Episode Transcript
[00:00:13] Intro: Welcome to Brain Forest Cafe with Dennis McKenna.
[00:00:21] Dennis McKenna: Delvin Solkinson is a visionary permaculture designer and art culture creator from the Elphinstone Rainforest of British Columbia, Canada. Holding four diplomas, an experimental master's and doctorate in Permaculture Education, he teaches permaculture design, writes articles and books, makes videos and creates learning tools with his beloved wife Grace. He is the Diploma Program Coordinator for the Permacultural Institute in the USA, a diploma tutor with the Permaculture association in Britain, and Dean of the Permaculture School at Pacific Rim College. He recently co-created an 80 hour online permaculture course with Dr. Elaine Ingham's Soil Food Web School, including 74 teachers from 22 countries.
Senior managing editor of CoSM, that's Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors Journal of visionary culture. Since 2009, Delvin has served on the board of directors for CoSM Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors, lived and worked there as Senior staff member and done a six year Future Minister's training with Alex Gray and Alison Gray. And Grace, his beloved wife grew up on a small family farm nestled on the edge of the woods and spent her childhood and young adult years diving deeply into animal husbandry while raising and showing a variety of livestock and poultry breeds. Specializing in herbalism, food preservation and green building. She is an instructor for the Permaculture Design and Resilience Ecosystems Diploma at Pacific Rim College on the Dr. Elaine Ingham soil Food Web School Permaculture Design Certificate and on many other courses. With her husband Delvin, serving as the Product Manager at CoSM, Chavel and Sacred Mirrors for many years, Grace co-created artifacts of visionary culture including art prints, sculptures, clothing with artists Alex Gray and Alison Gray, with whom she did a five year Future Minister training. Celebrating happily ever after with her business Grace Alchemy. She creates commitment jewelry and geek rings for engagements, weddings and milestone moments.
Delvin and Grace, welcome to the Brainforest Café.
[00:03:09] Grace Solkinson: Thank you so much Dennis.
[00:03:11] Delvin Solkinson: We're so grateful to be here. Thanks for the opportunity to connect today.
[00:03:14] Dennis McKenna: Thank you. I'm sorry I missed. I misread a couple of things but.
[00:03:20] Delvin Solkinson: I. Oh no worries.
[00:03:22] Dennis McKenna: I think people, it's a lot. You guys have a very extensive resume. I mean this, this is the super condensed resume, believe it or not.
And it just is illustrative of the fact that you've done many things and you're very interdisciplinary in your approach and you're committed to sacred art, visionary art, and of course permaculture is kind of at the center of your interest and that's a very important thing. I believe you were participated, both of you, on one of the earliest McKenna Academy virtual seminars that we did with our colleagues in Australia. I forget, it was 2020, I think, and you were there and contributed, and that was your first formal engagement with the McKenna Academy. And now you're back and I'm delighted to see you both.
[00:04:27] Delvin Solkinson: Thank you so much. Yeah, we've been looking forward to this and talking about it for a number of years, and now we've resettled in Canada and live not so far from you. So, yeah, we're grateful for this opportunity to connect and explore and uplift our incredible global community today.
[00:04:44] Grace Solkinson: Definitely. So nice to get to see you again, even virtually not in person this time.
[00:04:49] Dennis McKenna: Well, virtual is how it happens a lot these days. And that's okay. You know, I mean, I like in person meetings, but honestly, virtual meetings are useful for me because I can hear you.
It's true. In person meetings, especially in crowds. So we can have a good conversation here.
Tell me what preoccupies you at the moment. I know you just recently returned from a sort of pilgrimage to Wales and other sites in the UK and Scotland, maybe.
[00:05:28] Delvin Solkinson: Yeah, we've been on the road for three months. This is the final wing. We're winging home. And we've kind of taken a note from Marian Wright Edelman, who said, be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the earth during your sojourn. So we've been on an ancestral pilgrimage through the lands of our Celtic ancestors and working on a new book, which we anticipate for publication in 2026. So we've been visiting lots of, you know, remote, wild, atmospheric sacred sites in Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and Wales. And we're just back from a few weeks in Wales. So we're really excited about those travels. I don't know if you want to share a little bit about that.
[00:06:14] Grace Solkinson: Yeah, it's been so special to get to see these sites that have had a history of use, some of them for 5,000 years or more, from the time of when the pyramids are being built in Egypt and also in South America. There's been a culture at that time period of temple building around the world that seems to have been centered in these amazing places. And so we've been exploring our roots, which is from the Celtic heritage, and seeing what markers our ancestors left for us.
[00:06:48] Delvin Solkinson: Yeah, it's really incredible that these places have been in continual ceremonial and ritual use by visionary people, including journeys through the Neolithic Stone Age. The Chalcolithic pottery and Copper Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Roman Age, the Medieval Age, all the way through the Industrial Age and are still being used regularly on full moons and new moons and solstices and equinoxes to this very day. So its incredible to be part of an unbroken. A place that has an unbroken lineage and legacy of creative and visionary use.
[00:07:24] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, absolutely. I think. I think what you're saying speaks to the fact that sacred cultures, as opposed to our culture, which lives in profane time, sacred cultures live in sacred time. And it's a different rhythm.
It's a different kind of thing. You know, the petty affairs of humans play themselves out in history, which is basically a profane kind of time. Sacred time is above all that. You know, it existed before anything like history existed, as we understand that. And it will exist after history ends. You know, at least we have to hope so, because history may be ending rather soon. We may. It may end in our lifetime. But again, let's not go. Let's not get too dark here. But I think what you're saying is, you know, you look at these cultures, South America, Europe, Asia, they all share a similar sort of worldview and understanding, and a lot of them are related to these megalithic sites. You know, the importance of ceremony in some ways. I mean, these are, you know, I mean, you could look at them in separate traditions in a way, but they're really not. They're kind of the collective sacred consciousness of humanity. I mean, I'm a Jungian. I believe in the collective unconscious. I think that explains a lot.
And I'm also a fan of Graham Hancock most of the time. And I think that although he is vilified often, I think he's on the right track. I mean, I think, you know, he has been criticized more recently, but I think his basic perception, his basic theme is that ancient peoples, ancient from our perspective, were a lot more sophisticated than we give them credit for, both, you know, technologically and intellectually. And, you know, these megalithic sites are just evidence of that. I mean, it always sort of boggles my mind. I have not been to the.
The sites in Wales and the Celtic sites, although I hope one day to get there. But I've been to Machu Picchu and similar Incan sites many times, and every time I go there, I just can't quite wrap my head around it. You know, the fact that these people were able to construct these enormous megalithic sites that are built to the last millimeter, you know, I mean, they're so precise, not only are they huge blocks of stone that they were able to move around, but they fit them together perfectly. And they didn't have the benefit of stone tools, they didn't have writing, they didn't have. I don't know if they had plumb bombs. I guess they could have. But using what we would think of as very primitive engineering techniques, they were able to produce these monumental structures that we would be challenged to reproduce even with all our technology.
So how did they manage that?
[00:11:03] Delvin Solkinson: Yeah, that's really fascinating. We've interacted with Graham Hancock a few times out at CoSM at Boom Festival, which I think we've interacted at where we organized the liminal village. But, yeah, I think there's a relevance now that's emerging from the mystery of this past that has to do with connection practices. And we've been exploring our Celtic roots and ritual and ceremony and sort of bringing these visionary practices into our life at these sacred sites.
And there's a time traveling involved because there's so many people through the ages that have been doing that here, coming to these sites specifically to reflect, to vision, to think about life or gain new perspective.
And the connection practices seem important more than ever before, to connect not only with the ancestors from the ancient past, but with our future ancestors. And we're definitely optimistic that we're going to contribute to the continuity of this lineage of magic and connection and visionary culture into the future. Do you want to talk a little bit about maybe the ritual and ceremony that we've done at these places?
[00:12:15] Grace Solkinson: Yeah, definitely. But first, I also want to point out that, like, the legacy of these places is that all of these were amazing community initiatives where huge groups of people came and spent tens or hundreds of thousands of hours, sometimes millions of man hours, in order to create these massive sites with very primitive tools. And because of that work, now we have this link to these people who lived 5,000 years ago. We might not know everything about their culture, but we know that this site was really important to them and that they were marking these sometimes extremely nuanced astrological events, like astronomical events. Like, at one site, I think it was, like, every 17 years, Jupiter rises between these two stones. It's, like, extremely nuanced how unique these sites were at marking these occasions and letting us know in the future. Sometimes we don't even understand at this point, like, how many different things that there. These sites are marking, because originally there was this thought, oh, they're just solstices and equinoxes and a lot of work was done to try and fit them into that mold, because there wasn't the idea that they could have been more nuanced than that, but for finding out more and more that they're really unique, the different things that they're trying to caling make into a cylindrical marking for them. And so at these different sites, we tried to come up with our own rituals, because the rituals of 5,000 years ago are, for the most part, lost to us now.
And so often we would make a nature mandala using natural objects in the altar. We would do blessings at the stone, sending out thoughts for people we love or calling in prayers for things in our lives. We would do meditations there and just try to connect with the energy and the historical legacy of the place and the people who came before that. Thinking at some point in history, our ancestors may have journeyed seastone. So this is a living link for us to get a moment of, like, connection with them.
[00:14:34] Dennis McKenna: Right.
[00:14:34] Delvin Solkinson: The other thing we've been working on, Dennis, which has been our real passion, is a set of art cards we call Galactic Trading Cards. And this was a vision that came in the year 2000. This is the 25th year of creating these art cards. So at these sacred sites, we did ritual and ceremony, and sort of at peak moments in our experience, we worked on this project. I wrote words for the back of the cards in relation to visionary art that was given to us by medicine artists and shamanic artists and visionary artists from all over the world. So it was also a place to spark inspiration to do creative projects. So not only do we recommend people go on these pilgrimages to these sites to connect with the past or the future, gain perspective or gain new visions for their life, but also to activate and reinforce, you know, creative practices like writing or art or dance or music.
[00:15:37] Dennis McKenna: Right. Even if you can't visit these places, the work that you're doing helps people to appreciate them. You know, I mean, the galactic trading cards, and I assume that they'll. There'll be links on our podcast website where you can access all those things and order them if you like. And you just finished this huge project with Alex and Alison, this beautiful book that you sent me a copy of, but this book here you sent me, and this was a collaborating project with you and many artists, and it's just incredible. This is an incredible, incredibly beautiful piece of work, and it comes out of the CoSM legacy.
And people are able to order this if they wish, right?
[00:16:34] Delvin Solkinson: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's one of the artifacts that's representing visionary Culture. Thank you. I appreciate you sharing that. The Galactic Train cards are similar where it's a global collaboration with different artists around the world. And so we're just getting ready to crowdfund that project which will be happening when this podcast airs. So we invite anyone who's interested to join us in co creating this project to share visionary art and shamanic art and medicine art.
And I wanted to say something more about your comment about not everyone can travel to these sacred sites, which is absolutely true. And we are writing a book to help share some of the magic. It's a picture heavy book.
And also I wanted to note that this idea of pilgrimage as a visionary design tool could be really helpful. And it doesn't need to be a pilgrimage across the world to some ancient site. This is something you can do in your own neighborhood or even in your own mind. And I think the framework of pilgrimage as a life design tool of sorts is really relevant. And I'm curious about your reflection on this because we found it in the pilgrimage to these sites. But in general, there's a few phases. There's passing through gateways or across thresholds, like crossing out the front door or garden gate when you're leaving your home, or passing across the boundary of the everyday into the magic of this Brainforest Café podcast, for example. Then there's a quest for a journey or an adventure from the comfort of home or regular patterns to other special or sacred places, whether physical or internal. And this quest could be from the present to the future, which is what we do when we're designing and making decisions.
[00:18:24] Dennis McKenna: Absolutely.
[00:18:25] Delvin Solkinson: There's obstacles and challenges that may appear on the journey and usually do, but there's this overcoming of challenges and obstacles that tends to appear and those there might be a temptation to stop the quest and return home, but there's a takes a certain will and, you know, a certain strength and courage to persevere. And then, you know, and we do want to say to you, Dennis, and to everyone listening in relation to the obstacles and challenges to be here today, congratulations, you made it. You overcame all the blocks and the obstacles and the challenges along the way so that you can be here now whenever that now is thanks to your dedication.
[00:19:06] Dennis McKenna: It's kind of you, but that could be said of almost anyone. I mean, you know, the fact that we're here, we're still kicking, you know, we're not repentant. We're, you know, we are, we're continuing as best we can in the face of what sometimes just seems like, you know, adversity and dark things happening on the historical front. But I think that this, this sort of, it's a state of mind. You could occupy a sacred space, a cosmovision driven space, no matter where you are. I mean, the sacred space can be a megalithic site in Wales or Scotland that you expend great effort to visit and appreciate and sort of participate in that energy. But as you well know, as a permaculturalist and just a human being, as human beings that are connected to nature, you can step outside your back door and there's your garden and that's the sacred space, you know, and it's just as valid as anything that might be thousands of miles away and thousands of years old. Because this tradition sort of, it's a perspective more than physically visiting spaces. It may entail that, but it's a perspective on the idea that this 30,000 foot level perspective is what's really valid and what's happening within that. The petty affairs of humans, if you want to put it that way, are not so important in the grand scheme of things, you know, And I mean, what plays out in these processes are ancient traditions, you know, and traditions that in some ways have always been there and hopefully will always continue, you know, no matter what happens. On the historical level, this is ahistorical, it's an historical. We often say prehistorical, but it's also post-historical, if that means anything.
So I think keeping to that perspective helps keep things in perspective, a recognition of the human experience, and is really intertwined with the unfolding of life on the planet.
And these processes play out over thousands of years, sometimes over millions of years. When you look at biological processes, geophysical processes and that sort of thing. So the time frame is very different, you know, and we in Western civilization, we become estranged from this connection to nature, you know, and this understanding. We're much too focused on most of the time. We're much too focused on our screens these days. But even before there was a screen centric culture, there was a tendency to look inward and, you know, focus on what was right in front of us and not look up and see, you know, look around and say, we live in a marvelous world. We live, we're surrounded by miracles every day.
And I think that's an attitude that's helpful to cultivate.
My brother and I, we wrote a book years ago that was about novelty and this idea of novelty.
And you can talk about that however you want. But I think the take home lesson for the idea of novelty for me was that every day astonishing things happen that never have occurred in the history of the universe. You know, so are these, these are, these events happen. You have to try to be attuned to them or not, because they're going to happen whether you're attuned or not. But I find that a useful perspective to kind of the take that longer term view and understand.
You look at all these different cultures, for example, and you see the same kind of preoccupations that speak to a certain connection to nature that we've lost in our cultures because we've retreated inward, we've retreated away from nature.
Not all of us and not everyone at all times. But you know, for example, in these cultures, these temples and so on, always seem to be built on astronomical principles. You know, they're situated with respect to the solstice and the equinoxes in particular, important, you know, planetary conjunctions and that sort of thing. And that's a cosmic perspective that we don't have anymore. Or if we do, I mean, it occasionally crops up in the media if there's going to be a spectacular eclipse or something like that, everyone gets excited about that, although probably half the people that are excited about it won't bother to step outside and look up when it's happening. So.
But that bespeaks, I think, to an ancient connection to cosmic events. And that's reassuring to me that people in this very secular, technology oriented culture can still get excited about an eclipse or a comet or even a conjunction. There's nothing magical or paranormal about these things. This is just celestial mechanics.
So you're back and you're working on a couple of books that will come out of this, out of your adventures. And what else are you doing? You're doing all the things that we read in your biography. You're busy people, both of you.
[00:25:33] Grace Solkinson: We like to stay busy.
[00:25:34] Delvin Solkinson: That's a good thing.
[00:25:36] Dennis McKenna: That's definitely a good thing. And permaculture is such an important thing, I think, that people don't understand.
Well, many do. I mean, there's a great deal of interest in permaculture. But when we try to look at the solutions that could actually lead to a sustainable planet and help us to get out of this mess that we've made of it. Permaculture is clearly one of the things that we have to adopt widely. We have to teach it as you do. You teach it to many people. And I think once people are exposed to permaculture, they understand how important something like this is.
[00:26:23] Grace Solkinson: Yeah, I think permaculture can be really life changing for people because a lot of people come into it just wanting to like, grow a better vegetable garden, which is definitely something permaculture can do for you. And then they come out of it realizing, wow, this actually can impact every area of my life. This is a design system that helps me make choices that are more in line with how nature works. Which I think a tie in with permaculture. And like the sacred is this idea of sacralizing, which is sometimes considered permaculture principle, where making the mundane, making your everyday life sacred through simple rituals, through the practices.
As Susan Weed would say, that's how you can create this feeling of connection with nature and with the world around you. It doesn't require elaborate sacred sites. It can be something simple in your backyard, we go out collecting eggs, or it can be harvesting some herbs from your windowsill. It can be simple things that can just feel like rituals in your life and really give you that grounding and connection. And designing those into your life, which you can do through permaculture can be really powerful.
[00:27:44] Delvin Solkinson: Yeah. My teacher, Bill Mollison, one of the originators of permaculture, said, although the problems of the world are becoming increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.
And that's, I think that's the party line of permaculture in many ways is, well, we want to care for the earth and we want to care for each other and we want to care for our collective future.
And how do we do that? And really, we look to nature, which of course, we're part of nature, but we look to how is it that we've gone this far? And the answer is, well, nature's designed really well. Nature's designed incredibly well. It's. It's got this. It's like an operating system like OS Gaia. It's changing and evolving and growing, but it's based on a series of principles. And you can observe those principles just from observing nature. And you can adopt those principles and allow them to inform your everyday decisions. And that's really what it comes down to, is the decisions that you're making day to day about what you're going to do, who you're going to support, how you're going to vote with your money or vote with your time. What kind of media are you imbibing? So it comes down to design. And permaculture provides a toolkit for making effective and ethical and efficient decisions and designs for your life.
[00:29:14] Dennis McKenna: Right, Exactly. What, what keeps coming to mind as you. As you speak about this is the term mindfulness. You know, it's about living with mindfulness. It's about.
All you have to do is cultivate an awareness that everything you do is sacred. In a certain sense, you have that perspective. People forget that, you know, but you can consciously do it, and. And soon it becomes internalized, and it's just something that you do and you appreciate.
And people understand that they. They can feel that energy coming from people like yourselves who really make an effort to live, to inhabit these. These sacred, and I would say, magical places, you know, and you don't. The beauty of it is that you do it effortlessly.
If it appears to be difficult to do, you're not doing it right. You know, people can do this by not striving in a certain way, just let it flow. And it takes time, and it takes a certain dedication to learning that. But you've managed to do that. And because of that, you're, you know, you are people that others looked up to as examples, not necessarily to.
[00:30:44] Dennis McKenna: I mean, I don't think you would say your gurus to anybody. You know, look at what you do, and they can. They can see by example what you do, and they can say, these people are people that I'd like to emulate, you know, and learn from. And to your credit, you provide lots and lots of tools to learn from in the form of books and visionary art and the permaculture itself, teaching that, I mean, that is a sacred mission right there, just to teach people these skills, because they're going to become more and more important as climate change advances and all the environmental challenges that we're facing.
Permaculture may not be the whole solution, but it's bound to be a big part of it. So the fact that you have acquired this knowledge through your own practice and then generously spread it to the world, that's a wonderful thing. Your avatars, I would say. Well, again, I don't use the word guru because the word has been spoiled in so many ways. But you're just good people who are trying to live in a conscious way, and more of us could benefit from that.
[00:32:13] Delvin Solkinson: Thank you so much, Dennis.
[00:32:16] Grace Solkinson: Yeah.
Yeah. I think both of us really love to put out beautiful artifacts into the world, like things that have enduring value. And so that's one of the things that connected us, but also I feel like it connects us to a lot of people because the world is filled now with things that are either only digital or which are very disposable. And they're not made with intention. They're not made to last. And so when we try and create things, we try and think, how can this be the most enduring, that we can make it and have it have value that will continue so that it becomes something that people cherish and keep with them in their lives, rather than something that just gets enjoyed for a moment and let go of.
[00:33:04] Dennis McKenna: Right. Well, everything is ephemeral in the end. But some things are less ephemeral than others. And, you know, some things well. And I think the digital culture that we inhabit, where, you know, you look at a video, you look at some digital thing, and now, you know, in some of this software, they've even built it in so that after it's viewed, it destroys itself, it disappears. So the idea of something enduring is something that the Internet culture has abandoned. In some ways, it's all about what is happening at this very moment. But. And that's important. I mean, all we have, really, is the present. There is no future. There is no past. You know, all of these are the constructs of our being present in the moment. You know, but there are those connections. And I think it's important that people keep that perspective, you know, historical. And then, you know, the historical perspective and then even the personal and social perspectives of what ties people together in a spiritual way. I guess the cliche is often intentional communities, but an intentional community is a good thing to get involved in. You do that.
[00:34:34] Delvin Solkinson: Yeah. I think that comes back to this idea of connection, practices, connecting to ourselves and to nature in the present. And also permaculture. Bill Mollison described permaculturalists as time scouts.
Because we're being really present now. And the act of designing, of observing and analyzing those observations and then making really intentional decisions based on the observation and analysis and then implementing them and not finishing there, but evaluating and reflecting on the process to see how we can do it better when we do it again next time, that slowing down enables us to be time travelers of sorts, to be really present now so that we can help create this world that we want, this healthy, that vibrant, regenerated, natural world that we know humanity is dependent on as well as all life on the planet. So that's one of the simple solutions permaculture encourages everyone to do, is to slow down and be really present so that we're not racing through the present moment and we can kind of cast our intentions in to create the future that we want.
[00:35:53] Dennis McKenna: Yes, this makes sense. So what you're doing is fostering co-evolution in a certain way. I mean, co-evolution by definition is a process that unfolds in time.
And so these processes that you initiate that unfold over time are, this is really what we need to be doing because the, you know that the, if you look at ecosystems, if you look at biology, systems that are based on symbiosis and cooperation are the ones that sustain, they're the ones that last. And this is what we have to get back to. This is how nature is successful. You know, the idea that, I mean, the old Darwinian idea that never was really that, but the old Darwinian idea of competition and nature red and tooth and claw and all that, you know, that's an element of it. But basically I think nature is compassionate, nature is kind, nature is based on collaboration and cooperation. And if I can be permitted to use the word, even love, it's all based on love.
And you know, The Beatles said all you need is love. And that's probably true.
So nature is an instantiation of that. You see much more of that in nature than you do of competition and warfare and conflict. And these are, these are human institutions more than they are natural. And so we need to learn from nature in that respect as well.
[00:37:45] Grace Solkinson: Definitely. And I feel like the McKenna Academy is doing such amazing work in the biosphere. You've got exciting things coming up in the year ahead and it's amazing to see how much it's growing and what you have been doing.
So excited about watching that unfold.
[00:38:06] Delvin Solkinson: Yeah. How do you see this permaculture and visionary culture? How do you see that kind of reflecting through the McKenna Academy and these Brainforest Cafés, this regenerative approach to ecosystem Stewardship?
[00:38:22] Dennis McKenna: Well, the McKenna Academy, you know, it hasn't been around that long, we really got started in 2020, so we have not been around that long. And when we were beginning, we were thinking that we were going to be much more about maybe doing retreats and that kind of thing. And we can still do that. But as Covid came along, that kind of made that not an option for a long time. And so we pivoted and we started doing virtual events.
And then we did several of those, starting actually with the Permaculture symposium, which was a week long event.
And in the process of doing that, I think we understood what our mission is, is really education and trying to help people understand this relationship with nature. And the idea of collaboration and symbiosis and all those key words, that's really what the message we're trying to deliver. And of course, you know, on the practical level, we're also interested in building bridges between indigenous knowledge, which basically are the people that have always known this stuff. You know, they're the people. And then contemporary and scientific knowledge, you know, and science has something to contribute as well.
Science's problem is it's often secular, but that's okay. It's an element of it. It can learn, you know, I mean, I think that the greatest scientists, you know, not that I'm one, but greatest scientists are essentially visionary scientists. They're people that kind of understand. Science is all about peering into nature in a very detailed way. You know, it's very good at looking at processes in nature in extreme detail. And what science has discovered and doesn't really acknowledge as much as it should is the deeper that you look, the more complex everything becomes. You know, there is no end point. You know, occasionally there'll be somebody, will some scientists, usually not a scientist, but maybe Scient journalists will come out and write a book and say, like, with titles like the End of Science, for example, which is kind of like, there's nothing more to be learned. You know, we have it all figured out, you know, and about the time they publish the book, then there will be some amazing discovery. And it's like, you know, always gets back to the fact that puts. Puts in our face the fact of the limitations of our knowledge, you know, which again, I think this is a value that psychedelics can be helpful with. You know, many people ask me, you've taken psychedelics all your life, and what have you learned from this? What I've learned is I don't know shit.
The more I learn, the less I know. And I think that's true of people that really look into this.
So there is no end to discovery and there's no end to the potential for surprise.
And in that sense, I think science is useful science.
Well, we could go on about science a lot. I mean, it's not really understood in its purest form.
It's the search for truth.
You know, it's a search for knowledge in a way to ask questions of nature in a very structured way so that you can get answers back that are meaningful. That's really the scientific quest, not the discovery of new disease, new cures for disease or new technologies and all that. Those things are side effects. You know, they may or may not be important, but the pure quest for knowledge is what science in its pure form should be.
But it's very hard. These days to practice what you might call pure science because, you know, in the way that Darwin, for example, might have been able to.
Because science is also big business, you know, and cannot be separated these days from politics and business and all the other things that it's involved with. But there is an idea of the pure search for knowledge and meaning. And science can be very useful in that. In that respect, you know, pursued in that spirit. Most of us don't have the luxury to do that.
[00:43:39] Grace Solkinson: True. I mean, I think it's wonderful. Science is discovering what indigenous cultures have always known, which is, everything's connected. And the deeper we look, the more connections we find. It's just amazing.
[00:43:51] Dennis McKenna: Right, right. Discovering everything is connected. And then science can actually go the next step and say, everything is connected and how is it connected? You know, you can go to this next level of detail and you do that. You say, oh, it's connected in these ways, and so on. And then how are those things connected? Then you go to the next level and the next level, and finally you're. You're down to the fundamental levels, both on the macroscale and the micro scale. And the paradox of it is what the alchemist said, what many other people, wise sages of nature have said is as above, so below, the smallest instantiation of existence is a reflection of the largest. You keep finding the same things. So all of this, I guess, shapes our worldview in a certain way. And, you know, what you have done in the work that you've done is that you've given the people, you've given people the tools to bring that perspective to their work, whatever it might be, in their sort of consciousness, their state of mind.
So that's a very valuable thing to contribute.
[00:45:19] Delvin Solkinson: Thanks, Dennis. Yeah, Permaculture does try and go to the pattern level, and it describes itself as an ethical design science. So it's really trying to bring in this culture of caring into the scientific exploration. And looking to the pattern level. We're talking about connection. It's really looking for top tips and best practices as the highest iteration of different fields of study. And, you know, Leonardo da Vinci said simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. And permaculture is looking for this pattern understanding from nature that may or may not give us some specific details that hold true forever. However, it can provide these patterns, like the pattern of connection. I mean, we're talking about connection practices and how everything's connected. And one of the patterns of nature and of our world is that when two things combine, they become more than the Sum of their parts. And Luby McNamara and Michael Becker, some of my teachers, have inspired me on this front to really, that we are taught in school these scientific, you know, things this, in this case, mathematics, that one plus one equals two. And then we get out in the world and we realize, wow, nothing could ever be further from the truth. I mean, there's no situation in the real world where one plus one ever equals two. Like in this case, the three of us, one plus one plus one. I mean, we're certainly more than the sum of our parts. And so one plus one plus one might equal 64 or 278. But the really interesting piece, the visionary piece, I feel, is that it's actually beyond numbers. The emergent quality of us coming together isn't one plus one plus one equals 64. It's more like it equals … some emergent thing that we weren't expecting before we started talking here. This emergent quality or initiative or vision that comes out of our collaboration and permaculture really encourages people to collaborate. Not necessarily because it's just about achieving a specific outcome, but from the lesson of nature that collaboration and community and connection brings all this benefit that we can't anticipate, this benefit of unanticipated yields that create health and regeneration and opportunities to address some of these challenges that we're talking about in our world.
[00:47:45] Dennis McKenna: Right, right.
It's true what you say. In a certain sense, one plus one never equals two. There's always something more. But it is interesting that you can apply mathematics and quantification to nature in very useful ways. I mean, as a tool for describing nature, quantification is quite useful. And that tells you something about the nature of nature. I mean, it was Pythagoras, right, who said nature is made of numbers.
And that's, in a sense, that's true. But nature is not reducible to numbers. That's the important thing. Numbers are a way of understanding it. But just because you work out the quantitative relationships, some things can't be quantified.
And that's really where the interface between this sort of scientific, very secular kind of perception and something greater than that come together, you know, and that's where the action is. You know, discovery happens on the edges of these things, and that's always what it is. So you're absolutely right about that.
Well, what are you doing now? What is exciting you in the next six months? You have plenty on your plate. What's exciting you about the next phase now that you're back from your travels.
[00:49:24] Grace Solkinson: We're very excited to be back from our travels for the most part and to have a moment to ground in and finish up some projects.
We're diving into, as we said, this book about the sacred sites we're going to be putting out with permanent publications in the UK, which is really exciting. We've also got our Galactic Trading Card project in the works right now. Sort of talk about that.
[00:49:51] Delvin Solkinson: Yeah, it's been for the last five years, I've been reaching out, you know, to visionary artists, shamanic artists and medicine artists that are visually sharing some of the messages of the medicine in their own different ways, of the plants. And in some ways this is very permacultural because they're helping nature to express itself through human capacity for creativity. And this transcends some of the language that we're talking about. It transcends different languages because you can visually see some of this otherworldly, you know, messages from the beyond.
And it's about unity. It's a community building initiative to show that one of the things that unifies our culture is these visionary experiences and medicine plants and creative ways of sharing them. And that's something that links all cultures together and brings back time traveling. It's something that connects us to the past and to the future. I mean, all cultures of the past engaged in visionary or shamanic or creative practices, many supported by plants, others by other non-ordinary practices like meditation or fasting or trials and ordeals.
And so that's really exciting. We want to bring this into being and we're playing with this idea of crowdfunding, which really is a community collaboration where we don't have the resources to make this happen. And so this is a postmodern concept of can we collaborate also with people around the world that want to see this visionary oracle emerge, sharing global perspectives on visions and shamanic culture? And yeah, see if we can manifest the miraculous and create something from nothing, which is a real opportunity that crowdfunding and social media have emerged in the recent past, which is really amazing. Just like we're at a distance talking to you now and connecting with people around the world through this podcast. There's all these opportunities for global cooperation and community building to happen. And for us, that's the greatest connection practice there really is to find the others and connect with all of these people around the world who are like minded that are also on the mission to become better people and help regenerate our world and create a future culture that is one of caring and health and holism yeah.
[00:52:22] Grace Solkinson: And visionary art really ties into the very distant past. Like some of the earliest art made by hominid species is visionary art and shows visionary experiences. So it's amazing that, you know, at the present time we're still expressing these experiences and these amazing artistic ways that are so nuanced and so different for the different cultures around the world. So it's special to have artists from all different cultures, from all different continents in one beautiful collection.
[00:52:57] Delvin Solkinson: The other thing I'll throw into, Dennis, in terms of what we're excited about, because we were talking today about from the cosmic to the terran to the gaian, is this 720 hour in person permaculture diploma program at Pacific Rim College that includes a bunch of indigenous wisdom keepers and has its. We're talking about education. I mean, this is really like what was missing from education. Food preservation, animal care, medicine making, how to grow your own food, you know, how to use natural buildings and build your own house or structures out of materials around you, how to be an ethical decision maker, you know, how to make decisions with groups and use of creative facilitation and governance and explore alternative ways, many of which are rooted in the deep past for getting along with each other and having real practical hands on skills to help us navigate whatever this future is that we're moving into. So we're really excited about that program and being with people on farms and in the forest and in the garden to learn real practical skills that can support us all in our life in a really immediate present moment kind of way.
[00:54:16] Dennis McKenna: That is really important. Yeah. I mean, what you're doing is recovering and preserving lost knowledge. In a sense, you're helping to ensure that not only is it not lost, we can look at the past and look at this, but you're making it a vibrant part of the present. You know, same principles, same understandings, work just as well today as they did 5,000 years ago. You know, if we can just rediscover and reapply and live this way. And I think something that you said, Grace, also about, you know, I mean, the interesting thing to me about the sacred plants and the fact that these traditions go back so long. Well, the plants are the same that we might be using today. And we're the same in the sense that the brain of the modern human is not that different from the brain of a Neanderthal. I mean, we have the same neural architecture, we have the same tools and receptor systems and so on, that these plants, if I can be permitted to use the term, speak to, I mean, these psychoactive compounds, and really all the compounds that secondary compounds that plant produce, plants and fungi produce are messenger molecules. That's how they tie the ecosystem together. But when it comes to the psychoactive ones that they specifically seem to fit into these receptors that trigger notions of awe and wonder and that sort of thing, you know, which is really at the core of the most meaningful of human experiences, you know. And so, you know, the fact that we can take a mushroom and be just as astonished as our ancestor who might have taken it 15, 20,000 years ago, you know, I mean, we are just as much humbled and surprised and amazed as that person was. So there is something about this relationship with these plants.
The wonder is built into it, and we still haven't figured it out. And I don't think the challenge. I don't think we're trying really to figure it out in the sense of we can publish endless papers about neurophysiology and hyper connectedness and neurogenesis and all of these things you see in the literature about psychedelics now. But these are not. I mean, these are descriptive about how these compounds might work, but they don't get to the core of why they elicit the inner feelings, the inner responses that they do. That remains a mystery.
And although my basic orientation is scientific, in some ways, I'm inclined to say I'm glad it's a mystery. I hope it never really gets figured out, because there's nothing to figure out. It's just to be experienced.
[00:57:50] Grace Solkinson: Definitely. I think the experience of connection, too, is a powerful one that comes often from that type of experience and that kind of cycles back into, like. The message of nature is that everything's connected, everything ties into everything else. There's no individuality. There is the individual, but it's all part of the great wave. You know, like, you might be a droplet for a moment, but you're just going to absorb back in.
[00:58:17] Dennis McKenna: Right. And. And this is. This is the fundamental discovery often of the psychedelic experience. You'd think that after all this time we would just know this, but no, we have to keep going back to the well and drinking the sacred medicines and remind ourselves of exactly what you said, Grace. Everything is connected, and we are not separate from any of it. We're part of this if we would only acknowledge it. And so, yeah, I think that's the great utility and wonder of these medicines. And, yeah, I feel like. I'm sure you feel the same. I feel like for me, they've been one of my. The greatest gift that I've been privileged to experience. So.
[00:59:10] Delvin Solkinson: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we really want to encourage ourselves and everyone else who's listening to step into action, to go on quests and pilgrimages into all of these different ways of connecting with plants, with nature, with ourselves.
These discussions are brought into value when they're sort of alchemically transformed into next achievable steps and real actions that we all take in our lives to move forward. And I understand. We understand, you know it takes will and dedication to go on these journeys into the world and into the future. And we encourage everyone to kind of gather the will and the faith and the trust that it will be worth your while to step into action and be a. Be an actuary, if you will, and, you know, get out there in the world and help make it a better place.
[01:00:05] Dennis McKenna: Yes. It's always a quest. It's always a journey. Whether the journey is geographical, if you go to the ends of the earth, or you go to the limits of your own consciousness, it's all the same. The universe is within. Right.
That's the fact of it.
Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. We're about an hour and is there anything else that we didn't say that we should have said?
[01:00:37] Grace Solkinson: So wonderful. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you. So much gratitude for everything that you're doing in the world and for your presence in our lives live. It's just really special.
[01:00:47] Dennis McKenna: Likewise. Well, thank you so much for making the time and good luck with the crowdfunding. We'll try to get this up here hosted. What, do you launch the crowdfunding next week sometime?
[01:01:01] Delvin Solkinson: Yes, it'll be launched by the middle of next week and we're going to run it for over a month, so it'll go right through December.
[01:01:09] Dennis McKenna: Right.
[01:01:10] Delvin Solkinson: Just past Christmas even. So we're going to just let it roll and do our best to make connections and collaborate and build community around manifesting these visionary art cards.
[01:01:19] Grace Solkinson: Yeah.
[01:01:20] Dennis McKenna: All right, well, we'll get that up there real soon. Maybe not by the time it starts, but very quickly.
So good luck with it. All my best wishes, I'm sure will be successful.
[01:01:32] Delvin Solkinson: Thanks so much, Dennis.
[01:01:34] Dennis McKenna: Thank you so much. Very good to talk with you. And we'll be. We'll be doing more of that.
[01:01:40] Delvin Solkinson: Wonderful.
[01:01:42] Dennis McKenna: Have a wonderful day.
[01:01:43] Delvin Solkinson: You, too.
[01:01:44] Dennis McKenna: Bye. Bye.
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