Jonathan Talat Phillips, author of The Electric Jesus and co-founder of Reality Sandwich and Evolver (I hosted a series of crop circle webinars, and am about to do another series, for them), has written a review of Wanderlust, a movie that open today. It sets straight a world that is becoming ever more exposed to a life-altering substance: Ayahuasca: What Jennifer Aniston May Not Know About the ‘Spirit Vine’. Boy, does Hollywood get it wrong.

The way Wanderlust treats ayahuasca reminds me of how misrepresented the crop circles were in SIGNS. At first, circle lovers were infuriated – how dare they coopt our beautiful phenomenon?! But then, we realized it wasn’t a totally negative picture. SIGNS acquainted many people with the existence of the circle phenomenon, which is a first step to any dawning awareness. And, we were grateful the movie had the circles coming from aliens — despite how preposterously fictionalized a Hollywood sort of thing it was, at least they weren’t being ascribed to people. In the case of Wanderlust, ayahuasca has been mischaracterized as to how it works and what it does, but at least it’s been introduced to a mainstream audience without demonizing it. Two steps forward, one step back, on the road to the next reality.

PS: From the piece: “National Geographic adventurer Kira Salak wrote about how overcoming a ‘devil’ in an ayahuasca vision vanquished her life-long struggle with depression in what has become ‘the most popular article the magazine has ever published, bringing in 20 times more reader response mail than any previous article.’” See Inside Story, the post I put up in 2006 about that incredible report!

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