John Lilly: psychedelic scientist: In those days there was a very pure pharmaceutical form of LSD available from the Sandoz corporation, and Dr. Lilly applied to get hold of some of this. His request was granted. One wonders, now, what the American government and the Sandoz corporation thought he was doing with the substance. Probably they thought he was giving it to his dolphins. In fact he was taking it himself.

Fellow Creatures at Christmas: a Ranter's Yuletide Fable: Those of you who know me will know that I am obsessed by the Ranters.

They were a sort of anarchist spiritual cult who flourished, briefly, in the period of the interregnum between the end of the English Civil War and the restoration of Charles II in 1660. They were Christians, but they took on a particularly radical form of Christianity known as antinomianism. “Antinomian” means “against the law”. It refers to the doctrine of free grace, by which it is understood that Jesus came to overthrow the law, to forgive our sins and that therefore, we cannot sin any more.

Christmas gift ideas to inspire and excite: Imagine. You have a guest around for a romantic evening. You’ve savoured a candle-lit dinner for two and are sitting, cuddled up on the settee, in the flickering half-light, preparing for the customary kiss. She waits. He smoulders. She pouts. He burns. He turns to her with eyes of flame and says, in a deep and sultry voice, “frothy milk darling?” How could anyone resist?

Christmas gift ideas to inspire and excite: The problem is that in your desperation to get it all done you go into some form of a blind frenzy. This is a bit like that battle frenzy that Viking Berserkers were said to experience, where they see red and want to kill everything in sight.

Only you don’t see red, you see bargains. And you don’t want to kill everything in sight, you want to buy it.

Manufacturing Consent for an Attack upon Iran: It’s at this point that I’d like to remind you of the dodgy dossier - information gleaned from a disaffected taxi driver, and cut and pasted from the internet - which made up the bulk of evidence in the run-up to the war on Iraq.

This is what Herman and Chomsky are referring to when they talk of “the manufacture of consent”. This kind of information doesn’t have to be true, it merely has to be repeated often enough and loud enough for people to start to believe that it is true.

In the Temple of the Heart: Amanae Receiving Workshop, Brussels, June 3rd - 5th 2011: According to the Penguin Complete English Dictionary a revelation is:

1a the act or an instance of revealing something. b something revealed, especially a sudden and illuminating disclosure. 2 a truth believed to be revealed by God to man, or the communicating of it.

Semi-Skimmed Democracy: Check out the word “oligarchy” in your dictionary if you want a proper definition of the political system under which we actually labour.

It’s from the Greek, and it means rule by the few.

In modern terms, “the few” are a political and economic elite who cream off the wealth for themselves.

In other words, what we are being sold is a form of semi-skimmed democracy.

It’s watered down; but, hey, it’s good for us isn’t it?

Tam Lin, Halloween and the Ritual of Transformation:
Then would I never tire, Janet,
In Elfish land to dwell,
But aye, at every seven years,
They pay the tithe to hell;
And I am so fat and fair of flesh,
I fear 'twill be mysell.

Useless Idiots: cuts, war crimes and quantitative easing: The day that they begin reading out the names of the Iraqi war dead alongside those of the 9/11 victims will be the day I know that sanity has returned to our world.