Cobwebs of Trips has something new to discover for everyone from the psychonauts, the scientists, and the poets to the spiritualists, the campaigners, and the politically-minded.
Filled with little-known snippets of psychedelic history, Dickins delves into the less explored terrain of psychedelia – pulling up archives of Kenneth Leach’s work in Bishopsgate Institute and spotlighting lesser-known writers like Harry Fainlight and influential novels like Simon’s Daughter by Ronald Sandison.
“The documents themselves tell their own story,” explains Dickins.
“Reading Sandison’s book, for example, it’s actually a deeply historical book. He’s trying to tell a narrative about Britain using LSD. Now, 40 years after that book was published – and that book was published 20 years after he was doing his LSD research – you get a kind of hindsight.
“Were the visions of the past brought to bear on reality? The answer is often not, but the answer is that things did change, but in unexpected ways.
“A lot of what I do in Cobweb of Trips is think about that – has it been useful? Have things changed in the ways that people hoped and what was LSD’s role within that?
“People pin all sorts of hopes on LSD, with one’s personal journey, one’s community journey, one’s national journey, or the international journey. People pin hopes on LSD being able to change things – nearly always, they’re wrong. But change does always happen – it’s about trying to figure out, how did that happen? Why did that happen? For whose benefit? That’s the storytelling of Cobweb of Trips.”
From one of the most knowledgeable minds on psychedelia in modern Britain and featuring a foreword from Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, philosopher of mind and metaphysics, Rob Dickins’ Cobweb of Trips is a must-read for the newly enthused and the connoisseurs alike – and a new staple for the psychedelic bookshelf.
Stephanie Price | Community Blogger at Chemical Collective
Stephanie is one of our community bloggers here at Chemical Collective. If you’re interested in joining our blogging team and getting paid to write about subjects you’re passionate about, please reach out to Sam via email at samwoolfe@gmail.com
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