Image: The Shaman, by Amanda Sage

Deep within the concrete heart of downtown Los Angeles, I recently met Jimmy Bleyer, a wizard in the form of an art curator who is behind the Temple Of Visions, a new multi-arts space that opened January 9th. It will be the first gallery dedicated totally to the emerging contemporary Visionary Art culture here in the City of Angels.

I consider it significant that most of us find it impossible not to overeat at Christmas time. Likewise, we cannot avoid company on New Year’s Eve. It could be a proverb. Just try it—and afterwards, ask yourself whether you believe in free will. Look at all the women lined up and packing the halls in shopping centres before Christmas, purchasing last-minute presents for their kids and relatives. They are sweating in trolley jams. Their money drains away as their stress levels rise. There must be an enormous percentage of people who dread the festive season, yet they keep participating. Why? Don’t tell me it is free will.

I stirred and awoke to find myself seated on the couch. A glorious sun shone through everything, as if my surroundings were translucent.

The television was on and I was alone.

Santa Clause does exist. He exists in the Fourth Century, in the area that is now northern Turkey, under the name of Saint Nicholas. To say that he doesn’t exist is a lie, as much of a lie as saying he has magic reindeers and a home in present day North Pole.

   The obvious rebuttal is to say he existed—not exists—in the past tense. My argument is that this is not more truthful, just more ‘our-own-time-centric’. Biased, in other words, like a metaphysical prejudice. Saint Nicholas does exist in that time and place. Being biased towards our own time and place is closed-minded, and leads to illusion and even violence. A case in point: somebody once said that the world is flat, based on the fact that no one in his own time could prove that it was round. Somebody could prove it, of course, in the future. But some notable people went to prison or were tortured, or killed, because they did not cater to the time-bias (shall I say ‘timeism’?). Giordano Bruno, I hear, is being burned at the stake in 1590 for affirming the Earth's motion around the sun.

Dropbear's quirky VJ mashup for Bouncing Stones by Spoonbill, one of the standout tracks on the from 2008's Gourmet Scavenger compilation released by Omelette Records.

Join passionate plant heads sharing their experiences with psychoactive plants and their relationship to the Gaian matrix. Behind the chemistry are there active intelligences in the plant world, and if so how do we best interact with them? How can reclaiming our human-vegetal partnership help us become a sustainable culture? Why do we need to connect to the plant world? If plants can be teachers, can humans be students? What is our historical and bio-chemical relationship with plants? What does Nature have to teach us? What is the Australian plant kingdom’s place in the global entheo blossoming?

American Drug War : The Last White Hope details the journey of Producer/Director Kevin Booth  trying to understand the complexity and paradoxes of the ongoing drug war in America after losing three members of his family to legal drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs.  Through a wide variety of interviews with users, dealers, DEA officers, CIA operatives, the former US Drug Czar, prisoners, wardens, doctors, medical marijuana administrators, lawyers, victims and rednecks the documentary covers a huge range of the the opinions and issues revolving around this highly controversial issue.

Uranium Wormwood> Andy Thomas (Android)

Andy Thomas' work creates a visual fusion between Nature and Technology. By taking photos of plants, insects and machines and compositing them with artificially created forms in various 3D programs. The very process of the art he creates is symbolic of mankind’s continuing corruption of the natural world. His photographic endeavours have led him to such exotic locations as Borneo, Laos and the rainforests of Tasmania and the Daintree River.

Freak of Nature > by Andy Thomas