JUNE IS PRIDE MONTH.  It is also the time of the 2023 Psychedelic Science Conference in Colorado.  Do queerness & psychedelics have anything in common? 

Well, we could make an argument (as Rachel Hayden does in Queer Liminal) that trans, queer, intersex and even standard homosexuality are, like the wise use of plant medicines, strongly historically associated with what Alexander Bard calls shamanoids. 

On the other hand, we could just look at the list of books available from Synergetic Press.  Check out their promotion of Diana Quinn's intriguing manifesto on Queering Psychedelics. 

Publishing is a weird thing. 

Obviously, the website you are currently reading is closely associated with Perspectiva Press.  But why make books?  Isn't that hopelessly outdated?  Sooooooooooooooo 20th century?  Maybe not. 

The rise of AI (okay, okay, statistical prediction engines.... so far) accelerates the sense that the digital universe is an unreliable domain of derealization and rampant simulation.  That may prompt a countermovement.  Are we going back to in-person gatherings.  Real churches?  Hardcopy books?

It does seem like books are enjoying a resurgence within the emergence communities -- and that's where the Synergetic Press comes in.  They've been at this for a while.  They haven't given up.

Originally a small cabal of neo-Gurdjieffian ecological adventurers led by John Allen (the poet & polymath responsible for the Institute of Ecotechnics and later the original Biosphere 2 project), this 20th century network of specialists in regenerative ecology, futurism and human development produced a publishing arm that is still flourishing.

Their slogan -- regenerating people and planet -- even sounds like the leading edge of what today's emergent developmental, meaning-crisis & Regen communities are working on. 

So in the spirit of honoring our elders in this crusade (and not falling into the media trap of imagining everything just started one minute ago) remember the people who have been working on this for a while -- and maybe peruse the synergetic catalog. 

And while you're at it, for God's sake:  

Write a book already.