I've been dying to get membership to DMT-Nexus so I could share this with everyone:
This actually details an experience that happened almost 3 years ago. I originally typed up a trip report later that night so that I would never forget. Link to old report
Everything that I wrote was an exact account of what I remember happening, though there were parts that I had accidently omitted, yet still remember clearly. Also I was never quite happy with the way it was written and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, so felt it was time to be revised. Plus it deserves it. Every word is true and as I remember.
I also feel it is one worth reading; I have never really read an account quite like this before.
It is long but I think I’ve captured pretty much every detail here.
It all started when a close friend, Tom, said he wanted to try Salvia Divinorum. I had tried salvia on about five separate occasions, breaking through twice. I always found the experience to be fun, weird and utterly convincing. Yet, as the effects wore off I was always on the fence with regards to whether there was actually anything substantial/real to the psychedelic experience. That said, I was very much interested in everything regarding it, and it occupied a lot of my time. We both had plenty of experience with various drugs, if that matters, and had both tried psychedelics.
Anyway, I acquired some salvia and so the experience began on March 23rd 2008. Easter Sunday.
Tom had been working late and it was in the early hours of the morning. I’d had a few joints earlier in the night and was feeling slightly mellow but otherwise sober. He arrived at my house and we split the 2 gram pile of 20x Salvia Divinorum into quarters, opting for around a half gram each, if memory serves me right.
Tom started to play a downtempo album that has came to mean a lot to both of us. It was by Oliver Lieb, and the album is called L.S.G. – Into Deep. For anybody that hasn’t heard it, it is a flowing collection of beautiful luscious soundscapes and powerful, raw, broken beats.
In the kitchen we quickly fashioned a bucket (gravity bong in the USA) out of an empty bottle and loaded the salvia into the chillum. I went first, Tom was to follow. I pulled a bucket and inhaled, exhaling straight away. Tom sarcastically quipped that he hoped I wasn’t looking forward to doing salvia too much again, because I’d forgotten to hold the smoke in.
I used the remainder in the chillum to quickly pull a second bucket and the (...all a little too familiar) feeling of salvia gripped my entire essence. The way it looks, smells and tastes which just shrieks divine mystery at you. Salvia Divinorum is so very worthy of a name like Sage, as I was about to find out.
Suddenly, I heard an announcement. “You are the millionth person in the world to be called Michael Ross”. It sounded like a game show announcement, and it was fucking horrible. It had happened as if I were just pottering about my everyday life, and then this.
I saw people being pulled in from everywhere, slowly weaving and assembling piece by piece, letter by letter into my name in the sky. It was that freaky, weird, salvia Lego effect and it was like all the other pieces were me. A melody struck on the album. As it did so it merged with the experience, becoming a twisted and significant soundtrack of the moment. I was the final instalment and I became it.
And that was it. As far as I remembered, I hadn’t taken any drugs, just encountered an elaborate and sinister prank on my reality. This was my purpose and I felt utterly worthless. It was fucking shit.
I was wondering what to do with my pointless existence, stuck inside a giant name in the sky when, suddenly, it started fall apart piece by piece like a stack of cards. My kitchen kind of rapidly unfolded into view from a single point on my right hand side and I was forcefully flung back into reality. The giant name was still falling apart and the last piece was Tom, who I watched being flung forcefully into the room.
I’m sure that those who have experienced the wrath of salvia can relate to how utterly disturbing it felt to know that something like this had just occurred. And I cannot begin to describe how comforting it was to know that Tom was back.
I watched Tom kind of crumple backwards and ran at him with my arms outstretched. He got pushed back into the door, knocking the bucket over and later, we found, creating quite a sizeable hole in the kitchen wall with the door handle.
As tom hit the floor he was clearly distressed and started repeatedly asking what was happening. I picked him up and, remembering we’d just smoked salvia (big fucking relief), told him that he was simply on drugs and I was taking him somewhere more comfortable. “The same thing that happened to you happened to me in there!”, he shrieked. I'd felt the same.
I helped him into the living room and placed him onto the couch. Then, as he pointed at the wall behind me in horror I heard the words that would change everything.
“What the FUCK is that”.
As I turned to face the wall I was greeted by the presence of a life sized entity facing us on the wall. She was a glowing blue silhouette, emanating femininity and coming from a tear in reality bridging into salvia space. I knew that Tom could see the same thing and I couldn’t quite grasp it, so sat back on the couch with my head in my hands, unable to look up at her because what I was seeing was quite simply too real, too powerful. She started speaking and reciting all of her different names. “I am the Salvia Goddess. My name is Ska Maria Pastora, Mary The Sheperdess, Sally D, The Seer Of She Sages” etc etc. “I am powerful beyond belief”, she said “… but I’m not really bad”.
At this point on the album a very dark and forbidding, Portuguese female voice talks in much the same way. You actually distinctly hear the words “sally d” spoken on the album, although it actually comes from the spoken word “No Causalidad”, which is the name of the track and some of the only spoken Portuguese on the album that I’ve ever come to know the meaning of. It means No cause without effect. At a later point in the album, it sounds like somebody is singing the name Maria.
I don’t remember hearing all of what she said, as we were both completely humbled; reduced to whimpering shells of our former selves. I could barely look at her. A powerful feeling surrounded me. Like the music, it was very forbidding and dark. However, although I felt completely alien, I also had complete clarity of mind. It simply felt as if something very real and important was happening, which involved both of us.
To highlight the way I was feeling at around this part of the experience, it was at about this point that I actually turned to Tom and said “are you real”? What I really meant to ask was, “are you an actor”. It felt very sinister and I was half expecting him to turn to me and go, “This is your life!”, before revealing himself to be the host of a reality TV show, which I was the centre of. “I’m definitely real”, he replied, which much like his chaotic return to the kitchen, was just such a big relief.
By the time I looked up I could see her with perfect clarity. An utterly beautiful fractal goddess made from the colours of gold, green and autumn leaves. She looked young, maybe around 18 years old, and I got the undeniable feeling that I knew her from somewhere. Not only in terms of being a familiar face that I'd once known, but in terms of being a distinctive, powerful, female archetype.
As she spoke, her breathe came out as ethereal, synaesthesiac fractal wisps, made from the divine colour of her very essence. Every word was a perfect symphony, a musical tale. She was the music and she sang with perfect grace and eloquence.
She asked us to help her. She also said that I knew I’d been here before, and that we'd know what to do when the time was right.
With regards to knowing that I'd been there before; the first time that I tried salvia I had a very powerful feeling of déjà-vu and a feeling that I recognised the salvia world somehow, a feeling that lasted for and troubled me for weeks. In fact while on that very same salvia trip, a familiar-looking cartoon duck assembled itself out of some kind of red, exoskeleton reality-grid and gave me a knowing wink. This initial savia trip, back in 2002, was also my first ever psychedelic experience.
I asked what we had to do and she repeated “help me”. I got fleeting images of trying to change the world. I felt like our lives had been made for this purpose and that we really had to do something that she would ask of us. Then Tom got up and started walking towards the door. I thought he was going to try and run away from it all, but I knew he couldn’t. He wasn’t allowed.
I tried to stop him and asked where he was going. “she said get me”, he said. “No,” I replied, “she said help me”. He walked into the kitchen and he said that she had been pointing at something and pointed into the corner, remarking that nothing was there. Except, as I pointed out, the rest of the Salvia Divinorum.
We went back into the room and although Maria Pastora was no longer visible, her distinct presence was still strong, and was clearly still the essence of the music and the experience. However, I could feel her presence beginning to fade, and with it, normality beginning to return.
I was completely convinced of what had happened. I told Tom it was real and he agreed. We were both visibly shocked and I knew our lives would never be the same. I had suddenly begun to massively question my entire concept of reality. It had changed, utterly, in the space of a few minutes. It was clearly a lot to take on board; the implications were immense.
We sat in silence for a short time, both contemplating, and then I asked Tom a second time if the experience was real. I simply knew he was going to deny it. I could see it in his face, he didn’t want it to be real and he was already in denial. The drug was wearing off, she was leaving and reality was in his grasp; he could simply slip back into his old existence and forget all about it. I asked him again if it was real and he said it was just the drug.
At that point she came back and started to talk again, as prominent as she was earlier. “Don’t doubt me for I am very real”, she said, and more, although I can't remember what. I could see the shock in Toms face and I shouted “listen, she’s speaking!!”.
“I know”, he replied.
I lay back on the couch. I was astounded. Beforehand I’d felt like something bad was happening, but then I realised it wasn’t. I felt a growing euphoria. Tom was clearly troubled. He’d only just begun his process of forgetting and his denial was crushed in a few swift sentences. Then a voice came back which is on the album singing in English “give me your hand”. It was such a soothing and fitting thing to hear. I asked Tom if he was okay and he said yes, but he just couldn’t quite believe what had happened.
To give a rough reference of time, going by the album:
+0 minutes: LSG album started
+5/6 minutes: Smoked salvia
+7 minutes: Became giant name in sky
+11 First encountered Maria Pastora in the living room (The track L.S.G - Into Deep, from about 9.25 minutes into the album)
+20 minutes “Give me your hand” (tracklist was messed up on album, should have been 5 minutes earlier)
We sat for about another 15 minutes in complete silence, both contemplating. I was almost back to bassline now, just feeling slightly mellow. Her voice had disappeared and the experience appeared over. I asked Tom again if it was real and he firmly told me “listen, mate, it was just the drug”.
Then her voice was back, and this is actually on the album if you listen. She sang “I am not, I am not existing… You hear my voice… all over. The voice of everyone”. She then goes on to say something unintelligible before saying “come into another world… where you will never cry”. The song then builds into a crescendo where the words “I am not existing” are repeated again and again against the backdrop of a moody melody and powerful beat.
I was telling Tom to listen to the words and he was saying he could hear them, but didn’t want to pay attention.
We sat there pretty much in silence, lost in our thoughts for the next 40 minutes or so. The album ended and as I went to put on something else instead (silence was far too disconcerting) I looked at the name of the album. “It’s called In Too Deep” I exclaimed!!
The thought that this was the name of the album troubled me greatly and coupled with the whole giant name in the sky thing, led to some quite negative headspace for a long time afterwards. However, I have since learned that the album was named incorrectly and as already mentioned, is in fact called Into Deep, which definitely has more positive connotations.
We sat there for another hour or so, still thinking and instead listening to Sasha – Involver, which again has some very relevant lyrics. The first track sings repeatedly “there’s nothing to do, ‘cos you won’t go through it and there’s nothing to do, until you put yourself up to it”. The relevance was extremely unsettling, considering how much I felt like I was meant to smoke more salvia after Tom said that Ska Pastora was pointing to the rest of the Sage.
The next track sings about “been here before, a million open doors” and how “so you fall against the wall…” (Bit like what happened in the kitchen??)
The first time round I ended this report by saying it was like the soundtrack of my life and I don’t think that has changed a bit.
For a long time afterwards tom did not like discussing what had happened. If I broached the subject he said he couldn’t remember properly and pretty much refused to discuss it. He doesn’t seem to remember enough to put into a detailed description like I have, but agrees that what I say happened, did.
The first time I detailed this experience, I didn’t overtly admit that I thought there was some reality to what happened, but I was being dishonest.
I don’t know exactly who she is but I believe that she is some kind of powerful female figure, perhaps Mother Nature. Certainly an extremely powerful being who does have huge influence over this reality in ways that we could not possibly conceive.
The ‘synchronicities’ that I still get to this day lead me to believe that you really do hear her voice all over. Only a few days ago, we were discussing whether or not the whole thing in its entirety was actually real or not, when I noticed that there were a series of alarms fitted along the wall across the road from where we were sitting, each with LSG (the name of the artist who made the album) written on them in big letters.
Tom has also come round to the idea that this really did happen. He denied it for around a year or so, but since our shared foray into the world of psychedelia, he has let go and came to terms with it; the psychedelic experience is simply too powerful to ignore. We’ve both offered ourselves up to it completely, and it feels like I walk through a different world now.
I’ve got the L.S.G. album on now and it’s at a point that feels like a rather fitting end to this chapter.
So that’s what happened to us on Easter Sunday once.
Oh and she looked like this: those same flowing, golden colours; only younger somehow.
Thoughts? I eventually went back at the weekend.