The interpretation of symbolic structures is forced into an infinity of symbolic contextual meanings.

M. M. Bakhtin

Historically, Lions have been symbols of power from the Persian to the British Empires, from Hinduism (Narasimha) to Judaism, Islam and Christianity (see Kings, Judges, Proverbs, Samuel, Isaiah, Daniel, Numbers, Revelations, etc. and of course The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). In Meso and South American traditions Jaguars are associated with creation stories and shamanism.  From Mesopotamia to the Americas, cats and the divine have enjoyed an intimate relationship for  at least 10,000 years. Big cats (genus Panthera) have been deployed as markers for power, virility, nobility, the numinous, and more recently as mascots for Apple’s operating systems.

Apple Inc. has been naming (and code-naming) their operating systems after big cats since the release of OS X 10.0 (Cheeta) in 2001. Their newest release, scheduled for Summer 2011 is called “Lion.” It turns out they’ve chosen a stock photo of a Lion for their marketing materials that was also used by a Belgian anti-immigration nationalist party (Vlaams Belang) in 2007 along with the slogan “Flemish Force.”  Gizmodo reports that the photo, previously available from stock agencies Shutterstock and Fotolia, is called “The King” – though it’s now been removed.

Apple’s Lion (2010)

Vlaams Belang’s Lion (2007)

And, as ZDnet’s Apple Core blog points out, this isn’t the first unusual encounter Apple has had with stock imagery of big cats. For the current release of OS X, 10.6 aka Snow Leopard, they chose to remove blood from the predators mouth.

Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard, cleaned up

The message with Snow Leopard? OS X is fierce, but not too fierce.  Now Apple may be asking: how do you remove the ‘stain’ of an anti-immigration nationalist party from your cat?

For those who have encountered the sacred mushroom, the psilocybin experience is like an ancient codex whose glyphs are at once baffling and clear. To make sense of it, each must perform an act of translation or interpretation by which the strange is rendered familiar. But how should this be done? In the post-war period alone an original psychological framework has given way to mysticism, itself replaced in turn by the language of shamanism.

Here, I want to draw attention away from the mushroom experience itself – the usual province of trip-lit – to a consideration of the ways it has been interpreted throughout history. For, contrary to received wisdom, very few cultures have decoded the mushroom as we do. I shall ask a fundamental question: does the mushroom bring genuine transcendence, or are the experiences it occasions forever bound by culture?

(Horizons Conference Program, 2009)

Letcher began by situating himself in academia and describing how he arrived at religious studies.  He had started with an interest in ecology and direct action and was then invited to pursue a PhD in religion.  He explained that he was looking critically at the beliefs of the psychedelic community and we might not like his findings.  He discussed hermeneutics and told the audience that they to, even if they didn’t know what it meant, were hermeneuticists.

He made it clear that his is a scholarly approach, and he won’t give a pass to any of the myth making that is going on in the psychedelic community.  In fact, he wants to debunk those myths.  He expressed his intent to “debunk” the UFO cults, the 2012 movement, the valorization of R. Gordon Wasson, and other mythologies constructed within the psychedelic community.  He discussed the problem of ‘seeing’ mushrooms in ancient art when they aren’t there – and suggested that this can be debunked because they are not in fact mushrooms.  Why?  Because they don’t look like mushrooms.

I agreed with his main point that our interpretations of experience are based (to some degree) in culture, and that we are always engaging in a process of meaning making when we interpret, describe, recount and mythologize experience.  But what wasn’t clear to me is why he seemed to be so hostile toward the mythologies that were being constructed within the psychedelic community. So I asked:

“I understand why you would like to see a more rigorous academic discourse on psychedelics, but aren’t the myths being constructed around Terence McKenna and the 2012 communities not something to be debunked, but something we should look at using that same academic rigor?”

He took this question (which I realize now I should have phrased more precisely) as an opportunity to discuss why he didn’t like the 2012 movement – an answer that boiled down to two things: because it’s millenarian, and that it doesn’t leave room for free will (this answer seemed to exclude the Daniel Pinchbeck brand of 2012ism/mayanism).  If I’d had a chance for a follow up, I would have been more specific and a little more forceful in my critique, asking:

“Why would a scholar of religion be interested in debunking ANY myths?  Isn’t myth the object of our study?  Are you also, for example, interested in debunking the myth systems of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam or is your interest in debunking restricted to these specific new religious movements and myths developing around the psychedelic community?”

Buffy: So not stellar, huh?
Willow: Talk. All talk. Blah Blah Gaia. Blah Blah Moon…menstrual life force power thingy. You know, after a coupla sessions I was hoping we could get into something real but . . .
Buffy: No actual witches in your witch group?
Willow: No. Bunch of wanna-blessed-bes. You know, nowadays every girl with a henna tattoo and a spice rack thinks she’s a sister of the Dark Ones.

The effect of films like “The Craft,” “Practical Magic,” and the television series “Charmed” and “Buffy…” is far reaching. Social networks, retail suppliers and bloggers adopt a posture either in favor of or opposed to these depictions and construct identities in line with or opposed to them. There seems to be very little terrain online that hasn’t been touched by “slayage.”

You can download Pogo’s amazing creations on last.fm.

2/9/10: Update, the work is back up on the original site here.

This is free-writing in this post, a list of ideas:

* Spirituality is a right.

* In the mode of historical pursuits of social justice struggle a new cafeteria-style liberation theology must be written.

* All states of consciousness, even those which do not directly obviously produce capital, must be allowed, protected and encouraged.

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/

Discerning Brute is right on here – it’s the trend toward cruelty based shock art that is so disturbing. Let’s modify the old art school adage to reflect this trend:

“If you can’t do it well, do it big.
If you can’t do it big do it red.
If you can’t do it red, do it in multiples.
If you can’t do it in multiples, add animal cruelty for shock value and you’ll be right on your way to some Biennial or another”.