Books yet to be published
Homecoming
Homecoming is a creative work of non-fiction, based on my experience with entheogenic mushrooms six years ago. The experience occurred in woods in England and is confirmation of the fact that hallucinogenic plants can trigger off positive and important experiential insights into reality, if ingested with serious and deep motivation, in absence of fear and in favourable circumstances. The main body of the book is accompanied by my reflections on different facets of this experience. The second part of the book contains short essays, connected with this experience, ranging from the questions of our culture, of the need for deeper experiences of reality, to examination of the emerging new ways of initiation. This booklet reaches conclusions very similar to Huxley's The Door of Perception . Romanja domov (Pilgrimage Home)
is a creative work of non-fiction published in Slovene in 2002. It is a book of essays and excerpts from diaries written over the last two decades. It is composed of three parts. The Valley deals with my life in the Dragonja River Valley in Istria, with its periods of creative community and family life and present solitude. The Hill contains my experiences and reflections from the neighbouring “House of Silence”, a place of peaceful meditation, where I spent several weeks over the course of several winters. Finally, The Shore describes my solitary life in a deserted hamlet on the shore of the island of Cres, containing some strong emotional meetings with a girlfriend. I write also about our trip to Greece, where we roamed around ancient holy sites, being especially touched by a peculiar spontaneous experience, a kind of shock, whilst visiting the ruins of Eleusis. The text ends with the realisation that one should accept the changing of time and events as a field accepts the seasons passing over it... 215 pages
Eleusinian Mysteries and the Question of Contemporary Initiation
(excerpt) "For among the many excellent and indeed divine institutions
In the beginning of this unpublished essay - which with years of research is steadily growing into a book - I deal at length and in all round form with different aspects of the Eleusinian Mysteries. I have mentioned and given respect to all available notions about the content of this initiation, which had some grounding in real circumstances and so could happen. No direct description of the happenings exist, due to the oath of silence. It seems evident that the Mysteries happened on a large human scale. For example, in 408 BC about 2150 were initiated in the same night, statistics which come from information regarding the initiation income of that year (Cavanough). I take into serious consideration the proposals of many authors (summed up in Wasson's) about the entheogen (psychotropic) effect of the kykeon, the mixture the initiated drank before entering Telesterion, and the hallucinatory visions, Plato's pantasmata , being at least a part of the initiation. This hypothesis is based on the fact that Telesterion, with people sitting on all four sides of the hall, with its 42 massive columns and a building (Anaktoron) in the middle, didn't permit the witnessing of any common event. On the basis of several historic quotations and material documentation I suggest that opium poppies were the central source for the preparation of this mixture. I also try to put across the real meaning of the Mysteries with an exploration of the rich and meaningful signification of the Greek root telé in Telesterion (Building for telé).
New aspects and questions
I raise and try to answer, some new questions about the Mysteries. For example, in connection with the Mysteries every author takes for granted that the Lesser Mysteries happened in the Athenian suburb of Agrai and that people walked from Athens to Eleusis before the Greater Mysteries. But this is in fact true only for the Mysteries after 600 BC, when they became pan-hellenic. What about the whole proceedings of the original Mysteries, which were held in Eleusis from 1500 BC on, i.e. in the first 900 years ? We known that this first initiation took place in the open air in front of Megaron (near latter Anaktoron) and in about a quarter of space of the Pericleian Telesterion - but I could not find a trace of speculation of what the rest of activities could have been about. Other questions include: the condition for taking part in the initiation, besides not committing crime, was the understanding of Greek. So what about this condition in the last half-millennium of Mysteries, when they became pan-roman ? Did the initiated Fabia Paulina, the wife of prefect of Iliricus, know Greek? And if she somehow did, surely the initiated Brahmin, a guest of Augustus, the one that jumped into the fire (hopefully not because of a misunderstanding...), did not. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the Mysteries underwent significant changes - from rules and proceedings to economic aspects – whilst still maintaining their basic effectiveness. Researchers often lacked a simple pragmatic tonus or at least imagination. It is not enough to see a nice vessel on the head of eleusinian cariatid and presume that it contained kykeon, which was drunk before initiation, without taking into consideration that, to have at least a sip for everyone, it was necessary to have about 100 litres of the mixture and that if kykeon were drunk from the same vessel, the drinking of two thousand people would take several hours, which would stagnate the proceedings.
Grotowski
Grotowski was, in contrast, a man who was thoroughly pragmatic. Probably even too much: with a greater knowledge of the Mysteries he would know that his last project in the Polish woods, in 1980, represented a genuine continuation of the essence of the Eleusinian event. New initiation into deeper reality in Europe, after a gap of more than 1500 years, happened again after years of intensive preparation, during his complex international project called the Theatre of Sources. It was conceived in gradual and processional form, with open participation, and as with the Mysteries, minus the myth of Demeter and Core and kykeon and, of course, in a context of a modern world with contemporarily complex and individual people. I describe at length the aspects of this project I took part in it (its further development was disrupted by riots and sadly broken down by martial law the next year) and compare the common points and differences with the Eleusinian Mysteries. I analyse the last period of Grotowski's work in exile, called The Art as Vehicle , which enabled some members of his research team to reach the very depths of their being, but I also explain, why this period, contrary to his own opinion and of some theoreticians on his work, didn't reflect the Mysteries.
Other Approaches to New Initiation
I discuss the delicate question of the use of entheogens as triggers of deeper perception of reality, describing and analysing Pahnke's Good Friday Experiment in ‘66, discussing the problem of fitting ritual frame and propose, as one of possible future paths of research, the »objective ritual structures« of Grotowski and researchers influenced by his work. One of them is me. I describe the results of three decades of research and as honestly as I can discuss the pro et contra of »organic« and »entheogen« approach, dilemmas and possibilities .
Conclusion It is the first time that an active researcher on contemporary initiation discusses the aspects of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the possible application of its essence to modern times. I believe that by joining theoretical information and speculation with various personal experiences and long active research, my text comes across as interesting, fresh and stimulating.
|
