Wild Kindness; Artistic Practice as Psychedelic Integration

When Bett’s writer’s block began to negatively affect every area of her life, she turned to psilocybin mushrooms for help. The Psychedelic provided an ethos, a way of seeing, a scaffolding that catalyzed her non-fiction book The Wild Kindness; A Psilocybin Odyssey. Bett advocates for rogue psychedelic use outside of medical and therapeutic establishments, arguing that artistic practice is a legitimate ceremonial form in which to explore the nature of consciousness.

After her talk she will perform a piece from recent work she has done in collaboration with dancer, poet and archivist Rosemary Carroll.

Speaker Bio:

Bett Williams is the author of The Wild Kindness; A Psilocybin Odyssey. She has been a featured speaker at Horizons Perspectives of Psychedelics Conference, a regular writer for Lucid News and DoubleBlind Magazine and featured on Comedy Centrals Tales From the Trip YouTube Series. Currently she is collaborating and touring with dancer, writer and archivist Rosemary Carroll. @love.rosemary.carroll

“In general, this is a balm. It is the polar opposite of rhe Michael Pollan book.” – Molly Young, Vulture, New York Times

The Wild Kindness is absolutely electric. It’s not only the subject matter, which is mystical and fascinating. Bett William’s voice is untamed and inspired, full of gonzo humor, ambitious daring and high-vibrating heart. The personal, the political, the spiritual and the unknown come together into a mesmerizing read that is full-on literary fireworks. —MICHELLE TEA

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic and parapsychology researcher. Having just graduated from Chelsea College of Arts, her work over the last six years has been informed by her concurrent shamanic training, work with the Wixárika (Huichol) tribe from Mexico, and role as a research assistant under Dr David Luke of Greenwich university in the study of the psychedelic compound N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and other worlds. Walking between the worlds of the arts, science and the occult, she combines media and investigative techniques from each to inform and articulate one another in the exploration of ontology, consciousness and altered states, mytholopeia and mythology, ecology, the human condition and its relation to the environment, otherness and mortality. She describes her practise and research as contemporary Memento Mori (‘remember you will die’), and explores what that means in a time of mass ecocide and species extinction.

Follow her on the crooked path on Instagram @maya_themessiah

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019). When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 300 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex

This Psychedelic series is Curated by Maya Bracknell Watson and Dr David Luke

May 18th 2022 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

£5 - £10 & By Donation

These are extraordinary times and the plague has hit some harder than others, tickets are by donation –
if you possibly can £10 is much appreciated, but £2 is also very welcome.
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