories project LIFESTRIPs has been broadcast in the Berlin subway since February 2006. www.lifestrips.de www.marcseestaedt.de
Jeremy Atkins: Does not plan his pieces. He starts with a few lines and then breaks up the spaces between them and around them until recognizable images begin to appear. He hopes to one day incorporate this technique with his psychotherapy patients to help them gain a better understanding of their unconscious processes. arrowfox@yahoo.com http://www.myspace.com/thequietone1864
Steven Child: (Childlike Divine) A visionary projection embodied in light, sound, and feeling, channeled through reverse DSL from The Divine Source at Large, in collaboration with Celestial bodies, Metro Gnomes, and brought to you through the cosmic connectivity of the UniVerse. http://www.reverbnation.com/childlikedivine
Amelia Anne Sandy: exploring emotion, experience, and expression nature is my lifeblood, spirit is my scythe siae.tumblr.com siaelin@gmail.com
Matt Adams: (Blank Tapes) Matt Adams is a musician who plays under the moniker “Blank Tapes”. His drawings in this edition come from CD sleeves to his albums. About his creations, Matt could be said to be “part California country and California anglophile and California rock ‘n’ roll … there’s something in him too of the complete and casual confidence of the Southern California soul surfer—do you know what those are? They’re the ones who surf for spirit, not for sport, and when you think of sunsets over endless water you are thinking like a soul surfer and you are thinking maybe a bit like Matt Adams, too.” www.theblanktapes.com www.myspace.com/theblanktapes
Jessamyn Cuneo: Jessamyn has enjoyed recreational drugs since an early age. She grew up in a Boston suburb in a house near a brook where she first learned how to inhale.
Michael Warren Grant: Editor-in-Chief and dilettante di vita, Michael founded SynergyZine in 2007 as a college project, and with the help of some amazingly talented friends, SynergyZine has grown to its present incarnation. Expression, expansion, collaboration and reaffirmation of community – these are the bedrock of our magazine. Get involved! Email editor@synergyzine.com for more info.
Rickey Lee Bauman: Rickey Lee, Co-Editor of Synergyzine, writes: "I drew forth my weapon, which happened to be a feather, and called to the dragon that he surrender. He cracked with laughter and told me I would have to write a most convincing letter to entreaty his mercy. With my feather, I drafted two such letters. One, more antagonistic in tone, ended on a somewhat Saint Georgian note. But the other, which I chose, ended with these words: 'a dragon befriended can build town and plough field. ploughandfeather.com
SynergyZine Release Party Playbill SynergyZine 6: Entheogenesis was released April 3rd, 2010 at BlueSix Acoustic Room in San Francisco’s Mission District. www.myspace.com/bluesixcenter
In addition to poetry and story readings by SynergyZine artists, Audio Alchemy was provided by the following musical/mixed media acts:
The Blank Tapes www.theblanktapes.com
Giant Cloud
http://giantcloudmusic.com/
Vandella
http://www.myspace.com/vandellasound
Michaelangelo
www.snailconvention.com For pictures/video of the event, visit www.facebook.com/synergyzine
Credits SynergyZine 6: Entheogenesis Alpha Print
SynergyZine Publishing Editor-in-Chief: Michael Warren Grant Co-Editor: Rickey Lee Bauman For submissions contact: editor@synergyzine.com Please visit our publication online: www.issuu.com/synergyzine As well as our website (under construction): www.synergyzine.com Donations and Patronage (via Paypal): editor@synergyzine.com Printed by Culture Lite Printing In San Francisco, CA Released on: April 3rd, 2010 Type Fonts: Californian FB and victor moscoso Cover by Michaelangelo Title Page by Steven Child