Once again, New York City was graced with a presentation by Graham Hancock, this one for free at the National Arts Club in the Gramercy Park section on Nov. 7.
The doors did not open until 6:30 pm, even though I arrived with some friends a good hour earlier than that. Therefore I had to go around the corner for coffee, and by the time I returned at 6:35, most every seat in the room was long filled. Luckily everyone in my group managed to find seats, scattered about the room, but all with a great view of the screen upon which Graham subsequently showed his PowerPoint presentation as he spoke.
It was a pleasant surprise for me, a longtime friend and fan of Graham’s, to find I didn’t have to shell out $60 and drive upstate to Alex Gray’s gorgeous but difficult-to-reach-without-a-car COSM, where Graham had been Halloween night giving another presentation. The fact this show was free was icing on the cake, considering I’m more than willing to pay to see and hear Graham expound upon ancient history, mysteries, and his various theories about altered consciousness and ancient teachers who reached these altered states by whichever means, be it fasting, trance dancing, or the use of plants and molecules.
The first half hour or so Graham outlined his latest novel, War God; Nights of the Witch, about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Nation. I will be getting my hands on this book in the very near future, as he makes it sound not only entertaining but also mind-expandingly educational as well.
He followed up with a discussion about consciousness. Suffice to say the details were many and varied, stretching across multiple philosophies, including ancient and modern art forms, the right to be personally responsible for our own consciousness without intervention by prohibitionists waging their War on Some Drugs and Users, or as Graham insists, a War on Consciousness, and many other areas too numerous to give due credit to here.
I first interviewed Graham for High Times when his book Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind was published in 2006. At the time, Graham was still a little hesitant to attack prohibition or even discuss it openly and directly. This has changed in the succeeding seven years, as he's now adamant about how evil, wrong and intentionally focused the current repressive system actually is.
Graham is a gracious, generous and engaging speaker. Everyone in the SRO crowd repeatedly applauded this and that point he raised, obviously already of the same or similar mindset as Graham himself. The historic (yet not quite ancient) building was the perfect venue for this gig.
Check out Graham Hancock's event schedule here.
