Reality Sandwich | Rak Razam’s blog.

Cosmovision: An Aya Odyssey
Rak Razam

The following is an excerpt from Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey now available from Icaro Publishing.

“The vine has spread her tendrils across the world and a genuine archaic revival was underway. My bags were packed; South America beckoned, and the ancient mysteries of the rainforest awaited. I wanted in on it…”

Iquitos, Wednesday July 5th., 2006

IQUITOS IS ELECTRIC WITH NOONDAY HUMIDITY as Vance, John and I wade through the horde of locals hustling trinkets outside the Parthenon gates and join the other ayahuasca gringos amassing by the pool. It’s Bowman’s birthday — he’s twenty-four today — and drinking with Guillermo is going to be his present.

We’re waiting for Alexis, a blond, twenty-ish dude from Washington D.C. who’s going to help translate the interview with Guillermo I’ve lined up. Alexis is a Princeton dropout who’s backpacking around on a spiritual path, drinking ayahuasca with shamans and asking critical questions to deepen his own understanding. He’s drunk with Guillermo four times now, and calls him “a fucking Jedi.” When he turns up an hour late, wearing a Corey Feldman School of the Arts t-shirt, I know he’ll fit right in with our media crew.

Vance wants to get out to the Espiritu de Anaconda, Guillermo’s ayahuasca retreat to take some shots before we lose the afternoon light, so we pile into two motorcarros and speed away from the front of the Hotel Parthenon before the touristos bus has even arrived. But our motorcarros get bogged down on the dirt road turnoff from Km 14, a long undulating strip of mud from recent rains, and we get out to walk. The local villagers are busy building a concrete footpath to run from the highway past their village and towards the ayahuasca retreat a few miles in, and part of me wonders if this will facilitate t-shirt and refreshment stalls springing up wherever the gringos go, like mushrooms after a fresh rain.

for the full story click here.

Interview with Rak Razam.

Australia’s experiential journalist speaks out on entheogens, ayahuasca, salvia, and global psychedelic culture.
Interview by James Kent

Self-described “experiential journalist” Rak Razam is a busy man: Two wives, two kids, and two new entheogenic books to promote. Editor of “The Journeybook: Travels on the Frontiers of Consciousness” and author of “Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey”, Razam has his finger on the pulse of the Australian entheo scene and the global awakening. He graciously took the time to answer our questions for this exclusive DoseNation interview.

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Reality Sandwich | Divine Voyeurs: Salvia on YouTube by Rak Razam.

Phil’s sitting on a bed in a crashpad somewhere in the UK about to smoke Salvia Divinorum, an ancient Mazatec hallucinogenic herb. He’s a gangly lad in his 20s with shoulder-length dark hair, dressed in blue jeans and a dark t-shirt. As his friend hands him the bong he bites his lip in anticipation of this strange new drug he’s about to be filmed taking, which will later be posted on YouTube and broadcast to the world.

The background music is “Over The Line” by The Crystal Method from the Tweekend album, a chilled favourite of the salvia set. Phil’s friend lights the bong — it’s a 5x dose, not a massive hit but a decent sized pinch. Smoke curls up the chamber. Phil coughs, quickly holds his nose to stop any smoke escaping, then leans back against the wall as the effects start to come on. Within seconds he’s in another world. A smile breaks across his face and he keeps reaching forward like he’s grasping for something interdimensionally, trying to cut and open a door in the air with his hands.

“Ah, now I get it,” he says, his speech slurred and his body motor control impaired. He begins fidgeting around on the bed, gesticulating erratically. “Whooaww, whooaahhh” he says, over and over, waving his arms above his head like he’s at a rock concert. It’d be tragic if it wasn’t so funny.

Read the full story, excerpted from The Journeybook: Travels on the Frontiers of Consciousness here.

01/05/09

An interview conducted mid-April 2009 with Ryder Susman of the hip Gen Y video site Vive Cool City.com. Here we talk about The Journeybook, being an “experiential” journalist into psychedelic media, and one of the stories in The Journeybook, “Divine Voyeurs, The Salvia YouTube Trip”.

Experiental Journalist – Vive Cool City