@mikejay.bsky.social
http://mikejay.net
And the extent to which the experience is shaped by framing/expectation
19.02.2026 08:53 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
‘Most of the tropes that came to define the vampire – neck-biting, blood-drinking or invisibility in mirrors – are recent inventions, though some, such as the protective virtue of garlic, do have a historical basis.’
@mikejay.bsky.social on the dangerous dead.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Sleep paralysis, somnambulism, hypnic jerks: we’ve all drifted through the borderlands of sleep & wakefulness. Those borderlands have preoccupied philosophers, scientists, & novelists, from Montaigne’s “most profound and maddest fancies” to E.M. Cioran’s warning of sleep’s “frightening importance.”
02.02.2026 15:41 — 👍 16 🔁 5 💬 2 📌 1Exactly - anticholinergic eyes on Prof Dentinger’s lab results 👁️👁️
02.02.2026 14:43 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Lilliputian hallucinations (phalanxes of identical marching munchkins) are very familiar in non-psychedelic contexts, eg side effects of Parkinson’s meds. Suggests the mushroom pharmacology could be adrenergic/cholinergic?
02.02.2026 14:33 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0
Only recently learned that A MAN CALLED HORSE and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALLANCE are both based on short stories by a little-known female author. Both in this collection which is solidly excellent.
27.01.2026 08:52 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0He’s first rate, should be much better known but copyright issues with his estate have left much languishing out of print. Loads of films based on his stories including Rear Window.
16.01.2026 15:45 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
“If we conflate the richness of biological brains & human experience with the information-processing machinations of deepfake-boosted chatbots, or whatever the latest AI wizardry is, we do our minds, brains & bodies a grave injustice.”
— @anilseth.bsky.social, winner of @berggruen.org Essay Prize
Also his chemistry/engineering network overlaps with Beddoes and the Pneumatic Institution
03.01.2026 09:15 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0You too - enjoying your Swedish snow scenes :-)
03.01.2026 09:14 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Cochrane a bit younger but they had close mutuals, notably Francis Burdett who was political ally to both
Peter’s book coming this autumn, will put you in touch
Absolutely cracking new biog of Cochrane forthcoming from Peter Moore - more on his science and radical politics than Thomas
03.01.2026 08:42 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0The most detailed account yet of the Liberty Cap’s emergence - highly recommended 🍄
11.12.2025 16:39 — 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
In the middle of a wild wkend at Entheogenesis Australis' Garden States. Missing way too much but what I have caught has been deeply engaging.
Below daytime is Dave Nickles dropping bombs on the local community and night time is @mikejay.bsky.social going deep on mescaline art.
Still a few tickets left for this event with the amazing @mikejay.bsky.social tonight 6-7.30 at @kingsioppn.bsky.social
All welcome as Mike discusses his new book on the discovery of N2O & the birth of psychedelic science👌👌
Cover for a book called "The Unconscious: A Cultural History from Hippocrates to Philip K. Dick and Beyond" by Antonio Melechi. The cover features a floating black bowler hat above a cloudy sky backdrop.
From ancient dream theory to hypnosis, somnambulism to psychedelic mind-expansion, "The Unconscious" by Antonio Melechi traces the wider social and scientific history of the unconscious mind. Coming in February! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205102...
07.11.2025 00:30 — 👍 26 🔁 7 💬 0 📌 1
#OnThisDay in 1977 the artist William Kurelek died. His 1953 autobiographical painting, The Maze, painted during his time as a patient at the Maudsley Hospital, continues to captivate visitors to Bethlem Museum of the Mind. Discover this intriguing artwork here: bit.ly/MOTMMaze
02.11.2025 17:13 — 👍 3 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Listen to a series of recordings made by the ethnographer James Mooney in 1894 of different Native American Ghost Dance songs. According to the Library Of Congress notes that accompany the recordings, the performances are probably by Mooney himself — publicdomainreview.org/collection/j...
11.10.2025 14:16 — 👍 70 🔁 12 💬 1 📌 0🎯
07.10.2025 17:25 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The tragic story of James Tilly Matthews, a former peace activist of the Napoleonic Wars confined to Bedlam asylum in 1797 for believing that his mind was under the control of the “Air Loom” — a terrifying machine which was brainwashing politicians: publicdomainreview.org/essay/i...
04.10.2025 16:46 — 👍 67 🔁 14 💬 2 📌 7
"Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Mind" by Mike Jay
"…Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism." Mike is always a great read!
erowid.org/books/psycho...
Erowid needs your support. Donate toward real, honest info about psychedelics plants & drugs…for harm reduction, benefit enhancement, and the history books.
Matching challenge!
$20-$499 donations are DOUBLED
$500-$3,000 donations are TRIPLED
Erowid.org/sept_drive
Donate and help spread the word!
btw I’m @mikejay over here
17.09.2025 08:11 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
From fairy-rings to Lewis Carroll's Alice, mushrooms have long been entwined with the supernatural in art + literature. @MikeJayNet on early reports of mushroom-induced trips and how one species became established as a stock motif of Victorian fairyland. publicdomainreview.org/essay/f...
16.09.2025 16:47 — 👍 65 🔁 20 💬 1 📌 4
If you're anywhere in Australia at the end of Nov then I'd suggest you make your way here. This is the first outdoor entheogenesis conference in 8 yrs. An incredible event with a sharp line up of speakers. @mikejay.bsky.social @tehseennoorani.bsky.social @pyrodelic.bsky.social @gmantic.bsky.social
07.09.2025 09:36 — 👍 4 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
