Jonathan Ott's house torched

Jonathan's house was torched by parties unknown. From CognitiveLiberty.org. A tragic fire by arson has burned our dear friend Jonathan Ott’s lovely home to the ground. He was lecturing in Spain at the time and he is personally safe, but homeless and shaken. This is a tremendous loss, and Jonathan could use your help right now. He must relocate.

In his own words:

"[My] home was completely burned, destroying everything that was most important: laboratory, hydroelectric system, custom-built and -designed electric motorcycle and, for the crowning touch, [the arsonist] tried to burn [my] library, one of the best private collections on ethnomedicine that exist[s]. Signed, personal copies of some of Albert Hofmann’s books were even used as fuel to ignite expensive laboratory equipment! While the humidity of the cloud-forest saved the books, the house was rendered uninhabitable and without power; the laboratory unusable.
It is the attempted book-burning which most outrages me and, I think, will outrage others.
For that reason, I am dedicating my full attention first to saving the books—I now have 53 boxes banded and stashed, and there will be perhaps 100 to 125 in total. This is hard and dirty work, but I can see light at the end of the tunnel.
So I am fucked in a major way and the rest of this year will be devoted to moving to Colombia and starting over there. I go to Colombia to lecture in May and hope to have library and lab packed up by then. I have to start over again for the 4th time, but will land on my feet and in 2 years time be better off than before.

Help out!

» more at: www.cognitiveliberty.org

Posted By gwyllm at 2010-03-29 21:48:08 permalink | comments

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Albion. : 2010-04-09 00:54:29

Clearly the work of anti-gnostic forces. We live in a dark age, when mass-media blare lies about entheogens, armed inquisitors rob and jail psychological explorers, and police (DEA) hand down our laws on what naturally-occuring substances humans may or may not sample. Strike a blow for freedom and sanity and disseminate accurate knowledge of psychedelics and support those who do.

Anonymouse. : 2010-04-02 04:37:56

Ernst Zundel's house in Toronto was fire bombed, too. Similarities? Has Ott got pipe bombs in the post to look forward to, or was it all just a little domestic strife?

Pablo. : 2010-04-01 03:28:49

Important people like McKenna, Grof and Ott should have electronic copies of everything in their libraries. For those rare books, manuscripts and notes that are not digital, they should be scanned. Furthermore, all additional comments and material they've added to published works should be saved as annotations to those works. Is there an organization could fund such work?

Anonymous. : 2010-03-31 12:33:01

No, you can never be sure, and there could have been some ideology behind it. Who knows?

Regardless, from the perspective of the US government, Ott is probably considered an eccentric, burned-out druggie (his fondness for opiates is well documented), and not a serious ideological threat.

If you want to explore conspiracies (which I don't, I'm just doing this for fun), it would seem more likely that if this were a salvo in an ideological war, it's more likely committed animist plant enthusiasts who take exception to his committed, non-spiritual reductionist/materialist perspective and work. You know, the Christian Militia-analog of the plant people! :)

At least that would make a good short story. Militant spiritual animists running amok in Central America, waging war on materialism....

But in humdrum reality, the truth of the matter is probably a lot more mundane and a lot less dramatic/romantic. I wish that life would follow art more. I wish McKenna's library was the scene of a great, ideological battle, as opposed to the senseless victim of a tacky sub shop fire.

teleomorph : 2010-03-31 12:31:38

It wasn't the gummint.
From Jon Hanna:
Jonathan had been providing a place to crash in his newly created lab/guest
house for two guests, who ended up getting into a couple of physical
altercations with Jonathan's neighbor. Clearly, Jonathan found this to be
unacceptable, and his guests' anger was then turned onto him. While he was
gone from the country, they burned his place down. Nearly all of his books
are now covered soot and have to be cleaned before packing up, but
thankfully only about 40-50 of them were charred and none were consumed. So
he's got a bunch of sad, dirty, tedious work ahead of him, packing
everything up into fruit crates, trucking it to Veracruz, shipping it by
container to Cartagena de Indias, then overland to Manizales, in the
Cordillera Central. Colombia as a spot to relocate likely has more to do
with the fact that he has a gig and a friend he can stay with there; but it
is also true that he was increasingly disenchanted with the area in Xalapa
where he lived.

-- Jon

teleomorph : 2010-03-31 12:30:19

Stan Grof lost his house and entire library to fire in 2006, then Terence McKenna’s massive rare book collection burned in 2007. Thank the Word most of Jonathan’s library survived.

Nowhere Girl. : 2010-03-31 10:07:30

One can never be sure (and shouldn't accuse without evidence), but in this case the thought that this was an ideologically-motivated act immediately occurs.
Isn't it then something that could be called a hate crime?

Anonymous. : 2010-03-31 07:18:58

"USA Black-Ops strike again...!"

Don't know if you're joking or not, but I tend to believe that whole aggregation of work by Ott and others probably doesn't even hit the radar. I imagine they have their hands full with other, "higher priority" nefarious actions!

For them to take this kind of action, they would actually have to believe that these substances have value, value that needs to be opposed. I doubt they have the intelligence, insight, and creativity to even contemplate the possibility.

dreamdust. : 2010-03-30 22:21:10

USA Black-Ops strike again...!

Gwyllm. : 2010-03-30 19:37:21

Disgruntled houseguest. No. Really.

psypressuk : 2010-03-30 15:26:26

savage

Lift : 2010-03-30 14:44:45

It's not the first psychedelic library targeted by arson, either....

Nick. : 2010-03-30 12:02:29

PLEASE keep us up to date on this story. I hope the dirtbag is caught and brought to justice. Not likely though if it was the Feds or if they outsourced and contracted a third party to do the job. But who knows. Maybe since the mission was accomplished they will just throw him under the bus. All just speculation though. My thoughts are with mr. Ott

DONONAMOUSDEATHPENALTY. : 2010-03-30 11:50:59

WHAT THE FUCK? DEATH PENALTY

disappointed. : 2010-03-30 06:48:50

who would do that???

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Jonathan Ott's house torched

Posted By gwyllm at 2010-03-29 21:48:08 permalink | comments

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