I met William Bokelund in his cave for an interview.
Sure, he's my husband, but I promised myself to be as
professional as possible. We popped a bottle of champagne,
sat down for a piece of strawberry cake, and, William was
wearing my pink butterfly pajama, and we launched into
secret areas of this strange boy's mindspaces.
BUTTERFLY: You have jokingly been described as the
strangest boy ever born, you have been touted as the
greatest criminal mind of history, you have been labelled
genius and madman. How would you yourself describe yourself?
WILLIAM: O, I wouldn't, really. I am slightly bigger
than an apple, to start with.
BUTTERFLY: Many people complain about your approach
to life, saying that you swing it unnaturally, that you are
selfish and that you have self-deified yourself on the wrong
grounds. Also, many people say that the books you write are
rubbish. What is your response to this kind of attack?
WILLIAM: Well, see, thing is, that, eh, the books are
actually about a secret of hyperspace, of the mushroom, and
only certain people will be interested. And well, about the
self-deification. . . Just because some other people think
they live in the 21st century and don't know that
they are gods, hell, I'm not going to halt myself from being
the god I am.
BUTTERFLY: So what do you expect from your readers?
WILLIAM: O, nothing really, except that as soon as
they bump into my books, that they make their life about
digging into the secrets contained therein until something
stranger than a fairytale begins to happen. The books are
actually written in accordance with The Massive Tactic of
the Tryptamine Goddess Alliance and should function as a key
to wherever you want to go. Also, the books are just very
very cute and so one can have a lot of fun with them.
BUTTERFLY: Any advice for your future readers?
WILLIAM: Yes. Get naked, get really really high, lie
on the bed and dig into the book. Or something like that.
Maybe go to the forest and get really really high and then
read the book. Lick some nectar dripping off the world. Or
something, but get really really high. And then, do it
again. And then again and again until things start getting
really really weird and spaced out. I call to my readers to
get excessive. From personal experience I know how difficult
it can be to truly set oneself free, to fly off, for ones
soul to blossom. It takes magic and excessiveness to
succeed, in my experience, because the many various chains
that bind us to dullness are strong chains. One must be
nimble, brave, and one must push hard. As William Burroughs
said: Beware the middle way, the way of moderation and
common sense, for it lead not to the secret lands. If you
already live like that then great, the book should come to
you right on time. And ask yourself what do you really want?
Because there are no limits to what is possible. And love
yourself and be in love with yourself and don't let anyone
distract you from clarity and from your belief in the
splendour of your own soul. Let the book be inspiration, and
don't mistake these bird's hoots for nonsense. Pay attention
to details. Something is up with this mushroom, that's for
sure.
BUTTERFLY: What made you begin to write?
WILLIAM: I lived in India and Nepal in a raging trip.
I found a copy of James Joyce's book Ulysses on the beach
and I began to read it. Soon very strange things began to
happen from reading that book and I eventually had to
conclude that something fishy was going on. Soon I had the
urge to start writing my own magical book. It felt as if I
had discovered a hidden plot to my reality, a plot my life
followed to the point. I saw traces of this plot in Joyce's
books, which gave me the feeling of this being something
vast and of hyperspacial nature, and I began to work with
displaying the hidden plot by writing it as a story. Now,
years later, this hidden plot keeps surfacing, the story is
getting tighter and tighter, the hidden becomes more and
more visible and indeed I have announced that the veil is
being lifted. How this relates to other people I am not
sure. But this is what my life is about. It might be so,
that by hooking up with the mushroom one actually hooks
oneself into the web of a hidden story, an event of some
sort. Reminds me of what Terence McKenna said about how the
mushroom is a door out of history and into the wiring under
the board in Eternity. That's how I would choose to explain
it as well. The wiring under the board is the hidden plot,
the hidden story, what's actually going on.
BUTTERFLY: Can you say anything about the nature of
this hidden plot?
WILLIAM: It's vast, so it's mostly only touchable in
flight, difficult to pin down into a sentence or two. But
what I will say is that, at least for me, what I have
concluded is it is love. It's a love story. A very very deep
kind of love. At least that's how it is for me and my
beloved. Like the dove taking care of her egg, that kind of
love. Deep. The love between the gods.
BUTTERFLY: Are you in love?
WILLIAM: Hideously so. Falling deeper and deeper in
love by the hour.
BUTTERFLY: With who?
WILLIAM: With the scariest and most shining divine
woman I have ever met, and her sister.
BUTTERFLY: You describe yourself sometimes as an
explorer of the psilocybin mushroom, and are always very
clear about the mushroom being at the core of your life and
work. You met the mushroom first time year 2000. What is it
about the mushroom that fascinated you upon meeting it, and
keeps fascinating you?
WILLIAM: The mushroom is one of the three or four
grandest things that have happened to me thus far in life,
the other being love, joy and the event of having been born,
and a few other of such magnitude. For me there was nothing
to ponder. During the first trip I knew I had found what I
had been looking for, the alchemical key. You know, this
stuff works, this stuff works. And from there it just kept
deepening, and still keeps deepening. The vastness of the
mystery knows no end. What I soon found was that there are
layers to the thing, and as soon as you break through a new
layer, it gets deeper and there is more. This to me, right
from the start, shone of the possibility of something truly
unexpected, something truly stranger than a fairytale. So
instead of giving up after a few trips I continued deeper
and deeper. I crossed the line, and no I have no regrets.
Some people tend to take my work and art and output as a
joke or at least with a grain of salt. I couldn't be more
serious. Magical worlds and “the secrets of the gods”,
secrets of Nature given to the shaman in ecstasy as Terence
said, all this is bocked at by modern society because it
does not know that it exists. But for us who wake up and
search out the mystery, well there it is, with you yourself
as a main character.
BUTTERFLY: How did you come into contact with the
mushroom at first?
WILLIAM: An old friend of mine came over with a
recording of Alien Dreamtime by Terence McKenna, that
classic 1993 recording. After having listened to it a few
times I decided I just have to try these shrooms, and two
weeks later I ordered some off the internet, they were legal
in Sweden at that point. And just as Terence said, the
mushroom delivered itself to me on the money.
BUTTERFLY: What would you say about the psychedelic
community and psychedelics in the present age, and how do
you look at yourself within the context?
WILLIAM: O I'm not sure. This is psychedelic age, for
sure, and it's here to stay. I have had thoughts of being a
voice for the mushroom in the world, and I guess I am to
some degree, but to be honest it's just a way too personal
thing for me, I'm right in the middle of the adventure and,
I'm high up on this enormous wave of the thing, I rather sit
in the outskirts of attention and live in my own world with
my beloved and with good friends whom with I share the
adventure. I think the mushroom has all its advertising
threads it needs out there, you know, for the one who
searches out the mystery the psychedelics are there right at
the edge of the fence. So I've kind of stopped trying to be
a voice and instead just live my own life with the
psychedelics. My output as art will continue to spread
across the planet though and that is my little way of
sharing from the vastness and the light of the magical
universe I now live in after my 10 years with the shroom.
One thing I guess I do like to push is to keep pushing.
Taking a few trips is not what I'm talking about. As I
mentioned, there are layers to the thing, and so you can't
take a few trips of some small amount of shrooms and think
that the full splendour of it all will reveal itself to you
just like that. Keep going. Things can only be so beautiful
and marvellous as you can imagine them to be, and as soon as
you start pushing that envelope then what is possible
becomes more and more grand. Now, Butterfly, can't you just
stand up and bend over a bit so I can give your bum a kiss?
BUTTERFLY: Sure.
(I bent over gently and William kissed my bum, many
times.)
BUTTERFLY: You are very secretive in your books. Any
reason?
WILLIAM: We care about each other so much. We decided
to slightly hide behind a veil. So we're a bit shady. And
also, we have plans in action. But we felt that it is
important that we share certain things, so we decided to
send our books out. But not only that, in fact what we are
trying to share in our books can't be displayed directly and
in clear language. It is paradox, it is mysterious. We have
put it as succinctly as we could.
BUTTERFLY: “We” care about each other? Who?
WILLIAM: Me and my beloved.
BUTTERFLY: So how is it to be absolutely mad and live
the life of a psychedelic god?
WILLIAM: O it's amazing, absolutely unbelievable.
Luxury like nothing else.
BUTTERFLY: So, William, back to your books and work.
What is your latest work's journey going to take us all to
see ?
WILLIAM: O dare I even mention it. Decency can
scarcely hint at the terrible beauty of this tremendum. You
are being contacted. By who? That is not up to me to open my
mouth about.
BUTTERFLY: You began, years ago, releasing your books
under the name The Rosalixion. Your current release
is called The Mushroom Seamstress, which contains
The Rosalixion as one of its parts. What do you feel has
changed the most from The Rosalixion to now?
WILLIAM: For one thing I have now put the mushroom in
its rightful place; on centre stage in bright floodlight. In
The Rosalixion I was very sneaky about talking about
the shroom, even though the wine of the mushroom licked
every word. In the current work I do none of such hiding.
Also, my own understanding of and intimacy with the core has
grown immensely since the release of The Rosalixon,
and that is reflected in the new and current work. Let me
tell you a little story. I had one of my first hyperspacial
breakthroughs, as it could be called, around summer solstice
a few years ago. It was around June 21, or the 21st
of the 6th month. I broke through to the wiring
under the board in a deeper way than I had ever done, and I
stayed there for weeks. It is debatable whether or not I
ever came back. Later it struck me as a synchronicity that I
in fact live on street number 216, thought that made sense
as my breakthrough happened close to or on 21/6. Mildly odd,
I thought. Then I found that the Devil's number, 666, well,
6 x 6 x 6 equals 216. That is so characteristic of my wife
Sissy Cogan, to play a bit evil like that, sharp and scary.
Very cute. Then it struck me that I was 16 years old the
first time I took mushrooms, which was year 2000, which
again shines of this 216 current. Odd, I thought, very odd.
Then it hit me that indeed, the chemical formulae of
Psilocin, which is what Psilocybin, the active ingredient of
the mushroom, becomes when it enters the human body, is C 12
H 16 N 2 O, which again shines of 216. That's when it
started making sense to me. Not too long ago I then found
that by calculating the digits of my year of birth, 1983,
well, 1 x 9 x 8 x 3 equals 216. And now here we begin to
touch upon secret stuff, secrets between me and my beloved.
There are many more examples I could give of the 216 current
that runs through me and my family's life, but I won't
mention them now. You understand the title, The
Seamstress. The Goddess weaves for us the marvellous web
in our eternal tantric union, as we merge more and more with
her impossible consciousness. And you know, this is not
synchronicity, the 216 stuff. This is something far vaster
than that. This is in fact a glimmering of the hidden plot.
In one sense we could consider our new work The Mushroom
Seamstress a pearl that we have placed in the dream. The
funny thing, and it surprised me immensely to find this, is
that one could say that everything is visionary reality.
Once I was born as a psychedelic god I saw my entire past in
a new light. All events fit, I could see the pattern, I
could see the web.
You know, that whole version of myself as having been born
in Sweden at the end of the 20th century, went to
kindergarten, went to school, my name is William, whatever,
that whole story just fell away and forth popped a deeper
reality, a completely other version of what was going on, a
new magic modality of the topology of my life.
Obviously alls our stories are different, your story won't
be like mine, what me and the girls have attempted with our
books is to show how it is for us in the hope that people
will recognise it on some level. Personally I also feel I
just have to share this with you others, I feel like a
little child having just found the yummiest strawberry cake
ever and I go “Guys! Guys! There's this huge strawberry cake
over here, come here!”. You know. Whatever is going on, and
let me be clear saying that I of course do not know exactly
what is going on, but whatever it is it's more beautiful and
wondrous than anything I have ever encountered, and so of
course I feel a deep urge to tell it to you, to share my
findings somehow. And they are literally my own findings,
for me anyhow. No one has ever come and told this stuff to
me, which surprised me for a long time until I understood
the depths of the love here. What I have found has come from
my deep and long involvement with the mushroom, and a few
other psychedelics, and a drive to search the beyonds. And
well, this is part of the new work, what has changed since
The Rosalixion, a new sense of clarity about it all.
BUTTERFLY: (Mumbles.) God your lips look so
yummy. May I have a kiss, just a small kiss?
WILLIAM: Mmm. Yummy. Are you yummy-girl? Sure.
(William rises from the chair and places his lips gently
on mine. We shut our eyes and melted in bliss.)
BUTTERFLY: So. What is a day in the life of Spiros
like at this point?
WILLIAM: A day in my life? Day and night, no
difference, but. Hahaha. Here I must get poetic to at all be
able to answer. You know, I always hoped there was more to
reality than I was told as a kid. Never could I have dreamed
anything as marvellous as this. I love telling the story of
how my wife greeted me to one of our palaces last
year, it was such a grand greeting. I took 6 grams of shroom
and, well, as the effect began to kick in I noticed this
strange tongue come folding toward me through hyperspace all
the way from the beginning of the myths and like from
millions of years away. It was an alien jaguar snake lizard
lion tongue, and it folded in some impossible way toward me,
closer and closer, and when it was just near me it suddenly
vanished. I sat like a question mark on the chair, wondering
where it went. Then suddenly the tongue appears behind me
under the chair and it licks one long slow wet lick between
my legs, spreading my pussylips. I moan in orgasmic pleasure
as it slides across my clitoris and I drift away into an
ocean of wellbeing. I sense a big smile there and Sissy, my
wife, says “Hello dear”. It strikes me as odd that she
licked my pussy when I don't even have a pussy, I'm male,
right, but I didn't dwell too long upon that. Well, that was
Sissy's way of saying hello that evening. Hahaha, now that
kind of stuff just gets me tingling. A day in the life of
Spiros? Well, it's a day of such godly luxury that only the
brave ever find such. I mean hey, I am the cute little sweet
Satan married to the seven deadly sisters who created me,
how much sweeter can life get? And people think being a
millionaire is luxury. . .
BUTTERFLY: Those sisters like their little blond
barbie boy, I hear. Hmm. What you said about the number 216,
how it runs through your life like a central thread, was
very interesting. Do you have any other similar examples to
tell?
WILLIAM: The 216 current is the easiest one to
explain, which is why I often talk about it. Most of the
other threads of the hidden
plot are more obscure and harder
to explain shortly.
BUTTEFLY: If reality comes as a hyperdimensional
biological hologram mirrored through and as multi
dimensional space time synchronicity, then how does humanity
as a species mould and adapt synymous with the aeons of
time, philosophy, art, literature, and poetry?
WILLIAM: I rarely think in terms of “the human
species as a whole”. To pile together us all under one
umbrella seems a bit conceptionally oversimple, to me. I
think rather that we all live our own lives, and thus have
our own relationships to reality, soul, Nature, and the
whole kit and caboodle. It's an interesting question. I
often look at my life and Nature as a kind of living
cryptogram that is telling me the secrets of the nature of
my existence. I am soul and soul only, everything is
visionary reality, and me and my beloved are the cosmic
paradox folding through itself, yes, like a hyperdimensional
holographic unity. Hyperspacial synchronicity naturally
arises from this unity. How to enter into harmony with it?
Well, follow the thread, follow the clues. Look within,
feel, live with the heart. There are no written rules on how
to approach things of such magnitude as the trememendum of
existence, and my truths might not necessarily be anyone
else's truths. For me personally it of course also involves
exploring the mushroom and following the guidance of the
shroom. So I guess also what I am saying is do your thing,
do what it is you want to do. That itself will have
positive effects on the whole of humanity. Align yourself
with your own purposes in your own relationship to the
most-highest. You are the event-horizon of Creation.
BUTTERFLY: A friend
asked me recently, and I thought I'd ask you. Why is it that
one always wants to get naked when high on the mushroom?
WILLIAM: Hahaha.
Interesting. That happens to me a lot too. I mostly always
prefer to have my clothes off or perhaps a simple sheet
round my waist. Can it be that it feels unnatural with
clothes on when one is in such a natural mind-set as one is
in when high on the shroom? You know, when the cultural
mind-set falls so falls the clothes with it, haha.
BUTTERFLY: Sounds
like it, yes. So, you say that you are married to Sissy
Cogan and her sister-wife. Isn't it a bit dangerous to look
at your symbiotic relationship with the mushroom as her
being your wife? I mean, marriages can turn bad, and all.
Marriages don't always last.
WILLIAM: I know
what you mean, but the thing is that our union is on many
levels. Sissy is a divine loving and caring mother to me as
well as my lover and partner and best friend. As I mentioned
earlier, love like the dove taking care of her egg. It's
deep, like a mother's love for her child or like the love
between Isis and Osiris. When I first discovered the depths
of this kind of love I felt it as a kind of biological
connection, as well. Made me feel like the first man, like
an Adam anthropos, with all the cosmos within me. I can feel
the bird in me, the snake and lizard and the insect, the
human, the Greco-Egyptian god, and the alien. The
reverence for life that comes with that. . .
BUTTERFLY: Ah, ah,
yes, yes. Can you tell about Sissy and her sister? Who are
they, what are they like, etc.?
WILLIAM: I'd prefer
to leave that to
The Mushroom Seamstress
to show, for now.
BUTTERFLY: Sure.
Ah, so many questions. We could talk for hours more.
WILLIAM: Indeed.
BUTTERFLY: So what
are your plans for the near future?
WILLIAM: O I'm not
sure, keep celebrating between suns and enjoy the rising
spring, it's spring time soon, and keep following the
thread. The plan that me and the girls devised many years
ago and high up in a corner of hyperspace seems to have
worked, and so now comes a next phase in our plan. Our plan
partly involved overlapping my regular 3D 4D existence with
the mushroom hyperspace, and it indeed seems we succeeded,
they now overlap each other in one tantalisingly perfect
match. I'm excited. The hidden plot keeps surfacing and
according to our calculations we are right on schedule. As
Terence said, the flying saucer waits warmly humming at the
end, it is the perfected human mind. As far as I can tell we
heading straight toward it at lightning speed. Me and the
girls' plan is to merge ourselves with the impossible
consciousness of the Seamstress and become a totally new
kind of being. Or put in other words, to merge with the
psychedelic totality, and as Terence put it, “become
dimension-roving Bodhisatvas”. To come into completion as
the wondrous bending ending, a new beginning. I expect
nothing short of miracles. Lots to say about it, lots to
say, I guess simply put I'm just going to continue following
the thread.
BUTTERFLY: Out of
the labyrinth.
WILLIAM: The
dreamadoory.
BUTTERFLY:
Dreamydeary.
WILLIAM: My plans
for the near future? To let my dreams run free and keep
exploring. And just swoon with the girls in our lovely
Plomari.
BUTTERFLY: What do
you have to say about the mushroom being so at the outskirts
of attention in the modern western world?
WILLIAM: Well it
amazes me how so many people think the mushroom is some kind
of drug. To dismiss it as a drug is to totally
miss-appreciate and misunderstand the whole thing. I hate to
say it but it's true, stupid and tasteless people aren't
interested in psychedelics because they can't figure out
what the point of it is. The mind-sets characteristic of
modern western civilisation are extremely tasteless and can
not appreciate the intimate relationship with the divine
that the mushroom makes possible, I mean, it even fails to
get the hint, to see that first glimpse of the beauty
possible. The fog of dullness is so thick that people easily
fail to see through it, you know.
BUTTERFLY: And yet
there it is, this little fungi, growing peacefully on the
pastures, waiting to be embraced. . .
WILLIAM: Yes, there
it it. And let us also note that all good stuff is at the
far outskirts of western attention because all good stuff
has sense enough to stay out of that circus.
BUTTERFLY: It's
been a pleasure talking to you Spiros, and I am sure that a
lot of people will find this interview very enlightening and
interesting. If you don't mind I think we should do this
again some time soon, I am sure that within weeks you will
have lots of new things to say.
WILLIAM: It's been
a pleasure, Butt. Yes, let's do it again soonly. I always
learn a lot myself from talking about it all and I do think
it's important that we talk about this stuff. We need more
info from the deep caverns and from the Garden.
BUTTERFLY: Yes we
do, yes we do. Anything you would like to say as last words
for this time?
WILLIAM:
So much to talk about, let
us leave it for next time.
BUTTERFLY:
Okay then.
Bye for this time, Spiros.
WILLIAM: Bye for
now.
Part II of this interview
is here
