LSD — My Problem Child
Albert Hofmann
9. Correspondence with the Poet-Physician Walter
Vogt
My friendship with the physician, psychiatrist, and writer
Walter Vogt, M.D., is also among the personal contacts that I owe to LSD. As the
following extract from our correspondence shows, it was less the medicinal
aspects of LSD, important to the physician, than the consciousness-altering
effects on the depth of the psyche, of interest to the writer, that constituted
the theme of our correspondence.
Muri/Bern,
22 November 1970
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Last night I dreamed
that I was invited to tea in a cafe by a friendly family in Rome. This family
also knew the pope, and so the pope sat at—the same table to tea with us. He
was all in white and also wore a white miter. He sat there so handsome and was
silent.
And today I suddenly had the idea of sending you my
Vogel auf dem Tisch [Bird on the table—as a visiting card if you so
wish—a book that remained a little apocryphal, which upon reflection I do not
regret, although the Italian translator is firmly convinced that is my best.
(Ah yes, the pope is also an Italian. So it goes. …)
Possibly this little work will interest you. It was written in 1966 by an
author who at that time still had not had any shred of experience with
psychedelic substances and who read the reports about medicinal experiments
with these drugs devoid of understanding. However, little has changed since,
except that now the misgiving comes from the other side.
I
suppose that your discovery has caused a hiatus (not directly a Saul-to-Paul
conversion as Roland Fischer says…) in my work (also a large word) - and
indeed, that which I have written since has become rather realistic or at
least less expressive. In any case I could not have brought off the cool
realism of my TV piece "Spiele der Macht" [Games of power] without it. The
different drafts attest it, in case they are still lying around somewhere.
Should you have interest and time for a meeting, it would
delight me very much to visit you sometime for a conversation.
W. V.
Burg, i.L. 28 November
1970
Dear Mr. Vogt,
If the bird that alighted on my
table was able to find its way to me, this is one more debt I owe to the
magical effect of LSD. I could soon write a book about all of the results that
derive from that experiment in 1943....
A. H.
Muri/Bern,
13 March 1971
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Enclosed is a critique
of Jünger's Annahenngen [Approaches], from the daily paper, that will
presumably interest you....
It seems to me that to
hallucinate—to dream—to write, stands at all times in contrast to everyday
consciousness, and their functions are complementary. Here I can naturally
speak only for myself. This could be different with others—it is also truly
difficult to speak with others about such things, because people often speak
altogether different languages....
However, since you are
now gathering autographs, and do me the honor of incorporating some of my
letters in your collection, I enclose for you the manuscript of my
"testament"—in which your discovery plays a role as "the only joyous invention
of the twentieth century...."
W. V.
dr. walter vogts most recent testament 1969
I
wish to have no special funeral
only expensive and obscene
orchids
innumerable little birds with gay names
no naked dancers
but
psychedelic
garments
loudspeaker in every corner and
nothing but the latest beatles record [Abbey Road]
one
hundred thousand million times
and
do what
you like ["Blind Faith"]
on an endless tape
nothing more
than a popular Christ with a halo of
genuine gold
and a beloved mourning congregation
that pumped themselves full with acid [acid = LSD]
till they go to heaven [From Abbey Road, side two]
one two
three four five six seven
possibly we will encounter one
another there
most
cordially dedicated
to Dr. Albert Hofmann
Beginning of Spring 1971
Burg i.L.,
29 March 1971
Dear Mr. Vogt,
You have again presented me
with a lovely letter and a very valuable autograph, the testament 1969....
Very remarkable dreams in recent times induce me to test a
connection between the composition (chemical) of the evening meal and the
quality of dreams. Yes, LSD is also something that one eats....
A. H.
Muri/Bern,
5 September 1971
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Over the weekend at
Murtensee [On that Sunday, I (A. H.) hovered over the Murtensee in the balloon
of my friend E. I., who had taken me along as passenger.] I often thought of
you—a most radiant autumn day. Yesterday, Saturday, thanks to one tablet of
aspirin (on account of a headache or mild flu), I experienced a very comical
flashback, like with mescaline (of which I have had only a little, exactly
once)....
I have read a delightful essay by Wasson about
mushrooms; he divides mankind into mycophobes and mycophiles.... Lovely fly
agarics must now be growing in the forest near you. Sometime shouldn't we
sample some?
W. V.
Muri/Bern,
7 September 1971
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Now I feel I must
write briefly to tell you what I have done outside in the sun, on the dock
under your balloon: I finally wrote some notes about our visit in
Villars-sur-Ollons (with Dr. Leary), then a hippie-bark went by on the lake,
self-made like from a Fellini film, which I sketched, and over and above it I
drew your balloon.
W. V.
Burg i.L.,
15 April 1972
Dear Mr. Vogt,
Your television play
"Spiele der Macht" [Games of power] has impressed me extraordinarily.
I congratulate you on this magnificent piece, which allows
mental cruelty to become conscious, and therefore also acts in its way as
"consciousness- expanding", and can thereby prove itself therapeutic in a
higher sense, like ancient tragedy.
A. H.
Burg i.L.,
19 May 1973
Dear Mr. Vogt,
Now I have already read your
lay sermon three times, the description and interpretation of your Sinai Trip.
[Walter Vogt: Mein Sinai Trip. Eine Laienpredigt [My Sinai trip: A lay
sermon] (Verlag der Arche, Zurich, 1972). This publication contains the text
of a lay sermon that Walter Vogt gave on 14 November 1971 on the invitation of
Parson Christoph Mohl, in the Protestant church of Vaduz (Lichtenstein), in
the course of a series of sermons by writers, and in addition contains an
afterword by the author and by the inviting parson. It involves the
description and interpretation of an ecstatic-religious experience evoked by
LSD, that the author is able to "place in a distant, if you will superficial,
analogy to the great Sinai Trip of Moses." It is not only the "patriarchal
atmosphere" that is to be traced out of these descriptions, that constitutes
this analogy; there are deeper references, which are more to be read between
the lines of this text.] Was it really an LSD trip?… It was a courageous deed,
to choose such a notorious event as a drug experience as the theme of a
sermon, even a lay sermon. But the questions raised by hallucinogenic drugs do
actually belong in the church—in a prominent place in the church, for they are
sacred drugs (peyotl, teonanacatl, ololiuhqui, with which LSD is mostly
closely related by chemical structure and activity).
I can
fully agree with what you say in your introduction about the modern
ecclesiastical religiosity: the three sanctioned states of consciousness (the
waking condition of uninterrupted work and performance of duty, alcoholic
intoxication, and sleep), the distinction between two phases of psychedelic
inebriation (the first phase, the peak of the trip, in which the cosmic
relationship is experienced, or the submersion into one's own body, in which
everything that is, is within; and the second phase, characterized as the
phase of enhanced comprehension of symbols), and the allusion to the candor
that hallucinogens bring about in consciousness states. These are all
observations that are of fundamental importance in the judgment of
hallucinogenic inebriation.
The most worthwhile spiritual
benefit from LSD experiments was the experience of the inextricable
intertwining of the physical and spiritual. "Christ in matter" (Teilhard de
Chardin). Did the insight first come to you also through your drug
experiences, that we must descend "into the flesh, which we are," in order to
get new prophesies?
A criticism of your sermon: you allow
the "deepest experience that there is"—"The kingdom of heaven is within
you"—to be uttered by Timothy Leary. This sentence, quoted without the
indication of its true source, could be interpreted as ignorance of one, or
rather the principal truth of Christian belief.
One
of your statements deserves universal recognition: "There is no non-ecstatic
religious experience."…
Next Monday evening I shall be
interviewed on Swiss television (about LSD and the Mexican magic drugs, on the
program "At First Hand"). I am curious about the sort of questions that will
be asked…
A. H.
Muri/Bern,
24 May 1973
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Of course it was LSD—only
I did not want to write about it explicitly, I really do not know just why
myself.... The great emphasis I placed on the good Leary, who now seems to me
to be somewhat flipped out, as the prime witness, can indeed only be explained
by the special context of the talk or sermon.
I must admit
that the perception that we must descend "into the flesh, which we are"
actually first came to me with LSD. I still ruminate on it, possibly it even
came "too late" for me in fact, although more and more I advocate your opinion
that LSD should be taboo for youth (taboo, not forbidden, that is the
difference…).
The sentence that you like, "there is no
nonecstatic religious experience," was apparently not liked so much by
others—for example, by my (almost only) literary friend and minister-lyric
poet Kurt Marti.… But in any case, we are practically never of the same
opinion about anything, and notwithstanding, we constitute when we
occasionally communicate by phone and arrange little activities together, the
smallest minimafia of Switzerland.
W. V.
Burg i.L.,
13 April 1974
Dear Mr. Vogt,
Full of suspense, we
watched your TV play "Pilate before the Silent Christ" yesterday evening.
… as a representation of the fundamental man-God
relationship: man, who comes to God with his most difficult questions, which
finally he must answer himself, because God is silent. He does not answer them
with words. The answers are contained in the book of his creation (to
which the questioning man himself belongs). True natural science
deciphering of this text.
A. H.
Muri/Bern,
11 May 1974
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
I have
composed a "poem" in half twilight, that I dare to send to you. At first I
wanted to send it to Leary, but this would make no sense.
Leary in jail
Gelpke is dead
Treatment in the asylum
is this your psychedelic
revolution?
Had we taken seriously
something
with which one only ought to play
or
vice-versa…
W. V.
F 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11