Vapours and visions: Religious dimensions of DMT use - PDFCOFFEE.COM (2025)

Vapours and visions Religious dimensions of DMT use

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Queensland in June 2006.

Des Tramacchi

School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics

Candidate’s Statement of Originality Except where acknowledged in the text, the work presented in this thesis is my original research, and the material has not been submitted, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this, or any other, university.

Signature of Candidate:

Signature of Principal Advisor:

Acknowledgements I’d like to express my gratitude to all interviewees and questionnaire respondents, and to all the people who offered their hospitality and knowledge during my fieldwork. I am especially indebted to the people who take DMT as the subject of their art, without whom my analysis of DMT phenomenology would have been unspeakably difficult. An on-line collection of psychedelic art at the Erowid vaults http://www.erowid.org was invaluable as a source of visual data, and I extend my appreciation to the curators for building and maintaining this resource. I’d like to say “thank you!” and “well done!” to the ‘crews’ of Ethnobotanica, Psychedelic Circus, Julian, Pagan Love Cult, Exodus, Intracortex, and Entheogenesis for their extraordinary energy and creativity. The late Terence McKenna has been an inspiration to many, and I would like to acknowledge his eloquence and his vision of community. I’d like to express my thanks to Dr James Wafer for his advice and contributions on the Jurema religion of Brazil and especially for the translations on page 212. I would also like to thank the Keeper of the Trout for sharing his technical and philosophical erudition, and especially for his contributions to the section “A brief history of DMT”, Mulga for sharing his knowledge of Acacias and their habitats, and Rick Strassman MD for sharing his personal and clinical experience with DMT. The people at the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland have been a pleasure to work with, and I am especially grateful to my supervisors Associate Professor Lynne Hume and Associate Professor Richard Hutch for their invaluable insight and guidance.

Table of Contents List of Figures.............................................................................................................. 5 Chapter 1 Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 Synopsis ................................................................................................................................... 4

Chapter 2

Terms................................................................................................... 7

DMT (and 5-MeO-DMT)...........................................................................................................................7 Ayahuasca and “anahuasca”...................................................................................................................12 Substances.........................................................................................................................................15 Hallucinogens .....................................................................................................................................16 Psychedelics.......................................................................................................................................17 Entheogens ........................................................................................................................................19 Psychonaut.........................................................................................................................................21 ASCs ................................................................................................................................................23 Umwelt ..............................................................................................................................................26 Shamans, neo-shamans, and neo-shamanists ............................................................................................31 Self-healing ........................................................................................................................................34

Chapter 3

Fieldwork and methodology................................................................... 37

Chapter 4

DMT: Shaping expectations ................................................................... 49

Chapter 5

DMT visions ........................................................................................ 87

Ethnographic methods................................................................................................................ 37 Phenomenological and semiotic methods ....................................................................................... 47 A brief history of DMT................................................................................................................. 50 Burnt offerings .......................................................................................................................... 64 Media reporting of DMT in the Australia.......................................................................................... 68 DMT culture in Australia.............................................................................................................. 70 Acacia .................................................................................................................................... 75 Australian Aboriginal ethnobotany of Acacia.................................................................................... 76 Entheogenic Acacias in Australia .................................................................................................. 78 Alchemical minds ...................................................................................................................... 81 Sensing and feeling ................................................................................................................... 89 Ontology and (dis-)embodiment.................................................................................................... 93 Visions.................................................................................................................................... 94 Major motifs ........................................................................................................................... 100 Colours............................................................................................................................................100 Forms..............................................................................................................................................101 Composition......................................................................................................................................106

Ecstatic transportation .............................................................................................................. 107 ‘Others’ ................................................................................................................................. 108

Chapter 6

The DMT menagerie, and beyond. ......................................................... 113

Chapter 7

Conclusions...................................................................................... 172

Faces and masks. ................................................................................................................... 130 Disembodied eyes ................................................................................................................... 138 (Near) death and (nearly) dying .................................................................................................. 156 Transformation ....................................................................................................................... 158 Corroborating ethnographic evidence .......................................................................................... 165 A Forest of Symbols................................................................................................................. 167 Ritual, social patterning and ecstasy............................................................................................ 177 Abandoning the body ............................................................................................................... 181 Seeing and being .................................................................................................................... 186

References .............................................................................................................. 189 Appendix A: Glossary of terms ................................................................................... 202 Appendix B: Pilot questionnaire.................................................................................. 206 Appendix C: DMT-containing plants............................................................................. 208 Traditional DMT-containing entheogens ....................................................................................... 208 Novel DMT-containing entheogens.............................................................................................. 213

List of Figures Figure 1 Tryptamine and some naturally-occurring tryptamine derivatives. .................................... 8 Figure 2 Flier for the festival Exodus 2003 held Near Bald Rock /Tenterfield, NSW Australia. .......... 41 Figure 3 Principal entheogenic Acacias.............................................................................. 78 Figure 4 Left: woodcut of the Mercurial demon from Nazari’s Il metamorfosi metallico et humano (1564). Right: the cover of the psychedelic breakbeat/breaktrance album Astral Attache. ................... 83 Figure 5 A retort (left) and a glass pipe for DMT smoking (right). .............................................. 84 Figure 6 "kneb" by Steve Hatchett (1999) and "Angel of Death" by Angelo Miranda..................... 112 Figure 7 Mantises from “Illuminated Adventures” by Floyd Davis, Skeeta Power, Mango Frangipanni and Nina Rae (1998)............................................................................................. 121 Figure 8 “DMT” (2002) by Danny Gomez. ......................................................................... 128 Figure 9 "Star folk of wood and stream" by Joshua McPherson (2006)..................................... 130 Figure 10 “DMT entity” by Roger Essig ............................................................................ 132 Figure 11 "Divine Moments of Truth" album cover by Dusk Neal (2000) ................................... 134 Figure 12 Untitled image by Dennis Konstantin .................................................................. 137 Figure 13 Detail of "Dying" (1990) by Alex Grey. ................................................................ 139 Figure 14 “DMT—The spirit molecule” (2000), acrylic on wood panel by Alex Grey ..................... 141 Figure 15 Detail of fresco from Tepantitla, Mexico............................................................... 147 Figure 16 "DMT oracle" by Martina Hoffmann .................................................................... 151 Figure 17 “Diosa madre tierra” (2003) by Carey Thompson. .................................................. 160 Figure 18 Black light painting of DMT spirits, Courtesy of the “Adelaide crew,” Entheogenesis 2005. 168 Figure 19 Black-light paintings by "the Adelaide Crew" at Entheogenesis 2005. The alien Self in the bottom left foreground encounters a magical Other who manifests in the rising vapours......... 217

Disclaimer DMT is a controlled substance in virtually all industrialised countries. It is therefore legally hazardous to manufacture or possess. Despite it being an endogenous substance which is rapidly metabolised in the body, it may still prove detrimental to health in unforeseen ways, in addition to its known impact on consciousness, heartrate and blood-pressure (Strassman, 2001). Inhalation of smoke or vapour presents an insult to the lungs, particularly in the case of the vapours of freebase alkaloids like DMT. Smoking can also adversely affect one’s sensitivity to tastes and fragrances, and for all these reasons I advise against the use of DMT. Indeed, I make no recommendations for the use of any qualia whatsoever. By the same gesture, I do not wish to condone prohibition of consciousness modifiers either. As social policy, prohibition is at least as futile as King Canute’s attempt to command the tides, although I concede that prohibition strengthens the policing, legal, and incarceration sectors, provides an economic boost to the black market, and props up a number of regimes so entwined with ours that we could scarcely do without them (Fox & Mathews, 1992; Kersey, 1994; Musto, 1973; Szasz, 1985). Finally I do not wish to seem to be an apologist for DMT users. That would be patronising, and in any case no apology is needed for what is biologically (Samorini, 2000; Siegel & Jarvik, 1975) and culturally (Furst, 1976; Rudgley, 1993) as natural a drive as that to food, sex, art, religion, co-dependence, politics and death.

Vapours and visions

Chapter 1 Introduction

This thesis is offered as a contribution to the study of the socio-cultural and phenomenological dimensions of psychotropic substances, a field that is, of necessity, an interdisciplinary fusion of studies in religion, philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology, psychology, consciousness studies, botany, and ethnopharmacology. My specific objective is to weld phenomenology to the above-mentioned disciplines and to focus this epistemological battery, by way of experiment, on a single psychoactive substance. The substance I chose to examine is n,n-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. I chose DMT because the isolated compound has hitherto received relatively little attention of this kind, the exceptions being the work of Meyer (1992), McKenna (1992a), and Strassman (1996; 2001). DMT also appealed to me on account of the vivid otherworldly experiences frequently attributed to it. It seemed eminently suited to a phenomenological exploration within the context of religious studies. DMT is implicated in the trance techniques of a number of religious traditions. DMT and related tryptamines are often important constituents of snuffs and potions that form the primary vehicles of religious ecstasy in many forms of South American shamanism (Dobkin de Rios, 1970; Dobkin De Rios, 1992; Harner, 1973a; Luna, 1986; Luna & White, 2000; Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1975) and in syncretic churches such as the Santo Daime and the União do Vegetal or UDV (Alverga & Polari, 1999; Grob, 1996; Grob, 1999; Metzner, 1999; Shanon, 2002). Synthetic and isolated DMT, however, is a recent development associated mostly with heavily industrialised ‘western’ societies. Unfortunately cultural and pharmacological variations between traditional DMTcontaining preparations and refined DMT set the comparative study of the two well beyond the scope of the present thesis. Indeed, the variations in the pharmacokinetics of different DMT-containing preparations bring into question the validity of the very category “DMT”. For example, smoked DMT freebase1 is fundamentally different from DMT as a synergistic ingredient in ayahuasca. Western use of refined DMT has received relatively little scholarly attention to date, despite the extremely interesting visionary 1

The term “DMT freebase” refers to non-acidic (basic) chemical forms of DMT. DMT freebase is smokable, whereas the purified salts of DMT, such as DMT hydrochloride, are better suited to injection. page 1

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experiences that the material seems to elicit, and so in this thesis I have undertaken to study western DMT use as a subject sui generis. Fortunately, I found that I could gain ethnographic access to a great number of Australian DMT users. The details of my ethnographic research are laid out in chapter 3, which describes my methodology and fieldwork in more depth. Preliminary questioning of Australian DMT users corroborated claims repeated in the literature of DMT that subjects frequently experience religious ecstasy or encounter numinous beings while using DMT. I found myself presented with the opportunity to investigate a wealth of original mystical and numinous testimonies: raw data that is very attractive to a student of religions and almost irresistible to a religionist with a long-standing interest in consciousness studies. Over the last decade there has been a revival of western interest in DMT, primarily among members of two overlapping sub-cultural formations: the “neo-psychedelic movement” (Jenks, 1997) and the entheogenic movement (Ott 1996). Refined DMT is usually heated in small pipes and the resulting vapour is inhaled. Alternatively, DMT can be injected (if very pure) or compounded with other substances into longer-acting preparations with similar properties to the South American shamanic inebriant ayahuasca. Smoked DMT

as a free-base and without admixtures

induces profound changes in

consciousness within seconds of inhaling the vapour at doses of between 60-100 milligrams (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). These changes are the subject of a later chapter, but a few of the more salient features should be mentioned here. Awareness of the body is often attenuated or suspended, and attention is directed to vivid subjective impressions. The trance passes from an almost instantaneous peak of intensity (characterised by profound sensory and cognitive alterations) within five to ten minutes and subsides largely within thirty minutes to one hour. DMT experiences provide a wealth of information for the cartographer of altered states. The following testimony from Terence McKenna hints at the largely untapped richness of the data: “Breathing is normal, heartbeat steady, the mind clear and observing. But what of the world? What of incoming sensory data? Under the influence of DMT, the world becomes an Arabian labyrinth, a palace, a more than possible Martian jewel, vast with motifs that flood the gaping mind with complex and wordless awe…Many diminutive beings are present there the tykes, the selftransforming machine elves of hyperspace. ” (McKenna, 1993a:257-258)

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DMT users often subsequently allege that the experience transcends words, but often feel compelled to speak incessantly about it anyway. These narratives are very poorly studied indeed, possibly because of the widespread but ethnocentric notion that religious experiences induced by other means (prayer, meditation, dance, flagellation et cetera) are somehow superior to those induced by drugs. This view is surely obsolete, not only because we now understand enough of psychopharmacology to know that these drugs are the very pieces that fit our human jigsaw puzzle, but also because we recognise the religious virtuosity of shamans and other specialists for whom these ‘drugs’ are as indispensable as they are sacred. While there exists a general consensus that the use of such substances constitutes a bona fide element of religious practice among groups with distinctively non-western ethnic identities, social commentators and legislators have often been extremely reluctant to extend this possibility to cultural dissidents within the west, especially to the constituencies of renegade pharmacological subcultures displaying significant cognitive divergence from material realist sensibilities and aesthetics (“a bunch of hippies”). Yet the drug is invariable: its atoms are unbiased. Many users attest to positive changes in their lives as a result of DMT use, and while I do not wish to advocate DMT, the data I have gathered does suggest that DMT is conducive to processes that a depth psychologist might call psychosynthesis or individuation, and that a liberal mystic would probably regard as religious insights2. Consequently, I assume that western experiences with DMT can be bona fide sources of religious values and meanings, although the social contexts and the extent to which these meanings are shared and acknowledged may vary greatly. My principle task is to try to outline these meanings and values. This thesis then, aims to provide a phenomenological study of the underlying essence or eidetic core of western DMT experiences. To my knowledge no such overview has previously been attempted. I also wish to place western use of DMT in an anthropological context that allows us to compare and contrast different cultural frameworks for interpreting and coming to terms with visionary experiences. The thesis also enhances the already abundant coffers of consciousness studies research.

2

The possible psychointegrative potential of DMT is discussed further in the conclusions after an exploration of some western DMT experiences in Chapters 5 and 6. page 3

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Synopsis The following section provides an overview of this thesis. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction and statement of intent, as well as the present synopsis. Chapter 2 is devoted to stipulating the meanings of the various technical terms employed in this thesis. Every now and then motorists need to get their car serviced. The same is true of rational debate. Many terms in the current drug abuse debate, particularly the very terms ‘drug’ and ‘abuse’ are so contested and ambiguous as to be almost beyond salvaging. Even the term ‘debate’ seems to have been broadly misconstrued. Fines, imprisonment and some ‘treatments’ are, as a form of debate, invalid ad baculum arguments more coercive than persuasive (society seems to say: “I’m right or I’ll lock you up”). Different debaters so construct their own intended meanings of terms (often unilaterally so that the opposition has no idea what they are talking about) so as to in effect ‘poison the well’ of pharmacratic discourse (Szasz, 1985). In chapter 2 I elaborate the more useful terms, eliminate a couple of the more problematic or vague terms, and consider some of the repercussions or implications of adopting one term over another, and, where necessary, explicitly stipulate my intended meaning so as to avoid lexical collisions. Chapter 3 outlines my methodology, which essentially involved a combination of ethnographic and phenomenological approaches, each of which is treated under its own subheading. The ethnographic techniques consisted largely of interviews, fieldwork, and participant observation (stopping considerably short of ingesting DMT myself). My fieldwork experiences with Australian entheogen users are briefly outlined. The ethnomethodological subsection also addresses legal, ethical, and logistical concerns. The subsection on phenomenological and semiotic methods outlines my approach to the problem of ineffability, and explains my largely visual-culture-based (supplemented by textual and aural sources) approach to DMT visions. The research methodology used as a basis for selection of DMT-related images is also described. General epistemological and philosophical issues relating to subjectivity are also discussed. Chapter 4 recounts the history of DMT as a refined substance, beginning with its first synthesis in 1931. From the 1950s onwards, DMT was increasingly used by western adventurers in what might be called the “drug underground” to facilitate visionary

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experiences, and in the 1960s DMT was readily adopted into the counterculture pharmacopoeia where it joined LSD, DOM, mescaline and MDA as widely used synthetic psychedelics. With this increasing use came an increasing body of written testimonies about the effects to be expected of DMT. In Australia the major sources of DMT are indigenous Acacias. Some DMT users have attested their belief that Australian Aborigines may have used DMT-containing-entheogens. The anthropological literature does not appear to support this view. What material I have been able to find regarding Australian Aboriginal uses of Acacias is summarised in this chapter. A well-recognised property of subjective consciousness is its extreme plasticity. The impact of ‘setting’ (environment) and ‘set’ (psychological preconditions such as mood and expectations) on the structure of inner experience can be significant, particularly so for drug effects (Zinberg, 1984). It is therefore important to examine the major discourses that may have influenced contemporary DMT users. Chapter 4 addresses these discourses and provides an assessment of their impact. Chapter 5 describes some of the more common effects of DMT on mood, ideation and perception. Many of the effects described in Chapter 6 are common to a wide range of psychedelic drugs, although some of these common effects (for example, perception of fast-moving, multicoloured geometric forms) are especially pronounced during DMT inebriation. Some effects set DMT in a class of its own. For example, complete bodily dissociation or “Out-of-Body-Experience” (OBE) is a very rare property among psychedelic substances (with the exception, discussed in more detail later, of salvinorin a and the ‘dissociative’ anaesthetics). The sense of concrete encounters with spirit entities or alien beings is also relatively rare among other psychedelics, but frequently reported by DMT users. OBEs and alleged contact experiences are among the most remarkable and perplexing dimensions of DMT phenomenology. These numinous experiences generally take the form of intense and compelling visionary epiphanies, and their description and analysis (in chapter 6) forms the heart of this thesis.

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Chapter 6 describes a wide range of DMT-induced visionary experiences and analyses the symbolic content of these visions using a comparative method. When a symbol recurs frequently in DMT vision from different subjects, we may look to the global history of art and religion for occurrences of the same symbol, and glean insights into its possible meanings. This method is by no means deductive: significations are often culturally variant, and symbols are generally multivalent. Nevertheless, some symbols approach universality: Mary Douglas (1973), for example, has argued compellingly that bodily control (including drug abstinence) is almost everywhere a symbol of personal investment in systems of social control. Female and male genitalia are usually symbols of women and men respectively, regardless of any additional culturally variant significations. The snake, which sheds its skin periodically, is often a symbol of regeneration, although it too has multiple meanings. The common meanings of these symbols obtain closely to peculiar, innate, generally constant properties possessed by the things of which the signs are the type, and on this basis we may make reasonable inductive arguments about their meanings. The major motifs traced in chapter 6 — insects, aliens, faces, eyes, death, and abiding—culminate in a general theory of user motivation, for far from being an end in itself, DMT seems much more a means to certain developmental ends. Interpretations of DMT visions using comparative symbolic methods suggest new data of both psychological and sociological significance, viz, that DMT visions affirm the reality of autonomous subjective agencies beyond the individual ego of the DMT user. DMT visions are an affirmation of the Other in the face of radical doubt of the Other, and as such offers a means of transcending anomie: perhaps the gravest psychic affliction of modernity as viewed by Emile Durkheim (1897). Chapter 6 concludes with an ethnographic account of my presentation of these views to a sample population at an entheogenic conference in Victoria, Australia. Chapter 7 summarises the major arguments presented in this thesis. Having located DMT use within the discourses of a major sociological tradition it remains to explore some of the implications of these findings to the study of other unusual states of consciousness, and to suggest future lines of inquiry.

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Chapter 2 Terms

Terms are the cards we shuffle in our game of knowledge. Naming a thing is both a creative and limiting act, and implies a set of assumptions which I feel should be as explicit as possible, so that those considering the complex problems associated with entheogens, trance, and associated phenomenology, are at least playing with as full a deck of cards as I can possibly provide. There are a number of specialised terms used throughout this thesis, some of which seem to me problematic, yet substantially less biased or imprecise than their alternatives. Some of these terms are compromised by the simple fact of there being glosses for extremely complex or variable natural phenomena. For example, my informants’ often use the terms “DMT” and “ayahuasca” to refer to products made from chemically heterogenous mixtures of plants or plant-derived isolates. Other terms are problematical because they are contested labels for practices or persons that are integral to the formulation and expression of identity politics (for example “entheogen”, “psychedelic”, “psychonaut”, “shaman”, and “neo-shaman”). Still other terms (“Altered States of Consciousness”, “Umwelt”) are complicated by the rudimentary nature of our current scientific understanding. In the following sections I will clarify my usage of terms, starting with the term “DMT”.

DMT (and 5-MeO-DMT) Before describing and defining the relatively complex combinations of tryptamines extracted from plants and circulated as forms of “DMT” it may be useful to briefly map out the early history of DMT as a synthetic compound. DMT is a substance with two quite different histories — one modern, the other archaic and shamanic. Traditional shamanic uses of DMT-containing entheogens have been described by various explorers, ethnologists, ethnobotanists and pharmacologists, and many of these authorities are mentioned throughout this thesis and in Appendix C. The western or psychedelic history of DMT was originally the history of the refined synthetic form of DMT. This history commences with the first synthesis of DMT by British chemist Richard Manske in 1931. At this time DMT was not yet known as a natural product, nor was it known to induce visions (Manske, 1931). Figure 1, below, illustrates the chemical structure of DMT and some closely related compounds. As can be seen, DMT is structurally similar to

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serotonin, an important regulatory neurotransmitter in the nervous systems of many organisms, including Homo sapiens. The lower four substances in Figure 1 are all tryptamine-derived entheogenic substances found in nature. Of these, psilocin is only known to occur in fungi (such as the “magic” species of Psilocybe and Panaeolus mushrooms) while DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and bufotenine occur in plants and animals (bufotenine has also been isolated from certain fungi).

tryptamine

serotonin

DMT

5-MeO-DMT

psilocin

bufotenine 3

Figure 1 Tryptamine and some naturally-occurring tryptamine derivatives .

The discovery of DMT by Manske was part of a series of syntheses driven by chemical rather than pharmacological motives. At the time of Manske’s original work on DMT it was not yet known to possess any unusual properties. As an object of purely chemical interest DMT is known by various alternative names of which the standard is n,ndimethyltryptamine, but 3-[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl]indole and desoxybufotenine also occur in the chemical literature (Shulgin and Shulgin1997), and the Merck Index also provides the synonym n,n-dimethyl-1H-indole-3-ethanamine (Windholz, Budavari, Blumetti, & Otterbein, 1983). For over two decades DMT remained a virtual pharmacological non-entity. During this time, chemical investigation of an entheogenic potion derived from the roots of the Mimosa hostilis tree and known in north-eastern Brazil as Jurema, had led to the isolation of a new alkaloid that was believed to be 3

Structures reproduced from Shulgin and Shulgin (1997). page 8

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responsible for the activity of the Jurema potion (Gonçalves de Lima, 1946). The new alkaloid was named nigerine by the research team led by Gonçalves (ibid). Later, the identity of nigerine with DMT was established (Pachter, 1959). In 1955 DMT was identified as a naturally occurring component of another entheogenic snuff derived from the roasted seeds of a South American legume, Anadenanthera peregrina (Fish, Johnson, & Horning, 1955). At this point it became clear to astute researchers that DMT, as a major alkaloid of an ethnologically significant substance, very probably possessed some remarkable and largely unreported psychotropic properties. The lack of oral activity was to be expected, considering the great pains (literally) to which indigenous South American users go in order to inhale multiple grams of the caustic entheogenic dust. One might have expected early researchers to calculate the quantity of DMT one could expect from an average dose of Anadenanthera snuff and then more-orless emulate the indigenous practice by insufflating a small quantity of the refined salt. Instead, we know from the literature that the first experimental subject (the Hungarian pharmacologist Stephen Szára) made the somewhat heroic decision to step completely off the map and intramuscularly injecting himself with 75 mg of the synthetic hydrochloride salt of DMT (Szára, 1956). The phenomenological aspects of Szára’s experiments will be discussed later in chapter 4 of this thesis. In contrast to the pure artificial compound synthesised by Manske, my use of the term “DMT” in this thesis is a little problematical. In the majority of cases, the material that the people I interviewed had smoked was not pure synthetic DMT or a pure DMT isolate, but rather, DMT-rich plant extracts of varying degrees of purity. The major modifier that we could expect to be present in many samples is 5-MeO-DMT (5-methoxy-n,ndimethyltryptamine), a similar substance that is of somewhat higher psychoactive potency than DMT itself. I have talked to over one hundred DMT users and in virtually all cases, users of smokable “DMT” report a very similar chronology, with effects commencing almost immediately and subsiding within approximately ten minutes, and the emotional, perceptual and cognitive changes have been sufficiently consistent that I have no qualms about considering the experiences as part of a reasonably homogenous set. The admittedly variable material distributed in Australia as DMT is nonetheless phenomenologically very similar to pure DMT and sufficiently unlike any other psychotropic drug. Nonetheless, in the majority of cases, the materials circulating as “DMT” in the entheogenic community have not been subjected to chemical analyses and their exact composition is unknown.

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The substances popularly called DMT are alkaloid extracts of varying purity, drawn from a wide variety of plant species reported to contain DMT, but that may be subject to wide variations in alkaloid composition, with levels of alkaloid fluctuating according to the specific strain, maturity, light-levels, water availability, nitrogen levels, season and time of day (Moore, 1967). Many plants used for the production of “DMT” contain other psychopharmacologically-active substances, particularly 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenine (5hydroxy-n,n-dimethyltryptamine). In addition, DMT oxidises into the revoltingly erogenous compound skatole4, which is often present in well-used DMT-smoking pipes. �-carboline alkaloids may also be present in some samples, and these compounds can greatly augment the pharmacological activity of tryptamines like DMT and 5-MeO-DMT (McKenna & Towers, 1984). Some plant alkaloid extracts distributed as “DMT” (especially those derived from some strains of Phalaris grasses, Diplopterys cabereana leaves, and possibly some, but not all, Australian Acacias) may in fact be predominantly characterised by 5-MeO-DMT. The two materials are not easily distinguished. Both take effect rapidly and, when smoked, reach their peak effects within ten minutes and subside within half an hour. 5-MeO-DMT is one of the most potent naturally-occurring entheogens (Ott, 1996b), being active at 620mg, whereas 60-100mg of DMT is required to produce a comparable inebriation (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). As for a comparison of the experiences, DMT is generally considered more visually complex with a greater tendency towards encounters with perceived numinous entities. One psychonaut (Turner, 1994:53) made the following distinction between the two compounds: “…5-MEO-DMT feels like sheer force, whereas N.N. DMT feels like sheer perfection.” 5-MeO-DMT is often considered a more welcoming “cosmic consciousness type of experience” characterised by excitement and wonder, but not necessarily with the sense of alien-encounter and otherness typical of many DMT experiences (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997:533). The physical, somatic “rush” of 5-MeO-DMT is generally considered even more intense than the mental “rush” of wonder and amazement at the onset of DMT inebriation. DMT users frequently report losing awareness of their physical body and becoming a free moving disembodied 4

In addition to being a major degradation product of DMT, skatole is better known as the principle aromatic compound in faeces, an important element in ‘sultry’ smelling flowers such as jasmine and gardenia, and is also added, in small amounts, to a great many ‘French’ perfumes in order to increase their ‘sultriness’ (Jellinek, 1997:48). Skatole at the high concentrations found in old used DMT pipes is a rather unpleasant faecal /civet/ plastic-like smell, as opposed to the light indole/floral aroma of fresh DMT. Skatole vapour is much hotter than DMT vapour (Windholz et al., 1983) and can burn the lining of the mouth and throat. page 10

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consciousness. By contrast 5-MeO-DMT users frequently report ecstatic physical sensations and the need to work powerful “energies” through their bodies (Turner, 1994:53). Intense muscular tremors are sometimes reported, although generally the balance of sensations falls on the side of pleasure rather than discomfort. The combination of felt cosmic-connection and pleasurable physical arousal has led some to describe 5-MeO-DMT as “like adding the MDMA experience to DMT” (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997:533). Very pure DMT is white and crystalline, aging to beige or light yellow. DMT-rich plant extracts are often orange or reddish brown crystals that are sometimes gummy. In the majority of instances where a substance is distributed as DMT, and the effects are reported as intense and short-lived, we may tentatively assume that the phenomenological character of the material is predominantly that of DMT. It is however also possible that 5MeO-DMT is present to some extent, and because this tryptamine is active in such small amounts it may well influence the experience of the user. In this thesis I continue to use the term “DMT”, even when the exact composition of the material is unknown. This is largely for the sake of convenience: “total alkaloid extract” would be too vague and cumbersome. In any case, the situation is closely analogous to that of many other drugs. For example, marijuana or Cannabis is a convenient common-sense term for a highly variable combination of substances. The chemical profile of Cannabis varies according to a wide range of factors such as the genetics of the cultivar, the sex of the plant, nutrition, and growing conditions. There are over sixty cannabinoids (the pharmacologically active constituents known from Cannabis) of which (-)-�1-3,4-trans-tetrahydrocannabinol (�1THC) is considered by far the most important (Ott, 1996b). The levels of �1-THC frequently vary from between 1-10% of the total resin from Cannabis leaves (Green, 2002). Levels of another substance, cannabidiol, also vary over a wide range, and this substance is thought to be responsible for the more centrally depressing effects of some Cannabis varieties (ibid). The phenomenology of Cannabis reflects these chemical variations with a wide range of effects from elation to heavy sedation reported from different samples. Nonetheless, the continuities between the experiences elicited by different kinds of Cannabis are sufficient to compensate for any discontinuities, and the category Cannabis, despite its heterogeneity, is still a useful one. Similarly, different varieties of rose have different chemistry and different smells, for example, Bulgarian Damask roses have more ‘honeyed’ notes than do Moroccan roses. But a rose by any

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other name is still a rose. No plant-based drug is entirely uniform in its chemical composition, but it is still useful to retain catch all terms for the general category, and that is how the “DMT” described by my informants is best viewed. An important reason to retain the term “DMT” is that this is the category most frequently used by the entheogen users themselves, and DMT and 5-MeO-DMT are in any case phenomenologically similar if not identical. The definition of “DMT” in this thesis is therefore a stipulative one: For our purposes, DMT is any of various tryptamine-rich alkaloid extracts derived from plants, in which the predominant effects are those typical of DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, or a mixture of these, and where the subject using such substances asserts the identity of the material as “DMT”.

Ayahuasca and “anahuasca” The focus of this thesis is on the experiences resulting from smoking the vapour of DMT. However, DMT can be ingested in a number of different ways. Intramuscular injection produces effects comparable to those of smoking, but only DMT of very high purity is fit for injection, and such pure DMT is extremely rare as are DMT users who are willing to use a hypodermic syringe. DMT preparations may also be snuffed or insufflated, but this method is also culturally anomalous to many potential DMT-users and is also extremely irritating to the nasal mucosa. Another DMT-containing preparation has been more widely accepted by western entheogen-users: the traditional western Amazonian entheogenic drink ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is typically a decoction (usually concentrated to a syrupy consistency) combining a DMT-containing plant with a �-carboline containing plant that renders the DMT orally active through pharmacological inhibition of an enzyme, monoamine oxidase, which would otherwise, in the normal course of events, rapidly neutralise any DMT entering the body (McKenna, 1984; McKenna & Towers, 1984). The �-carboline contributing plant is in nearly all instances the giant rainforest liana Banisteriopsis caapi (the actual ‘ayahuasca’ vine). The DMT in ayahuasca is usually supplied by the leaves of the chacruna plant (Psychotria viridis), a shrub belonging to the coffee family (Rubiaceae), although other species of Psychotria may enter the equation. Leaves of the “White Queen,” Psychotria alba, are often used in place of Psychotria viridis in the preparation of Daime, the sacramental tea of the Brazilian entheogenic Church Santo Daime. The leaves of oco yagé or chagropanga (Diplopterys cabrerana) contain high

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levels of 5-MeO-DMT and are an important additive to ayahuasca in the Colombian and Ecuadorian reaches of the Amazon. Many other plants are also added to modify the ayahuasca brew (McKenna, 1995), although here it is enough to merely indicate these complex departures from the classic forms. Some peculiarly western variations based on the pharmacological principles of ayahuasca have recently been invented. These new ayahuasca-variants are usually called “ayahuasca analogues” (Appleseed, 1993; Ott, 1994) which is often contracted to anahuasca5. Ayahuasca and ayahuasca analogues differ significantly in their phenomenology and symbolism from smoked DMT freebase. Ayahuasca and ayahuasca analogues contain, in addition to DMT, a host of �-carboline alkaloids with their own pharmacological profiles (Callaway, 1999), not least of which is that they are powerful inducers of nausea and vomiting. The effects of ayahuasca and ayahuasca analogues last for many hours, in contrast to those of DMT freebase which lasts for a about ten minutes, and the greater duration and stronger somatic effects are more arduous and leave, perhaps, a deeper and more long-lasting physiological and psycho-somatic impression than does smoked DMT. The topic of ayahuasca use is vast and has its own extensive literature (for an introduction to the English language scholarship see Luna and White (2000), Metzner (1999), and Shannon (2002)). Regrettably, the question of western adaptations of ayahuasca and ayahuasca analogues is considerably beyond the scope of the present thesis. However, a rudimentary understanding of ayahuasca complements an analysis of western DMT use on at least three accounts. Firstly, because ayahuasca is commonly known to DMT smokers as a beverage containing DMT, many users conflate the two substances and this perception can create a strong impression on their subsequent DMT experiences. For example, knowledge of the visions of jaguars and anacondas frequently reported by ayahuasca users may prime DMT-smokers to expect to see these same faunal taxa. Secondly, many users of DMT have also used ayahuasca. Anecdotally it would appear that many people (although not all) encounter DMT first and then become interested in ayahuasca as a way of “grounding” or “anchoring” the DMT experience, as if trying to make the brief intensity of DMT last longer so that more of the experience can be better 5

The term anahuasca is unsatisfactory etymologically as it is an unhappy blend of Greek and Quechua words meaning something like “according to the vine” and, ironically, from which the Quechua word aya—meaning “souls” or “dead people” has been unceremoniously exorcised. The same oversight extends to variant terms like acaciahuasca and mimosahuasca (western ayahuasca analogues made from Acacia and Mimosa plants respectively) and prairiehuasca (an ayahuasca analogue potion incorporating the United States prairie plants Desmanthus illinoensis or Desmanthus leptolobus. In this thesis I retain the more cumbersome and politically correct term “ayahuasca analogue”. page 13

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comprehended and integrated. The people who go on to the more arduous “work” of ayahuasca are often very serious about visions and their potential for growth or change, and the traditional shamanic healing context of ayahuasca appeals strongly to them. Thirdly, there exist some hybrids of smokable DMT and ayahuasca in the form of DMTfreebase preparations that have been combined with �-carbolines (often on a matrix of dried ayahuasca leaves) to create a smokable form of ayahuasca analogue that lasts for approximately one hour. Because of these linkages between DMT and ayahuasca the symbolism, discourses, and sociology of these distinct entheogens cross over to a considerable extent6. It is therefore useful to have a little background regarding the Amazonian entheogen, its cultural history, pharmacology, and phenomenology. Ayahuasca (a Quechua word meaning “vine of the soul” or “vine of the dead”) is consumed over a great area of the western Amazon, and this is reflected in the vast list of regional synonyms (yajé, notéma, kahi, caapi, dápa, mihi, nixi pae, pinde, hoasca, et cetera) by which the potion is known to different South American peoples (ReichelDolmatoff, 1975; Schultes & Raffauf, 1992). Ayahuasca has long been used in Indigenous shamanic contexts in Amazonia from whence its use has diffused, and it is now also to be found as the sacrament of a number of syncretic Brazilian Churches, of which Santo Daime and the União do Vegetal (UDV) are the most prominent (Alverga & Polari, 1999; Labate & Araújo, 2004; Lowy, 1987). As the most famous of all DMTcontaining entheogens, ayahuasca and its literary representations (Burroughs & Ginsberg, 1963; Lamb, 1974, 1981) have influenced western perceptions, so that many people who smoke DMT seem to anticipate a “jungle’” experience, replete with visions of jaguars and Amazonian Indians (Naranjo, 1973). Ayahuasca has a long-standing reputation as a therapeutic agent. In addition to ayahuasca’s well-established role in shamanism and folk medicine (Dobkin de Rios, 1970; Dobkin De Rios, 1992; Luna, 1986; Schultes & Raffauf, 1992), a comprehensive double-blind medically-oriented study comparing regular ritualistic users of hoasca (ayahuasca) in Brazil with a demographically matched sample of non-users seems largely to confirm its alleged health benefits (Callaway, 1999; Grob, 1996). One private individual has recently attempted to patent a variety of ayahuasca as a medicine. This patent was initially approved but subsequently overturned after a reappraisal of the plants 6

Because ayahuasca users are more likely to be allied to established traditions, DMT smokers are probably more likely to embrace ayahuasca than ayahuasca-drinkers are to endorse DMT-smoking. However, among the westerners I have talked with, both groups are, generally, mutually respectful and tolerant. page 14

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religious implications and the indigenous intellectual property rights involved (Wiser, 1999). Ayahuasca is used almost exclusively in a religious and therapeutic context. While DMT is occasionally used for enjoyment7 it is difficult to imagine what recreational use of ayahuasca could possibly entail. The drink is bitter and nauseating, with a tendency to bring the user into contact with very difficult psychological material of which the vomiting and diarrhoea often caused by ayahuasca are only the slightest of physical tokens. For novices the experience is generally humbling, terrifying and, eventually, cathartic. The spiritual benefits attributed to the ayahuasca experience are frequently in the form of ‘teachings’: an internal flow of dialogue, or a display of meaningful imagery. Ayahuasca is essentially hierophantic. The plant conveys a gnosis that is so well appreciated in South America that in many Amazonian societies a combination of special diets, isolation and intensive ayahuasca drinking constitutes the basis of shamanic training and practice (Harner, 1973a; Luna, 1986; Luna & Amaringo, 1991; Schultes & Raffauf, 1992). Ayahuasca is also a vehicle of divine revelation in numerous Churches and syncretic movements (Alverga & Polari, 1999; Labate & Araújo, 2004; Lowy, 1987). In saying that the ‘plant’ conveys gnosis I do not wish to assert one or another metaphysical position. Shamanism and science seem, mostly, to be at opposite poles over the question of plant consciousness. In any case, these theological issues, while interesting in themselves, bear little on this thesis. The reader may take the statement metaphorically or literally as they see fit.

Substances Throughout this thesis, the neutral terms substance and material are used interchangeably. When referring to the broad set of substances that in some way alter consciousness, I will use the term psychoactive substance. The expression mind-altering substance will be avoided, as it places an unwarranted emphasis on the cerebral aspects of substances which are often alleged to be as much spirit-altering or feeling-altering. Many terms have been used to describe substances such as DMT, mescaline and LSD25. No single term is 7

Two of my informants suggested that they smoked DMT for enjoyment. One of these informants enjoyed the aesthetic aspects of the experience, while the other found the experience satisfyingly surreal. For many people the “fun” of DMT departs when the existential implications of the experiences start to sink in. The vast majority of users approach the material with mixed emotions, often with trepidation. Of course, while I distinguish DMT and ayahuasca from “fun” I do not mean to imply that there is anything irreligious about fun. The fact of an experience being enjoyable does not in any way disqualify it from also being ‘religious’. We have only to think of revivalist meetings and Pentecostal Christian congregations embracing rock-music and dance to see how central an element fun can be in serious religious endeavours. page 15

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entirely adequate, and many terms are loaded with unsubstantiated connotations of psychopathology. Initially, use of vision-inducing substances in a western context was restricted to experimental psychiatry, where they were often conceptualised as having ‘psychosis-mimicking’ properties. This paradigm of “psyhotomimetic” drugs has undoubtedly impacted on the way in which scientists in the later part of the last century represented DMT and similar materials and helped to shape public opinion, especially with regard to LSD. In the psychiatric literature the materials have been variously described as delusionogenics, dysleptics, hallucinogens, misperceptinogens, phantasticants, psychosomimetics, psychotomimetics, psychotaraxics, psychoticants, psychotogens, psychogens, psychotoxins, and schizogens (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). The following sub-sections discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the three most frequently used terms for those psychoactive substances that are used to induce visionary ecstasis. These terms are hallucinogen, psychedelic, and entheogen8.

Hallucinogens Hallucinogen—a drug that induces hallucination—has been perhaps the most widely accepted term until quite recently. Philologically, the word hallucinate derives from the Latin alucinari: “to wander in mind” (Morris, 1975:595). This idea is similar to the concept of tripping, that is to say that in both instances the visionary experience is likened to a journey. The Latin term derives from an earlier Greek word: aluein meaning “to wander” but has the added implication of wandering and being distraught (ibid). Hallucinogen is, however, a somewhat misleading and biased term for describing materials that are allegedly capable of transporting an individual to the heights of mystical or shamanic ecstasy, insofar as hallucination is commonly defined as a “false perception with a characteristically compelling sense of reality…in the absence of relevant and adequate stimuli” (Morris, 1975:595). In recent years there has been a shift away from the use of hallucinogen towards culturally sensitive expressions such as entheogen and psychedelic9. Natural products chemist Jonathon Ott has been a major advocate of this change: 8

The excellent phrase ‘psychointegrator plants’ has been put forward by anthropologist Michael Winkelman (1995) as a term for psychoactive plants used in shamanism for beneficial psychotherapeutic outcomes. My findings in this thesis tend to strongly confirm these psychointegrating properties. However, not wishing to prematurely presuppose such a finding, I have decided against applying the term in this thesis. 9 The connotations and (counter-) cultural context of the terms hallucinogen and psychedelic are quite different, as illustrated by the following example of usage. In States of Consciousness Charles Tart (1975) discusses differing perceptions of the value of hallucinogenic drug-induced states of consciousness, noting page 16

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“Hallucinogen has in general been falling out of favor, inasmuch as ethnographers, physicians, and scientists familiar with the effects of these drugs are increasingly in consensus over one notion—that the visionary states accessed through the agency of these drugs are not hallucinatory. Moreover, hallucinations are considered medically to be pathological, and one of the predominant traditional contexts of use of these drugs is in healing, as medicine.” (Ott, 1996b:206)

Psychedelics The term ‘psychedelic’ originally grew out of a correspondence between Aldous Huxley (the author of the term ‘phanerothyme’) and the psychiatrist Humphry Osmund. Huxley had written to Osmond recommending the term phanerothyme as a new descriptor for substances like mescaline and LSD25. He delivered his suggestion in the following couplet: “To make this mundane world sublime Take half a gram of phanerothyme.”

To which the psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond responded: “To sink in hell or soar angelic You'll need a pinch of psychedelic.”

Huxley conceded the euphony of Osmund’s “psychedelic” and the term went on to characterise almost the entire counter-cultural style corpus of the 1960s, covering everything from “psychedelic” rock to “psychedelic” kaleidoscopes. Ott has highlighted some of the inadequacies of the term psychedelic when applied to the snuffs, potions, and smoking mixtures of shamanism and other non-western religious traditions: “… psychedelic is pejorative outside of the counterculture, has both the theological baggage and shadow of “generation” that some find objectionable in entheogen[ic], is not applied uniformly to important shamanic inebriants by its proponents, and has a western-ethnocentric, countercultural, decidedly

that among the majority of his orthodox colleagues, “complete rationality” is valued highly and the effects of hallucinogens are rated very poorly—they are seen as having a similar value to psychotic states. Conversely, Tart describes how his “hip” associates value mystical, meditative, and psychedelic states very highly, and locate “complete rationality” as a neurotic state closer in value to psychoses. page 17

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modern connotation, making it an inappropriate word for any shamanic plant.” (Ott, 1996a:207) While I do not consider psychedelic as generally “pejorative” — I respect the humanistic ideals embodied in the term — I concur with Ott (with certain reservations10) that outside a limited set of socio-historically specific contexts the term is ethnocentric and inappropriate for characterising shamanistic plants and preparations. In the context of this thesis entheogen refers to shamanistic substances and psychedelic alludes specifically to either the use of relatively pure compounds in psychedelic psychotherapy or to the psychedelic counterculture, again following the usage proposed by Ott: “Since the prototypical psychedelic drug is LSD, a modern creation of the western pharmaceutical industry, and since the prototypical psychedelic drug use is contemporary and nontraditional, I propose that we restrict the use of psychedelic to modern, nontraditional use of LSD and kindred synthetic or isolated and purified visionary drugs, whether such use be ludible11 or medical/therapeutic (e.g. psychedelic therapy).” (Ott, 1996a:207) Sundry chemical definitions of the psychedelics have been proposed12. Following the finely-nuanced definition offered by chemists Peyton and Shulgin (1994) the “classic” 10

While “psychedelia” is uniquely western in toto, its integral parts are widely distributed. It is a question of what one picks out as the key elements of psychedelia. One could argue that the aesthetic characteristics of “psychedelic music” or “psychedelic art” from the 1960s are dissonant with the cultural sensibilities of traditional cultures that use entheogens such as peyote or psilocybin mushrooms. I am not convinced that such a dissonance runs as far as the elemental components. For example, if we take loud, repetitive, percussive sound as a defining characteristic of psychedelic rock, then we find culturally-specific variants of the same rhythmic percussive element represented in the “entheogenic” music of the Huichol of Mexico (Schaefer & Furst, 1996), the Tukano of the western Amazon (Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1975), and the Fang Bwiti of Gabon (Fernandez, 1982). Elsewhere I have discussed such similarities at length (Tramacchi, 2001; Tramacchi, 2004). Similarly in the case of psychedelic art, we find archetypal imagery, brightly and contrastingly coloured abstract geometric forms, and complex compositions in the entheogenic art of Peruvian ayahuasqueros (Luna & Amaringo, 1991), and in Huichol yarn paintings (Valadez & Valadez, 1992). It is difficult to see what elements of “psychedelia” are not shared by other peoples who also value unusual modes of experience, although each conglomerate of aesthetic choices is culturally unique. 11 Ludible is presumably derived from the Latin ludus (play), and implies ‘recreational’ uses. 12 A number of other substances that are chemically and pharmacologically unrelated to the classic psychedelics are capable of inducing modes of consciousness conducive to religious experience (Emboden, 1972; Furst, 1976; Harner, 1973b; Ott, 1996b; Rätsch, 2005; Schultes & Hofmann, 1980). These entheogenic substances include preparations of Cannabis species; the masticated leaves of Salvia divinorum (Siebert, 1994; Valdés, 1994; Valdés, 1983); concoctions such as beers and wines which contain the organic solvent ethanol; decoctions of the rootstock of the Kava plant (Piper methysticum) (Lebot, Merlin, & Lindstrom, 1997); deliriants such as the Datura species and related nightshades (Hansen, 1976); and stimulants such as coca leaves (Martin, 1970) and tobacco (Wilbert, 1987). Some western psychonauts have also reported noetic and mystical experiences from the use of dissociative anæsthetics such as ketamine (Hansen, Jensen, Chandresh, & Hilden, 1988), and the gas nitrous oxide (Lynn, Richard, Harris, Dendy, & James, 1972; Smith, 1982). page 18

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psychedelics can be considered to comprise nine prototypic substances and their numerous analogues (Peyton & Shulgin, 1994). These compounds are mescaline, thiomescaline, 2CD, 2CT, TMA, DOM, DMT, psilocybin, and LSD (Peyton and Shulgin, 1994). These compounds are members of two related families of alkaloids13. The first six compounds are derivatives of phenylethylamine (Schultes & Hofmann, 1980; Shulgin & Shulgin, 1995). The latter three compounds are derivatives of tryptamine (Schultes & Hofmann, 1980). A number of plants and fungi also contain substances from these groups, and are utilised as entheogens. The drugs ibogaine and harmaline—substances found (respectively) in the entheogenic plants eboka (Tabernanthe iboga) and ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi)—and their analogues bear a structural resemblance to ‘mainline’ psychedelics, but these materials also have a significant constellation of unique pharmacological effects (Naranjo, 1973). I will use the term psychedelic sparingly to refer to a peculiarly western subset of the more universal class of entheogens. This does not preclude the use of psychedelics compounds as entheogens; it simply avoids automatically conflating these two distinct paradigms of substance.

Entheogens The search for a more appropriate term to describe what is an essentially new paradigm in western psychopharmacology produced numerous fruit, some of which withered on the vine. One suggestion, mysticomimetics, derived from the Greek musterion, secret rite, from mustes, an initiate, is today almost completely extinct (Stafford, 1992). Another entry, almost as obscure is the term phanerothyme, coined by Aldous Huxley, for which Lisa Bieberman (1968) was a major proponent. Bieberman was adamantly not “turned on” and “tuned in” to the 1960s youth-cultural-revolutionary zeitgeist. Bieberman, who believed in the separation of good and evil and in the existence of an almighty creator God (as many quite understandably do), was saddened by the psychedelic movement’s anarchic approach to LSD, which she believed was best used in a context modelled closely on Quaker meetings or the Native American Church (Ibid). Bieberman defined phanerothymes as follows:

13

An alkaloid is an alkaline organic substance usually of plant or fungal origin containing at least one nitrogen atom and a ring structure (Uvarov, 1979). Most pharmacologically active drugs—including most psychoactive drugs—are alkaloids (Schultes and Hofmann, 1980). A small number of psychoactive drugs, such as the cannabinoids, salvinorin A (Siebert, 1994; Valdés, 1994), and the kava-lactones (Lebot et al., 1997) lack a nitrogen atom and are therefore not alkaloids. page 19

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“(1) a state of mental and spiritual clarity, achieved through the responsible and reverent use of certain plants or drugs, such as peyote, mescaline, psilocybin and LSD. (2) certain drugs, when used for the sake of phanerothyme.” (Bieberman, 1968) Available from: http://www.csp.org/practices/entheogens/docs/bieberman-phanerothyme.html

Of the various choices of neologism on offer to the religious user of DMT, ‘entheogen’ is by far the most popular. ‘Entheogen’—generating God within—refers to the idea of a substance that gives rise to an experience of imminent divinity14. The popularity of the term may reflect the personalising and privatising of religion ‘looking within’ that is a predictable side effect of the western tendency toward secularisation. Jonathon Ott recommended the term ‘entheogen’ to supplant ‘hallucinogen’ when discussing shamanistic substances, and provided the following definition: Entheogen[ic] was proposed as a name for a subclass of psychotropic or psychoactive plants (and, by extension, their active principles and derivatives “both natural and artificial”), as a broad term to describe the cultural context of use, not specific chemistry or pharmacology; as an efficient substitute for cumbersome terms like shamanic inebriant, visionary drug, plant-sacrament, and plant-teacher. (Ott, 1996b:205) In the last fifteen years there has been a revival of popular interest in entheogenic drugs and associated activities among neo-shamanistic practitioners in Australia and elsewhere (Jenks, 1997). The entheogenic sensibility finds popular expression in a variety of books and manuals (De Korne, 1994b; Ott, 1994; Pendell, 1995; Trout, 1999) as well as periodicals such as The Entheogen Review and Eleusis, which cater exclusively to individuals who consider their approach to plants to be entheogenic. Entheogen-users could perhaps be described as entheogenists to distinguish them from other kinds of psychonauts. The sincerity of many entheogenists seems absolutely genuine; to grow or harvest their sacred plants and fungi is to invite theophany into their homes and daily 14

While entheogen is a more respectful term than hallucinogen or drug, it is far from perfect. It can be argued that entheogen is an inappropriate term because the prefix en- emphasises an inward-directed, even narcissistic spirituality that could be seen as the fruit of culturally specific historical processes that do not authentically reflect environmentally directed, relationship-oriented, animistic ontologies of indigenous peoples. The cultural specificity of the notion of theos goes without saying. page 20

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lives. Jonathon Ott has described the western resurgence of interest in shamanic or spiritual uses of entheogens as an “Entheogenic Reformation” (Ott, 1994:12), implying a similar socio-spiritual ethos to that indicated by Terence McKenna in the latter’s use of the phrase “Archaic revival” in his book of that title (McKenna, 1991): both call for a (re) institutionalisation of ‘archaic’ shamanic techniques. The entheogenic religious orientation in western society accentuates one of the fault-lines in western societies’ selfdefinitions as ‘religiously tolerant’ as our society has thus far been unable to arrive at an adequate legal accommodation for religious users of “controlled substances” (Boire, 1994). To employ entheogens is, by definition, to employ psychoactive substances in a religious way. DMT is as clearly a kind of “psychedelic” as it is a kind of “entheogen”, and I see no reason to favour the one ideology over the other, although I see every reason not to confuse the two. Each has its meanings and values. Acceptance of both approaches has meant that I have favoured a third neutral term to describe practitioners of either approach under a single rubric. The term I have chosen is one that conveys an essential theme in both the entheogenic and psychedelic experience, yet does not partake of the more exclusionary aspects of either. The essence to which I refer is the theme of psychological (phenomenological) or spiritual travel, an essence conveyed well by Ernst Jünger’s (1970) term psychonaut.

Psychonaut While the term entheogen connotes a specifically religious orientation to the employment of psychoactive drugs, the term psychedelic has no necessary religious implication. It has, in contemporary times, been possible to conceive of a psyche in entirely rationalistic and non-spiritual terms. The great bulk of the discipline of psychology is unconcerned with theological matters, and the root psyche no longer necessarily suggests ‘spirit’. When presented with a discrete instance of DMT use, one cannot be entirely sure whether the practitioner adheres more to the entheogenic or psychedelic approach. That is, it is often unclear whether a DMT-user considers the experience as one belonging to a transcendent or numinous order, or to a purely naturalistic or mentalistic order. There are, of course, all kinds of intermediate gradients between and beyond these common ways of conceptualising intense and unusual experience. Because of these uncertainties in the ways in which different DMT-users understand or frame their experience, the act of labelling the user as an “entheogen-user” or a “psychedelics enthusiast” presents

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epistemological difficulties: the DMT-user’s framework may be misrepresented. It is possible to generalise about “entheogen-users” or “psychedelics-users” and I do so later in this thesis, but these categories remain “ideal types” (as defined in the sociology of Max Weber) — useful for the practice of sociological analysis — but at the end of day, not entirely identical with complex individuals in real societies. To get around some of the implicit ideological assumptions inherent in phrases like “entheogen-user” I have selected the term psychonaut as a relatively unproblematic expression for individuals who use psychoactive materials to achieve a subjective sense of excursion or inner exploration without necessarily implying, or precluding, a religious orientation. The term psychonaut — coined by Ernst Jünger (1970) in Annäherungen: Drogen und Rausch — has the benefit of being relatively unfamiliar in the Anglophone literature, and so not as tied to cultural assumptions. It also has the advantage of already being used by both entheogen and psychedelic-users as a self-descriptive label. Jonathan Ott (1996b) recently championed the use of the term to describe entheogen-users, and also developed the related noun, psychonautics, and the adjective, psychonautic. Psychonaut has become an extremely popular expression among psychedelics and entheogen users. A recent (January 10th 2006) Internet search on www.vivisimo.com returned 62,044 results for the word. One implicitly religious variant of the term, “entheonaut,” is occasionally employed by entheogenically-oriented psychonauts to describe themselves. An informal and widespread synonym is tripper, and while most of my informants would probably identify as trippers, the term has undoubtedly become closely associated with the psychedelic counter-culture, and so in deference to DMT-users who trace their spiritual lineage to other traditions I will avoid this term in favour of psychonaut. There is a special irony in this superficial Western connotation of the expression tripper. The metaphor of the ecstatic journey or “trip” to another world is an archaic and veritable tradition in many forms of shamanism. For example, Kensinger (1973:11 footnote 3) reports that the Cashinahua of Peru call ayahuasca inebriation Nixi paewn en bai wai pe, which he translates as “Vine drunkenness-with I trip good.” According to Kensinger the word bai conveys the idea of “a sight-seeing tour” with “house calls”. Similarly, on the other side of the globe, the Finno-Ugrian peoples of Siberia conceptualised the ecstasy visited upon them after eating the basidiocarps of the Amanita muscaria mushroom in terms of “wanderings” or disembodied flight (Schultes & Hofmann, 1992:85). Globally, the idea of transit in another World is possibly the primary metaphor for trance, and this is

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perhaps connected to the unstable and dynamic character of non-ordinary phases of consciousness as explicated by Charles Tart (1975; 1976).

ASCs The model championed by Charles Tart and others of ‘Altered States of Consciousness’ (ASCs) has been extremely productive, giving rise to an entire discipline of consciousness studies, and sustaining animated discourse in numerous journals devoted to the topic. Research on ASC seemed to reach a peak in the 1970s, spawning a vast literature (see Tart (1969; 1975) for overviews). ASCs have been defined in many ways and this reflects their enormous heterogeneity (Tart, 1976). Both the hyperkinetic ecstasy of the whirling Dervish and the introspective dreams of the morphinist may be regarded as ASCs. ASCs are generally defined by alterations of experiential criteria regardless of the direction of that alteration in terms of the excitation or depression of the nervous system (as described by Fischer (1971). Charles Laughlin and associates (1992) plot the changes involved in ASCs along a trajectory ranging from ‘alert’ (that is, fully engaged with the external environment) through to ‘autistic’ (where subjective experience is unconnected with the external environment). For the project of Laughlin et al it is perhaps useful to affirm the autonomous existence of an external environment and to relegate perceptions that do not coincide with such a yardstick to the realm of autism. In such a system DMT visions could justifiably be considered autistic fantasies. However, to study DMT phenomenology in a freer and more open manner, and to try to encompass the worldviews of some of the people who positively value DMT visions, it is necessary to relativise the two modes of experience. From a more philosophically open stand-point one could just as arbitrarily relegate ‘normal’ non-DMT-inebriated consciousness to the realm of ‘autism’ or abnormal subjectivity in which the individual is totally unaware of the many consistent and recurring features that are reported by DMT users, including wellarticulated ‘virtual’ worlds and the consensus that DMT initiates contact with spiritentities. ASCs have also been defined substantively in terms of common variations from a ‘normal’ consciousness that we are all apparently familiar with. Experiential factors that may vary during an ASC include exteroception, interoception, input-processing, memory, emotion, time-sense, identity, cognitive processing, motor-output, and interaction with the environment (Tart, 1975) and indeed, all of these variables are dramatically altered by DMT so that DMT visions squarely fit this lexical definition of ASCs. Nonetheless, the

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concept of ASCs has also its limitations, such as the idea of ‘alteration’, which seems to imply that there is a normal consciousness from which ‘altered’ states are a deviation. The status of a state of consciousness as ‘ordinary’ or ‘non-ordinary’ depends largely on the terms used to linguistically code the experience, and on arbitrary interpretations of ‘normality’. For example, Ludwig (1969:9) defines an ASC as follows: “…any mental state(s), induced by various physiological, psychological, or pharmacological maneuvers (sic) or agents, which can be recognized subjectively by the individual himself (or by an objective observer of the individual) as representing a sufficient deviation in subjective experience or psychological functioning from certain general norms for that individual during alert, waking consciousness.”

Unfortunately Ludwig does not offer definitions of the all-important criteria “sufficient deviation” and “certain general norms”. ‘Normal’ or ‘baseline’ consciousness is untenable because the epistemological assumptions involved are so culture-bound and idiosyncratic. An alternative position is put forward by Berger and Luckmann (1981) who argue that ‘consensus reality’ is an ever-changing construct, subject to ongoing cultural and social negotiation. ‘Normal consciousness’ may then be a synonym for the specific ‘historic moment’ in which one contemplates the ‘normal’. The normative and ethnocentric assumptions that are so often intertwined with the ASC paradigm have been discussed by David Lewis Williams: “By now it will be obvious that this commonly encountered phrase is posited on the essentially Western concept of the ‘consciousness of rationality.’ It implies that there is ‘ordinary consciousness’ that is considered genuine and good, and then perverted, or ‘altered’, states. But, as we have seen, all parts of the spectrum are equally ‘genuine’. The phrase ‘altered states of consciousness’ is useful enough, but we need to remember that it carries a lot of cultural baggage.” (Lewis-Williams, 2002:125) In the case of ‘DMT –consciousness’ and ‘normal’ or ‘rational’ waking-consciousness the question of which is a derivative of the other, or of how the different modes might be organised hierarchically in terms of this or that value, is entirely open to cultural negotiation. In many western Amazonian societies, the modes of consciousness precipitated by the DMT-containing entheogens are considered primary and the wakingconsciousness is considered a dream-like derivative (Harner, 1973a, 1973b; Reichel-

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Dolmatoff, 1975). Many of my informants have also claimed that they considered DMTconsciousness more vivid and ‘real’ than ordinary waking consciousness, some comparing ordinary consciousness to the simulated world in the movie ‘Matrix’. The notion of consciousness settling into ‘states’ has also been criticised, with some theorists suggesting ‘phases’ rather than states. There is also the question of what comprises consciousness itself (a largely philosophical problem) and the more applied problem of how to relate consciousness studies to other disciplines. In particular, with the exception of consciousness researchers with a strongly bio-medical orientation (see for example d'Aquili & Laughlin (1975), Laughlin, McManus, & d'Aquili (1992), Persinger (1987; 1989)), a gulf exists between the abstract ‘consciousness’ of consciousness studies and the concrete concerns of the biological sciences. There is indubitably a continuing need to study consciousness as a thing sui generis however, there is also plenty of room, and many exciting potentialities, in the possibilities of bridging disciplines where the sciences have already uncovered biological substrates or correlates of consciousness. In the case of DMT some of these biological substrates are already exposed. The question is what kind of theoretical links from the humanities map onto the newly exposed tracks? With the trances resulting from ingestion of entheogenic substances we are some way towards understanding the naturalistic causes — from the perspective of the biological sciences — of the changes in consciousness. It is known that the effects of DMT are related to the ability of DMT to bind to receptors in the brain that are normally the docking sites for the endogenous neurohumor serotonin. DMT ‘mimics’ serotonin on account of the close structural similarity of the two compounds: whereas as DMT is n,n-dimethyltryptamine, serotonin is 5-hydroxytryptamine (Böszöményi & Brunecker, 1957; Strassman, 2001; Szára, 1956). The visions of DMT are directly correlated to its ability to temporarily modify the neurological systems associated with serotonin (Hooper & Teresi, 1986). While these systems are still poorly understood and clearly very complex, the role of DMT as a biochemical ‘bridge’ between subjectivity and sensory/cognitive processing is at least evident. Because of this clear link to biochemistry as a factor in DMT ecstasy, I have favoured a more biologically-based theory of sensation, meaning, and action than that afforded by the paradigm of ASCs: that of the Umwelt.

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Umwelt This expression, Umwelt, was expounded as a technical term by the German Biologist Jakob von Uexküll15 in his seminal work Theoretical Biology (Uexküll, 1926), and further clarified in his essays An introduction to Umwelt (Uexküll, 2001 [1936]) and The new concept of Umwelt: A link between science and the humanities (Uexküll, 2001 [1937])16. Umwelt refers to an organism’s environment insofar as that organism’s sensory apparatus is equipped to perceive it, in conjunction with the outputs or operations that the organism is able to perform in their perceived world. Perceptual qualia are connected to the organism in terms of functional relationships, so that, for example, a stick in a forest may have an obstacle-quality for a beetle, but a throw-fetch-quality for a playful dog and human. “The concept of Umwelt is central to Uexküll’s theory of organisms. The German word became naturalized into English and, fortunately so, because its translations—species-specific reality, self-world, phenomenal world, perceptive universe, world horizons—are all awkward. Umwelt is now defined as ‘the circumscribed portion of the environment which is meaningful and effective for a given species’” (Fraser, 2001:263) The sensory and operational world or Umwelt mediated by a coral polyp’s tentacles is a different world than that of a human being with its forward pointing eyes or a Springer spaniel with its excellent sense of smell and its eyes set more towards the sides. At this point the concept of Umwelt may seem too mechanistic to endure the post-structural humanities, but the Umwelt has subtleties that tie it closely and productively to contemporary semiotics and philosophy. Rather than describing an organism’s world in terms of an ecological niche as understood by an ‘objective’ human observer and assumed to exist in its own right as an extension of the material realist epistemology, the Umwelt is assumed to be impressed on the world by the subjectivity of each organism. “The Umwelt theory has been favorably received by biosemioticians, and the concept of Umwelt, which Uexküll considered only for animals, was extended to cover all living things, including even single cell organisms such as bacteria. Especially significant was the notion of subjectivity, emphasized by 15

For a biographical sketch of Jakob von Uexküll and an account of his philosophical and scientific legacy see Kull (2001). 16 A recent volume of Semiotica (Semiotica 134;1/4 2001) has been devoted to articles about Uexküll’s Umwelt concept and provides one of the most comprehensive overviews of the subject as it affects the social sciences, semiotics and philosophy. page 26

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Uexküll, that every living being must be considered to have its own autonomous subjectivity.” (Kawade, 2001:815) In a partial bow to radical constructivism and phenomenological idealism, perceptions are posited by Uexküll to be possible only where a homology exists between the object of perception and the structures and operations of the individual’s organs of perception. The paradox of the Umwelt is that there are two diametric ways of understanding causality that must be reconciled or synthesised. These positions are summarised in an article by Krampen (2001:421) who translated the following adaptation by Uexküll of verse from Goethe. Where Goethe had written: ‘Were our eyes not like the sun, Never could they see it’ Uexküll added: ‘Were the sun not like our eye, It could not shine in any sky’

The radical constructivist leaning in Uexküll’s writing is also reinforced elsewhere: “No matter what kind of quality it may be, all perceptual signs have always the form of a command or impulse…If I claim that the sky is blue, I am doing so because the perceptual signs projected by myself give the command to the farthest level: Be blue!” (Hoffmeyer, 2001:381) To apply Uexküll’s “rule of correspondence” (Krampen, 2001) to our present concern with the relationship of DMT to human consciousness we might consider the structural similarity between DMT and serotonin that allows DMT to bind to the serotonin receptors (also known as 5HT2a receptors) in the mammalian brain and produce what can be described as a modified or ‘extended’ DMT-Umwelt distinct from the more usual nonDMT-Umwelt: ‘If serotonin did not bind, no DMT could blow our mind.’

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Humans are able to ‘extend’ their own ‘species-specific reality’, through the aid of tools, signs, and language, to include aspects of the Umwelten of other animals. For example, as Fraser (2001) points out, we are able to develop photo-optic technologies that allow us to perceive ultra-violet markings on the wings of various Lepidoptera that are normally invisible to humans and were once exclusive to insect Umwelten. Radio telescopes allow us to see astronomical phenomena once beyond the ken of terrestrial life, and our linguistic and sign-forming abilities allow us to perceive non-present and abstract objects. Our wonderworld is wonderful indeed. We have also developed systems of religion, mysticism and meditation for approaching non-obvious worlds, and in a sense, religions are tools of Umwelt-extension, in many cases beyond waking and dreaming, time and space, subject and object. This is especially true of shamanic religions where the focus is so specifically on entering an extended world through trance and ecstasy. Among the foremost of methods for attaining sensory and operational experience of other worlds is the use of entheogens. In modifying the brain, one is modifying the Umwelt, and in keeping to this naturalistic view of entheogenic substance use we may approach ‘altered states’ in a less theologically cluttered manner, without jettisoning the phenomenological subject or treating subjects as ‘black-boxes’ ((Hoffmeyer, 2001:382) with environmental inputs and outputs, but whose contents are of no account. Traditionally, science has been reluctant to handle issues of phenomenology and this superstitious caution on its part is perhaps due to the latent humanistic theology of science: “…science spiritualizes and — consequently — rejects that area of life that is virtual reality.” (Hoffmeyer, 2001:382). ‘Virtual reality’ in the context of this thesis encompasses the non-obvious realities of religions and the various ‘altered states of consciousness’ including those induced by DMT. As homologies seem to be necessary between organs of perception and objects perceived, we might also suggest that there are necessary homologies between the DMT visions described later in this thesis and certain archetypal properties and psychological structures that the mind “projects” into the sensory and action sphere of the DMT-extended Umwelt, and that from a radical constructivist view-point, it is these interior structures that create meaning and sensation, and form a world of action and experience that is complete in itself. The idea of “projection” is of course familiar to scholars as a key concept in the depth-psychology of Carl Gustav Jung (1960) and Marie-Louise von Franz (1980). But a very similar idea, although applied purely to objects of perception in conjunction with

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functional meaning for an organism, is also a key concept in Uexküll’s Umwelt theory. The term used by Uexküll is hinausverlegt, which can be rendered as ‘relocated to the outside’ or ‘projected to the outside’(Hoffmeyer, 2001:381). Which is to say that the phenomenal world or perceptive and action universe of the self is a psychological projection, where the psyche is nonetheless seen as a system intrinsically entwined with biology. When a chimpanzee uses a stick to augment its reach, we may say that the chimpanzee’s Umwelt is extended by its tool use: its sensory/action world is extended beyond the nontool-using capabilities of its organic structure. Similarly, when a gemmologist uses a scanning electron microscope to perceive the regular lattice of silica micelles in an opal, we may say that the microscope extends the microscopist’s Umwelt. When DMT is ingested so that it binds en masse to 5HT2a receptors in the human brain, perception and action are radically altered and a range of sensory and operational possibilities not normally available come into the reach of the DMT user. We cannot rationally dismiss these perceptions by saying that, under ordinary circumstances, we do not share them, anymore than we can say that an opal’s iridescence is not caused by silica micelles because we cannot ordinarily perceive them. The case of DMT ingestion is closer to home, because, unlike a stick or a microscope, the Umwelt-extender, DMT, is taken into and incorporated within the body and brain of the subject, so that it becomes an organic component of the individual, forming new, if temporary organs of perceptions, so that the refutation of the perceptions is like a denial of the validity of the perceptions of another’s organs. It is a denial of another’s experience. Few of us would argue that insect vision cannot be composite because our own eyes are not compound. Subjectivity is mediated by diverse organs of perception and action, and these may be extended by diverse means. Each individual Umwelt is a complete and autonomous universe, and there are no true and false extensions. Extensions are simply extensions. Throughout this work I will return to the phrase DMT-Umwelt, as a way of indicating this idea of DMT as an extension of senses and responses mediated by 5HT2a receptors. Note however, that this is a way of refreshing our appreciation of the phenomena by using a different metaphor to that of ASCs, in part in order to avoid the assumptions and unknown quantities that limit the possibilities in that admittedly most fruitful paradigm. Note also that extension of the Umwelt does not, by necessity, equal expansion of the Umwelt, as per those colourful psychedelic expressions ‘expanded states of consciousness’ and ‘mind expansion’.

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Indeed, I feel such terms should be assiduously avoided until we can determine what empiric meaning they can possibly hold. To repeat the fundamental point above: an extended Umwelt is neither degraded, nor superior. It is simply an extension of perception and action beyond the norm. There are also a number of metaphysical and theological explanations of what I am calling DMT Umwelten that have been posited primarily by subjects (in particular my informants) who have used DMT and who subsequently wish to provide a reckoning of the experience. The most common explanations are those claiming that DMT provides access to parallel dimensions, hyperspace, or the astral plane. Umwelt has similar connotations and does not exclude the possibility of any of these metaphysical explanations (nor do I), although Umwelt itself is not at all metaphysical, but rather biological, or even “bio-phenomenological”. Some informants describe DMT as an “alternate reality” (and again, I do not dismiss this out of hand), but I prefer to side-step the use of the reality concept, because the idea of reality is contested in many worldviews, including two of the major world religions (Hinduism and Buddhism). The use of the naturalistic model of Umwelt is helpful as a way of avoiding reality. Whereas the existence of a ‘baseline’ reality is contentious, the existence of a sensory environment is, at the least, as plane as the nose on one’s face. The Umwelt is also an explicit attempt on the part of Jakob von Uexküll to reintroduce the subject of life into biology, and, despite the real dangers of the experiment, this sense of wonder and excitement of living is part and parcel of the experience sought by users of DMT. The notion of a DMT-Umwelt implies action in a world of changed perception. The principle mode of action in the DMT reports I have collected is travel: the verb is to go. This principle of going and seeing is present also in the western psychonaut identity (the spiritual voyager), and is probably connected also to the tropes of tourism, scopophilia, the flaneur mind-set, voyeurism, and videocentrism, although these modes of assimilation are well beyond the ‘scope’ of this thesis. The western preoccupation with tourism evidences a similar drive to go and to see (Rojek & Urry, 1997). The possibilities of the Umwelt paradigm are expressed in the following passage from anthropologist and semiotician Myrdene Anderson. It is my hope that the utility of the concept in the study of consciousness is apparent.

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“As we release our imaginations to travel around, evolutionarily, in wonderworld, we risk ranging farther from the safety of fixed compass points, but in so doing, we come closer to living.” (Anderson, 2001:190)

Shamans, neo-shamans, and neo-shamanists The flaneur or aimless wanderer is to be contrasted with the professional who travels with goals and a sense of purpose. Not all psychonauts are tourists. The shaman is a virtuoso. It is important to define what the term ‘shaman’ means in the context of western DMT use. Meredith McGuire (1997:9) has written that, for sociology at least, a definition is a strategy, not a truth, and those who define shamans have pursued many different strategies. The word ‘shaman’ was adopted by anthropologists in the Eighteenth Century, and is derived from saman, a term which designates Siberian Tungus religious specialists who operate ritually from a condition of ecstatic trance (Wallis, 1999). Mircea Eliade, popularised the idea of the universality of underlying structures shared by Siberian shamanism with a great multitude of apparently similar practices worldwide. In Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l’extase Eliade (1964 [1951]) proposed that the term “shaman” could serve to encompass culturally disparate religious practices which revolve around individuals held to experience the sacred with unusual intensity, to heal, and to enter trance states. The term shaman is contested and is often distinguished from “core shamanism” (Harner, 1990) and various other interpretations or “neoshamanisms” (Wallis, 2003). Neo-shamanism has become an important resource for some DMT psychonauts, and is shaped, in part, by popular western perceptions of shamanism (discussed below), but also by appropriation and legitimate exchange with indigenous cultures, especially through entheogenic ethno-tourism, not all of which is reputable (Dobkin de Rios, 2001). Some would limit the term “shaman” to denote only the family of subarctic and Eurasian ritual specialists from which the term was originally borrowed by Mircea Eliade (Siikala, 1978). Others extend the term more liberally to connote ritual specialists who operate from a condition of ecstatic trance and who share a lexicon of features such as initiatory sickness, affiliation with tutelary spirits, and characteristic healing abilities (Halifax, 1982). Michael Winkelman has undertaken detailed comparative studies of the characteristics of different types of religious specialist (shamans; shaman-healers; mediums; priests; and sorcerers/witches), concluding that the term “shaman” is best

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applied to such specialists as are found in hunter-gatherer societies (Winkelman, 1986, 1990, 2000, 2004). Entheogen-using religious specialists are of many kinds and occur in many different societies. In Colombia we find semi-nomadic societies with shaman-like practitioners known as payés (Schultes & Hofmann, 1992); the Huichol are agricultural and sedentary with specialists called mara’akáme who cure and organise rituals, dances and pilgrimages (Schaefer & Furst, 1996); the sedentary agricultural Mazatec have curers known as cho-ta-ci-ne (Ott, 1996b); in Peru, including urban centres, specialist plantdoctors who cure and enter ecstatic trances using entheogens are vegetalistas, some of whom are ayahuasceros or ‘ayahuasca shamans’(Luna, 1986; Luna & Amaringo, 1991) — these are separate institutions, which nonetheless share many characteristics, and which are possibly the results of the same historical diffusion of Neolithic huntergatherers who gradually migrated from the northern reaches of the New World (La Barre, 1990). Over time, according to the model proposed by La Barre, the various descendents of these original nomadic hunter-gatherers spread south and developed a range of economies and settlement patterns, but retained many shamanic religious practises, including the therapeutic use of entheogens. This so-called “New World narcotic complex” (La Barre, 1970) is a hypothetical pattern of entheogen use that encompasses the ritual use of tobaccos; the Caribbean Cohoba snuff; morning glories; Datura; psilocybin mushrooms; entheogenic cacti; and the vast pharmacopeia of South American psychointegrator plants. When “shamanism” is mentioned in the context of the western entheogenic movement it is nearly always this constellation of New World entheogen use that is being referred to. Rather than using the cumbersome (and contested) phrase “New World entheogen complex” throughout this thesis I have retained the problematic the use of “shamanism,” but with the explicit proviso that what is generally stipulated by the term in popular entheogenic parlance is this distinctive complex of entheogen use. This brings us to the problem of neo-shamanism, and precisely what that term means in the context of western entheogen use. Not all neo-shamans use entheogens: far from it. But again I choose to retain this convenient term with the understanding that in a western entheogenic context it tends to have specific connotations. The figure of the shaman came to greater western attention through the writings of Carlos Castaneda, commencing with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968. This enormously popular fiction, posing as anthropology, was so riddled with “ethnographic” anomalies that one critic, Jay Courtney Fikes (1993:xxv), has recommended that it be “…best interpreted as a manifestation of

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the American popular culture of the 1960s”. Yet Castaneda’s novel’s power to shape popular culture surpassed that of most legitimate anthropological writings, and for better or worse laid the shaky foundation for the romance of New Age shamanism. Relying entirely on Castaneda’s “description” one could be entirely forgiven for concluding that shamanism is some kind of loose freemasonry between elderly men and the occasional inept sorcerer’s apprentice, involving the use of peyote and pharmacologically implausible burnt mushroom preparations to achieve a mysticism as abstract as it is introverted. Where the Don Juan saga fails as ethnography, it succeeds as narrative, and more so as an allegory of a kind of renunciative or ‘negative’ mysticism (de Mille, 1978). Castaneda’s Don Juan character denies the validity of the common-sense world and affirms a hidden “assembly point”: a less-than-obvious underlying reality of which our normal experience is an epiphenomenon. Moreover, Castaneda provides a sophisticated and more or less original system for undermining ordinary perception and achieving experiential knowledge of this underlying reality. Castaneda’s account of shamanism has little to do with healing: Don Juan seeks power and this quest for engagement with power appealed immensely to a 1960s youth culture that also sought power: the power of radical social change and radical consciousness change. This theme of personal transformation through the encounter with a hidden underlying reality is a cornerstone of contemporary western entheogen use as, exemplified in the writings of Jim De Korne (1994b), D.M.Turner (1994) and Terence McKenna (1993). Many neo-shamanists have gone far beyond Castaneda’s portrait, yet the shadow of his mysticism often persists subtly in the subsequent western variants of shamanism. His influence can be perceived, for example, when Terence McKenna, speaking to the ravegoing youth culture of the early 1990s via track 10 of the dance album Boss Drum (West & McKenna, 1992), says that the shaman is someone who has: “…actually seen the wiring under the board, stepped outside the confines of learned culture and learned…language, into the domain of what Liechtenstein called the unspeakable: the transcendental presence of “the Other”, which can be sectioned in various ways to yield systems of knowledge which can be brought back to ordinary social space for the good of the community…” The shaman thus described has unlearnt learnt behaviours, has become de-conditioned or de-schematised. Perhaps people in western societies feel restrained by role-expectations and desire a de-schematisation from the inflexible structures of contemporary consumption-oriented industrial society. This factor alone would provide a

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sufficient soteriological rationale to explain the wide appeal of neo-shamanism. But although many elements of traditional New World shamanisms are represented in reports of DMT use, this does mean that the specialised roles and activities of a shaman are even roughly approximated by DMT psychonauts. Rather, it is often the case that the shamanic world-view is embraced as the best ontological ‘fit’ for the phenomena that are experienced.

Self-healing The healing and spirit-intermediary roles enacted in traditional shamanisms are rare among entheogen users, although it is possible to view the two roles as converging: entheogen users may be their own clients and their own healers, they may, in effect, be self-shamanising. The entheogen movement is largely based on a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethos: mainline institutions have not addressed their spiritual and technical needs. People tired of relying on black market drugs of fluctuating quality and availability have assumed responsibility for their own ecstasies, and grow and refine their own entheogens, experiencing an additional sense of empowerment and self-sufficiency in the process. The entheogen movement also has strong links to the psychedelic dance culture of the 1990s which sought to disengage from the “pleasure prisons” of the metropolitan night clubs and create DIY parties for the people, as well as links to the self-help ideologies and back-to-Earth sensibilities of the 1960s and 1970s alternative movements. Self-help and the DIY ideal are central to entheogenism. But what conditions are entheogen-users treating themselves for? I have already suggested the possibility of a soteriological trajectory to DMT use related to the need for de-conditioning unhealthy learned behaviours. It remains to trace a connection between the “illness” of social alienation and traditional shamanic aetiologies. Two widely recognised forms of shamanic illness suggest analogies. The first kind of spiritual illness involves pollution or contamination of the person by environmental factors. Eliade (1964 [1951]) speaks of intrusive pathological objects, while Eduardo Luna (1986) in his ethnology of Peruvian ayahuasca shamanism describes the malignant virote darts with which sorcerers infect their victims, and mal aire, a condition caused by stagnant or contaminated air or water. In our often-abiotic urban-industrial landscape, mal aire could be extended to include mass media, fast foods, advertising, and propaganda as potentially malignant environmental vectors of ‘spiritual pollution’. “Soul loss” is another spiritual illness reported by Luna and Amaringo (1991) as a condition frequently treated by ayahuasca

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shamans. The idea that the soul or souls (the number and nature of the soul/s varying from culture to culture) may become estranged from the other components of a person is a natural extension of the idea of spiritual travel prevalent in many forms of shamanism. This belief is naturalistic in that it is suggested by dreaming and trance ecstasy, in which an individual’s subjective experience of travel is at odds with an observer who can testify that the subject appeared to be merely asleep or entranced. The notion of separability of the body and soul is also attractive, in that it provides some possibility for the transcendence of death in a disembodied form. Some forms of soul loss are thought to result from the abduction of the soul by spiritual entities. The symptoms of soul loss usually include prolonged listlessness (Luna, 1986). A shaman generally needs to make an otherworldly journey in order to recover the lost soul. The prolonged listlessness mentioned above has some similarities to the “epidemic” of depression seen in industrialised societies and at present evidenced by the great commercial success of antidepressant drugs such as Aurorix®, Zoloft® and Prozac®. Sociologists have tended to connect this kind of despondency to anomie (Durkheim, 1897) and alienation (Marx, 1977) rather than to occult or medical causes, but the environmental, social, imaginal, and somatic systems interlace and it is reasonable to expect an increase in telos, or communication between these spheres, to contribute to well-being. For entheogen users, entheogens provide this telos. Entheogens facilitate the ligare in the religio, the bond or fastening between humanity and the meta-human recognised by the Romans and from which our word religion is derived (Morris, 1975:1099). It is of interest to us in our examination of DMT visions that the retrieval of the lost soul in traditional shamanism often involves a vivid confrontation of the human ego with spirit beings. Later in this thesis I will present numerous alleged instances of precisely this kind of confrontation between my research subjects and the ‘meta-human’ other. It will be necessary during our study of these numinous confrontations to consider the extent to which soul-loss and soul-retrieval are enmeshed with philosophical concerns related to the problem of authentic intersubjectivity, such as those addressed by Emmanuel Levinas (1993). It should become clear during the presentation of these DMTinduced intersubjective encounters, that we have ample reason for suspecting that DMT is used to religare with the numinous, and that the Numa, regardless of how we regard them, help to relocate the psyche in relation to the cosmos.

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This concludes my discussion of the major terms employed in this thesis. We have discussed the complex nature of what is herein referred to as “DMT” and located this substance as both an entheogen and a psychedelic, depending on the context in which it is used. The theory of Umwelten, first proposed by Jakob von Uexküll is offered as an alternative (more a complement) to the theory of ASCs. Ernst Jünger’s concept of the psychonaut has been suggested as a neutral term to cover all persons who report a sense of metaphysical excursion, regardless of whether they conceive of such ‘flights’ within a sacred or a secular framework. The terms shamanism and neo-shamanism have been discussed, and the provisos made that, regardless of their ideal uses in other contexts, in this thesis, shamanism should be understood to refer particularly to those forms of shamanism which employ entheogens, and entheogenic neo-shamanism can be understood as Carlos Castaneda’s love child raised by Terence McKenna, D.M. Turner, Jim De Korne and others. Certain themes connected with shamanic healing (contamination, intrusion of pathogens, and soul-loss) have been abstracted so that their outer contours are coterminous with mainline psychological (projection and recollection), philosophical (intersubjectivity) and sociological (anomie) concerns. Now that we have our ‘cards’ in order we are nearly ready to play. But first we need to consider how our ‘hand’ was dealt during that equally fundamental component of analysis: the research methodology.

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Chapter 3 Fieldwork and methodology

Ethnographic methods Research into the experiences elicited by DMT involves some serious ethical aspects. DMT (n,n,-dimethyltryptamine) is a scheduled substance in all Australian States (and most of the western world) and its possession may incur significant fines and long periods of imprisonment. I was initially concerned that collecting data on DMT use was potentially equivalent to collecting evidence against my informants, surely one of a fieldanthropologist’s worst nightmares. However, accounts of past experience with DMT do not imply current possession, and the prohibitions on DMT relate to possession, not use per se. Information about current possession of a scheduled substance (or any other illegal practices) was not a part of my research agenda and was never recorded. The University ethics committee approved my research proposal in which I outlined my intentions to meet and interview past users of DMT. Fortunately, I had already established a wide range of casual contacts through conferences and networks of friends. I was able to interview people at ethnobotany conferences, where, as I often took to the podium for an hour or two, I was able to solicit the crowd for interview volunteers. On account of the ethical concerns it was necessary to make compromises with regard to the ‘thickness’ of my ethnographic description. I have deliberately avoided collecting data that could be used to assemble a detailed demographic ‘portrait’ of DMT users, which could be used by law-enforcement agencies to construct an identifying DMT ‘profile’ that would work against the interests of DMT users. A few comments about the broader entheogenic community, gathered from my field research and Internet ethnography, may be useful as a sociological primer while remaining sufficiently generic. DMT use is often one ingredient in a complex social brew that may include other entheogens or psychedelics, various religious and aesthetic values, and sundry ideologies and practices. Virginia Hine’s (1977) concept of SPINs is a useful way to conceptualise the intricate linkages. SPINs is an acronym for Segmented Polycentric Integrated Networks, and describes the complex dynamic of separate groups that are able to form an integrated network of common concern, effort and resources in order to achieve shared goals. The linkages between the separate groups of a SPIN are

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shared ideologies and overlapping membership. Members of SPINs may have numerous affiliations or identifications. Some DMT psychonauts identify as neo-shamans, trippers, or ‘entheogenists’. The term entheogen, largely popularised by Jonathon Ott (1995; 1996a) has caught on widely, especially via Internet discussion groups and mailing lists, as well as among those interested in shamanism, neo-shamanism, neo-paganism, and the New Age. Practitioners in these latter groups may have read about traditional shamanic entheogen use, or may even have participated in shamanic sessions with entheogens, especially if they had the opportunity to travel to those parts of South America where San Pedro and ayahuasca are used. Others may have connected with DMT as hippies associated with the early psychedelic counterculture. Many will have encountered DMT through their involvement with the psychedelic/electronic dance scene. Unlike MDMA or LSD, DMT is a very implausible choice of “party-drug”17 and its astonishing phenomenological properties would have curtailed its use at psychedelic dance parties — raves and doofs — even if those circulating it had not the good sense to save it for more appropriate occasions. Although DMT is not generally used at parties, it is there that many people use a wide range of ecstatic and sociality-enhancing materials in order to connect as a community (Gauthier, 2004; Moore, 1995; St John, 2001; Tramacchi, 2000; Tramacchi, 2004). As a primary locus of sociality for psychedelic users, the party is also an important vector for sharing information about different psychedelics, including DMT. Many people have encountered the ideas of Terence McKenna through the psychedelic dance community, and associated multimedia and zines18. DMT use (and entheogen use generally) has been well incorporated as a practice alongside the neo-tribal, neoprimitivist and feral (St John, 2004) articulations that thrived at the juncture of the New Age and global psychedelic dance/tekno-culture (D'Andrea, 2004). From a broader perspective this represents a step in an ongoing refinement of counter-cultural practices dating back four and half decades. Part of this refinement involves the autonomy of being able to control production of one’s own consciousness. Do-it-Yourself (DiY) practices by their nature attract capable or motivated persons who might be described as geeks and hackers (Gardner, 2000; Harris, 1986; Purdue, 1997), and this may account for the wide and unusual range of additional skills and resources evident in the entheogenic and psychedelic communities. The ferment of creativity may also relate to an inclusiveness of 17

I am informed that DMT is used socially in some circles, but at low doses, and often mixed with other herbs, and especially in joints of Cannabis. 18 Zines are usually self published magazines, a kind of alternate media that often expresses the alternate reality of the publisher/s. For a discussion of the wonderful world of zines see Williamson (2001). page 38

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people with heterodox ideologies, as, for example, those with strong interests in UFOs or the soteriological and metaphysical uses of the Mayan Calendar. There are many published DMT experiences with elements that affirm or corroborate a wide range of ‘fringe’ cognitive systems — what Kath Williamson (2001) calls “abominable knowledge” — cognitive systems capable of producing original artistic, philosophical, and technical fruits. Gardeners, herbalists, and botanists are also strongly represented in assemblies of entheogenic people, as are natural products chemists and organic chemists. The entheogenic community has grown organically, sharing visions as well as technical knowledge, negotiating consensus on important issues of safety and sanity, and bound together through shared intense experience. Each new “trip report”, “health concern” or “extraction technique” contributes to the sum of shared expertise, so that over time, a greater choice and refinement of approaches has developed. Public sanction of behaviour is also negotiated, and while the limits of acceptable behaviour is very broad by any number of mainstream standards, this tolerance has in itself led, in few rare instances, to some fairly colourful excesses on the part of a few persons, occasionally resulting in a microcosm of social chaos and dysfunction. The informants I spoke with during the course of my fieldwork remained anonymous with the exception of a few well-respected authorities on ethnopharmacology, such as Christian Rätsch, Claudia Müller-Ebeling, Benny Shannon, Rick Strassman M.D., and K. Trout, who, in any case, provided data of a more technical, and less experiential nature. I met past users of DMT in a wide range of contexts. Conversations with students, hitchhikers, occultists, street-vendors, and strangers at parties all led on occasion to the telling of a DMT narrative. Data concerning my subject’s DMT experiences was often recorded on mini-disc in a de-identified form. The discs were carefully stored, and in the event that the data at any stage posed a potential risk to the welfare of participants, I was prepared to edit or destroy the recordings. Research was initially focused on the use of DMT-rich Acacia extracts in Australia. Later, as more data concerning the phenomenology of DMT experiences emerged, it became clear that it was useful to expand the scope and to include a variety of DMT experiences from other societies, and especially from the online European and American entheogen communities. This broader scope was particularly fruitful in that it allowed me to compare a wider range of visual representations of DMT experiences, and to focus on symbolism and comparative iconography. Nonetheless, the original Australian focus remains strong, with much of the

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verbal data supplied by Australian interviewees, with smaller supplements from DMTusers from other countries. This Australian emphasis is particularly clear in terms of my field research within Australian entheogenic and ethnobotanical milieus. My fieldwork involved participant observation (Friedrichs & Lüdtke, 1975), attending ethnobotany conferences and festivals, and accessing local communities through informal networks, including voluntary networks involved in organising conferences and parties. When I began researching DMT ecstasy in January 2001 I was based in Brisbane, in the Australian State of Queensland, where I had lived for the last decade and consequently had many contacts. About one third of my informants were interviewed in Brisbane. In October 2003 I moved across the border to Nimbin in the State of New South Wales. For many years I had been visiting Northern New South Wales and its rich entheogenic and ‘alternative’ communities. A number of these events are worth mentioning. The ‘Ethnobotanica’ conferences held in Mullumbimby have been stimulating events since their inception in 2001. The event was initially sponsored and organised by the ethnobotany mail-order business Shaman Australis, but is now organised by a committee comprised of members of the Australian Ethnobotany Society, although Shaman Australis retains strong ties. The Ethnobotanica conferences are held over the course of a few days, with on-site camping and a solid program of speakers. During Ethnobotanica 2002 I had the opportunity to share with the local community my intention to study DMT experiences and I was able to distribute a pilot questionnaire to the audience (see Appendix B). This survey garnered about thirty responses from people at the conference who briefly outlined their experiences with DMT. Responses to this questionnaire are peppered throughout the chapters on DMT visions. The aim of the questionnaire was to determine the general character of DMT experiences in Australia, in order to determine productive lines of inquiry during face-to-face interviews. The resulting interviews were loosely structured around the following five questions: 1. 2. 3. 4.

How did you hear about DMT? In what setting was DMT used? How would you describe your experience? How do you see the experience now? 5. How (if at all) has the experience affected your outlook on life?

Later in 2002, I was invited to a small gathering called “Psychedelic Circus”, a sideline event to the much larger “Mardi Grass”: an annual festival held around April/May in the township of Nimbin in northern New South Wales. The Psychedelic Circus was held in a

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marquee in a cow-field a few minutes walk from the town of Nimbin. I arrived in the late afternoon, to find a field spotted with rain-loving entheogenic Panaeolus mushrooms, and a tent full of a hard-core of ‘true-believers’ who had made their way across a quagmire road in truly abysmal, drizzly weather. One of the crews19 present was especially interested in DMT and an animated discussion ensued. A member of the above mentioned crew seemed almost evangelical in his zeal for DMT, and had, it seemed to me, acquired a charismatic status among his cohorts. The typically eloquent, but confrontational rhetoric associated with charismatics was markedly present. I was reminded of the Catholic sage Saint Peter who controlled access to the Christian otherworld of paradise — this DMT evangelist promoted the entheogen as a soteriological avenue and controlled access to that avenue and to its ‘orthodox’ interpretation. I confess that such ‘Saints’ leave me with a feeling of ambivalence, although this may be my own mistrust at the way in which the presence of charismatic egos both facilitates and limits experience. It is, of course, each person’s individual choice to engage with these possibilities and limitations on their own terms, and the ‘Saint Peter syndrome’ at least creates the drive to present other people with incredible possibilities, although the motives of such a drive merits cautious scrutiny.

20

Figure 2 Flier for the festival Exodus 2003 held Near Bald Rock /Tenterfield, NSW Australia . 19

A ‘crew’ in this context refers to an assembly of cohorts who come to an event such as a party or conference with a specific agenda, goal, material contribution, artistic opus, ceremony, or social objective.

20

Note the flowering Acacias in the two upper corners of the Exodus 2003 flier. The elongated inflorescences indicate that these Acacias are members of section Juliflorae: the division of Australian Acacias to which all species thus far found to contain DMT belong. The species on the left closely page 41

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In January 2003 I was invited to participate in an event called ‘Intra-cortex’, one of many activities at the mammoth out-door festival ‘Exodus’ held in the bush high on Bald Rock near Tenterfield, New South Wales. Intra-cortex was one of a multitude of crews camped around the artificial lake on the remote Bald Rock property that hosted Exodus. The week long festival was structured so that every second night was a dance party with the option of extremely loud electronically amplified music (mostly tekno and other electronica), and every second night was essentially a recovery period with only acoustic instrumentation permitted. The parties were extraordinarily energetic affairs that easily carried me through the night and past each new dawn. I was grateful that the Intra-cortex planners had the good sense to set our camp well away from the massive hacienda that was the epicentre of the largest parties. The Intra-cortex zone was a forum for discussing the use of entheogens. The large cream-coloured marquee was equipped with a good P.A system and a low stage set before a regiment of folding chairs, which were very often occupied by wandering festivalgoers who listened to the presenters and frequently contributed to debate as well. It seemed that many people who were essentially passers-by had entheogenic stories to tell. Older Exodus-goers, especially, had advice to offer younger people, and, as is often the case, younger people had much to teach older folks too. One of the great delights of the festival was that so many people had the chance to meet and talk with the highly affable international guest speaker and expert on entheogens ‘K. Trout,’ who had flown from the United States to share his knowledge. Trout has a long standing involvement with the entheogen-using community, with close connections to the magazine “Entheogen Review” as well as being the author of numerous technical resources for entheogen-users (Trout, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002). Trout provided an interview that strongly informed the section of this thesis dealing with the scientific history of DMT. In addition to providing an entheogenic forum by day, the Intra-cortex marquee also served by night as a chill-out zone for people seeking a refuge from thumping tekno and surreal remixes of eighties pop (especially a very loud looped sample of “video killed the radio star” taken from “The Buggles” and repeated ad nauseam for minutes at a time and at irregular intervals around the clock). In the very early A.M. hours of one of the party resembles Acacia maidenii. Note also that the composition is essentially a cross formed by the intersection of the central figure and the horizontal line of bird-headed beings. The cross is also a crossroads—a place of liberating transformation as symbolised by the metaphor of flight.

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nights the space was transformed into a limpid azure haven, with larger-than-life footage of colourful tropical fishes performing their serene tarantellas above a pulsing multicoloured coral reef projected onto the marquee walls, to the accompaniment of soft, acoustic, ambient sound. Psychonauts lay quietly on mats on the ground, many holding one another tenderly, and presently a bubble-magician with a long fair beard, and wearing a full-length starry Prussian blue wizard robe and red mantle, delighted us with exquisite bubble-blowing artistry to the accompaniment of a small orchestra playing a composition based on water droplets falling from suspension wires into various watery bowls, combined with ‘dripping’ or ‘wet’-sounding vocalisations. The “bubble-man” used customised lighting to highlight the multi-coloured light-wave interference patterns of soap-films to maximal effect. The relatively simple technology accentuated some extremely complex physics leaving every soul in the Intra-cortex tent speechless with astonishment. The bubble-blower had brought gas cylinders containing gases of different densities which he aspirated in order to blow and combine bubbles of different weights into pulsing, iridescent, ephemeral soap-sculptures. It is difficult to convey the sweetness and fascination of this scene, and yet this was one of many such amazements sequestered in the hyper-abundant Exodus festivities. In mid-2003 I visited Melbourne, where I stayed with some Exodus cohorts who were also involved with organising Melbourne-based psychedelic dance events. One Melbourne man, who I will designate as informant [“1”]21, introduced me to a number of his friends who had smoked DMT and were willing to tell me about their experiences. I found the patterns of DMT use in Melbourne and Brisbane to be very similar, which is not surprising considering the high rate of communication and mobility of people between capital cities on Australia’s eastern coast 22. This brief stay gave me the impression of a well-integrated network of mutual support with a strong oral tradition in which the exchange of narratives of entheogenic experiences plays a prominent part. I left Melbourne for a few days and travelled several hours northeast until I arrived at Mt 21

Throughout this thesis numbers in square brackets (for example [“1”]) are codes that stand in lieu of proper names. The codes are a simple progressive numerical sequence based on the order of appearance in the text. The square brackets make the codes easier to locate. 22 DMT use in northern New South Wales generally differed from use in Australian capital cities, in that DMT was more frequently used in a more natural ‘ bush’ setting, and also that DMT was used more intensively (higher frequency, larger dosages), and more gregariously (DMT circles, limited instances of DMT use at parties), which may reflect the fact that DMT is produced in greater amounts in northern New South Wales, is generally more accessible, and, as a local speciality connected to the lived experience of the land, it is more closely identified with at a personal level. In the cities, where people are alienated from the means of production, the DMT experience may itself be more alienating. This, however, is a speculation requiring additional research. page 43

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Buffalo. Here I was able to see one of the most potent natural sources of DMT growing wild in situ. I discuss Acacia phlebophylla, a rare and threatened taxa of entheogenic plant, in greater detail in the section of this thesis entitled “Entheogenic Acacias in Australia” in Chapter 4. After Mt Buffalo I returned to Melbourne where I enjoyed the hospitality of inimitable ‘informants’ (‘research colleagues’ might be a more apt appellation) who I will designate as [“2”], his wife [“3”] and their son [“4”]. The enthusiasm of [“2”] for all things entheogenic was absolutely contagious, and my brief stay was extremely stimulating and informative. [“2”] had been aware of clandestine research into Australian sources of DMT in the early 1990s, and was able to provide a very good account of how knowledge of DMT extraction had spread from being the reserve of chemistry students to being widely available to psychonauts in ‘digest form’. In June of 2005 I was invited to present my findings on DMT phenomenology at the Victorian Ethnobotany Conference: Entheogenesis 200523, which was held at a remote camping facility at the Grampians Mountains National Park. This was serendipitous in that it gave me the opportunity to publicly present my analysis of DMT visions to an audience highly knowledgeable about the topic. I was subsequently able to incorporate many of their responses to my ideas into this thesis. The generally warm response to my analysis has been a major impetus to completing this work. Because this event occurred late in my research program, and because it provided several instances of positive feedback and confirmation, I have decided to discuss Entheogenesis 2005 late in this thesis in the section on “Corroborating ethnographic evidence” in chapter 6. Interspersed with these larger public events were numerous interviews with psychonauts about their DMT experiences. My final data set consisted of 85 individuals. Although I use the term ‘interview’, ‘discussion’ or ‘conversation’ would be more accurate. I found that any rigorous approach to questioning tended to be counterproductive, whereas sitting down with a cup of tea and paying attention allowed for unexpected and valuable responses. In about 40% of cases I was able to record the interviews on mini-disc; another 10% of the DMT narratives were given to me as written narratives. In the remainder of instances I tried to jot down my recollections within a half 23

The reference to ‘genesis’ in the title of this conference may (or may not) be a Biblical reference that emphasises the religious tone implicit in the idea of use of entheogens. It also creates a resonance with another annual Australian ‘underground’ event, Exodus, more explicitly Biblical, wherein the religious quality adheres to the liminal or anti-structural interstices generated by the participants, and where the emphasis is more on a set of social practices (which can include entheogens) tending towards creative anarchy or the T.A.Z. (Temporary Autonomous Zone) (Bey, 1991). page 44

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an hour of the interview. The narratives of DMT users provide a way of exploring dimensions of the human mind that are otherwise very difficult to collect data about. My interviews focussed on the phenomenology of DMT experiences, and it was my intention to understand the experiences in and of themselves, rather than trying to place the experiences into a psychological, sociological, or theological context. These interviews were supplemented by accounts of DMT published on-line. Internet sources became increasingly important, especially as my attention was drawn more to the analysis of visual or artistic representations of DMT. While my focus has been on the phenomenological ‘interior’ of the DMT experience, interviewees have also provided sociological data. The following written account from one of my informants provides an introduction to the experience and an account a of proxemics, and then describes the phenomenology of a relatively ‘light’ DMT experience: “ [“5”] arrived at my home one summer afternoon and began to assemble an altar consisting of bowls of water and semi-precious stones arranged on an ornate cloth. She produced a small glass pipe and a lighter. She loaded the pipe with an orange waxy substance and handed this pipe to me with a solemn compassionate expression. I held the pipe to my lips while she held the lighter flame beneath the waxy material in the bowl of the glass pipe. The substance abruptly melted, and then gave rise to curls of tiny white vapour. I inhaled the peculiar, plastic-flavoured vapour, and strange prickling sensations shot through my mouth and lungs, spreading rapidly to the peripheries of my body. In the recesses of my awareness some ancient presence seemed to lurch out of hibernation and into alertness. The room where I had sat moments before had been spirited away from me, leaving me in what seemed to be a sky-vault of magenta ether, that now filled with iridescent spinning points of light, succeeded by luminous, interlocking motifs that woke into animation and began to murmur. The sky-vault became increasingly brilliant and it now seemed my awareness was suspended high above a gentle undulating sea of luminous patterns. Gradually, these designs began to overlap with the contours of the familiar world I had recently left. A sense of immense relief at returning to corporeality mingled with a desire to linger above the luminous ocean. The acute visionary effects of the substance had fully subsided within fifteen minutes of inhaling the vapour. I spent much of the remainder of the day contemplating the experience. The DMT remaining in the glass pipe had recrystallised, encrusting its stem with beautiful crystalline snowflakes. There were no unpleasant somatic or psychological after effects.” Informant [“6”] (2003)

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The same informant [“6”] provided another account of a different DMT session in which they described the atmosphere of a DMT session. In the following description of DMT inebriation [“6”] provides the perspective of an objective observer. The account shows that a numinous quality can pervade a DMT session, so that persons not directly experiencing the entheogen may nonetheless be affected psychologically. The mere smell of DMT vapour can produce a peculiar psychological arousal. Even before we touch on the phenomenology of DMT we encounter a range of unusual social and psychological conditions. For example, in the session described below there is an emotional atmosphere — a sense of Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremendum et fascinans — characteristic of the solemn ritual. A condition of liminality prevails and, as cohorts in the experience, a social tie is forged among the participants in a common matrix of sacred space and time: “[“7”] held an erect posture and retained the vapour in his lungs for a long, long time before exhaling. A range of expressions moved his facial muscles: what seemed to be bemusement alternated with comprehension, astonishment, rapture, concern and peace. His face became quite flaccid and he lay back on the futon with his legs and back straight and his arms by his sides. [“8”] and I had observed all this in complete silence, scarcely breathing. We sat like piles of stone in a desolate wilderness, scarcely breathing and withdrawn into ourselves. For my part this was an almost involuntary response. It was as if a film of lead had descended. The air seemed charged with an electric quality, the air was laced with the extremely disturbing smell of DMT, and I heard two peculiar tones: one a high frequency ringing sound and the other a deep hum, both of which seemed to be independent of the sound of the refrigerator in the adjoining room. In any case neither [“8”] nor I spoke or moved for about twenty minutes. [“7”], however, in the grip of his visions had begun to speak. He was addressing entities that neither [“8”] nor I could perceive: “…yes…aha…yes…” he lay on the mattress, eyes closed, facial muscles ecstatically clenched nodding affirmatively in response to the information he was hearing, taking in the rapid succession of images he was seeing. Occasionally his limbs would stretch with what were clearly extremely enjoyable sensations. Five minutes into the experience and [“7’s”] physical and emotional responses were passing from intense ecstasy into deep relaxation and contentment. By around the ten-minute mark [“7”] was beginning to stir, to yawn and stretch as if waking up…” Informant [“6”] (2003)

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Phenomenological and semiotic methods There are many non-ethnographic ways of approaching DMT experiences. Contributions from pharmacology, psychology, the neurosciences, history, anthropology and ethnobotany all provide necessary resources for understanding DMT ecstasy and are included in this thesis as required. However, it is the subjective, emic dimension of entheogenic substances which are of greatest interest to the religionist, and therefore the theoretical approaches emphasised here are those drawn from the phenomenology of religion, especially the phenomenological focus on description, experiencing, empathy, and epoché or “bracketing” of assumptions (Allen, 1993). Accounts of DMT use are drawn from interviews, surveys and discussions with contemporary Australian DMT users, as well as testimonials published on the Internet, journals and newspaper reports. Artistic representations of DMT experiences, as mentioned earlier, are also analysed, and in some respect constitute our most valuable data. This is because the visual aspects of DMT inebriation are most often emphasised by users, and also because DMT users frequently allude to the ineffable or unspeakable quality of the visions. This initially presented a problem, but the method of approaching this problem was straightforward: temporarily bypassing verbal accounts and focussing on images as the primary semiotic units. DMT-related images were obtained using the online Erowid psychedelic art gallery, various published texts, and trawling through DMT-related images on the Internet using the AltaVista search engine with “DMT” as the search term, limiting the results to “images only”. This method produced a lot of “noise” as DMT is also the abbreviation for a number of totally unrelated substances and certain mechanical devices. Nonetheless, it was necessary to filter through a great deal of unrelated material in order not to overlook images authentically related to DMT. Once these images were collected it was relatively easy to categorise them by theme and to explore the different combinations of symbols in order to reach a theory of their significations. A number of themes recurred regularly and particular symbols were evidently closely related in such a way that it was possible to propose a kind of grammar (for example the “face” was ubiquitous in DMT art and so too was the “eye” symbol. Because the eye was more constant than the whole face and occurred in many different relationships to the face, I came to the conclusion that the eye was a more conserved, and possibly more central symbol for the DMT experience). The regularly recurring motifs are presented in Chapters 5 and 6. On the basis of the relationship between the images I

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was led to develop a hypothesis concerning the existential drives leading to DMT use, and indeed to the conclusion that the DMT experience is sought as a cure for deeply internalised solipsistic alienation (that is to say, a neurotic belief that only the experiential self really exists), but I will unravel this proposition more in the section entitled ‘Others’ in Chapter 5. The semiotic analysis of images entails certain epistemological problems, the most obvious of which is that my interpretation of the meaning of an image may be very different to that of another viewer and that of the author of the work. Some semioticians emphasise the author’s intention, while others consider the reception of the work to be more important and the artist’s intention to be immaterial to the assigned meaning. Clearly, I rely on my own interpretations to a great extent, and also those of others, especially informants and people who have given me their feedback on my findings. But I also consider the creative process of the artist to be an invaluable source of data; it was, after all, some deep drive of the artist that caused them to create, and this drive to create and share art seems to me at least as powerful as the drive to view art. My aim is to present a spectrum of possible interpretations wherever possible, and to build a consensus, or synthesis, from these different interpretations. But before we look at visual representations of DMT in detail, some consideration of the history of DMT, and the discourses that might shape psychonautic expectations are in order.

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Chapter 4 DMT: Shaping expectations

This chapter explores the accretion of discourses around DMT, and how these discourses influence the expectations of DMT users. DMT smoking provides an unusual and intense experience. That immortal phrase “Boy, we couldn’t get much higher” from the song “Light my fire” by The Doors, could as well have been penned with DMT in mind. When we are presented with people ardently seeking such intense experiences or pursuing some adventure that the majority are content to bypass, we may wonder what the motivation is: what is it that they get out of it that makes all the fear and uncertainty seem worthwhile? We know from the psychological studies of Abraham Maslow (1976) that not everyone seeks “peak experiences” but that there exists a correlation between peak experiences and certain kinds of creative expression, and that “peak experiences” provide a rare context in which one’s life may be viewed with an enhanced sense of appreciation and context (ibid). This latter correlation between peak experiences and the experience of life-asmeaningful is one of the vital connections between peak-experiences and religion. Abraham Maslow argues that “peak experiences” should be valued regardless of whether they arise from a recognized religious tradition. Maslow suggests that “…organized religion can be thought of as an effort to communicate peak-experiences to non-peakers, to teach them, to apply them etc.” (Maslow, 1976:24)24. Many psychoactive substances, including DMT, seem capable of triggering ‘peakexperiences’. Indeed, the term “peaking” is used by psychonauts to describe the more intense phases of a psychedelic experience. We can expect that DMT smokers obtain psychological satisfactions from their activities. To appreciate more fully what these satisfactions consist of we need to examine the DMT experiences more closely, as we shall in the next two chapters. But an equally valid question might be “what benefits do people expect to gain from DMT?” People seek out DMT largely on the basis of what they have heard about its effects. These reports in turn contribute to the moods and

24

Maslow believed that “…LSD and psilocybin, give us some possibility of control in this realm of peakexperiences. It looks like these drugs often produce peak-experiences in the right people under the right circumstances, so perhaps we needn’t wait for them to occur by good fortune.” (Maslow 1976:26). However, in general Maslow counsels a moderate approach, warning against becoming attached to the peak experience as an end in itself, or trying to “escalate the triggers” without integrating the experience (Maslow 1976:ix). page 49

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expectations that comprise the individuals “set” when they first sample DMT. It has long been recognised that the effects of psychoactive substances can be understood as an interplay of four factors. The first two factors are purely pharmacological: the specific drug (or drugs) and the dosage. An additional pharmacological variable is the individual’s body and its capacity to metabolise different substances. Bodies vary broadly in their sensitivity to different drugs, including entheogenic drugs. Rather than the variable ‘drug’, we might more accurately say ‘drug-body interaction’. The second group of factors are psychological and cultural: the “set” and “setting” (the environment in which the substance is used) (Zinberg, 1984). In order to know the expectations that users have of the experience, we need to know what they have seen and heard about DMT. The following section provides a history of discourses about DMT and an analysis of how these different discourses have shaped current expectations of DMT’s properties.

A brief history of DMT South American peoples have long used DMT-containing plants, often in the context of shamanism and sorcery (Ott, 1996b; Rätsch, 2005; Schultes & Hofmann, 1992). Many of these plants, and the snuffs and potions that can be made from them, are discussed in Appendix C. It should be noted that books, ethnographic studies, films, and tourism have all made South American shamanism and entheogen use more familiar to western psychonauts, and this influence has been particularly strong since the 1990s, partly as a result of the increase in information flows made possible by the greater public accessibility of the World Wide Web. DMT was first synthesised by Richard Manske in 1931. The first person to experiment with refined DMT was the Hungarian pharmacologist Stephen Szára (1956) who intramuscularly injected the hydrochloride salt of DMT into himself in the April of 1956. Szára noted the usual vegetative symptoms of DMT: dilated pupils, elevated blood pressure and pulse, as well as trembling and nausea (ibid). He also reported euphoria and fixation of attention on the visual effects of DMT, to the extent that he was unable to discuss them until they had passed (ibid). Szára described the visual effects as “brilliantly colored oriental motifs and, later, rapidly changing wonderful scenes” (Stafford, 1992:314). Despite this initial report of euphoria, Szára and other early researchers characterised DMT as a psychoticum or psychosis-inducing drug (Sai-halász, 1958). The intense subjective effects of DMT, coupled with its structural similarity to the endogenous neurotransmitter serotonin, made these researchers suspect that DMT or related

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compounds were responsible for natural psychoses (Szára, 1956). Although this was never established, much of the initial interest in DMT and other drugs with a structural similarity to serotonin was connected to this belief that DMT-like drugs were “psychotomimetic”. Indeed, LSD —which also resembles serotonin in certain respects, but which is orally active, far more potent, and very economical — was widely distributed during and after this time by the Sandoz pharmaceutical company, largely for psychiatric research (Sankar, 1975). DMT itself was at one stage tested on 24 female psychiatric patients and was found to delay or decrease physical symptoms associated with schizophrenia (Böszöményi & Brunecker, 1957), although it should be noted that DMT is often followed by a quiet, introspective period of recovery. Unlike LSD and mescaline, the majority of users of DMT in the late 1950s and early 1960s seem to have found little in the way of euphoria or aesthetic and philosophical benefit: terror seemed the more typical response (Stafford, 1992). The “psychotogen” label seemed to fit. Researchers and adventurers who wanted a taste of ‘madness’ were few and far between. Most who sampled DMT in these early years (virtually always via intramuscular injection) had nightmarish experiences. This is in contrast to contemporary western use where many psychonauts report ecstatic experiences. William Burroughs was among the early western explorers of DMT. In 1960 he had travelled to Peru in order to drink the DMT-containing potion ayahuasca (which Burroughs referred to by its synonym yagé). Burroughs’s correspondence with Allen Ginsberg, published as The Yagé Letters, reveals Burrough’s ambivalence towards the Amazonian entheogen, although Ginsberg’s later experiences with the brew were positive and productive (Burroughs & Ginsberg, 1963). From the early 1960s William Burroughs and Timothy Leary began a correspondence which reveals that Burroughs had obtained a supply of synthetic DMT and had used DMT on about ten occasions (as injections of about 65 mg) finding the effects “sometimes unpleasant but well under control and always interesting” until an overdose of around 100 mg precipitated what Burrough’s described as a “horrible experience…which I have recorded and submitted for publication in Encounter…” (Stafford, 1992:314). It should be noted that when used within the lower dosage range Burroughs found the experiences manageable, only encountering terror at a very high dose. Nonetheless, Burroughs’ “urgent warning” (ibid) about the psychological perils of DMT helped to raise the public profile of DMT from the relative obscurity of experimental psychiatry.

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“William Burroughs had tried it in London and reported it in the most negative terms. Burroughs was working at that time on a theory of neurological geography—certain cortical areas were heavenly, other areas were diabolical. Like explorers moving into a new continent, it was important to map out the friendly areas and the hostile. In Burroughs' pharmacological cartography, DMT propelled the voyager into strange and decidedly unfriendly territory.” (Leary, 1966b) http://deoxy.org/h_leary.htm

In the wake of Burrough’s description, psychonautic adventurers injected DMT (the “terror drug”) with the expectation that it would induce a frightening visionary experience, and many users seem to have had exactly that. Southern Californian psychiatrist Oscar Janiger also administered DMT to many subjects during the early 1960s, the results of which have never been published (Stafford, 1992). Like Burroughs, Janiger also suffered an unpleasant overdose of DMT which he described as “terrible�like being inside a gigantic pinball machine with lights going on and off everywhere” (Stafford, 1992:152). According to Timothy Leary, Allen Watts25 experimented with DMT around this time and had an alarming experience: “He took the drug as part of a California research program and had planned to demonstrate that he could maintain rational control and verbal fluency during the experience. The closest equivalent might be to attempt a moment-tomoment description of one's reactions while being fired out the muzzle of an atomic cannon with neon-Byzantine barrelling. Dr. Watts gave an awe-full description of perceptual fusion.” (Leary, 1966b) http://deoxy.org/h_leary.htm

A research team consisting of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner were not dissuaded by the uniformly negative (but interesting) reports they had heard about DMT. Leary and associates all believed in the implications of the “set and setting” hypothesis and felt that any psychedelic drug, including DMT should conform to the formula and produce a marvellous epiphany if combined with a positive mind set and a 25

According to Peter Stafford (Stafford, 1992:326) “Alan Watts said the DMT experience was like “being fired out of an atomic cannon” but later re-evaluated DMT, calling it “amusing but relatively uninteresting compared to LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and Cannabis.”

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beautiful and harmonious environment. By carefully creating a trusting and peaceful ambience for DMT sessions, Leary, Alpert and Metzner seemed to have at hand a method for routinely inducing paradisiacal experiences: “Our group was sharing a paradisial [sic] experience—each one in turn was to be given the key to eternity—now it was my turn, I was experiencing this ecstasy for the group. Later the others would voyage. We were members of a transcendent collectivity.” (Leary, 1966b) http://deoxy.org/h_leary.htm

The intensity of DMT experiences makes it difficult for psychonauts to communicate the experiences to “sitters” or “ground-controllers”(non-inebriated persons supervising the session). Leary proposed that an “experiential typewriter” with a concise lexicon of terms be developed to make communication easier (Stafford, 1992). Leary’s and Metzner’s reports of “giant, gold-encrusted, shimmering beetles26” were no doubt an important stimulus to early clandestine experimentation among the counterculture that blossomed in the mid-to-late ‘sixties. Another important stimulus to the more widespread use of DMT around this time was the discovery that DMT could be smoked on a base of dried herbs, resulting in a rapid inebriation commencing almost immediately and lasting for ten to fifteen minutes. Many psychonauts would have been dissuaded from injecting DMT on account of a fear of needles, but smoking provided an attractive alternative. Around this time DMT acquired the label of the “business man’s lunch trip” on account of its brief duration. This term gained currency after Timothy Leary (1966a) referred to DMT in an interview with Playboy magazine. A Vivid description of a DMT experience also appeared in Masters and Huston’s The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience27 (2000:162-164). Although there is relatively little published material on DMT culture in the 1960s (much more is known about LSD, psilocybin and Cannabis use during this era), we do know that a small but distinctive culture had evolved around synthetic DMT by the late 1960s. For some � such as the ‘Sid Johnson’ in the following quotation � DMT became the sin qua non of hippie ideology: 26

Note that jewel-like, iridescent insects are one of the motifs that seem to recur with great regularity in the visions of DMT users, and here we see that they have been present from the very earliest western reports. Chapter 6 of this thesis contains a subsection on visions of insects during DMT inebriation. 27 The anonymous subject related their encounter with God: a terrifying crystalline cat with a disdain for humans. This experience is discussed in more detail in Chapter 6. page 53

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“There was a time when no one was invited to our house — anyone who was a hippie — unless they smoked DMT. Because usually people who don’t smoke DMT are fucked up for one reason or another. I mean all of them. Anyone who doesn’t smoke DMT has to be fucked up, because there’s no good reason why you don’t smoke it — except if you’re not taking drugs, and that’s fine, everything’s cool, or if you’re straight. But if you’re a hippie, you know, and you’ve smoked DMT and you know where it’s at, you just know it’s only a good trip.” (Stafford, 1971:211). In the late 1960s the precursors for DMT synthesis were freely available and syntheses were available in books such as The Turn-On Book (ibid) and The Psychedelic Guide to Preparation of the Eucharist (Brown, 1968). The process for synthesising DMT could be easily modified to give the close structural analogue DET, and both materials were freely available prior to the imposition of restrictions on the starting materials. These precursors became increasingly difficult to obtain in the United States after the enactment of State and Federal laws from 1966 to 1969 making the possession of DMT and DET a criminal offence. Other nations, including Australia, followed the American model (although DMT was very rarely used in Australia at this time) as a matter of routine fulfilment of previous International Treaty obligations (Fox & Mathews, 1992). Many DMT and DET analogues were not legally scheduled at this time. Notably DPT and 5-MeO-DMT remained noncriminalised (although this may no longer apply because of the catch-all nature of the United States Federal Analogue Act and its international equivalents). As a consequence of these laws DMT became a rare psychedelic in the 1970s, despite it having a very convenient duration compared to most other psychedelics, as well as an ‘adrenalin’ factor that might have been well suited to the thrill-seeking ‘70s zeitgeist. Nonetheless, it was still available to a limited extent and significant enough to be profiled in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs (Shulgin, 1976) and discussed by Jeremy Bigwood and Jonathon Ott in Head magazine in 1977 (Ott, 1996b). An important contribution to the contemporary user’s conception of DMT came in the late 1970s when it was discovered that DMT, 5-MeO-DMT and some related tryptamines are normal components of cerebrospinal fluid in humans (Christian S.T., 1976). This discovery revived interest among psychiatrists in the possible role of DMT in psychosis, although research published the same year demonstrated that there was no statistically significant difference in DMT levels of a control group as measured against patients with acute psychosis or those with high “suspiciousness scores” (Angrist, 1976:29). Apparently “suspiciousness” page 54

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is a symptom of paranoid psychosis, although a lack of suspiciousness could be considered a symptom of unhealthy pronoia (in this instance, the irrational belief that psychiatrists are trying to help). In any case, these findings were corroborated by an additional research group who also found that DMT was not a convincing candidate for a “schizotoxin” as there was inadequate statistical correlation between schizophrenia and elevated DMT levels and also noted that the psychological effects of DMT do not closely mimic the symptoms of schizophrenia (Gillin, 1976). Christian et al’s studies (1976) had demonstrated that DMT levels were higher in the cerebrospinal fluids of animals and humans during extreme stress, in which case severe mental illness is perhaps sufficiently stressful to account for elevated DMT levels and need not be posited as causal even if a correlation could be established. The correlation between endogenous DMT and stress leads easily to speculations that DMT might be produced in greater concentrations during the stress associated with extremis. From here it is a short step to Rick Strassman’s (1996; 2001) hypothesis that DMT may be responsible for the visions reported as Near Death Experiences (NDEs). This idea that DMT produces NDEs has become a significant aspect of the expectations of contemporary DMT users. The DMT experience is alleged to resemble the process of dying. Reports of an intense cold, numbing sensation early in the experience are fairly common, as is the subjective impression that one’s breathing has stopped. The belief that the DMT Umwelt is identical with a conjectured disembodied existence continuing after death provides a very strong ideological justification for the religious use of DMT, as the following paragraph indicates: “It now seems possible, by the use of the psychedelic tryptamines, to venture into the death state before we die and to accustom ourselves to that state. This is the path of the shaman and the spiritual warrior. At death, when the transition is finally and irrevocably made, the psychedelic explorer will enter a realm he or she knows from previous experience, and will, hopefully, not be swept away by fear or ignorance.” (Meyer, 1992:166) Such convictions are not easily swayed by the threat of legal persecution. The priorities of immortality take precedence over mortal law, especially in a Christian society infused with the ideals of a saviour who resisted Earthly laws to obtain resurrection and eternal life in Heaven. Within many religious traditions we find that the moments of dying carry a special power; these are moments where the range of spiritual possibilities is greatly

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expanded. When the DMT experience is constructed as an analogue of death the accompanying impressions are thereby invested with a peculiarly religious feeling and authority. The association of DMT with death and dying is discussed further in Chapter 6. DMT continued to be in scarce supply until quite recently when extraction procedures and phytochemical knowledge became widely disseminated, largely through the medium of the World Wide Web. The drive behind the spread of DMT was a kind of psychedelic mysticism wed to scientific pragmatism, one of many instances in which science has been instrumental in liberating visionary practices from socio-legal constraints (Kuhn, 1986; Szasz, 1977). In many respects the recent dissemination of knowledge regarding extraction of DMT from plants was modelled after the earlier dissemination of knowledge relating to the cultivation of psilocybin-containing mushrooms in the 1970s. Psilocybin mushrooms became a significant force in the continuation of the psychedelic counterculture throughout the late seventies and eighties, spreading throughout the counterculture rather like the underground mycelium of the fungi in question and mushrooming into a force that provided a virtually free alternative to the various black markets that profited by dubious means from the supply shortages and lack of industry regulation caused by drug prohibition28. The successful democratisation of the mycological techniques necessary for home production of psilocybin mushrooms is largely attributable to a slim book entitled Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide (Oss & Oeric, 1991 [1976]). The authors of this text used pseudonyms, but have been identified as Jeremy Bigwood, Kathleen Harrison McKenna, Terence McKenna, and Dennis McKenna (Ott, 1996b). These figures, each an advocate of entheogenic practices, spring from the same milieu that was later to make a democratic project out of DMT. Each has contributed substantially to the culture of entheogen use, with Kathleen Harrison McKenna deeply involved with plant preservation, Jeremy Bigwood and Dennis McKenna contributing research and scientific publications on ethnobotany (Bigwood & Beug, 1982; McKenna, 1984, 1995; McKenna & Towers, 1984; McKenna, Towers, & Abbott, 1985), and Terence McKenna making 28

In the southeastern United States and in much of Australia the temperatures are well suited to the growth of Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms (Allen, 1991; Badham, 1984). These entheogenic mushrooms grow readily outdoors in cattle or elephant dung and need only be harvested after rain storms in the warmer part of the year (Hall, 1973). An indigenous Australian mushroom, Psilocybe subaeruginosa, as well as a number of closely related species, provide very potent entheogenic mushrooms during the wet autumn months in the cooler southern States of Australia (Stamets, 1996). Consequently, the Australian situation has been rather different to the American experience with mushrooms being picked wild with very few attempts at sterile cultivation techniques. Naturally, mushrooms growing wild without human controls are only available when in season. page 56

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numerous contributions to psychedelic philosophy and art (McKenna, 1991, 1992a, 1993a, 1993b; McKenna & McKenna, 1993). Terence McKenna’s writings have contributed enormously to the recent rise of interest in DMT among users of entheogens and psychedelics. The extent of McKenna’s influence was born out to me during discussions with DMT users in Australia, and from my reading of Internet sources, noting especially the vast number of overt references to key McKenna terms and ideas, as well as the prolific number of McKenna interviews and writings available on-line. Many DMT experiences seem to conform to, or seem structured on (cause and effect are difficult to determine) ideas articulated in Terence McKenna’s writings. It is also the case that many DMT novices expected experiences like those described by Terence McKenna (elves, aliens, excursions into different dimensions) but were surprised to have experiences of totally different kinds. McKenna’s ideas (which I shall return to very soon) have been central to shaping the moods and expectations of many DMT users and require special consideration. Another major influence on the “set” of contemporary western users of DMT are the writings of the psychonauts known as “Gracie” and “Zarkov”. Gracie and Zarkov began publishing their experiments with DMT, ayahuasca analogues, and other substances in the 1980s. Their work became much more influential in the 1990s through the medium of the World Wide Web, where it joined the writings of Terence McKenna as the two principal sources of practical and phenomenological accounts of DMT. In both Terence McKenna’s accounts of DMT, and those of Gracie and Zarkov, we find more than a simple description of the experience. Rather, we have an intricate exegesis of events, which imply an entire cosmology replete with ethereal intelligences, exotic dimensions, alien philosophies and languages. They seem as much a description of new and unbounded Heavens as they are descriptions of drug effects. Yet each writer proceeds from a stated intent of simple phenomenological reporting. Both Gracie and Zarkov, and Terence McKenna seem compelled to reconcile cosmology with the sheer experience of DMT, and in the process have made unique contributions to the literature of religious ideas. Gracie and Zarkov are clearly highly committed and experienced users of DMT. They attempt to provide an adequate map of the visionary terrain, while also acknowledging the potential dangers of DMT and psychedelics generally. They also provide a great deal of practical advice on lighting, seating or reclining arrangements, and smoking technique. It is probably this combination of practical emphasis and metaphysics

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that has made the duo’s short pamphlet DMT: How and Why to get Off (Gracie & Zarkov, 1984) such an underground classic. Gracie and Zarkov described their experiences of smoking DMT as breaking out of embodiment, time and space through a threshold or portal (which they called the “chrysanthemum pattern”) into a “hyperspace” of “formless vibration” resounding with alien language and music, and teeming with intelligent entities and strange machines. These reports of hyper-spatial numina are echoed in the descriptions of DMT inebriation offered by Terence McKenna: “Breathing is normal, heartbeat steady, the mind clear and observing. But what of the world? What of incoming sensory data? Under the influence of DMT, the world becomes an Arabian labyrinth, a palace, a more than possible Martian jewel, vast with motifs that flood the gaping mind with complex and wordless awe…Many diminutive beings are present there the tykes, the selftransforming machine elves of hyperspace. ” (McKenna, 1993a:257-258) The consensus that a sufficient dose of DMT facilitates access to a nearby ecology of hyper-dimensional beings is now an orthodox belief among DMT users, although this belief in spirit-beings has many variants and many interpretations, from the literal physical existence of such beings through to relative belief in these entities as autonomous psychological complexes. Particular kinds of entities are especially well attested, especially elves and alien preying-mantis-like creatures known as “Mantids”. Reports of Mantids and elves are common to both Gracie and Zarkov (1985) and Terence McKenna (1993b). Both Gracie and Zarkov and Terence McKenna write of peculiar visual linguistic manifestations on DMT, McKenna writing of the “logos”, and Gracie and Zarkov writing of the “assembly language” of the “machine elves”. Again, visually manifesting phonetic symbols are a common experience among DMT users. Ideogram making is of course a very widespread human behaviour. Perhaps DMT stimulates specific “scribe-centres” in the brain. Whatever the case, DMT clearly stimulates a lot of brain centres. Gracie and Zarkov attempt to prepare the novice with a not-quite comprehensive inventory of what to expect after inhaling DMT vapour:

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“For all practical purposes, you will no longer be embodied. You will be part of the intergalactic information network. You may experience any of the following:

•

Sense of transcending time or space

•

Strange plants or plantlike forms

•

The universe of formless vibration

•

Strange machines

•

Alien music

•

Alien languages, understandable or not

•

Intelligent entities in a variety of forms

Do not be amazed and do not try to actively direct your observations but merely pay attention.” (Gracie & Zarkov, 1984) http://www.deoxy.org/h_vnotes.htm

Gracie and Zarkov assure the DMT-user in advance, explaining that although they may feel anxious or overwhelmed, the experience will pass rapidly, and that in the meantime they can resist identification with emotions such as astonishment or the desire to control the experience: “The beings can show you amazing things, but if you try to impose your personal trip on the DMT you will find that you cannot and may become frightened…You may begin to wonder how you will ever find your way back to your body. If you have taken enough DMT to fully 'breakthrough', by the time you can even wonder about it, you are almost back. Trust in your own wetware29; your psyche and your body will be reunited. Worrying will only prolong the process.” (Gracie & Zarkov, 1984) http://www.deoxy.org/h_vnotes.htm

Gracie and Zarkov also emphasise the sense of a presence. This sense of presence is one of the most powerful and pervading aspects of a DMT experience. That some other self, 29

“Wetware” (also “liveware” and “meatware”) refers to the amalgam of mind and nervous system and is based on an analogy with the computing terms “software” and “hardware”. The term was initially coined by cyberpunk author Rudolf von Bitter Rucker in his 1988 novel Wetware. page 59

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or a number of other selves are present in the experience is one of the elements that most perplexes DMT users. It raises a number of difficult ontological questions. Who is present, and why? How can an other be present and yet remain other within the subject’s very sense of subjectivity? We will return to these questions later in the thesis, and pay them considerable attention, for these questions seem to lie near to the essence of the DMT experience. Such questions of the identity or nature of the entheogenic other were an integral part of the writings of the psychedelic philosopher Terence McKenna. Terence McKenna (1946-2000) was perhaps the most prominent spokesperson of the post-rave neo-psychedelic movement. His work is well known to contemporary users of entheogens (although McKenna himself preferred the term psychedelic), and he has often been compared to Timothy Leary in terms of the influence of his thought on the discourses of the current generation of psychedelics users. McKenna’s writing challenges the reader to investigate ecstatic states empirically in order to judge whether his often very broad “repertoire of operational constructs” is “. . . in Wittgenstein’s wonderful phrase, ‘True enough’” (McKenna & McKenna, 1993:XXV). Indeed, the “true-enoughness” of many of McKenna’s ideas is contentious: for instance, the notion of an Edenic “Ur culture” in humanity’s past; the simplistic typology of “partnership” versus “dominator” societies; and the theory that ingestion by early hominids of (extraterrestrial) psilocybin mushrooms catalysed human evolution. McKenna also postulated an eschatological vision in which the year 2012 will be characterised by an immense incursion of novelty into time, supporting his prophecy by the use of mathematical modelling software of his own devising called timewave zero, and noting that this date is corroborated by its coincidence with the climax of the Mayan calendar (McKenna & McKenna, 1993). Many entheogen users are familiar with McKenna’s more peculiar ideas, although for the most part they expressed scepticism when the topic came up during interviews conducted for this thesis. Nonetheless, these unusual ideas have currency as a kind of ideological “springboard” for the heterodoxy of beliefs that characterise the intellectual life of psychonauts. However we may regard the more speculative portion of McKenna’s writing, these polemical concerns are less pertinent to their reception than they would be for studies that fall more conventionally within the sciences and humanities. Like the nineteenth-century Romanticists, Terence McKenna’s writing conveys a revelation of a primary, poetic, revolutionary consciousness where, for those drawn to them, fantasy,

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hallucination, and dream are varieties of data that are as real as any other. In 1975 Terence and his brother Dennis McKenna — an ethnobotanist and psychopharmacologist — published the recondite The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching (McKenna & McKenna, 1993), recounting the hyper-dimensional adventures and eschatological ideas resulting from an expedition to the Amazon in 1971. The goal of this expedition was to learn from ayahuasqueros – shamans who use the entheogenic potion ayahuasca to attain ecstatic trance. The model of Nature presented in Invisible Landscape is that of a complex mystery emanating as an organized fractal sequence from a unified, sentient, and abstract field: a model resonant with the newly simulated “virtual realities” of early nineties cyber-culture. That symbioses between psychedelic plants and people can lead to deeper cultural and ecological awareness is a central theme of Terence McKenna’s work. Terence McKenna advocated naturally occurring psychoactive substances, especially psilocin-containing mushrooms, DMT, and the tryptamine-containing entheogens of the Amazon, as ways of transcending the constraints of “dominator culture” and obtaining a vision of a more integrative, archaic and geocentric sociality. These themes are extensively developed by McKenna in The Archaic Revival (1991) and Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (1993a). The visible manifesting of language is another recurrent theme in Terence McKenna’s writing. Appropriately, his (counter) cultural significance extended beyond his writings and charismatic spoken-word performances to multimedia collaborations30, ethnobotanical conservation, and fundraising for environmental groups. He was a co-founder of Botanical Dimensions – an organization for the conservation of plants that have traditional ritual and medicinal uses. Many users of DMT compare or contrast their experiences with those described by Terence McKenna. Indeed, many users had not heard of DMT prior to reading McKenna, or had considered DMT a rare material that they were not likely to ever encounter. McKenna’s primary assertion about the DMT trance is that the user enters into a different environment densely populated with entities of scarcely comprehensible exoticness, variously described as self-dribbling basket-balls, self-transforming machine-elves, and 30

One multimedia collaboration between Terence McKenna and the early British electronic dance/techno outfit “Shamen” (sic) was at one stage extremely popular in the rave scene. The album, Boss Drum, contained the track RE:EVOLUTION (West & McKenna, 1992), which featured a lengthy monologue from Terence McKenna touching on his themes of psychedelics, eschatology, hyper dimensionality, novelty, time, and soteriology. This album served to introduce Terence McKenna’s serious neo-shamanic approach to psychedelics and ASCs to a much wider youth audience, many of whom would subsequently read his work and in so doing encounter the possibilities of DMT. page 61

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children at play. As with many who have experienced subjective “contact” with entities during DMT trance, McKenna (1991; 1992a) fixates on the ontological status of these entities. Terence McKenna’s discourses concerning DMT revolve around his own preoccupation with the problem of knowing the Other, and particularly these strange DMT-induced others. McKenna saw these concerns with the problematic objectivity of the other as having fundamental and far-reaching implications for intersubjectivity per se. In our usual life we are confronted by explicit others who are verified primarily through an intersubjective consensus that simultaneously confirms our own veracity. With DMT we have a similar intensity of confrontation with the other as we have in daily life, except that these others are non-verifiable by ordinary intersubjective consensus. When the two states (baseline and DMT-induced) are combined there is a potential for enormous dissonance, and in this dissonance there is a radical questioning of being itself. Around the same time Peter Meyer (1992) published an intriguing exploratory essay, Apparent Communication with Discarnate Entities Induced By Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), emphasising the capacity of DMT to induce apparent contact experiences with “discarnate entities”. Meyer presented a detailed description of the experiences of six DMT users and offered an array of possible interpretations spanning the gamut of material-realism, through speculative science, and shamanic cosmologies. Meyer’s essay also became widely replicated and distributed on-line. Two years later the pseudonymous psychonaut D.M. Turner (the Initials refer to DMT) released a slim volume, called The Essential Psychedelic Guide (Turner, 1994), which soon became immensely popular. The volume was withdrawn from publication following “D.M. Turner’s” tragic and allegedly drug-related death. Turner offered practical advice on a number of psychedelics and psychedelic combinations and related many personal anecdotes from his experiences. He also associated DMT with entities. A now common western belief about DMT concerns the purported spiritual affinity between DMT and water, and the idea that water should be ritualistically included in the sacred space of a DMT session. This belief that “…DMT is a water spirit…” can be traced to Turner’s book (1994:89). Knowledge of methods for extracting DMT from plant sources was reaching critical mass around this time, with many amateur ethnobotanists and “kitchen chemists” actively engaged in the process of finding the best local source of DMT. Journals such as Eleusis and Entheogen Review kept psychonautic researchers up to date on the latest plants, resources, and experiments. New discoveries were constantly being made as, for example,

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the development of potent analogues of ayahuasca using plants more easily accessed by westerners living in temperate regions (Appleseed, 1993; Festi & Samorini, 1996) or the development of simple, home-based extraction methods for DMT. This information became widely available through books like Ayahuasca Analogues (Ott, 1994) and Psychedelic Shamanism (De Korne, 1994b). This later work by Jim De Korne, at one time the editor for Entheogen Review, became a major source of information on extraction techniques for entheogenic “basement shamans”31. In addition to organic chemistry techniques, Jim De Korne’s Psychedelic Shamanism provided a psychospiritual model for understanding entheogenic experiences, especially those involving apparent contact with spiritual entities. De Korne describes the entheogenic entities as belonging to the “Imaginal realm”, but this realm is not merely imaginary, but rather an independent universe, where, as in the Upanishads and Gnosticism, devas or archons are dependent on human consciousness for their sustenance and prepared to resort to subterfuge in order to obtain their nourishment (De Korne, 1994b:48). Hence, for De Korne, knowledge of the workings of the Imaginal realm is of utmost importance if we are to attain any degree of spiritual freedom, and this liberating knowledge is to be gained through entheogens. Temporal concerns such as drug prohibition scarcely attain to relevance against such high soteriological stakes, indeed, the current western anti-drug laws could easily be construed as attempts by archons to keep the human beast in ignorance. An important source of practical information for entheogen users is the Trout’s Notes series, consisting of edited bibliographies and notes from scientific journals and elsewhere, critically and selectively presented, and providing an abundance of ethnopharmacological knowledge regarding entheogenic plants (Trout, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002). K.C. Trout through “Better Days Publications” compiles this series, and excerpts are widely available from online sources. Indeed, the Internet provides an extremely important vector for information about DMT and other entheogens through sites such as “DMT world forum”. The entheogenic movement is also firmly connected through grass roots person-to-person sociality, forming a social matrix part earthly, part virtual, and part spiritual. As a religious collective, the DMT psychonauts can be viewed as being in a stage of effervescence or communitas, and, as a “charismatic” community of 31

“Basement Shaman” was also the name of a mail-order business specialising in entheogenic materials and resources. page 63

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the liminal type, we find only the most economical degree of ritual or liturgical “form”. The lack of apparent ritual belies the ethical and phenomenological complexity of DMT culture, a theme taken up again at the conclusion of this thesis.

Burnt offerings Alchemy is, perhaps, the prime example of the projection of ethical, mystical and archetypal content around a nucleus of chemical technique. But the mechanics of producing or administering entheogens is also apt to arouse and concentrate projections of unusual psychic content. It is worth remembering that the term “entheogen” refers to a religious context of use, not to any specific spectrum of psychotropic effects. The mild mood-elevating properties of a cup of tea can, with a battery of adjuncts to maximise ‘set’ and ‘setting’, become the centrepiece of an entheogenic experience, as in the exquisite Japanese institution of Teaism, which melds practical, aesthetic, ethical, economic, and religious considerations into a sensibility at once democratic and aristocratic: “The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup. Mankind has done worse. In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too freely; and we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why not consecrate ourselves to the Queen of Camelias [sic], and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiate may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.” (Kakuzo, 2000:19) The use of DMT by western psychonauts is rarely elaborated in an unambiguously ritualised fashion. Nonetheless, I gained the distinct impression that the mechanics of producing and administering DMT often operated as the nucleus of ethical, mystical and archetypal projections of an essentially religious nature. Many of my informants expressed reverence towards the Acacias that provide the source material for the extraction of DMT. Many treated the plants as sentient, faery-like beings, or as the habitation of sentient beings, and said that they should be harvested respectfully. Gathering magical plants can arouse powerful psychological archetypes. One thinks of the god Hermes gathering the herb moly in Homer’s Odyssey, or of Sir James Frazer’s

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murderous mistletoe-gathering druids. There is Virgil’s Aeneas descending into Hades with the golden bough, and the screaming demon of the mandrake root in medieval magic (Thompson, 1968). What lends this botanical imagery such primal force? Weston La Barre (1990), the renowned historian of religion, contended that entheogenic-plant-based religion was the prototype for other religious forms, and the psychological power of the botanical image may well derive from such ancient and hidden roots. In any case, from conversations with Australian entheogen users, it seems that a pronounced emotional ambivalence pervades the harvesting. The nature of this ambivalence varied from subject to subject, but on the basis of their reports (combined with a discrete modicum of conjecture) the following psychological schema can be proposed. This schema is tentative, designed more to stimulate future inquiry than to dogmatise, and draws largely on Maurice Bloch’s (1992) theories of the structure of sacrifice. The entheogenic plant is sacrificed for human gain. Entheogen use is generally remedial or soteriological, so it is correct to consider the taking of entheogenic plant material as sacrifice in the sense of it being cut-off or set apart (sacer) from the profane order and appropriated to the use of a god — in this case the immanent divinity or entheos experienced by the psychonaut during ecstasy. This is, in a sense, a crime against the plant (which is often conceptualised as sentient and god-like) and simultaneously a crime against both the profane order and the spiritual order. This ‘crime’ authorises a second, retributive ‘crime’ in a sacrificial dialectic: the voluntarily sacrifice of the psychonaut’s profane ego-self during entheogenic ecstasy. The obvious parallel with the Christian ritual of eating the redeemer whom the sinful have slain need not be emphasised: the mythological theme is ancient and ubiquitous. What is significant is that the original sin 32 reciprocates the final judgement (to again use familiar Christian tropes). The parallel to the alchemical work is also evident: the spiritual forces associated with the plants are compelled to become involved in material transformations when the plant is harvested and chemically processed. The largely material consciousness of the human harvester is subsequently transformed by the evoked spiritual forces following the confirmation of the botanical sacrifice by the act of inhaling the vaporous essence or soul (DMT) of the plant.

32

The herb untimely picked is often myth’s original sin. The snare that seals the fate of Persephone in the “Homeric hymn to Demeter” is a hundred-stemmed Narcissus which she innocently (?) plucks, a trope recycled in the romance of “Beauty and the Beast”; Eve succumbs to forbidden fruit in the legend of Genesis; the Monkey King has a similar disposition in “Journey to the West”; Gilgamesh’s fortunes go from bad to weird after he plucks the thorny plant of immortality. Each crime justifies an exile from one dimension and a translation to another. page 65

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The reciprocal dynamic of crime and atonement implicates entheogenic rituals of this kind in the structures of a much broader religious logic outlined by Maurice Bloch. Bloch traces the ritual processes which legitimate the use of violence necessary for human survival, and these processes are based on the dialectic of “rebounding violence” (Bloch, 1992:4). In the case of entheogenic ritual, the sequence is inverted at the outset: a plant is sacrificed “illegitimately” in order to facilitate the “legitimate” sacrifice of the profane ego. With the “slaying”(the petit mort of ecstatic inebriation) the human ego submits “legitimately” to the plant’s punishment (intoxication is a variety of poisoning, and poisoning is the foremost of vegetal analogues to the animal practice of predation). In so doing, the plant and human reinstate the principle of rebounding violence, and so transcend life. During the acute phase of inebriation the body is lost, and physical vitality is replaced with spiritual vitality. But on return to bodily consciousness the human vitality is intensified with a fresh infusion of spiritual vitality. In this way we can construct foundations for a Blochian theory of entheogenic shamanism. While guilt over the crime of harvesting can adversely affect ‘set’ and ‘setting,’ the subsequent acknowledgement of sacrifice can allow reciprocal atonement with the ‘spiritual world’. Elsewhere (Tramacchi, 2000:209) I have compared ‘set’ to the concept of karma and argued that the widespread belief in the requirement of positive ‘set and setting’ for precipitating a productive and enjoyable psychedelic experience tends to act as a pragmatic moral incentive and framework for choosing the ‘good’ among western psychedelic practitioners. Entheogen users likewise seek to minimise negative ‘set’ associated with producing entheogens, and the ‘harvesting’ phase is especially problematic. This problem has found unique evasion in the form of total synthesis. Synthetic drugs have ‘dematerialised’ sacrifice in an unprecedented way, essentially taking the overt signs of sacrifice from the process of sacramentality. It is probably this apparent ‘gap’ in the ritual cycle of LSD or ecstasy that has made many religious people uneasy with the psychedelic and rave collectives. The systems seem somehow disconnected from the rhythms of life when contrasted with, for example, the Huichol Indian sacramental cycle revolving around confession, atonement, and the sacrifice of the peyote/deer (Lamaistre, 1996; Mostratos, 1998; Schaefer, 1996). It is not that sacrifice is not present in LSD or ecstasy manufacture, but rather that the chemist is separated from the earlier sacrifices involved in the production of the solvents, reagents and precursors

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that she employs33. The production of DMT from organic sources in western countries usually proceeds from a species belonging to one of four genera: Phalaris grasses; Mimosa hostilis root-bark; Desmanthus root-bark; and Acacia bark or root-bark (although there are well over sixty plant species known to contain entheogenic tryptamines)34. Each of these sources entails a different degree of harm to the plant, and hence a different resulting psychological ‘set’. Phalaris leaves can be harvested in such a way that the plant can regenerate; Mimosa hostilis root-bark can only be collected in a way that severely damages the plant, however, the majority of Mimosa hostilis root-bark is imported from developing countries, so that the clandestine chemist is alienated from the sacrificial means of production, and thus both responsibility and atonement are somewhat deferred; Desmanthus root-bark collection involves serious sacrifice of plant life and here the clandestine chemist usually harvests wild plants and thus accepts full responsibility. As a researcher based in Australia I have been able to study the conditions around the collection of Acacia obtusifolia bark and root-bark (this is discussed more extensively in the section on entheogenic Acacias later in this chapter). Ten years ago it was not uncommon to hear of DMT-seekers going into national parks and stripping the epidermis from trees wholesale. This oblivious attitude to the sacrificial process was to be expected at that time, when many seekers had commenced their quest from the context of a psychedelic dance-party culture based on synthetic LSD and MDMA. Around five years ago a consensus of sorts had emerged that the trees, as the repository of an awesome numinous power, required greater reverence, and so the collection process was modified to careful removal of individual branches, thus allowing the trees to continue living. The current refinement of this — which I have now heard from a number of different sources � is to let Nature select and harvest the trees. It works like this: the collector waits until after one of the frequent storms that toss the forests of northern New South Wales where Acacia obtusifolia abounds. The trees nearly always grow on or near exposed and sunny cliff faces and the high winds almost invariably cause one or two of the older trees in a given population to fall. These old and potent trees can then be stripped of their stem bark and exposed root bark with a lighter conscience than would be the case if the tree stood strong and tall. Reverence for life and nature are central to the way that many entheogen

33

See Tramacchi (2001:183-184) for a discussion of dematerialised sacrifice in relation to psychedelics. There are many other known plants sources of DMT and there are probably many yet to be discovered. The interested reader is referred to Appendix C in this thesis, and also to Ott (1994) and Trout (2002) for more exhaustive treatments.

34

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users wish to relate to DMT, and this is reflected in the sustainable methods used to produce the entheogen.

Media reporting of DMT in the Australia Another important influence on the “set” of psychonauts is the way in which DMT is presented by the mainstream media. There is evidence from on-line discussion groups that DMT users are ambivalent towards the major commercial media. This is unfortunate, because these same media have an important, though generally neglected, role to play in social policy formation, education, and harm reduction. DMT has received very little coverage in the Australian mainstream press. There are few news stories about it to set precedents or to provide templates for more coverage, the health impacts appear to be minor35 when contrasted with virtually any other substance36, it is not associated with extremely loud music as is the case with MDMA, it does not cause nymphomania or satyriasis, and it seems to be generally used in a quiet setting for introspective purposes. Notwithstanding, there has been some coverage in Australia. On Friday, May 8, 1998, The Sydney Morning Herald presented Linda Doherty’s (1998) article “Teen trippers trying dangerous “natural” drug”. This article claimed that a “powerful hallucinogenic drug” was being used “in ritual ceremonies” by “teenagers”. Paul Dillon, spokesperson for the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), was quoted as saying, “They tend to use it in ceremonial situations, much like young people play with ouija boards”. The implicitly religious aspects of entheogen use were ignored. This secular and rather unsophisticated treatment is, sadly, indicative of a more generalised deficiency in the treatment of religions by journalists (Hutch, 1996). Dillon’s use of the “ouija board” comparison has the effect of marginalizing and trivialising the use of DMT and diverting attention away from the essentially spiritual (and thus legally and morally problematic) character of DMT use. The article exaggerated the pharmacological dangers of DMT and sensationalised its subjective (“alien music”) 35

Most forms of smoking are detrimental to the health of the lungs; DMT freebase is probably no exception. The risk of long-term damage to the lungs from regular smoking cannot be ruled out, but most users smoke DMT infrequently. DMT is associated with a rapid rise in blood pressure and so it is generally contra-indicated for people with poor cardio-vascular health. DMT is a natural constituent of cerebrospinal fluid and is metabolised rapidly by the body’s native monoamine oxidase enzymes. Apparently no lethal dose for humans has ever been published, and one fatality has been linked to DMT, although the evidence that DMT was the cause of death is inconclusive (Rick Strassman M.D. personal communications). 36 Nicotine and alcohol were implicated in 96% of drug-related deaths in Australia in two independent N.C.D.A. (National Campaign Against Drug Abuse) studies in 1985 and 1988 (Kersey, 1994). Tobacco smoking causes at least 20 000 deaths per year in Australia and incalculable human suffering at an economic cost to the community of about $6.8 billion (ibid). page 68

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and behavioural (“frightened teenagers…running through fields”37) correlates. Contradictions abound: in the same article in which DMT is said to provoke “running through fields”, Paul Dillon noted that “as soon as you take it [DMT], you need some cushions behind you because you fall over”. The latter scenario seems far more prevalent; although I do know of two instances among over one hundred DMT experiences reported to me where the subject felt the need to run in panic at the onset of the experience. It does happen, but it is not characteristic. Another newspaper, The Sunday Mail, ran an article about DMT use entitled “Super drug hits coast” (Taylor, 1998), in which Paul Dillon suggests that DMT had “infiltrated Gold Coast nightclubs…” and “become popular in Sydney and northern NSW” although this popularity seems inexplicable in light of further comment from Paul Dillon in the same article that “Everyone I have spoken to who has taken this drug says they will never take it again because it is so powerful and so frightening.” The Sunday Mail presented no evidence that DMT is being widely used and failed to mention that it is often used in a spiritual context. Perhaps the social implications of religious DMT use would complicate an otherwise simple, formulaic, and ‘unproblematic’ allegory on implied moral deviance. The term entheogen was certainly not mentioned. In summary, in both articles the tone is entirely negative, important information about spirituality is de-emphasised or omitted, unconfirmed and contradictory statements are rife, and health concerns are sensationalised (“frightening side effects” are alleged but not described). After this contrived flurry of moral concern out of all proportion to actual risk—analogous to what Philip Jenkins (1999) has called a “synthetic panic”—DMT fell back into media obscurity for about five years. Then, in 2003 it returned to the mainstream press in two much more sympathetic articles. The first of these was a multi-paged feature that appeared in the Good Weekend section of the Sydney Morning Herald, but unlike the “synthetic panic” of five years earlier, the article was well informed and socially conscious, despite its attention-grabbing title: “The Freakiest Trip” (Hamilton, 2003). Kath Hamilton’s article offered a good depth of insight into the phenomenology of the DMT experiences, provided a detailed ethnographic and scientific background, and resisted the general media trend to stigmatise cognitive 37

The phrase “running through fields” is strongly reminiscent of accusations made in the 1920s by American Public Health Service that Cannabis smoking “seems to make [people] go crazy and wild” (Musto, 1973). Later, in 1934, Dr. Walter Bromberg of the American Psychiatric Association re-asserted this position claiming that Cannabis is “a primary stimulus to the impulsive life with direct expression in the motor field” (ibid:220). page 69

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minorities. The spiritual aspects of DMT use were given some priority, and the potential of DMT as a psychiatric tool to further our understanding of the psyche was also emphasised. Later that year the Sydney newspaper The Sunday Telegraph also ran a story about DMT entitled “Tune to Another World” (Phillips, 2003). The article reviewed Rick Strassman’s DMT research and recommended that DMT is sufficiently remarkable as to warrant further scientific investigation. The way in which DMT was negatively portrayed in 1998 could scarcely contrast more sharply with the levelheaded but sympathetic constructions of DMT use offered by the mainstream media in 2003. The media has great influence on public conceptions of phenomena, and one could reasonably expect that less negative reporting would result in better psychological “set”. There are of course too many extraneous variables to easily reach any empirical conclusions about the influence of media discourses about DMT, although it is clear from some of my open-ended interviews that some DMT users in 1998 become extremely sceptical of the press as a result of the evident paradigmatic dissonance, whereas in 2003 a number of DMT users felt pleasure and relief at seeing their spiritual values reflected in the popular press. The earlier style of reporting had the effect of ostracising entheogen users, while the latter style was more inclusive. Consequently the latter style would be a much better avenue for harm-reduction messages. Mainstream media portrayals of DMT give very little suggestion that there might be a culture of entheogenic DMT use that provides its own satisfactions, sanctions and norms.

DMT culture in Australia. I have been able to study psychedelic and entheogen using communities in Australia in greater detail than parallel populations in North America, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. My knowledge of these other milieus is based on Internet research, email exchange, books, magazines and conversations with travelling entheogen users visiting Australia. I recognise that each local entheogen culture is unique for sociocultural as well as botanical and ecological reasons. Even within Australia there are salient differences between, for instance, the Brisbane/northern New South Wales communities (where I am primarily based), communities in Melbourne (where I conducted field research in 2003 and 2005), and Adelaide and Perth. My knowledge of the latter is based entirely on conversations with entheogen users from those locales. The cultural and social context of each DMT

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user, along with the discourses about DMT that have primed their imagination, constitutes a fundamental context for their experience and their subsequent interpretation and expression of that experience. While there has been a background level of interest in DMT in Australia since the 1960s, it was only during the 1990s that DMT became widely available. On Australia’s east coast the excitement around DMT reached a point of focal intensity in February 1997, when the well-known psychedelic exponent Terence McKenna toured. After an official welcome in Byron Bay on 21/2/97 McKenna spoke at a now almost legendary event called ‘Beyond the Brain’ at the Byron Epicentre (22/2/97), an exwhaling factory adjoining the Byron Bay beach-front that had been transformed by a artist’s collective into an aesthetic paradise perfect for masses of psychedelic people to dance all night to trance and tekno38. I have heard from a dozen or so informants that an important part of the effervescence of the event was attributed to the presence, at that time, of a large quantity of well-made LSD distributed on blotter-paper bearing the images of ‘red dragons’. In any case, McKenna spoke again at the Star Court Theatre in Lismore (23/2/97), and again at The Zoo in Brisbane (26/2/97). My partner and I had the opportunity to provide lunch for Terence and some local psychedelic enthusiasts in Brisbane prior to his Brisbane talk. At this stage DMT from Australian Acacias was becoming much more widely available to people in the trance/tekno scene (many of whom were already well acquainted with LSD, and to a lesser extent MDMA). McKenna’s tour promoted much greater awareness and interest about DMT and people seemed keen to test themselves against, or learn from, a psychedelic that was allegedly even more intense subjectively than LSD. The trance/tekno scene attracted people who enjoyed sensory and informational overload. These were people who enjoyed what Roland Fischer (1971) has characterised as ergotrophic stimulation; mercurial people who enjoy complexities, reveries, and the 38

Some of the psychedelic trance music produced around this time seems to have been influenced by the characteristic auditory effects of DMT. This unusual quality of sound associated with DMT is sometimes described as “squelchy”, “high-frequency”, “chirping”, and “edgey”, and has been explicitly discussed in a musicological thesis on Australian techno music (Cole, 1999). The “sound”, if not the substance, is a feature of the music of Insectoid particularly Groovology of the Metaverse (Castle, Spacetree, & Turner, 1998), and Space Tribe’s album The Ultraviolet Catastrophe (Wisdom & Algranati, 1997), and many artists producing on the Demon Tea label (with psychedelic track titles like Spirit of Spider by Shift Cognition, and Alkaloid Frenzy by Aumphibian, both of which are included in the compilation Album Oozie Goodness (Mostratos, 1998)). Internationally, we find Ubar Tmar’s True album (Tmar, 1998) with such phrases as “DMT”, “entheogen” and “shamanism” digitally wall-papered across the cover, and later Shpongle with their DMT-related album Divine Moments of Truth (Ram & Posford, 2000). page 71

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creative possibilities of immerging technologies (one informant, [“9”], described herself as an “information junkie”). For a generation raised in the information age and keen surfers of informational webs, DMT provided the possibility of an experience that provided enough information for people whose potential for sensory and information consumption seemed virtually unlimited. The McKenna engagements were more than mere monologues. These events were multimedia extravaganzas, with ‘Beyond the Brain’ featuring an astonishing line-up of trance-tekno DJs, performers, designers, ceremonialists (X-sight performed a piece called “probe” and Sishumna conducted a “Star Matrix Activation interactive ceremony”), sight and sound engineers (for example, the creators of the main dance space called the “Infinity Groove Generation room”). This event has been nostalgically described to me by several who partied that night, as the absolute acme of psychedelic trance in Australia. Indeed, the more private moments around these events provided the first opportunity for many psychedelics users to link up with one-another, and in the process, DMT became more broadly circulated. Recommendations about how DMT should be used also circulated. One of the most salient features of DMT use around this time was the idea that DMT was sacred and should be taken with an attitude of reverence. Many of my informants also regarded excessively high “macho”39 doses of DMT as unsustainable, counter-productive or foolish. Another Australian DMT user (Watcher, 1998) described the substance as “…a 39

The technical term “macho” has been stipulated by Ann and Alexander Shulgin (1997:606) as follows: “MACHO, adj. This describes a person of either sex who pushes his limits too much in experimentation with psychedelics. He always strives to take a higher and yet higher dose, to prove that he can weather the storm. Such a person should be encouraged to do intensive insight work into his compulsion, which is essentially self-destructive.” While macho behaviour is generally disapproved of there does seem to be an element of self-testing behaviour among a minority of psychonauts who may have a need to determine the limits of their endurance, both psychologically and toxicologically. This need not be abnormal or dysfunctional: the use of psychoactive drugs in ordeals of initiation, including many drugs far more toxic than DMT, is in fact quite common, and serves to prepare individuals for the gruelling experiences of adulthood. Examples of toxic ordeals include the widespread use of anaesthetic doses of alcohol by adolescents “coming of age,” the widespread use of delirium-inducing doses of Datura and Brugmansia in Amerindian rites of passage (Schultes, 1979b), the use of Datura in Tsonga women’s coming of age rituals in Mozambique (Johnston, 1977); and the use of Boophane disticha in Basuto men’s initiation ceremonies in South Africa (de Smet, 1996). Young men of some California Indian groups — including the Kawaiisu, Kitanemuk, and Tübatulabal — are reported to have practised a technique for acquiring spiritual knowledge that involved swallowing several balls of eagle down containing “five yellow ants” given with water by either of the youth’s grandfathers until the “eyeballs turned red” (Blackburn, 1976:79). The young men were then shaken to agitate the ants so that they “would bite him inside” (ibid). Ant swallowing allegedly induced a very deep trance-state that lasted until the following morning when hot water was administered to induce vomiting, whereupon “the ants came out alive, in those little balls” (ibid). Recently, some affluent, boundary-pushing North American psychonauts have been spending absurd sums of money to have mucous secretions from Amazonian poison-dart frogs rubbed into freshly self-inflicted burns made with modified soldering instruments. The poisonous frogs belong to the genera Dendrobates and Phyllobates and contain batrachotoxins and possibly psychoactive peptides (Ott, 1996b). The venomous frog secretion initially produces excruciatingly symptoms which gradually give way to a state of heightened sensory awareness and concentration which the Amahuaca Indians of Peru have long exploited as an aid to hunting (ibid). page 72

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special or healing thing, not [a] regular recreational buzz.” The same psychonaut also emphasised the need for preparedness and a willingness to surrender ego attachments: “Before smoking do some breathing and relaxation, and prepare for a humbling or terrifying experience rather than a diversion or high…It pays to leave your human ego behind.” Other Australian DMT-users also find the idea of “recreational” DMT use highly dissonant: “DMT being taken at a rave or any other party environment, particularly the first time, seems absolutely crazy to me. It is a very confronting “drug” and an incredible tool to venture beyond our worldly existence…” (Bentessentials, 1998) http://ann.nrg.com.au/edgecore/ravesraps.html

A number of the Australian users I interviewed preferred to take DMT in a forest or other natural setting. DMT is credited with the power to open people to deeper connections with the Earth and some users believe that they are able to communicate with otherwise invisible natural forces during the DMT trance. DMT-assisted communication with Earthspirits, or Earth-energies, is thought to be potentially therapeutic for both the individual and the planet. The interrelatedness of ecological and individual health, both physical and mental, has long been emphasised by traditional healers and naturopaths, and is increasingly recognised by mainline psychologists, especially environmental psychologists (Barows, 1995; Hillman, 1995). Some psychonauts felt that the DMT ecstasy was a specific curative for excessive ego attachment and eco-alienation, a perspective crystallised by Neil Pike (2002 personal communications) of the Nimbinbased collective known as the “Pagan Love Cult” who proposes “Dose ‘em all, let Gaia sort ‘em out”40, the assumption being that psychedelics mediate directly between the individual ego and the Gaian super-mind. A lack of balance or wisdom is seen as the result of a loss of connection with Nature, and entheogens are thought to restore this connection by dissolving psychological barriers that allow the individual to shut out the World. Humanity is restored when Nature is restored. Aldous Huxley (1994) described psychedelics as the “Doors of Perception”, they could perhaps also be described as the “Doors of Nature”. 40

The phrase is reminiscent of the infamous expression “Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoset” (“Kill them all. God will know His own”) which was allegedly used to justify the indiscriminate and brutal massacre of multitudes of innocent people, some of whom might have belonged to the heretical Cathar sect (also known as Waldensians or Albigensians) in the French city of Beziers during the third crusade circa 1210 (Costen, 1997; Martin, 2005). page 73

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This eco-psychological approach to DMT is well developed among psychonauts living near the northern New South Wales towns of Lismore, Mullumbimby, Byron Bay and Nimbin. In 1972 Nimbin was a small community with an economy based on timber and dairy farming experiencing severe economic decline as a consequence of a rural recession. In 1973 Nimbin had been selected by festival organisers from the Australian Union of Students as the ideal site for a large-scale counter-cultural lifestyle ‘happening’ called the Aquarius Festival. After the festival many hippies decided to stay, forming large land-sharing communities, and engaging in innovative cultural, environmental, and political practices and raising families. Some of the more conservative locals saw the hippies as troublemakers, “ratbags” and “druggies”. Drug use was certainly an element in the Aquarius counter-culture, especially the use of LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and Cannabis. Indeed, Cannabis became an increasingly important to the Nimbin economy and now attracts numerous tourists to the otherwise quiet town, especially during the Nimbin Mardi Grass (“grass” being a colloquial expression for dried Cannabis inflorescences). During Mardi Grass the township is packed to capacity for a weekend of mellow, stoned, carnivalesqe antistructure. The following quotation conveys something of the atmosphere of this annual marijuana harvest festival: “The buildings and shopfronts are a garish yet somehow compelling collage of full blown psychedelia and traditional Bundjalung art. There’s more cafes, craft shops and backpackers than you can wave a traveller’s cheque ate [quasi-sic] and the stinky sweet smell of ganja is positively enveloping the street…Down the centre of the main drag of this tiny, tripped out tourist town, there’s a huge throng of people, laughing, drumming, chanting, DANCING towards the local cop shop. Dozens of them are helping to carry a huge smoking joint with “Let it Grow!” painted in 4 foot high letters on the side.” (Pike, 1999:1) The Dionysian current in the local psyche positively values ecstasis and altered states of consciousness, and this underlying tolerance has helped to foster a strong network of DMT psychonauts. The area surrounding Nimbin is known as the “north coast,” that is, the north coast of the Australian state of New South Wales. The area is also known as the “rainbow region,” partly because the area is unusually rainy for Australia (hence there are a lot of rainbows), but particularly because the region is closely associated with the psychedelic counter-culture, one of the symbols of which is the rainbow. There are a number of aspects to this symbolism. The rainbow signifies an alliance of diversity: the counterculture that first emerged in definitive shape during the 1960s valued diversity, page 74

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being a united amalgam of civil-rights activists, peace activists, women’s liberation activists, environmentalists, practitioners of alternative spiritualities, gay rights activists, proponents of free love, and other parties opposed to the status quo of militarised industrialism. The emphasis on peaceful means of dissent that characterised the flowerpower epoch is also echoed in the rainbow, which, according to the Christian Bible, signifies God’s covenant to Noah and his family to stop drowning people, and to not massacre humanity for the foreseeable future (and even then, never again in a wishywashy way, but rather with an all-encompassing fire of judgement). The rainbow also recalls the harmonious chromatic visual effects of LSD, a substance central to the formulation of counter-cultural ideologies and values. Very similar harmonious chromatic effects are characteristic of DMT, which has, through synchronicity, become very common in the rainbow region by virtue of the convergence of two factors. Firstly, the culture of the region has attracted a disproportionately great number of psychedelics enthusiasts, and secondly, the natural environment surrounding the north-coast population centres is extremely rich in entheogenic Acacias. By a strange coincidence, the region with the greatest demand for DMT also happens to be a region with an abundant supply of DMT. A general understanding of the ecology and of ethnobotany of these Australian wattles is essential to an understanding of entheogenic beliefs about DMT in Australia. The following sections provide a brief overview of the entheogenic Australian Acacias.

Acacia “Here is the wattle, symbol of our scene, you can smoke it in a bottle, or eat with harmaline41”

(Neil Pike, speaking at EthnoBotanica 2, 2002) In Australia, the principal sources of DMT are certain species of Acacia. The Acacias or “wattles” are a quintessential component of the Australian biota, and indeed well over half of the approximately 1,200 species of Acacia occur in Australia (New, 1984). As the 41

Harmaline is a -carboline alkaloid that can inhibit the action of the enzyme monoamine oxidase and thus potentiate the effects of DMT, rendering it orally active (McKenna & Towers, 1984). Harmaline is widely distributed in higher plants, but is usually extracted from the seeds of the Syrian rue (Peganum harmala) (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997), which can be combined with DMT extracts to concoct an “ayahuasca analogue” (Ott, 1994). Harmaline by itself also exhibits psychoactivity, eliciting nausea, numbness, and dream-like imagery at around 4 to 5 mg per kilogram of body weight by mouth (Naranjo, 1973). page 75

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Australian floral emblem, the Acacias are linked iconically to national and cultural identity, a facet of their symbolism that appeals to patriotic Australian entheogen users, so that these entheogens are sometimes proudly described as “Aussie plants” (Watcher, 1998), and sometimes constructed as imbued with indigeneity and the potential to enhance spiritual connection to Land, a point resonant with David Tacey’s thesis that colonial Australians are (in general) profoundly alienated from the country in which they live, and that many post-colonial Australians seek some sense of belonging or linkage to the Land and to the Sacred (Tacey, 1995).

Australian Aboriginal ethnobotany of Acacia Some DMT users have posited links between entheogenic Acacias and Indigenous Australians, despite the apparent absence of any ethnographic record suggesting that Aboriginal Australians used any psychoactive drug in a strictly entheogenic context42. The willingness to believe a role for DMT-containing Acacias in Aboriginal culture stems from a number of factors. Firstly, traditional Aboriginal culture is characterised by an intimate knowledge of the environment. Given such comprehensive knowledge of the environment, some entheogen users assume that the entheogenic properties of Acacia must have been known. Secondly, there is the vast time-scale of the Aboriginal presence in Australia; surely (some entheogen users reason), given such a long association with the Australian flora, the entheogenic properties of Acacia must have come to light. The difficulty with both these assumptions is that the properties of DMT are not readily perceived. It is not orally active and is not easily isolated. Despite the presence of DMT in many plants around the globe, only a small number of societies have hit upon the properties of these plants, and these are mostly Amerindian cultures in which entheogenic plants are conspicuously valued as part of a culturally distinct shamanic religious complex (La Barre, 1970). Thirdly, there are a number of features to the visual and aesthetic components of the DMT trance that seem to resonate (at least in the minds of some DMT users) with Aboriginal art and myth. The similarity between traditional Aboriginal “dot matrix” painting and the shimmering, undulating, pixel-like granularity associated with DMT visions has been alluded to in an excellent documentary by Dean 42

In some parts of Australia (mostly the central regions) native tobaccos and the nicotine-containing shrub pituri (Duboisia hopwoodii) have been used as stimulants and held great social and economic significance (Aiston, 1937; Watson, Luanratana, & Griffin, 1983). Aboriginal knowledge of plant-based medicines is extensive (Lassak & McCarthy, 1990; Low, 1990) and numerous psychotropic plants are known, but there is little evidence that any of these plants were ever cosmologically significant on account of their pharmacological properties. page 76

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Jeffreys entitled: Shamans of the Amazon, which was screened on the Australian television network SBS in 2004. In this film, images of entheogenic paintings from Luna and Amaringo’s book “Ayahuasca Visions” (Luna & Amaringo, 1991) revolve across the television screen. Suddenly, the patterns of an Australian Aboriginal “dot-matrix” painting are superimposed to the accompaniment of a blast of sound from a didgeridoo. The suggestion is that Aboriginal use of DMT is almost self-evident. The supposed correspondence of Aboriginal art and undulating DMT visuals is possibly suggested by the juxtaposition of concentrically arranged dot/pixels with a mythical serpent and Acacia trees on a flyer for the Australian festival Exodus 2002 held in the bush on the summit of Bald Rock in New South Wales, and is possibly also suggested by some album cover art such as that of Insectoid (Castle et al., 1998). Some Acacia species are, however, known to be ceremonially significant for some Aboriginal Australians. Acacia aneura, Acacia lysiphloia, Acacia dictophleba, and Acacia pruinocarpa are used in a range of smoking ceremonies and smoking treatments that are part ceremonial and part therapeutic, especially in rituals that immediately follow child-birth (Hartley, 1996; Low, 1990). These rituals involve post-partum fumigation of the mother, and especially of the birth-canal, and fumigation of the baby held above a shallow pit from which rises the smoke and steam of Acacia leaves, with the aim of imparting strength to the new-born (Low, 1990). Although Acacias are the major fumigant, other plants, most with pronounced medicinal properties (Cymbopogon bombycinus, Eremophila longifolia, Erythrophleum chlorostachys), have also been used in some areas (ibid). As a child’s first experience, and also as the first symbolic social interaction, rituals of smoking are clearly of profound significance. However, there is very little to suggest a link between this ceremonial use of these Acacias and the potentially entheogenic effects of some Acacia species. Acacias are a characteristic aspect of the environment in much of Australia. The plants are commonly called “mulga”, and lend their name to a major Australian ecotype: “mulga scrub”. Such a ubiquitous plant has found many uses: as food (the seeds are excellent sources of protein (Cherikoff, 1989)), fibre, medicines (often applied externally as an analgesic (Levitt, 1981) or chewed for tooth-ache (Lassak & McCarthy, 1990)), and building materials (New, 1984). The Ash of Acacia aneura has been added to a dried powder made from the herb Isotoma petraea for use as a pituri-like stimulant (Lassak & McCarthy, 1990), and the Pitjantjatjara add Acacia aneura ash to native tobaccos. DMT

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is not known to occur in either of these Acacia species, and in any case, reduction of the plants to ashes would probably destroy any DMT present in the leaves. Smoking ceremonies are also used by some Aboriginal people as part of a cleansing or purification prior to approaching sacred or spiritual places, and smoking rituals have recently been incorporated by some Aboriginal Catholics as a preparatory liturgical element prior to the opening song and the sign of the cross in the Mass of the Eucharist (Hartley, 1996).

Entheogenic Acacias in Australia

Acacia maidenii

Acacia obtusifolia

Acacia phlebophylla

Figure 3 Principal entheogenic Acacias.

The presence of DMT in the Australian tree Acacia maidenii F. Meull. (see Figure 3 above) was reported in 1965 (Collins, Culvenor, Lamberton, Loder , & Price, 1990; Fitzgerald & Sioumis, 1965). Two years later high levels (0.3%) of DMT were discovered in Acacia phlebophylla F. Meull. (Rovelli & Vaughan, 1967). By 1993 psychonauts in Australia (and elsewhere) were making visionary preparations from Acacia maidenii and A. phlebophylla and also obtaining visionary results from preparations made (sometimes mistakenly) from other Acacia species of unknown chemistry (Hex & Michael, 1994; Ott, 1994; Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). Acacias are notoriously difficult to accurately determine to species level, and incorrect identifications seem to have been made by amateur researchers leading to the discovery of previously unknown psychoactive species. A. longifolia var. longifolia (Andrews) Willd., A. longifolia var. sophorae (Labill.) F. Muell., A. obtusifolia Cunn., and A. orites Pedley (the presence of DMT in this species is

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poorly substantiated) have reputedly all been used as starting points for the clandestine extraction of DMT or related alkaloids. No detailed chemical analysis of A. obtusifolia (see Figure 3), a widely used species, has been published43, but, based on the anecdotal reports of Australian psychonauts it is nonetheless clearly an abundant source of entheogenic tryptamines. One of my informants told me that some unofficial quantitative testing had been performed. From this analysis Acacia obtusifolia root bark was alleged to contain 1.2% alkaloids44. The effects of the alkaloid extract of the bark and root-bark of this species is strongly entheogenic and the effects are distinctly similar to DMT and/or 5-MeO-DMT, with some indication of seasonal variations in potency. While some of the above mentioned Acacia species might contain only these alkaloids, it is possible that other substances are also present45. Recently (2005) an extract that is reportedly very similar to 5-MeO-DMT in its effects was rumoured to have been derived from an undisclosed Western Australian species of Acacia. The New Caledonian Acacia simplicifolia (previously known as A. simplex) is also reported to contain a high proportion of DMT in conjunction with other tryptamines (Trout, 1998). Acacia simplicifolia is only rarely encountered in horticulture as of 2005. A. phlebophylla (see Figure 3) is restricted to exposed granite outcrops on a single mountain, Mt Buffalo in Victoria (an alpine mountain of rugged plutonic granite, home also to Australia’s oldest holiday resort (Webb & Adams, 1998)). A rare and vulnerable species, A. phlebophylla consisted, at the last official count, of an estimated 3,000 individuals and this population appears to be in decline (Heinze, O'Neill, Briggs, & Cardwell, 1998). In January 2003 a massive bush fire swept across Mt Buffalo decimating this already small plant population. Many Acacia species have seeds that respond well to fire, indeed many species require heat to trigger germination, and fires clear overhead vegetation allowing light to reach the new generation of seedlings (New, 1984). Because

43

Collins et al.(1990) reported the isolation of 0.15% alkaloids from the bark of Acacia obtusifolia collected at Springbrook in Queensland. It should be noted that Acacia is well known for extreme chemical variability between different localities (New, 1984). 44 This same informant estimated that 10 grams of Acacia obtusifolia root bark could be expected to provide approximately 100 mg of DMT. My informant recommended this as a single dose if taken orally in conjunction with harmaline or Peganum harmala seeds. This seems a rather high dose, although I have heard of people taking as much as 120mg of DMT with this combination. 50-80 mg is more usual, but some people aim for a more overpowering and cathartic effect. 45 The psychoactive tryptamines 5-MeO-DMT and 5-HO-DMT occur in the related South American genus Anadenanthera (Schultes & Hofmann, 1980) and other biologically active substances are common in the Mimosaceae family (Evans, 1989). page 79

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of these fire-related strategies it is possible that the populations of Acacia phlebophylla may ultimately benefit from the fires. I visited Mt Buffalo a few months after the fire and the outlook for Acacia phlebophylla seemed very bleak. There were very few plants surviving. Those that I could find were adult trees that had been out of the path of the fire, often on cliff-faces, in crevices in broad expanses of sheer rock, or near overhangs and waterfalls along the creeks. My visit to Mt Buffalo also coincided with extreme, prolonged drought. It is possible that after heavy rains some of the subterranean stock of buried seed will germinate. The prognosis for this species, however, remains uncertain. The additional stress on this population caused by humans seeking a source of DMT is to be deplored. Within the Australian ethnobotany community there is grave concern for the survival of this species, which has given rise to numerous propagation and conservation programs. Unfortunately Acacia phlebophylla is a very delicate plant out of its native alpine range, and few attempts to cultivate it ex situ have succeeded in keeping seedlings alive for more than three years. Among entheogen users there appears to be a consensus that A. phlebohylla is a sacred and vulnerable plant that should not be exploited as a source of tryptamines. DMT has been extracted from this species for visionary purposes; however, the usual approach among people knowledgeable about entheogenic Acacias is to limit harm to the environment while finding sustainable alternatives: “Especially in the case of rarer plants it is recommended that wild plants are not used as a source of alkaloids, as this may cause a problem for the survival of the species. Taking plant material from national parks is illegal, and these places are the only refuge many plants and animals have from us, leave them be. Roadsides, wastelands and other disturbed areas are quite often colonised by acacias. Generally acacias are easily grown from seed and can grow extremely quickly, planting more acacias will benefit a planet already suffering from too much pollution and land degradation.” (Mulga, 2002 [1996]) http://mulga.yage.net/acacia/

Fortunately the common species Acacia maidenii and Acacia obtusifolia are able to provide the entheogenic community’s DMT requirements in a sustainable, low-impact way. Indeed, entheogen users seem characteristically reverent towards nature and work towards healing the environment rather than exploiting it on a whim. They seek the aweinspiring visions of DMT, not empty novelty, and their reverence of the mysterium

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tremendum carries over into their encounters and dealings with these awe-inspiring plants.

Alchemical minds After the DMT-containing plants are harvested they require additional processing in order to extract the DMT and concentrate it in a smokable form. The extraction of DMT by entheogen users (as opposed to organic chemists) has both exoteric and esoteric aspects. The organic chemistry techniques necessary to extract DMT and other tryptamines from plants are relatively simple and can be easily acquired by dedicated entheogen-users. Most of these techniques involve prolonged heating of DMT-containing plant material in a weakly acidic aqueous solution followed by basification and extraction with an organic solvent which is later evaporated to yield the DMT and any accompanying alkaloids. For legal and ethical reasons I will refrain from offering a more detailed description. There are a profusion of web pages detailing these techniques, including the following: http://www.ethnobotany.yage.net/extraction.html http://dmt.lycaeum.org/extract/where.html http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dmt/dmt_chemistry1.shtml http://www.erowid.org/plants/acacia/acacia_extract1.shtml

Testimony from some informants suggests that the clandestine DMT laboratory can be the site of unusual psychological processes. As an engrossing activity concentrated on a very limited area of attention, the possibilities of a “flow” experience is present for the chemist (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988), and this has significant implications for the drive to this kind of activity: there are, after-all, far less difficult, challenging, rewarding, and “optimal” paths to ecstasy. The “flow” experience is itself a much-prized form of consciousness, and when coupled with esoteric meditations, the latter can impart a mystical quality to the former. If a chemist’s mind is absorbed in metaphysical speculations, if their imagination swirls with mystical iconography, if their hands are fully engaged with technical occupations, then the results can be extraordinary. The case with DMT extraction is comparable. The goal is an entheogenic catalyst of convincing power. The imagery includes the psychedelic menagerie described later in Chapter 6. Attention is richly engaged in a finite field of technical operation. While the methods for extracting DMT derive from organic chemistry, the goal towards which most entheogen users move is an encounter with the sacred, and for some (although not all) page 81

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practitioners, the emotions accompanying these extraction procedures includes those of a religious or mystical nature. There are subtle blends of science and art involved that take these procedures into the realm of alchemy. The aspects of alchemy that seem especially relevant are those concerning the projection of psychological and imaginal forces into utilitarian operations and physical substances, something akin to fetishism. The spirit of the matter has been substantially elaborated in the alchemical writings of Carl Jung, from which the following is extracted: “…the alchemists came to project even the highest value—God—into matter. With the highest value thus safely embedded in matter, a starting-point was given for the development of genuine chemistry on the one hand and of the more recent philosophical materialism on the other, with all the psychological consequences that necessarily ensue when the picture of the world is shifted 180 degrees. However remote alchemy may seem to us today, we should not underestimate its cultural importance for the Middle Ages. Today is the Child of the Middle Ages and it cannot disown its parents” (Jung, 1980 [1968]:323) Similar projections seem to be also involved in the production of DMT. Alchemical emblems are frequently appropriated in psychedelic visual culture. The following images provide an example of this syncretism of alchemy and psychedelia. The image on the right (Figure 4, below) is reproduced from the cover of the Album “Exotic Matter � Astral Attaché”, a solo project by Ray Castle (Also known as Rythmystec, Masaray and Sonic Sufi) for Demon Tea Records (album code DMT CD04), an Australia-based psychedelic music label, which produces music resonant with (if not influenced by) DMT.

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46

Figure 4 Left: woodcut of the Mercurial demon from Nazari’s Il metamorfosi metallico et humano (1564) . 47 Right: the cover of the psychedelic breakbeat/breaktrance album Astral Attache .

As can be clearly seen, the album cover is a close interpretation of an alchemical woodcut. But what is being depicted in each case? The symbolism is complex and undoubtedly has many referents. The figure from Giovanni Battista Nazari’s alchemical allegory may be based on the form of an alchemist’s retort. Instruments in alchemy, especially vitreous vessels, were often given fanciful metaphors (Carl Jung might well consider these metaphors projections from the collective unconscious onto the mirror-like convex surfaces), so that, for example, alchemists would describe vessels as “storks”, “Pelicans”, and “Ethiopians” (Jung, 1976 [1967]:316). Jung argued that the alchemical vessel is a site of psychological synthesis and transformation. Just as substances change within the vessel, so too do the psychological impressions projected onto those substances. The psychological force is externalised and manipulated as symbolically appropriate devices in order to effect some psychological alteration, as is the case with fetishism. If we adhere to the tenets of depth psychology we might even posit that these changes can be in accord with a will that transcends the individual ego. I use the term ‘fetish’ in the sense of the original Portuguese term fetiço which means, “that which is made in order to make” (Lima, 1987). Fetishism is a way of manipulating the powerful emotions associated with one phenomenon by transferring them to an object, which can be more easily neutralised or accommodated through complex rules and manipulations. A 46

Image reproduced from http://www.levity.com/alchemy/nazari_i.html. Note that the face of the sun on the tail arising from the upper part of the Mercurial dragon has been replaced in the modern version by a single downward-looking eye. Both the face of the sun and the eye may operate as symbols of divine awareness.

47

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peculiar convergence of alchemy and DMT smoking involves the special paraphernalia in which the most dynamic phase of each operation is actualised: specifically, the apparatus in which the fixed becomes volatile. Compare the following apparatuses.

Reproduced from http://www.crscientific.com/glassretort.html

Figure 5 A retort (left) and a glass pipe for DMT smoking (right).

The alchemical instrument on the left is designed to hold a solid or liquid for heating in the globe-shaped area below the removable stopper. An external flame is used to heat the contents from beneath the globe. The vaporous distillate then ascends to the zenith of the vessel, whence it swirls as vapour down the tubular portion and into a receptacle where it condenses. The distillate is generally a more potent and concentrated substance in comparison to the starting material. The DMT pipe closely resembles the retort precisely because its function is to do exactly the same thing. The DMT is placed in the globular chamber at the end of the pipe and then very gently heated until it begins to melt. Soon after the DMT liquefies a portion of it becomes a swirling vapour circulating in the loosely sealed globe. When the chamber becomes thick with visible vapour the operator inhales the vapour deeply into the lungs. The effects of the DMT usually commence before the operator can set the pipe down. The structural convergence of the two devices, the one alchemical the other psychedelic, is very marked. One may suspect that the contribution of the shape of the instrument to the “setting” of the operator might be similar in both cases. It is a rather abstract and ambiguous form, and not by any means the only form that could perform the function, for example, a flat-bottomed retort or pipe would be far more heat-efficient. Both resemble structures of the reproductive organs of both female and male animals, as well as anthers and pistils of various plants. But beyond any tenuous sexual symbolism there is a tube that facilitates transference of the dynamic and volatile principle, and a reflective convex lens that allows for observation of the static and solid principle while also reflecting the gaze of the observer. The reflective sphere

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echoes the form of the human eye, and, as discussed later, the eye, as a symbol, has an almost reproductive quality for the visionary ecstatic subject. At a very broad level, the loose but persistent association of psychedelia with alchemical symbolism is reflected in a vast amount of Internet-based material. A query made with the clustering search engine Vivisimo in December 2005 using the terms “DMT” and “alchemy” produced 5,771 results including such word combinations as “NeuroAlchemy”; “DMT alchemy”; the psychedelic trance group “Weird Alchemy”; and the juxtapositioning of the following trance music record companies: “…alchemy rec[ords], psy dmt…” with another called “shamanic alchemy”. A “conference on hallucinogens and the creative process” called “AllChemical Mind States” was held in Hawaii on 12-17 September 1999, again emphasising a linkage between alchemy and psychedelics. Dale Pendell explicitly links psychedelics with the alchemical tradition of spagyric herbalism and his recent books (Pendell, 1995, 2002) dealing with entheogens are an attempt to reintegrate science and alchemy: “My whole program in the weird way that Pharmako/poeia looks, this illegitimate mixture of science and magic, is kind of a wager that poetic logic is a truer description, a more complete description of the world than a purely scientific description. But at the same time, the scientific tradition has to be incorporated into it. Trying to pull these two currents in the western tradition back into each other. I think the culture needs that. It’s kind of a disease we have.” (Ruttelege & Pendell, 2002) http://www.tripzine.com/articles.asp?id=dale_pendell

This idea of trying to diagnose and heal self and culture is a theme that will become central to this thesis. Healing, after-all, is a fundamental part of shamanism, and shamanisms and neo-shamanisms are key ingredients in the syncretism of the entheogenic movement. If a shamanic medicine (DMT) is being used in our society, then it may be that something is wrong with the health of the existential system of which the DMT user is a part, and it is not necessarily an illness of the person taking the medicine: that is a western allopathic medical model that does not pertain to shamanism, where the medicine is usually taken by the healer, rather than the patient. The connection of alchemy with chemistry, medicine, and herbalism can be extended to shamanism. All of these domains overlap. In many cultural contexts the overlap is historical, for example herbalism derives from (or is parallel to) shamanism in many places, chemistry developed from alchemy,

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while allopathic medicine is derived substantially from herbalism. But the overlap is also functional: the various institutions perform similar roles in regulating the health of individuals and societies. The social dynamics of healing are a vital component of an effective cure, and the means by which a medicine is circulated determines the social scope (for good or ill) of that medicine’s power. Diagnosis is akin to divination, and divination is an approach to knowledge. DMT is as much a way of knowing as it is a way of healing: the two are interrelated. Many psychonauts approach DMT as a spiritual teacher. One informant suggested, “DMT can show you anything, anything at all.” Some people approach DMT as an all-purpose oracle. K. Trout (personal communication) told me of financial speculators who claimed to have uncanny success at consulting DMT visions in order to predict the day’s commodity trading. Others settle for guidance in their quest for universal understanding, wholeness, or harmony with the Earth. To understand the way in which DMT is used to pursue these diverse aims we need to assess the subjective effects of the substance, to consider the phenomenology of the experience, and to interpret the symbolic content of DMT visions.

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Chapter 5 DMT visions This chapter provides an overview of some of the more typically reported physical and perceptual effects of DMT. One of the most dramatic areas of DMT effects is in the field of complex visions, which are often strongly themed and attributed with narrative properties. Some of the more salient themes — derived from my informants, the World Wide Web, and extant literature — are discussed in this chapter. The subjective effects of DMT can be as far ranging and complex as those of any other psychedelic substance. Many of the effects of DMT are analogous to those that follow ingestion of mescaline, LSD, or psilocybin (Shulgin, 1976). These materials have been extensively studied in experimental and psychotherapeutic settings, primarily during the era preceding criminalisation in the early 1970s, and a vast literature exists cataloguing the various physiological, cognitive, emotional, and perceptual changes produced by these materials. A review of studies of the perceptual and behavioural effects of these drugs would be a colossal bibliographic undertaking, quite beyond the scope of this thesis (Fischer, 1975; Grof, 1976; Klüver, 1966; Masters & Houston, 2000; Metzner, Litwin, & Weil, 1965; Pahnke, 1963; Sankar, 1975; Siegel & West, 1975). Richards (1978) determined that DPT (n,n-dipropyltryptamine), a close structural analogue of DMT, could produce mystical and archetypal experiences, which Richards used in an experimental treatment of anxiety among the terminally ill and their lovedones. “The potency of such experiences in psychotherapy may well depend upon the nature and completeness of the specific encounter involved. A female subject, included in the nonmystical sample analyzed above, for example, experienced herself in a visionary synagogue during the action of DPT. In the experiential sequence reported, she described being met by a wise old man she called God and taken by the hand to the ark in front of the sanctuary where she was given a Torah to carry as a sign that, in her words, she was “forgiven” and had “come home.” Another patient described a visionary scene

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of being on a mountaintop where he was embraced by two figures that he identified as Christ and the Holy Spirit. Concomitant with this embrace, he claimed to have experienced an intuitive insight that, in spite of his cancer, life still somehow made sense and there was no ground for anxiety.” 48 (Richards, 1978:125) These mystical and archetypal experiences seem closely analogous to those produced by DMT. Recently, much has been published on the psychology and phenomenology of ayahuasca, a longer acting entheogen (lasting between two to five hours, followed by pleasant lassitude), and this work has often been of extremely fine detail and high quality (Grob, 1999; Metzner, 1999; Shanon, 2002). There are, however, unique features to DMT, or at least features that are unusually consistent and well emphasised in the case of DMT. These features include the dissociative nature of a strong DMT trip — that many people lose awareness of their physical body and experience sensations of locomotion in an entirely novel Umwelt. These modified Umwelten or visionary worlds of DMT are central to a phenomenological understanding of DMT. DMT differs from the DMT-containing entheogen ayahuasca. Although ayahuasca produces a compelling sense of excursion into other realities, it also tends to anchor the physical body (often with intense nausea) and thus prevents full dissociation, and prevents total ecstasis (in the sense of going completely beyond one’s self, or at least beyond one’s self as one knows one’s self in terms of corporeality in a human body). I will discuss these vivid excursive visions shortly — these fully panoramic vistas replete with symbolism and import — but for now it is important to also cover some of these more general alterations of perception and affect. Some people find it difficult to experience what has been called “the DMT breakthrough” experience, of losing body awareness and entering an apparently different environment, so that their experiences are comprised of the elements to be discussed in the following section.

48

Theistic and Messianic visions are prevalent among reports of DPT use. DPT is one of the rare instances of a totally synthetic substance that is employed as an entheogenic sacrament by a Christian Church that is evidently sincere in its doctrinal belief that their “Eucharist” DPT is “a powerful Angel of the Host”, with communion confirmed by either smoking or drinking the material. This fascinating Church, known as the ‘Temple of the True Inner Light’ has thus far observed its religious practices unhindered by the United States Federal Government (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997:430). page 88

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Sensing and feeling During a DMT experience the mind is flooded with cognitions, emotions, intuitions, strong instinctive impulses (for example, some people experience panic and try to physically escape the experience by running or hiding) as well as sensory impressions, cognitions, and what might be described as peculiarly spiritual sensations (for example, a sense of cosmic unity, or a feeling of healing or wholeness). Often, there is a sense of a sudden shift into a heightened mode of awareness. This extremely sudden, almost explosive, transition is very common, and is one of the features that makes DMT quite different to many other psychedelics, such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, where there is a period of gradual transition into the altered state after an interval of latency while the substances slowly diffuse in the subject’s body. DMT commences almost instantly, and its initial intensity is comparable to the “peak” of a psilocybin or LSD experience. My informants reported a very broad range of changes in consciousness. “Intense visual and auditory phenomenon (sic)” was very common, especially fastmoving “geometric patterns”, “fractals49” and “mosaic visual patterns”; changes in depth perception (“under a glass dome” [11], “visual distortion” [12]); “sounds buzzing insectlike very rapid and intense mantis-like energy” [13]50; “a high-pitched hum” [14]; “…popping…” [15]. The combination of visual and auditory effects are described in the following account by a 48 year old “spiritual being, nature based, aging hippy, mother, writer, artist, musician” from northern New South Wales: “There was a swirling and a shift, noises, a popping, and everything became richly textured and coloured, taking a different dimension. Fractals seemed to burst and my companion and I were suddenly garbed in royal and ceremonial robes…” Subject [16] 49

Fractals became associated with LSD and MDMA use in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, in part because of Benoît Mandelbrot’s (1982) contemporaneous publication of “The Fractal Geometry of Nature”, and especially because his research on Julia sets and the discovery of the Mandelbrot set involved the use of cutting-edge computer modelling (Mandelbrot had joined a research team with IBM), with the result that the fractals programs were easily transformable into delicious computer-generated art that could be displayed before the appreciative sense organs of the early psychedelic rave scene. 49 Callaway et al. (1994) discusses the possible role of this endogenous tryptamine derivative in dreaming and other routine states of consciousness. 50 High frequency sounds are often heard in the seconds following inhalation of DMT vapour. These sounds are described as buzzing, ringing, popping, crackling or humming. These DMT sounds are sufficiently recognised among enthusiasts of electronic dance music that a distinctive “edgey” or “zingy” sound effect in trance, techno or related genres of electronic music may be easily ascribed by a listener to the influence of DMT on the creative process of the composer. A DMT “sound” has even been mentioned in a recent Doctoral thesis on Australian techno music (Cole, 1999). page 89

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This same informant then heard a voice say, “you asked about death…I’ll show you death.” They then saw themselves gradually stripped of flesh until skeletal, then the skeleton dissolved and what remained was an eternal essence of being. They were then miraculously returned to life. Voices are frequently reported among the various published DMT testimonials, as well as among accounts published on the Internet. In these instances there is usually an impression of speech, which may be a vague murmur, or which may be articulate, but very often the language of the speech is unknown (although some people claim to have understood the meanings intuitively). Some of my informants [6, 7, 17, 18] reported seeing “magical” or “strange” “letters” or “language.” Others have reported hearing alien language, and a few related that they had fallen into trances of glossolalia and began vocalising the speech that they heard. One informant told me of having witnessed others ecstatically uttering streams of unknown syllables. Another [19] told me of the therapeutic or spiritual benefit to be gained through “harmonic chanting51” while in the grip of DMT ecstasy. One man’s “harmonic chanting,” however, is another man’s “scream of the spastic howler monkey” according to one informant [1] who was frankly “freaked out” by some of the noises produced by a fellow traveller. Some tones can be profoundly disturbing during “delicate” states of consciousness. DMT glossolalia and harmonic singing have their counterparts in Charismatic Christian, New Age and Shamanic religions, with perhaps the most salient comparison to be made with the ayahuasca-based shamanism of Amazonia, where people receive magical songs called icaros as spiritual gifts directly from the spirits they perceive while entranced with ayahuasca. Very often the icaros, when sung during inebriation, produce magical healing effects and are a keystone of shamanic practice (Luna, 1984, 1986; Luna & Amaringo, 1991). Glossolalia and harmonic chanting are one mode of externalising the visionary experience, of expressing the internal energies of ecstasy. Movement is another, and one which has received a great deal of scholarly attention, due to its connection with the enormously popular psychedelic dance movement, of which it is the central practice (Brabazon, 1997; Bull, 1997; Hill, 1999; Jordan, 1995; McRobbie, 1993). Most people 51

Harmonic chanting, overtone singing, and overtoning are terms used by musician David Hykes to refer to throat singing, as exemplified in the folk music traditions of the Tuva of Mongolia (where it is called khoomei). David Hykes, a composer of sacred music, popularised harmonic chanting in the west with the release in 1987 of “Hearing Solar Winds: with the Harmonic Choir” (Ocora 558607, distributed by Harmonia Mundi). page 90

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are uncoordinated during DMT ecstasy, and may be totally unaware of their bodies, but a few are able to integrate the experience somatically, to move about, some with a marked degree of lightness and grace. Trembling and prostrated writhing are more common, with the “working through” of “the energies” favouring contortions and prolonged extensions or stretches of the limbs, sometimes combined with grimaces and convolutions of the facial muscles: “DMT frequently produces changes in the facial expression of the user, which can appear quite bizarre to an onlooker. It would seem as though the human face has the potential for a far greater number of expressions than we normally use, possibly even the ability to carry on sophisticated communication through facial expression. DMT acts as a catalyst to reawaken this realm of movement by exercising the muscles involved and realigning the underlying energies. It’s also possible for this realignment of energies to take place in other areas of the body, occasionally instigating a shamanic dance.” (Turner, 1994:53) Movements on DMT, while not precisely involuntary, may involve some groups of muscles temporarily attaining a new level of autonomy from the ego. One of my informants [5] told me how, as she came out of the strongest phase of a DMT trance and opened her eyes, she was astonished to see her right arm transform into an ornately patterned snake, which writhed about of its own volition, although she assented to her arm/snake expressing itself in this way. The emotions aroused by DMT are intense and variable, but often follow the chronology of the experience as follows: At the commencement of the visionary experience there is apprehension and fear (sometimes of panic proportions), this soon gives way to awe and amazement as the subjects orient themselves to the new perceptions, sometimes coupled with a sense of dé jà vu and “alien-homecoming” as if one has been to this space many times (for some this sensation gives rise to speculations about the after-death or before-birth states of consciousness). Some informants report a sense that they were “expected” to use DMT and to arrive in another world. One subject who I met at a private party in Nimbin in September 2005 (a woman perhaps in her late forties or early fifties) gave the following account:

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“So there was this young buck saying “Its [DMT] very strong, you’ve got to be very careful, really mindful” and I was thinking “kid, if you were getting the doses of acid they gave us in the ‘70s, you wouldn’t be telling me this.” So I tried it, and there was this sound, like a hum, and it was really strong, and there were these critters there, and it was like they were going: “Great! You made it, welcome!” Subject [20] When it becomes clear that the intensity of the experience has reached a plateau and is gradually diminishing there is often a profound sense of relief that one will actually return to one’s accustomed form of consciousness (frequently the sense of reprieve is of such intensity as to be comparable to a state of charis), and often a profound new sense of appreciation of the ‘miracle’ of routine consciousness, a renewed love of the everyday, and a sense of bonding or agape with any cohorts who may be present. For many there will be no repeat experience, it is simply too harrowing, a bit like ‘extreme sports,’ and not at all ‘recreational’. For some, the strange sense of welcome, familiarity or ‘homecoming’ might prompt further experiments, while others are more fascinated by the existential knowledge that DMT makes available than they are repelled by the terrifying strangeness of the experience. A strong sense of disembodiment or dissociation is very common after smoking DMT. One informant [21] explained: “my mind was there but I had no concept of my body…out of body — within your pure spirit.” Another psychonaut described the condition thus: “A DMT tryp52 tends to be out of body, out of personality, and sometimes outside of the mind.” (Turner, 1994:57). Ego suspension is sometimes a feature of this dissociation: “pure light, egolessness, disembodiment, soul death” [22]. On the other hand, it is also common for the ego to remain intact, with most of its fears and neuroses, but to be projected into a bewildering and terrifying experience. DMT is very frequently associated with a sense of access to unusual Umwelten variously described as “cyberspace” (D.M. Turner, 1994:52) or “multidimensional states” [6], “chthonic infernal realms” [13], and a place of “death, paradise, then rebirth” [15]. The presence of distinct entities in these other worlds (and sometimes intruding into the mundane world) are reported in a little over one third of all the accounts I have collected, but are much more common in the published literature and the material accessible through the World Wide Web. Occasionally the effects of DMT resemble Near Death Experiences 52

The word tryp is derived from the alkaloid tryptamine, which is the parent compound of DMT and several dozen related entheogenic compounds (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). Some psychonauts distinguish between tryptamine “tryps” and “trips” produced by other substances. page 92

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(NDEs), and are in many ways analogous to some reports of shamanistic initiatory ordeal as described by Eliade (1964 [1951]). Some of these experiences are very “heavy” and are described as “…hell realms…horrors…” [23] with even more ferocious energies held in reserve by “…absolute benevolence…”[23]. Of the accounts that I have collected, about one sixth contain elements suggestive of shamanic ordeal, for example, there are visions of landscapes covered in blood, vomit, and skeletal remains ([23]); encounters with skeletal entities ([13], [24]); encounters with tutelary spirits ([6], [24]); and the modification of the subject’s internal organs through surgical interventions performed by spirits ([6]). This ratio applied at approximately the same rate to both interviews and questionnaire responses. The themes of death and dismemberment are very common in artwork representing DMT, but it is also likely that only the most intense DMT experiences provoke an artistic response. These shamanic confrontations with the extreme limits will be considered in greater detail later under the heading “(Near) death and (Nearly) dying” in Chapter 6.

Ontology and (dis-)embodiment DMT visions can impact significantly on subsequent world-view, identity, and character. A sense of having received divine grace through DMT is not uncommon and feelings of gratitude can be enduring, as for example, in the following testimony of a 46 year old male respondent [25]: “I return healed, I receive gnosis, healing, inspiration…A spiritual gift. Cosmic fortune to see the truth before I deserved it. Thanks Universe”, the same informant also stated the following soteriological doctrine: “The plants want to save us from misery and take us to mystery.” When asked if the experience had affected his outlook on life he replied: “Totally, better than anything else I’ve ever been taught. God is the one with the Love.” He also wished me luck with “finding God.” It is this sense of gratitude combined with the deep sense of awe that makes these accounts compelling as religious experiences. Subject [16] reported: “I know that soul and eternality are way beyond what we generally regard as “life” and it was another affirming experience on my evolutionary journey. I hold it to have been a very valuable and precious event.” We have now touched briefly, by way of a broad introduction, on a diverse spectrum of DMT phenomenology. Many of the effects mentioned are shared to a greater or lesser degree by other psychedelic substances, but as is often the way with DMT, the speed, intensity and brevity of the effects powerfully condition the experience. Many users of DMT have reported “out of body” or “spiritual” experiences, some of which contain most

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of the classic hallmarks of shamanic initiation as defined by Mircea Eliade. The accounts in the following sections are peppered with these shamanistic and “out-of-body” experiences. These accounts reinforce the idea that DMT is strongly entheogenic in its effects, and entheogens are frequently at the core of complex systems of ideology, cosmology, ritual, belief, and values, as attested to by the following 31 year old male informant interviewed in 2002: “The healing sacraments including ayahuasca inform my whole cosmology and belief and value system…DMT reminds me of the sacredness of life and all creation, and keeps me on the true road. They teach me the healing way, and offer specific techniques for divination and healing.” Subject [24] Virtually all psychedelics cause multi-sensorial changes. However, the specificity of some psychoactive tryptamines has been commented on both anecdotally and also in the experimental research of Shulgin and Shulgin (1997). The brain receives the different inputs from the various sensory organs and creates a synthesis. Perhaps the different tryptamines have selective affinities at different parts of this synthetic process. Some tryptamines are primarily tactile, 5-MeO-DIPT has alleged aphrodisiacal effects that are primarily related to increased tactile acuity (this apparent increase in sensitivity has not been objectively tested), body image accentuation and fantasy enhancement, whereas DIPT is almost exclusively an auditory psychedelic. DMT is primarily visual.

Visions One of the most frequently commented on aspects of DMT ecstasy is how difficult it is to express in words. Words are one of our principal means of formulating experience in such a way that it can be shared and mutually reified. The ineffable is that which, by virtue of definition, cannot be spoken. It may, perhaps, be communicated by other means: “There is no possibility that this could be construed as neurological noise of any sort. It is, in fact, the most highly ordered visual information that one can experience, much more highly ordered than normal waking vision. That is why it’s so hard to English because it is like trying to make a threedimensional rendering of a fourth-dimensional object. Only through the medium of sight can the true modality of this Logos be perceived.” Terence McKenna (1991:98-99)

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The DMT experience is received primarily through images. Not only are DMT experiences primarily visual, but (and this presents great difficulties for their description), they are largely non-verbal or preverbal. This has indeed been the principle obstacle to my own work on DMT: how to discuss a non-verbal experience. It is as if the drug bypasses mental functions for processing spoken language, transferring meaning to purely visual sign carriers. Often my informants were at a loss for words, as in the case of the following 30 year old male subject: “Really hard to put into writing…After five years without DMT I am still interpreting the experiences…It has changed my outlook on life, but I can’t really express how.” Subject [26] (2002) Two of my informants provided transcripts of recordings made during their DMT experiences. In the first transcript informant [27] emphasised that the visual aspects of DMT exceed the possibilities of language: “…This Beautiful halo around you, and it was like the whole thing which I’d seen from the beginning, it was like a geometric pattern, which it’s probably best to draw rather than to explain…” Subject [27] (2002) In a second transcript based on a audio recording of a DMT session (provided by a different subject with no connection to [27]) the informant emphasises that the translinguistic and hyper-real quality of DMT qualia: Closes eyes Opens eyes Looks, (no response) Closes eyes, (smiles) Coughs “WOW, that’s full on” “its so………..its beyond language” “You see” “The visuals are fantastic because they’re so (real?) So crisp, fleeting trails through time and space its am………………”

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“Fireworks from nowhere” “ I was completely free from time, you experience something resembling time…like infinity” “Its insane” Subject [28] (2002) Terence McKenna was prominent among those who linked tryptamine experiences to the idea of logos, as meaning that is beheld, speech that shows itself forth. Often a person returning from an intense DMT experience will be completely lost for words, or may commit not to talk about the experience in order to not misrepresent the experience53. The mind returning from the experience seems to makes a sharp transition back into a linguistic mode of thinking, and spoken language is unable to authentically carry the meanings of the visions. The situation is familiar to religionists from the study of mysticism, where it is known as the “alleged ineffability” problem54. DMT visions are often experienced as inherently meaningful; they are sometimes experienced as a kind of visual language similar to ideograms or hieroglyphs, but highly detailed and mobile like animation and cinema. Certain motifs or themes characterise the experiences, although there is a great deal of individual variation in response just as there is a great deal of idiosyncratic variation in the dosage taken, individual physiology, set and setting. It is also important to refrain from generalising about intensity, as not everyone is equally impressed by DMT, although in some cases this may be caused by very low doses as a 53

The DMT experience is usually conceptualised as an Out of Body Experience (OBE). If we take the intellectual risk of taking this figure of speech literally, then we entertain a metaphysics where the spirit can be separated from the physical body and experience independent realities with senses similar to, but different from, the physical senses of the body. What this spiritual body does not seem to have, is an apparatus for cognitive analysis. It does not split phenomena into dialectical relationships and then affirm some phenomena and reject others. Spirit is non-analytical it seems. What language necessitates is analysis. Experience must conform to linguistic templates; words must be selected from the entire range of vocabulary. This involves analysis, analysis is something the brain does, the brain is an organ of the body, activation of the brain excites the entire soma, and the body/brain awakes or becomes “re-spiritualised” to use a mystical but convenient expression. From the evidence presented by DMT reports, it would seem that analytic thought and verbal expression are incompatible with OBEs in part because they arouse the body. 54 “Alleged ineffability” is one of the nine classic hallmarks of mystical experience according to the typology devised by Walter Pahnke (1963) and applied to a double-blind study of the effects of psilocybin in volunteers in a Christian religious setting (a Church on Good Friday). The nine hallmarks of mystical experience were adapted from models developed by W.T. Stace (1960), which is itself ultimately derived from the hallmarks proposed by William James (1995; 1996) in his lectures dealing with mystical experience. R.C. Zaehner (1972) provides an excellent discussion of these models of mystical experience, and treats the question of whether psychedelic drugs engender authentic religious experiences (he believes that in the majority of cases they do not: see Zaehner (1973) for his assessments of authenticity). I disagree with Zaehner on this question. My primary objections are the limited size and unrepresentative nature of Zaehner’s sample, the lack of trans-cultural comparisons in Zaehner’s book, and the absence of a culturally relativistic framework for assessing the meanings and values of his counter-cultural subjects, without the distortion imposed by his own conflicting conditioning and values. page 96

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result of poor smoking technique. A number of my informants commented on their initial inability to “go with the experience.” For these people, visionary excursion with DMT was something they had to learn, a state of consciousness that was initially bewildering, as in the case of the following account from an anonymous 54 year old Australian man: “…terrifying until I learnt to face my fears with love…to detach from what was happening externally, close my eyes and go inwards—into heaven. Smoking taught me to face my fears, to live in the now (be happy) and showed me a concept of heaven which is [an] infinitely colourful and amazing world of infinite possibility and dimension.” Subject [29] (2002) The same informant’s further testimony reads almost like an advertisement for DMT: “I am happier, more secure, no longer self-critical, egotistical and emotionally distant. Thank goodness for entheogens like DMT. I wish the whole world (especially ego power trippers like politicians and excessive capitalists could/would) experience tryptamines!! This information needs to be out there—but such info is prohibited. Drug LORE, not drug WAR!!” Subject [29] (2002) Subject [30], a 31-year-old “spiritually aware” woman gives insights into the nature of the conscious psychological barriers that can prevent the more dissociative kinds of DMT experience: “Short duration mostly due to dose…[and]…my will power over the experience — being someone who likes to be in control of myself I pushed myself out of the experience sooner than was probably necessary but mostly due to the feeling of not being able to breath unconsciously!?! However, the heightened awareness of depth of vision was significant — a feeling of being in or under a glass dome — peripheral presence of entities or beings also: they, or it, was a positive entity — encouraging/loving. Positive — definitely afterwards — if I could allow myself to go with it: not be so conscious of my breathing — I will do it again.” Subject [30] (2002)

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This informant, like the preceding one [29], and indeed the great majority of respondents and interviewees, found the encounter with DMT transformative in an empowering way: “I came out of it with a greater sense of needing to do things for me rather than to please others but not in a selfish sense. I feel that it is something that has helped to “ground” me — in a short space of time.” Subject [30] (2002) For others “…DMT is largely a simple, stoning drug with no sensory contribution, no intellectual contribution. Its greatest contribution might be to provide a subject [with] the vocabulary of an altered state of consciousness so that, with interesting and constructive drugs, these effects will be familiar, and thus not distractions…” (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997:532). Nonetheless, for many DMT facilitates an astonishing, if brief, immersion in a maelstrom of numinosity and ineffability. For some, it is a profound enigma: “I saw similarities between my LSD experiences and the iconography of Mahayana Buddhism. In fact, it was LSD experiences that drove me to collect Mahayana art. But what amazed me was the total absence of the motifs of DMT. It is not there; it is not there in any tradition familiar to me.”…I am baffled by what I call “the black hole effect” that seems to surround DMT…Metaphorically, DMT is like an intellectual black hole in that once one knows about it, it is very hard for others to understand what one is talking about. The more one is able to articulate what it is, the less others are able to understand.” (McKenna, 1991:44-45) At the time that Terence McKenna wrote this there was indeed very little artistic representation of DMT experiences. However, in recent years, and following on the much greater availability of well-refined DMT freebase, DMT art has flourished into its own distinctive psychedelic sub-genre. With the increased number of works inspired by DMT visions it has become possible to gain a sense of which symbols signify the eidetic core of the experience. With clearer knowledge of the signs used to encode the experience it is possible to scan through the histories of iconography and to identify the motifs of DMT in art that is not psychedelically induced. For instance, I see the motifs of DMT occurring independently in some renaissance self-portraiture, some contemporary science fiction and fantasy art, and especially in the work of M.C. Escher, through his interest in the regular division of planes55, his dimensional distortions, his use of preying-mantis 55

The “division of planes” was a mathematical problem that preoccupied M.C. Escher from an early age (Schattschneider, 2004). Escher was almost obsessed with finding new variations of plane symmetry page 98

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iconography, and his sensitive treatment of existential uncertainties. I will return to this argument in the course of this chapter, but for now I will say that in view of the peculiar genius of Escher, and considering the underlying serotonergic physiology of the brain, as well as the presence of DMT as a minor constituent of cerebrospinal fluids, it is possible that an artist might achieve some of the understandings associated with DMT, and communicate these understandings through coinciding symbols, without needing to ingest externally produced DMT. Terence McKenna’s observation that it is often difficult to communicate knowledge from one state of consciousness to another, and that the more dissimilar the states of consciousness the more difficult the transfer of information can be, is something of a truism in consciousness studies. Charles Tart (1976) has called this the problem of statespecific knowledge: some ways of understanding may be bound to particular states of consciousness and seem irrelevant or quaint in others, as for example when William James under the beneficently indifferent influence of nitrous oxide writes profundities such as “By George, nothing but othing! That sounds like nonsense, but it is pure onsense!…There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.” (Shedlin, Wallechinsky, & Salyer., 1992:8). In any case, the discontinuities between different states of consciousness are often over-emphasised, possibly because of our dualistic and rationalistic philosophical inheritances. By contrast, many other worldviews presuppose the efficient transfer of information between states of consciousness; we have only to affirm that this can be done and to study the psychological attitudes, techniques and metaphors for doing so. The effort does pay off. We know more about consciousness from the reports that people make regarding their experiences with DMT and other entheogens. The data is often very good and quite groupings: completely filling planar surfaces with symmetrically interlocking tile designs which included fish, bird, reptile and insect shapes (ibid). The repetitive, swirling mosaics Escher created were often rendered in strongly contrasting complementary colours which serve to further highlight the resonance of his creative genius with the interior visions of contemporary psychonauts. Fields of interlocking, revolving, repeating designs are a very common feature of many psychedelic substances in addition to DMT, including many, which while not “addictive” in the modern sense of that word are highly enjoyable for earnest enthusiasts of what Abraham Maslow (1976) has called “peak experiences”. If Escher was somehow naturally attuned to these profoundly beautiful psychedelic states then it becomes easier to understand his confession that the process of tiling planes is, for him, “…an extremely absorbing activity, a real mania to which I have become addicted, and from which I sometimes find it hard to tear myself away” ((Schattschneider, 2004:ix). Some of the images in Schattschneider’s study of Escher’s “regular division drawings” are very similar indeed to aspects of DMT visions. One of my DMT informants (subject [31]) physically recoiled when she saw an Escher image of red and yellow interlocking insects (image 54 on page 157 of Schattschneider (2004)) because of the astonishing semblance to the visionary world of ayahuasca (the insects she encountered during her visions were actually blue and yellow). Later in this chapter I discuss DMT insect visions in greater detail. page 99

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copious. The difficulty, as with any synthesis of knowledge, lies with the selection and interpretation of the data. I have chosen to let visual representations of DMT experiences shape other, verbal and textual accounts. It seems to me that the discontinuity between the rich flow of DMT visuals and the subsequent faltering effort to convey the experience in a limited vocabulary is the first stumbling block to understanding the experience. It is like trying to express an infinity within the constraints of a totality. This is the way it often is with mystical forms of consciousness, which visionaries have traditionally conveyed most effectively with peculiar metonyms and metaphors, especially through the visual arts. Once we have an icon or a miniature of an ecstatic saint, then we can discuss her (or his) ecstasy at length, but some kind of visual representation with which we can empathise provides a very useful basis for subsequent discourse, otherwise our discourse may itself be thoroughly state-specific and irrelevant from the perspective of the ecstatic.

Major motifs Before we examine the major recurring motifs in representations of DMT experiences, a few words about some of the formal properties of the DMT-induced images are in order, starting with the simpler elements (colours, forms, composition), which, incidentally are the elements reported mostly with lower doses � at higher doses complex imagery (figures, landscapes, archetypal themes, complex narrative) override the simpler, coloured geometric impressions.

Colours “You know you’re on DMT, you know—because of the colors. There are no colors like DMT colors.” ‘Sid Johnson’ quoted in Stafford (1971:214). The better known psychedelic drugs belonging to the indole, amphetamine, and phenethylamine series tend to enhance colour perception, making colours seem much more intense and saturated, while also sharpening contrast between colours. This is true of one’s perception of the external world, where for instance, a drab, worn, green carpet in a motel might be transformed into a vivid field of kelp, each strand its own unique shade of green. An orange in a fruit bowl may seem like it contains hundreds of distinctly nuanced variations on the theme of orangeness. The same intensification applies to the colours seen with the eyes closed, the colours of the so-called eidetic patterns seen in “the

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mind’s eye” or projected upon the eyelids. DMT’s intensity is such that an individual can completely lose the sense of the external world, so that eidetic imagery may be all that is experienced regardless of whether eyes remain opened or closed. An intriguing characteristic of the colours perceived during psychedelic inebriation is that they often resemble precious jewels in terms of their transparency, saturation and brilliance. Aldous Huxley has written an excellent account of the reasons why people are attracted to gemstones, arguing that gems suggest mystical states of consciousness. “Every paradise abounds in gems, or at least in gemlike objects resembling, as Weir Mitchell puts it, “transparent fruit.” Here, for example, is Ezekiel's version of the Garden of Eden. “Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald and the carbuncle, and gold...Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth...thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.” The Buddhist paradises are adorned with similar “stones of fire.” Thus, the Western Paradise of the Pure Land Sect is walled with silver, gold and beryl; has lakes with jewelled banks and a profusion of glowing lotuses, within which the Bodhisattvas sit enthroned.” (Huxley, 1994:74)

Forms The following account provides a fairly representative example of a DMT experience where there is no alleged encounter with entities or journeys to other geographies, but there is nonetheless very intense and vivid visual activity. Note that the subject indicates that discursive thought interrupted his ability to focus on the subsequent visions. This recapitulates the notion that the DMT experience is incompatible with discursive or binary ideation. DMT consciousness may be a non-dual mode of experience, resembling, in this respect, the Indian concept of advaita. Note also that the subject uses the analogy of the “sea” of fractals. Two other informants also used the analogy of the “sea” [32] or “ocean” [6] to describe the extent and complexity of the visual patterns induced by DMT. The marine image also occurs in the background of the painting “Diosa madre tierra” (2003) by Carey Thompson discussed in greater detail later in this chapter. The following description was offered by a 29 year old male musician, traveller and “curious” atheist:

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“Smoke[d] in a pipe mixed with damiana56. The first hit of smoke I had I was lost in a sea of fractals. My mind was there but I had no concept of my body. After about 30 sec[onds] or so I sat up and the experience became less intense and stabilised. My ruminations on the initial rush prevented me from fully following the rest, peaceful, amusing. Subject [33] A hitchhiker I encountered between Nimbin and Lismore in NSW Australia had some DMT stories to share. The traveller [34] had several experiences with DMT — in this case synthetic material he encountered in the late 1970s � and reported having a very uniform response each time he smoked it. After inhaling the DMT he would find himself ascending in an elevator, which always deposited him in a great domed room opening onto a blue sky. The themes of domed-ness and blueness recur in other accounts. The floor of the room was composed of alternating black and white rhomboidal tiles saturated with intense violet light. He would stay there for a while, and would then return to bodily awareness, often after interactions with strange beings, which unfortunately he did not describe in detail. A Melbourne man (Subject [35]) volunteered information about his DMT experiences that also involved visiting environments covered with alternating contrasting tiles; in his case these tiles were described to me as triangular. After smoking the DMT freebase he found himself on the edge of a wide bowl-shaped57 depression in a triangular tiled topography. A large tentacle snaked its way into the bowl from the opposite rim and began to stroke the inside of the bowl, producing musical tones. The subject became entranced by the sounds and, if I am interpreting his statements correctly, felt himself becoming identified with the tentacle, which then metamorphosed into a curtain billowing on a breeze in the room in which he had smoked the DMT. The features of the familiar room crawled about for some time before settling into their more regular static relationships. I was intrigued by his attitude toward the visions. He explained that he would experience all kinds of strange and wondrous things when he smoked DMT, but 56

Damiana (Turnera diffusa) is a herb native to Mexico, where it was valued by the Maya as a treatment for asthma (which they considered a form of demonic possession) and as a sexual tonic (Rätsch, 1997). This medicinal herb is named after the physician Saint Damian, who, with his brother Saint Cosmas, is reputed to have won many converts to Christianity with herbal cures (according to the “late and historically worthless Legend” (Farmer, 1978:92). The leaves are commonly made into a tea or smoked for their alleged aphrodisiacal effects. The dried leaves burn at a steady and reliable rate, and are consequently highly esteemed as a relatively innocuous matrix or base for smoking other substances. DMT crystal may be sprinkled onto damiana leaves, or the leaves may be soaked in a solvent infused with DMT, which solvent is then completely evaporated prior to smoking. Leaves of various mints (Mentha species) and of Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) have similar pyrolytic properties and are also used as matrixes for smoking DMT. 57 Bowl shapes, domes, and globes are recurrent motifs of DMT visions. These globular forms are discussed in more detail in the section of this thesis dealing with “disembodied eyes” in Chapter 7. page 102

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that he had not the slightest interest in trying to reconcile these experiences with his everyday existence. He was quite happy for the two to be ontologically discontinuous. This was in contrast to the majority of people I have spoken to regarding their DMT experiences, most of whom had a strong desire for continuity of consciousness; that is to say, most people like to be able to reconcile their DMT experiences with their normal mode of consciousness. Checker board-like patterns are commonly seen with even relatively light doses of DMT. Coloured grids are frequently reported from all of the classic psychedelic drugs, either as patterns seen with the eyes closed, or as patterns projected onto surfaces as a kind of overlay with the eyes open. These ‘hallucinatory form constants’ were described in 1928 by Heinrich Klüver (1966) who hypothesised that they were caused by irregular activity of retinal structures. Klüver’s form constants are: “(a) grating, lattice, fretwork, filigree, honeycomb or chessboard; (b) cobweb; (c) tunnel, funnel, alley, cone or vessel; (d) spiral.” (Klüver, 1966:66) Spiralling chequered or tiled planes in alternating colours are also commonly reported, sometimes taking on representational qualities, as when a field of coloured diamonds seen projected against a ceiling swirl into the shapes of the ferocious Scylla and the hungry whirlpool Charybdis from Homer’s Odyssey (as reported by subject [6]). On the basis of anecdotal reports, this swirling chess-board-like motif appears to be a somewhat ubiquitous feature of light doses of DMT. In their pamphlet on DMT, Gracie and Zarkov call this form ‘the chrysanthemum pattern’ although we may actually be dealing with significant individual variations. “At the end of the ‘flash’ of the visions you will have an after-vision of circular interlocking patterns in exquisite colors. It has been described as looking at a vaulted ceiling or dome. If you did not ‘breakthrough’ to the levels described above, this ’chrysanthemum’ pattern, as we call it, is all you will see. It is worth the trip, too.” (Strassman, 2001) http://deoxy.org/gz.htm

Although square or diamond shaped grids are probably the most frequently remarked form, many kinds of regularly tiled surfaces with interlocking tiles in contrasting colours have been reported to me. One informant (subject [31]) reported fan-like overlapping

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ovate forms in the colours of the prismatic spectrum. Another subject [10] reported “…swirling patterns of myriad dots in a field of maroon light. Very reminiscent of the Italian millefiori glass…Accompanied by a warm ‘buzzing’ hush.” The patterns seen with DMT often seem laden with portent. Roland Fischer provides an explanation for why people become highly aroused by these visionary designs: “The hallucinatory constants are magic symbols — visual or auditory metaphors within a structure of symbolic logic and language, the language of hyper and hypo-aroused hallucinatory states, and are the base of the general tendency towards geometric/rhythmic ornamentalization. For example, both the rose windows of Gothic cathedrals and the mandalas of Tantric religions are ritualised hallucinatory form constants.” (Fischer, 1975:389) Another informant, [36], described smoking DMT at his home in the hills of Nimbin and seeing the familiar forms of the world around us not just as they usually are, but also as the by-products of an imperceptible grid of an archetypal form generator. He claimed that he understood that things were the way they were because of this invisible mesh or field that he had discerned, and that during his DMT experience he saw nothing that was not usually present, but that his sensitivity and philosophical appreciation of form and perception — and especially his understanding of Plato’s archetypes — were vastly expanded and enriched. Another commonly reported motif is that of some kind of “sacred language” or “alien language”, frequently described as resembling both Sanskrit and Hebrew, and occasionally described as pictograms resembling Mayan or Egyptian hieroglyphs. The letters are usually seen in great planes of rapidly changing fiery filigree and are often made of a metallic fluid or light. DMT smokers who encounter these portentous writings are sometimes able to intuitively sense their meaning, but more-often are bewildered by the enigmatic characters and rapidly lose their trance when they try to memorise the figures for later analysis or for comparison to known languages. I know of one instance where an informant, [37], insufflated approximately 250 milligrams (a substantial dose) of n,n-dipropyltryptamine or DPT — one of the closest structural analogues of DMT — and reported being inside a temple shaped like an equilateral triangular prism (with one of its long rectangular sides forming the floor) composed of a golden liquid and held in shape by strong magnetic fields. These fields were manipulated so that the golden liquid swirled into the shapes of sacred writing stylistically reminiscent of Hebrew. With each word a phonetic value formed in the informant’s mind, and each

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word was a name of God: Allah; Tetragrammaton; Shiva, and all were powerfully felt to be equivalent. Gracie and Zarkov (1985) linked these language-like forms to the elves so often attributed to DMT ecstasy, testifying that the language was an extension of the representational will of the elves, that the elves transformed themselves into living language in order to communicate telepathically and visually to human egos experiencing the DMT Umwelt. The relatively simple drug-induced patterns have interested psychiatrists, optometrists, and more recently neurophysiologists who have proposed a range of naturalistic and reductionist models to explain them, or to explain them away. Possibly the earliest scientific attempt to catalogue and explain the elementary “hallucinogenic form constants” has already been mentioned: the innovative study of mescaline visionary motifs conducted by Klüver (1966) over a century ago in his book Mechanisms of Hallucination, in which he proposed that the images were all variations on a limited repertoire of five form constants that arise in perception from abnormal interoception of retinal structures. According to Klüver, the visions of mescaline are all in our “little rubbery cameras” to use Kurt Vonnegut’s (1980) expression for the human eye, and are not as “far-out” as the speculations of certain hippies would have it. Later neurostructuralists have relocated the anatomic locus of the patterns from the retina to the brain-stem (although the retina as a fundamental structural basis for vision is clearly involved at some level (Heiss, 1973)). More recently, collaboration between neurobiologists, neuropsychologists, and mathematicians has revealed complex geometric relationships (connected to Euclidean symmetry) between the hallucinatory form constants and the striate cortex (Bressloff, Cowan, Golubitsky, Thomas, & Weiner, 2001). While work in this direction will no doubt bear some very interesting fruit in years to come, the central paradigm of a small set of fundamental visionary forms can only be maintained by reductionist arguments that are ultimately comparable to attempts to appreciate Mozart in terms of the neuroanatomy of the ear, or to understand Mondrian’s ‘Trafalgar Square’ in terms of the mechanics of brushstrokes. How are we to account for a psychedelic vision of an indefinite number of velvet-covered paisley-patterned Archimedean solids playing trombone in terms of simple planar forms? Klüver himself reported being told of “plastic spherical filigreed objects d’art similar to…radiolaria…” (Klüver, 1966:21). To me these visions seem not even remotely reducible to a form as simple as a honeycomb or spiral. Rather, Klüver’s analysis represents an exercise in

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scientific positivism that is useful as a life-sciences research strategy but that seriously misrepresents entheogenic phenomenology. Any anatomic explanation of visions will tend to be centralised in some specific organ, whereas entheogenic visions involve whole systems, and frequently seem to reach beyond the organs, and hence beyond optics, ophthalmology, anatomy, neuroanatomy and related sciences.

Composition Reductionist explanations become more difficult to apply as the phenomena we study become more complex. Religious explanations unfold many more ‘lines of flight,’ perhaps too many. Depth psychology seems to meet these extremes halfway. Are the ‘chrysanthemum patterns’ of DMT visions anatomic optical structures or mystical mandalas? Perhaps mandalas are mystical because they are related to our optical anatomy. Many of the images depicting DMT visions are based on either rotundas or bilateral symmetry. We are ourselves examples of bilaterally symmetrical life forms, arrayed with twinned radially symmetrical organs for detecting light, depth and colour, so it is not surprising that these arrangements seem special to us. Of the various ways in which a radial form can be dissected, the quaternity is by far the most prominent in DMT art, either as a broadly four-fold lay-out in terms of composition, or with the composition centred on a crux, often a Maltese cross, and again, we are ourselves cruciform creatures, so that the ‘four-square’ feels ‘right’ to us; clearly these symbols have concrete biological correlates and are not mere shells wafting in arbitrarily from the Azoth of the religious imagination58. In Jungian psychology these ‘quaternities’ are emblems of the Self archetype as the mediator between opposites, as symbolised by two planes intersecting at right-angles, and hence showing a coming together of above and below, left and right. As such the quaternity is a sign of individuation in Jungian thought. We have here also the idea of the trinity complemented by the feminine principle, yet another way of signifying wholeness. The cross as a place of intersection is particularly pertinent to DMT. DMT, as will become clearer as we progress, seems to intercept our egoic trajectory with a radically autonomous otherness. DMT takes us to an intersection: we stand before it at the crossroads. 58

Quarternities are also the basis of the primary 4/4 beat of psychedelic techno, trance, and acid house music. The driving rhythm is an incessant concentrated meditation on fourness, expressed somatically in stomping feet, swaying torsos, and undulating arms, often not unlike what some members of ISKCON have called the “Swami two-step”. The melodies are complex and variable (yet bound by the beat on four sides, as it were), distracting thought from the body’s urgent and unconscious identification with the 4/4 beat and the crossroads of the Self: 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,4; AUM’; AUM’; AUM’; AUM’; I.N.R.I; I.N.R.I; I.N.R.I; I.N.R.I; ��‫ ;�ה�� ;�ה�� ;�ה�� ;�ה‬et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. page 106

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Ecstatic transportation “…[I] was able to put the pipe and lighter down, but as I lay down the universe swirled and dissolved and my reference points and attachments dissolved into rapid movement through a strange urban landscape. I recognised elements such as walls, roads and rooftops in blue-grey green and black as well as many other minor colours, but the ground was distinctly curved in a way that reminded me of the science-fiction novel “Ringworld.” There were entities there and we entered into communication — some kind of thought transference. They were like the energy channels in their etheric body. They had two major vertical channels of radiant white light and along these channels were different coloured chrysanthemums of light, I can’t remember the precise details but they reminded me a lot of paintings of human chakras. They felt friendly, protective, and good to be with. What happened between us felt very sacred to me, and I don’t want to talk about it, because it is something I want to cherish to myself…after about seven minutes I became aware of my body again. As I came out of the other place I remember saying “It’s waking me up again.” The sense of having gone somewhere was extraordinary.” Subject [6] (2004) Many people take DMT as a means to induce a “spiritual journey.” Some psychonauts enjoy going for ‘joy-rides’ with DMT, but there is absolutely no guarantee one will end up in a place that is even remotely tolerable to the psyche and this sets a limit on the number of times that it can be used injudiciously at high doses. Some users say that they are able to guide the experience with their intent, and many I spoke with emphasised the sense of awe and wonder that accompanied their DMT ‘voyages’, including the following 40-year-old female polytheist and artist: “…it can take you into truly multidimensional states where you experience communion with energies that are not commonly tapped into, but only felt, in waking life…out of body—within your pure spirit” Subject [38] (2002) How a “spiritual journey” may be conceptualised among the various different users of DMT is unclear. This is a somewhat problematic phrase, because it conjures up all kinds of metaphysical theories and doctrines about “shamanic flight”, “Out of Body Experiences (OBEs)”, astral travelling, dissociative trance states, psychotic delusions and so on. There are any number of variations among users as to how the journey is conceptually framed. What is usually involved is a strong sense of excursion or

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immersion into a complex environment that is sensed as entirely different from the continuum from which the subject exits at the commencement of the inebriation, and to which they subsequently return. For some, this alternative Umwelt, or world of the senses, is sensed to be “far away” and dissociated from non-inebriated Umwelt. For others it is an additional, more compelling dimension of experience, overlapping their routine state of consciousness. One DMT informant reported: I allowed myself to trust to the experience and to let myself go. I felt myself fly forward through some kind of pulsing energy field and found myself in a huge underground building with high vaulted ceilings and a sense of spirits coming and going all around me. It was like a busy underground metropolitan railway station except the activity, ‘though very rapid, was also solemn and spiritual. It was like a transit centre crossed with an initiation hall. Tall people dressed in dark grey rubber robes and hoods with broad yellow stripes gestured toward me. They were serious and focused on getting things right, so I allowed what ever it was that they intended… Subject [6] (2004) The subject was able to choose to travel in the experience, just as they were able to allow their own involvement in various visionary activities. This experience also presents us with the proposition that there are autonomous ‘others’ within the visionary world, independent actors with their own agendas.

‘Others’ “I stared up at the stucco pattern in the ceiling and noticed they had begun to crawl. Random bumps became little eyes, pointed noses, giggling mouths. The little people had arrived and were literally coming out of the woodwork. They poked out of the ceiling, waved and made faces. I could make out four of them; a stickly troll, a laughing clown, a dancing harlequin, a diabolical imp.” (Kent, 2000) http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=1843

The entities seen during DMT inebriation are of many kinds and perform many different functions. They may, like Hermes, be psychopomps, who guide the subject through the DMT Umwelt, or they may be psychosurgeons who operate on the subject’s visionary body, or they may be fiends who try to devour the visionary. How psychonauts are received by these visionary entities can vary not only from subject to subject, but also from one experience to another. DMT is often an experience of visionary transformation,

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although the experiences are very condensed and may take years to fully integrate. Many users report encounters with aliens, elves, clowns, or various other creatures, although many DMT smokers do not experience such “contact”. Even so, some minimal sense of communication is generally present, although for a few informants this communication may be with the “world of archetypes” or the “Gaian over mind” (the planetary consciousness hypothesised by James Lovelock (1989)) rather than with distinct spirit people. Nonetheless, one of the most remarked about properties of DMT is this potential to produce contact experiences in a great many users. It is sometimes difficult to extract information about spirit beings from informants, because the language is extremely ambiguous, but about seventy percent of my informants attest to contact with an autonomous being while inebriated with DMT and I would expect the actual proportion to be a little higher, because the admission of contact with non-verifiable phenomena is generally stigmatised in our culture. DMT psychonauts are rarely left entirely to their own devices. The DMT contact phenomenon has been discussed by proponents of DMT, especially Gracie (1991), McKenna (1992a), and Turner (1994). Peter Meyer (1992) has written on some of the major epistemological, ontological and phenomenological challenges that DMT encounter experiences present to science and philosophy. I do not intend to go over precisely the same ground that Meyer has already recommended to inquiry, but there are a number of points to be added to Meyer’s contribution. Firstly, there is now much more data available on the variety of different kinds of entities encountered by DMT smokers. Secondly, Meyer presented a number of possible explanations for DMT contact experience, ranging from neurophysiological explanations, depth psychology, quantum physics and Celtic mythology, but did not directly address the possibility that the beings might mean something, that they might operate as symbols without losing their autonomy and beingness. James Kent has argued against the existence of DMT elves, or more precisely, has argued that the elves and other entities are purely brain-based phenomena. The illustration “DMT space”(http://www.tripzine.com/articles.asp?id=dmt_pickover) which accompanies the online version of Kent’s article exemplifies some of the more widely known motifs of DMT inebriation. A skull leers out of the background of the image. The eyes of the skull have blue irises, are very much alive, and not at all friendly. The crooked teeth of the Death’s head extend across the composition, metamorphosing into a serpentine piano keyboard (oddly, this rather specific motif, the crooked piano keyboard issuing from a skull, also

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occurs in an apparently unrelated pencil drawing of a DMT experience). Luminous, netlike folds extend across the bottom of the image while above the piano keyboard a petite, green, alien-like being with an enormous head and pointy elf-like ears holds its hands together in a gesture of prayer as it sits in the lotus asana. A similar being leaps in the foreground. Each element in this composition occurs elsewhere in representations of DMT ecstasy, although this combination is unique to this one image. Each of these motifs is important for understanding the appeal of DMT, and each will be examined in more detail in the sections that follow. DMT has gained the reputation within the psychedelic cultures as the drug most likely to facilitate contact with otherworldly beings. However, it should be recognised that many substances have this potential, especially when used in combination with other techniques of evocation. DMT has a number of close structural analogues among which DPT, CZ-74, CY-19, and many 4-substituted tryptamines have been reported to facilitate contact experiences, while psilocin, 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenine are components of traditional shamanic inebriants used for spirit communication, as well as for other ends. A number of unrelated substances, acting primarily at totally different receptors also have the potential to induce contact experiences. The leaves of Salvia divinorum and salvinorin-a � the active principle of the herb (Siebert, 1994; Valdés, 1994; Valdés, 1983) � have a strong tendency to induce an apprehensive, dissociated state characterised by contact scenarios, often involving (it would seem from overwhelming anecdotal evidence) a stern, feminine presence (Aardvark, 1998). An intense quality of strangeness and alienation often (but not always) permeates these Salvia experiences. A beautiful painting by Anna Ignateva (2003) entitled “Salvia drive” (2003) (available at Erowid: http://www.erowid.org/culture/art/artists_i/art_ignatieva_anna.shtml) shows an apprehensive Salvia

user being spirited away by frantic pointy-eared goblins very similar to those depicted in the image discussed in the previous paragraph. Salvinorin-a has now been shown to be an agonist of �-opioid receptors, whereas DMT and its relatives act primarily on the serotonergic system. Another class of drugs, the dissociative anaesthetics, interact with the NMDA receptor complex (Collingridge & Watkins, 1994), but also contain agents that precipitate apparent encounters with otherworldly entities. Of these, the most psychonautically explored are PCP (phencyclidine), ketamine, and DXM (dextromethorphan) (Darboe, 1996; Darboe, Keenan, & Richards, 1996; Hansen et al., 1988; Reed & Kane, 1972). Ketamine is the best tolerated of these, and has been the

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subject of the most intensive research, use and some abuse (as defined by the people doing the abusing) (Jansen, 2001; Krupitsky, 1999-2000; Krystal, 1994). Its capacity to induce contact experiences is amply displayed in John Lily’s writings on the subject59: “This is very strange. This planet is similar to Earth but the colors are all different. There is vegetation but it’s a peculiar purple colour. There is a sun but it has a violet hue to it, not the familiar orange of Earth’s sun. I am in a beautiful meadow with distant, extremely high mountains. Across the meadow I see creatures approaching. They stand on their hind legs as if human. They are a brilliant white and seem to be emitting light. Two of them come near. I cannot make out their features. They are too brilliant for my present vision. They seem to be transmitting thoughts and ideas directly to me. There is no sound. Automatically, what they think is translated into words that I can understand.” First Being: “We welcome you once again in a form which you have created. Your choice to come here we applaud.” Second Being: You have come alone. Why are you alone?” I answer: “I do not know. There seems to be something strange about this; the others are reluctant to join me here. “ First Being: “What is it that you want from us?” I say: “I want to know if you are real or merely a product of my own wishes.” (Lilly, 1990:172) The overlap between some accounts and representations of DMT visions and those of ketamine is remarkable. Compare, for example, the image “Kneb” by Steve Hatchett (Figure 6, below), which may or may not be a contraction of “Ketamine-nebula” with Angelo Miranda’s DMT-inspired painting “Angel of Death” (also in figure 6, below). In these images, faces and forms emerge and dissolve among swirling, flame-like, hypnotic clouds of colour. The complexity, ambiguity, colour palette, composition, and brushstroke (digital or otherwise) are each closely analogous in the two paintings.

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It is interesting to note that John Lilly was a highly learned and exceptionally gifted scientist, who also had exceptionally vivid visions, in light of an unusual study by Currie and Currie (1984) of the effects of subject’s literacy levels on their “emergence phenomena” (a period of profound hallucinosis or lucid dream) following emergence from full ketamine anaesthesia. Those who had been assessed as having greater literacy skills also had more vivid visions. As sub-anaesthetic ketamine and DMT overlap phenomenologically, we might anticipate similar results from a study of literacy use among western users of DMT, although “literacy” is an admittedly ethnocentric domain: there are other ways of being culturally articulate. For example, globally, shamans in societies where knowledge is transmitted primarily through oration are nonetheless often gifted visionaries, story-tellers, chanters, musicians, and artists, as well as healers. Nonetheless, the correlative findings of the Currie’s study are highly suggestive. page 111

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Figure 6 "kneb" by Steve Hatchett (1999) and "Angel of Death" by Angelo Miranda

The differences are slight: pink predominates more in “Kneb”, the resolution is slightly higher in the DMT-inspired work, and the texture is more determinate. It is almost as if the same environment were being recorded on two different media: one on video perhaps, and the other on infrared film. One environment: two Umwelten. But what are we seeing? Who is the “Angel of Death”, and whose face peers at us out of “Kneb”? We will return to inspect these themes of death and “the face of the Other” in greater detail, but first I wish to provide a brief taxonomy of the DMT menagerie.

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“Kneb” reproduced from Erowid: http://www.erowid.org/culture/art/artists_h/art_hatchett_steve.shtml; Angelo Miranda’s painting “Angel of Death” reproduced from Plate XII facing page 147 in Siegel (1975). page 112

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Chapter 6 The DMT menagerie, and beyond.

The entities encountered on a DMT journey can range from faerie-like beings that look like they have just stepped out of an Enid Blyton61 children’s book through to others that look like they have just crawled out of an H.P. Lovecraft horror62. There is great variety among these entities, but there are also some creatures that recur with surprising frequency. A basic inventory would include enormous amoebas and tentacled horrors; felines; insects (especially Mantids); reptiles; robots, “mechanoids” and androids; aliens; and humanoids (including elves, clowns, goblins, divinities, “Ancestors”, “elementals”, “little cartoon character like entities”, and daemons). Humanoids or beings with primarily human attributes are very common — probably the most common of the visionary entities described — and will be treated separately below (under the heading of Faces and Masks). One informant, [39], reported being assailed by brightly coloured “care bears® 63

”. For now, the focus is on the non-humanoid entities. Some of the DMT beings are

fairly exotic creatures. There are a number of reports of blue or violet, luminescent, undulating, tentacled creatures resembling the comb jellies and jelly fish of the marine and freshwater animal phylum Cnidaria. Like the Cnidaria they are radially symmetrical in general body plan, but may have ciliated grooves at the edges of the mouths that make them perfectly divisible in only two planes. Their faces (if this is an appropriate 61

For Enid Blyton’s personal account of her encounter with tutelary spirit beings, and her visionary epiphany inspired by nitrous oxide, see pages 164-165 of “Sister of the extreme: Women writing on the drug experience” (Palmer & Horowitz, 2000). 62 H.P. Lovecraft was a pioneer of American horror writing. The resemblance of Lovecraft’s monsters to some psychedelic visions may not be entirely coincidental. Lovecraft’s horror and fantasy stories contain numerous references to dream potions and magical plants. For example, “Hypnos,” a short story published in 1923, describes how “…with exotic drugs…” the protagonists “courted terrible and forbidden dreams” (Lovecraft, 1996:87). “The Crawling Chaos” (co-written with Elizabeth Berkeley and included in Lovecraft (1995)) describes fevered visions accompanying an opium overdose. Lovecraft’s (1996) “At the mountains of madness” originally published in 1931) deals in part with enormous scintillating cell-cultures called “Shoggoths” which were thought by one of the characters to not exist on “…Earth except in the dreams of those who had chewed a certain alkaloidal herb” (Lovecraft 1996:309-310). The chewable “alkaloidal herb” Lovecraft had in mind may have been the Peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii), which at the time “At the mountains of madness” was written was generally known by its now obsolete binomial Anhalonium lewinii (named in honour of the German pharmacologist Lewis Lewin M.D. (1850-1929). See Schultes and Hofmann (1980:216-217) for a discussion of Lewin’s involvement with peyote research, as well as Lewin’s own ground-breaking work on consciousness altering plants, “Phantastica” (Lewin, 1998). Anhalonium or peyote was well known in early 20th century bohemian circles after Havelock Ellis’s (1898) publication of “Mescal: A new artificial paradise” describing the visionary effects of this entheogenic plant. 63 “The Care Bears” was a television cartoon serial intended for children and loosely based around a product of the same name. page 113

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expression) are generally difficult to discern, although one illustration (not included here) shows two squarish nerve or fibre concentrations that may be eyes. Unlike the Cnidaria they inhabit some kind of suspension medium, or perhaps a low-gravity environment. Creatures with similar geometry but composed of a blue incandescent gas or liquid have also been reported. Some of the DMT creatures are more tellurian. Cats play a conspicuous role. Considering the ancient reputation of felines as familiars of the supernatural, as well as their feral genius for ecological adaptation we should not be too surprised to find them in hyperspace. The jaguar is important in New World shamanism and frequently features in the imagery and cosmology connected to the Amazonian entheogen ayahuasca: “In many tribes, the shaman becomes a feline during the intoxication, exercising his powers as a cat. Yekwana medicine men mimic the roars of jaguars. Tukano ayahuasca-takers may experience nightmares of jaguar jaws swallowing them or huge snakes approaching and coiling about their bodies.” (Schultes & Hofmann, 1992:122) The domestic cat has an old association with western magic, and in popular consciousness it can appear as an otherworldly trickster/magician, for example Lewis Carrol’s (1950 [1862]) levitating, teleporting, enigmatic ‘Cheshire Cat’ with his dislocated grin, and the miraculous and mystifying ‘Cat in the Hat’ of Dr Seuss (1957). In DMT visions the cats may be benign or auspicious, but they may also be extremely frightening as in the following classic account of intramuscular DMT injection: “And then, there it loomed before me, a devastating horror, a cosmic diamond cat. It filled the sky, it filled all space. There was nowhere to go. It was all that was. There was no place for me in this—its universe. I felt leveled (sic) under the cruel glare of its crystalline brilliance. My mind, my body, my vestige of self-esteem perished in the hard glint of its diamond cells…It moved in rhythmic spasms like some demonic toy; and always there was its voice—a steely, shrill monotony that put an end to hope. There should not be such a voice! It ravaged the nerves and passed its spasms into my head to echo insanely from one dark corridor of my mind to another. Me-e-e-e-yow-owow-ow me-e-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow me-e-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow—the incessant, insatiable staccato went on. It would not have been so bad if it had just been diabolical noise. The chilling thing was that I knew what it was saying! It told me that I was a wretched, pulpy, flaccid thing; a squishy-sqashy worm. I was a thing of soft entrails and slimy fluids and was abhorrent to the calcified God. I opened my eyes and jumped up from my chair screaming: “I will not

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have you! I will not have such a God! What is the antidote to this? Give me the antidote!”” (Masters & Houston, 2000:163) Subject [27] provided me with a superbly detailed transcript of a DMT experience that he had tape-recorded. This was the subject’s first experience with DMT, and, in addition to presenting a more attractive side to cats, it also provides an excellent perspective on the complexities that face a DMT user as they return from the visionary experience and try to formulate a verbal account. The number +12.14 in the following account indicates that 12 minutes and 14 seconds had passed since the subject inhaled his dose of DMT vapour: [ASSISTANT passes pen and paper] SUBJECT: Oh thanks, great…and anyway, this… [SUBJECT draws on paper] +12.14 SUBJECT: Just making it very quickly, you were there, and there was this…[euphoric laughter]…there was this, so that’s what it looked like, in the most basic way, that’s your face, and there was this…and they were like this…um…interlocking red ribbons moving in a circle. The really important thing was what I saw before, and I cannot recall it exactly, but there was something…I could see hearts, like love hearts, and these red ribbons again, these interlocking red ribbons…[heavy sigh]…and it was this guy, he was male, and there were cats, and there were females too, maybe the cats were the females, and there were love hearts, really sounds like a Cure song [laughter], but it was both visual and…um…and it was someone communicating to me, and it was this shaman, this medicine man, but he was really…and he was showing me something, but he was just showing me his own mind, I think, and it was really frightening, I mean the things that were in his mind were like…it was like a hell realm, there was something hellish about it but incredibly seductive, in the sense that there was this feminine thing there, all oranges and reds, all oranges and reds…there was this sort of cat, female cat…um… ASSISTANT: Was it a big cat? SUBJECT: Um… my idea was there were lots of domestic cats, there were lots of domestic cats, and it wasn’t a big cat like a jaguar, and I hadn’t even thought of a jaguar until I said it now, obviously it might have formed some sort of expectation, because I’d read about jaguars…but this was someone communicating to me [inaudible], it was like someone communicating to me in spirit form, which is exactly what shamanic experience is supposed to be…I wish I could remember it…

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The first thing I saw, that was unbelievable, but I just can’t recall what it was…I can see it, I can see the patterns, and it was as if they were coming into my body, they were circulating around the fan and coming into me as well, it was really…the orangeness of it, they were changing from red to orange to yellow, and if you can imagine nausea being expressed visually, it was like nausea, but then there was this consciousness there, which was this female, that appeared like a cat…I saw lots of cats in some way, they were in a darkened room, and within the room there were these red ribbons of light moving in circles and waves, very serpentine…but what I saw then, that was…I can’t say what it was… Subject [27] (2002) Reptiles are also reported with some regularity, especially immaculately black, shiny reptiles who are often bipedal and anthropomorphic. Snakes are frequently reported, as in the case of the previously mentioned informant who experienced her arm becoming a snake, and snakes also figure as elements in a number of images depicting DMT experiences, some of which will be discussed later. Snakes are cosmologically significant in many indigenous Amazonian cosmologies, where they are closely associated with the DMT-containing entheogen ayahuasca. At the risk of grossly simplifying a very complex symbol and numen64, the aspects of the serpent that are most relevant to DMT in the case of these Amazonian systems are the snake’s motion, patterning, and ability to renew its designs through the shedding of skin: these being the metaphoric hallmarks also of all perceptual qualia (Lagrou, 2000). Snakes and ayahuasca vines are intimately related: “…what unites both elements is precisely that design that offers itself on the surface of the snake and awaits in the interior of the vine…” [as visions] (Saéz, 2000:39). Lizards are another life form with ornately patterned skin which they shed periodically. Later, I discuss the painting “Diosa madre tierra” (this being an acronym of ‘DMT’) by Carey Thompson that features a large winged dragon. Visions of dragons, dinosaurs, and crocodiles are by no means limited to DMT visions, and can be found in descriptions of psychedelic and entheogenic visions produced by other agents, such as ibogaine and ayahuasca, both of which, like DMT, comprise derivatives of tryptamine (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). Generally, giant lizards seem connected with impulses and instincts that many humans, and mammals generally, might consider highly antisocial or even psychopathic. As such, they may, at their best, 64

Not the least of the variables effecting snake symbolism is the type of snake, for example, the attributions of Anaconda and Boa-constrictor are diametrically opposed in Tukano symbolism (Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1971). page 116

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contribute to an understanding of our repressed tendencies and neuroses. The following account from a psychoanalytic session in which the client has been given ibogaine demonstrates a clinical application of the dynamic: “…impersonating a huge saurian with crocodile-like skin that she has seen, she berates the monster and screams at the top of her voice: I am horrible, black, gray, hard! I live in this horrible underground cave. I want to be alone. I don’t want life around me. I want to be alone, alone. A queen, powerful in this solitude. I am the queen of the darkness. I aaaam the beeeast! I want to screech, roar, howl, destroy. I want to kill, break, pierce, crush, scratch, smash, shatter, tear, squash. I am implacable! I am implacable!! I am implacable!!! I am implacable with myself.”

(Naranjo, 1973:210-211) Ibogaine, at lower doses, often produces a sense of empowered enthusiasm that enables the user to ‘tackle’ difficult experiences. Ayahuasca and DMT do not, generally speaking, make such concessions to courage. An encounter with chthonian reptiles during a DMT or ayahuasca experience can be terrifying. Michael Harner drank ayahuasca while living with the Untsuri Shuar of the Ecuadorian Andes in the early 1960s. His account of his vision is very detailed and explicit, and consists largely of communications with large dragon like creatures, from which we may perhaps glean some understanding of how illadjusted the mammalian brain can find itself when ancient dragons are aroused: “First they showed me the planet Earth as it was eons ago, before there was any life on it. I saw an ocean, barren land, and a bright blue sky. Then black specks dropped from the sky by the hundreds and landed in front of me on the barren landscape. I could see that the “specks” were actually large, shiny, black creatures with stubby pterodactyl-like wings and huge whale-like bodies…The creatures then showed me how they had created life on the

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planet in order to hide within the multitudinous forms and thus disguise their presence…I began to struggle against returning to the ancient ones, who were beginning to feel increasingly alien and possibly evil…I barely managed to utter one word to the Indians: “Medicine!” I saw them rushing around me to prepare an antidote, and I knew they could not prepare it in time. I needed a guardian who could defeat dragons, and I frantically tried to conjure up a powerful being to protect me against the alien reptilian creatures. One appeared before me; and at that moment the Indians forced my mouth open and poured the antidote into me.” (Harner, 1990:4-5) Harner soon recovered from this traumatic encounter, and subsequently discussed the experience with missionaries who pointed out the similarity of the visionary reptiles to the expelled “dragon” of the Book of Revelation, chapter 12. Harner also discussed the intimidating reptiles with an elderly shaman who explained that this was typical behaviour for the giant bat-like65 creatures. Harner, on ayahuasca, encountered malevolent entities but received a timely rescue. The speed of onset and the rate of DMT visions are much faster than those of ayahuasca. If one encounters visionary hostilities there is little possibility of the psychonaut getting outside assistance to intervene in the visionary experience (for example, by providing calm reassurance, or otherwise improving the subject’s psychological “set”). In contrast to Harner’s account, what follows is a high-dose intravenous infusion of DMT, administered to a volunteer in a clinical setting. The italicised print is that of the volunteer, the narration is that of Rick Strassman: “At 14 minutes, looking shaken but keeping some composure, he started, There were two crocodiles. On my chest…It was awful. It’s the most scared I’ve ever been in my Life. I wanted to ask to hold your hands, but I was pinned so firmly I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t speak. Jesus! His experience was over, so there was little advice we could give about letting go, or trying to get past his reptilian assailants.” (Strassman, 2001:252) The two previous accounts portray reptilian entities in a very poor light. It would be remiss of me not to mention the following account of a positive visionary encounter with an alien reptile, in which, however, the subject [37] had snorted the DMT analogue DPT, rather than smoking or injecting DMT: 65

Harner (1990:7) was unable to identify a Shuar word for “dragon”, so that “giant bat” was the closest phrase Harner could use when discussing these visions with his Shuar colleagues. page 118

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“Onset was rapid, the light seemed to dip into the ultraviolet realm and the square room become a revolving carousel with deep “cracks” in the fabric of time (time was dilated in the cracks). The blood in my veins tasted of liquorice. I became aware of inter-dimensional aliens and became anxious. A friend reassured me saying “This is just like ecstasy…only NASTY!” At this I started to really enjoy it. I communicated with the nearest alien (black, fine, lithe, female, reptilian; using alien hardware on her home world to achieve the contact) we exchanged body awareness, each dancing in the other's flesh. Wow.” Subject [37] (2001) DMT psychonauts also commonly report visions of insects, and as with reptiles, these entities appear to be heterogenous in terms of their conduct and intent. I have also heard reports from people who have taken ayahuasca in Australia (subjects [6], [31], and [40]) who have had terrifying visions of being devoured by small, jewel-like insects with prominent serrated mandibles. Cicada-like chirpings, buzzing, and snipping sounds sometimes accompany these insectoids visions (it should be noted that these experiences took place in the eastern Australian bush where insects orchestrate the aural back-drop of summer evenings, and that ayahuasca increases sensitivity to sound). The insect is an ambiguous and intermediate symbol between traditional western diabolic and angelic forms66. Combining elements of both, the visionary insectoids are an amalgam, a synthesis of the hard, scaly demons (conventionally reptilian in accord with the idea of the devil as dragon or serpent) and the gloriously pigmented, swift and airborne choir of heaven. The antennae recall the horns that are so characteristic of devils. And yet the insect is neither angel nor demon. It is not at all human. There is no pity in those compound eyes; nor is there any malice. Evil and good are purely human sensations. The insect is more like the technology we have created. The arthropod morality, the snipping of its mouth-parts, is like binary code applied to nutritive action. The insect then, is the messenger of sacrifice in a utilitarian age of total moral relativism: an almost mechanical processor of initiatic meat. The mantis, in particular, links the idea of religious devotion (as implied by its “praying” stance) with the idea of sadomasochistic eroticism, or 66

We do, however, admittedly find representations of the wholly demonic in insect guise in medieval religious art, as for example in the Last Judgement fragments in Munich (c.1442), attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, or in Bosch’s St Anthony triptych, and also in Jan Breugel’s Orpheus. But in all these cases where the demons are insectoid, there is also a strongly initiatic theme at work, the trial of judgement; the ordeal of St Anthony; the descent of Orpheus: all of these narratives are of visionary ordeal followed by positive transformation of the visionary. The insects may be demonic, but their function is ultimately psychologically constructive. page 119

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perhaps the eroticism of the prey and the preyed upon that forms the major theme of Bataille’s (1986) Erotism. The female mantis is infamous for decapitating the climaxing male mantis with her serrated forearms, and savouring her lover’s twitching corpse as a delectable post-coital refreshment. This inhuman and amoral treatment of the beloved delineates the mantis as wholly other, a transcendent amalgam of Eros and Thanatos. The human revulsion at the generative and dietary habits of the mantis is captured in a cartoon by Gary Larson, in which a female mantis declines the offer of a tray full of snacks with the words “Oh, good heavens, no, Gladys—not for me…I ate my young just an hour ago.” The mantis is intellectually and morally alien, and yet distinguished by a religious attitude of prayerful contemplation of its victims. It is a holy predator67. The mantis symbolism eloquently expresses Rudolf Otto’s great paradox of numinous experience, that the spiritually intense is simultaneously a seductive fascinans and an awe-engendering tremendum. DMT mantis visions started to be reported in the mid-1990s. The mantis makes its way into a number of visions. Illuminated Adventures (Davis, Power, Frangipanni, & Rae, 1998), a book produced in Mullumbimby, Australia, features the psychedelically inspired poetry and art of a number of local psychonauts and mystics, and perhaps alludes to DMT, as the back cover features a photograph of Acacia obtusifolia: the principal source of DMT in Australia, while the dedications within the book include one to “dear mother tree”, which of course yields the acronym “DMT.” The “Mantis” character narrates much of this text, and numerous illustrations of brightly coloured and ornately patterned mantises and insects adorn the pages: “YES; I am Mantis. Behold the Keys to search you inside and out. I express You. I open the Mantle to extend Your Transcendental Horizons I see You for Your True Self” (Davis et al., 1998:5)

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The centrality of the relationship of prey and predator as a template on which the relationships between human and numen are modelled in theology and ritual is explored in depth in Maurice Bloch’s (1992) definitive study “Prey into Hunter”. page 120

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Figure 7 Mantises from “Illuminated Adventures” by Floyd Davis, Skeeta Power, Mango Frangipanni and Nina Rae (1998).

The Mantis in Illuminated Adventures is a dynamic hierophant-harlequin bestowing love and pouring benedictions from cornucopias into mandalas of psychic wholeness and integration. Here the more angelic aspects of its character are in the ascendant. “Insect God of the Mantoids” (2002) by John W. Allen (available at Erowid: http://www.erowid.org/culture/show_image.php?i=art/artists_a/allen_johnw_beaumantisinsectofthegodmanto ids.jpg) depicts a far more austere and sinister mantis. Here the mantis — seated in a

meditative posture — is a fitting form of the divine as other, a being who exceeds the possibilities of humanness and takes consciousness beyond our accustomed limits, an alien idol and bug-eyed guru. The praying mantis may also have played the role of psychopomp in ancient Egyptian funerary religion: “In the lxxvi th and civ th Chapters of the Book of the Dead an insect called �bit…or Bebait…is mentioned which is said to lead the deceased into the “House of the King,” and to bring him “to see the great gods who are in the Underworld”; this creature is probably to be identified with the praying Mantis (mantis religiosa) about which so many legends are current.” (Budge, 1969 [1904]:378) The mantis is associated in some visions with transcendental revelation, but not necessarily as the hierophant who instructs and guides, but rather as fearsome protector of mysteries, as in the following account of a vision originally beheld in 1975, that combines

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the flying saucer symbol (which Carl Jung equated to the idea of God and the Self archetype) with that of the mantoids68: “She noticed that directly above her was a disc of light and color�a giant tinker-toy assemblage of softly glowing rods of light, with jewel-like connectors emanating every color. “I understood,” she told me, “that the relationships of the places�their lengths, their angles to each other�was infinitely complex and also the embodiment of perfect truth. By seeing it, I was understanding everything…but there were creatures inside the vehicle, mantis-like and made of light, that didn’t want me to know. Bending over their instrument panels, the more I understood, the more they burned me with their ray. I couldn’t stop looking, but I was being vaporized. I felt you pick me up and, as you carried me, I thought, ‘I hope he hurries. I’m becoming a cloud…’” (McKenna, 1993b:220) The mantis symbol had a broad resonance within the psychedelic community and even featured, along with stylised carnivorous plants of the genera Nepenthes and Dionaea, on a beautifully airbrushed flier for a large commercial dance party, “Creation,” held at the “Arena” in Brisbane in 2000. While the carnivorous plants emphasised the predatory aspect of the mantis, the religious quality of the insect was accentuated by splotches of Episcopal purple and a strange chitinous protrusion of the exoskeleton on the insect’s head resembling a Bishop’s mitre or the crown of Osiris69. This confluence of symbolism is not unique to the psychedelic religious imagination, but it is also a theme developed independently of any psychedelic drug by M.C. Escher. In “Dream,” a finely rendered wood engraving from 1935, Escher depicts a surreal scene centred around a larger-than-life praying mantis who stands upon the reposed form of the stone likeness of a dead Bishop carved into the lid of that Bishop’s sarcophagus (Escher & Locher, 1971:65). While an earlier study by Escher of the Bishop’s tomb depicts it 68

Note that this vision was associated was precipitated by Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms and not DMT. However, the principal active agents of these mushrooms are the related tryptamines psilocin and psilocybin, which are very closely related, structurally and phenomenologically, to DMT. 69 The symbol of the Bishop also occurs in one of the DMT trip reports I collected in 2002. The informant [41] was a member of a ceremonial magickal Order. I should emphasise that at the time I spoke with him he was the only member of his group that endorsed the use of DMT as a spiritual practice, although no one expressed any opposition to the practice. He had tried DMT within a ritual context, and described a vision of a Bishop, clad in emerald green. He interpreted this Bishop as a manifestation of the energy represented in the system he practised by the planet Venus � which is to say, that it relates to the idea of Aphrodite Urania, agape, love, fertility, the Empress of the Tarot and so forth, through a complex series of formal attributions or “correspondences”. He later related his vision to others within the order and discovered that in the symbolism of his Order, each ecclesiastical grade was thought to relate to a different planetary influence, and the grade of Bishop was said to relate specifically to Venus. page 122

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among catacombs, the sarcophagus in “Dream” lays beneath a portico opening to a courtyard under a night sky studded with stars. Across the flagstone-covered courtyard stands a structure composed of two intersecting arched vaults that form a crossroads with four entrances. This conjunction of four gates, possibly aligned with the cardinal points, is positioned in the centre of the composition, a position it shares with the fore-portions of the mantis, who turns its head to gaze directly at the viewer. The picture is wholly enigmatic. Elsewhere in Escher’s oeuvre we find peculiar centipede-like creatures, either as a multitude of centipedes winding and unravelling through impossible architecture as in Escher’s (1971:112-113) “House of stairs” series, or as a single centipede coiled into a Moebius strip (recalling the self-devouring Uoroboros serpent). The centipede also occurs in a DMT vision reported to me by an informant [7], who encountered an undulating centipede that was trying to express or “communicate” through its rapid contortions, which were “a kind of sign language.” Equally enigmatic are the next class of entities to be considered: clowns. The comical or clown-like personage is a figure who tumbles through many of the DMT reports. The word ‘harlequin’ was used by a number of DMT users to describe parti-coloured, acrobatic, Joker-like beings very similar to the zany character from 16th Century Italian comedy. Here we have another curious conjunction of meanings: the liminal, wholly other, gender variant70 clown covered with distinctive, brightly variegated, alternating triangular or diamond patterns very similar to the checker-board-like ‘hallucinatory form constants’(Klüver, 1966), or the ‘entoptic phenomena’ of palaeolithic art (Lewis-Williams & Dowson, 1988). It should be noted that this was not Harlequin’s original costume, but represents a late refinement of the original ragged garb (Halliday, 1863). The religious and daemonic origins of Harlequin are suggestive, the name deriving from “…Old French Herliquin, Helliquin, leader of a troop of demon horsemen riding at night, probably from Old English Herla cyning, King Herla, a mythical figure who has been identified with Woden” (Morris, 1975:601). The visionary world of DMT seems riddled with clown characters, as reported here by a medical research volunteer who received an injection of DMT:

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The male character harlequin becomes pregnant in some standard improvisations of La Commedia dell’Arte, delivering triplets, of whom one survives (despite harlequin’s enthusiastic whippings) and learns to read at a rather early age (Beaumont, 1967). page 123

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“They were like clowns or jokers or jesters or imps. There were just so many of them doing their funny little thing” (Strassman, 2001:192) A psychonaut from Brisbane, Australia, reported finding himself in the presence of a clown-like being after smoking DMT: “…am in a kind of box (not a coffin). Floating above me is the strangest being. It appears to be androgynous wearing a long white gown or robe. It has curly blonde hair caught up in a bunch on top of his/her head. The eyes are an intense blue. I get the feeling that he is more male than female so I will henceforth refer to ‘him’. He has a crazy look on his face and starts throwing stars at me! They are flying down on me and landing on either side of me gathering in piles between me and the sides of the shallow box. They are very colourful stars, sort of metallic. He is just throwing stars at me and laughing. He does not feel malevolent, just mischievous. He reminds me of a clown.” Informant [10] (2006) Often in the visions, a comical or child-like aspect will paradoxically offset some serious or transcendental subject matter, as with the reports of “being electrocuted” amidst “skullclowns” (Turner 1994:55), visions of “…the Aeon [as] a child at play with colored balls” (McKenna 1991:36), or the following account of environmentally destructive cartoon soldiers, as featured in a written response from a 34 year old woman on a “spiritual journey,” who sampled DMT in 1996: “Very environmental concerning. Human environment terrorism. Male destructive ego little cartoon character entities, space cadets, furry freaks X with macho soldiers with crude old pump guns, and blowing things up etc. Very colourful enthusiastic fast moving continuous…These little guys were not scary as they were happy and showing off. They did get annoying as would not leave me alone. Showing off their destructiveness…In last stages of experience being quite tired lay in a warm bath. Floated focused on breathing became aware that breathing is a choice. I find this empowering and liberating moment to moment. Very intense very in your face. Definitely for the seeker, not for fun” Subject [42](2002) Another common category of beings encountered by DMT users is the alien, in the contemporary, extraterrestrial, sense of the word. To see ‘little green men’ is of course widely considered a clichéd symptom of mental incompetence, and it is interesting to page 124

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note, as Erich Fromm (1971:121) has, that alienage meant insanity not so very long ago, and that according to Hegel and Marx most people today suffer from alienation to various extents, which is to say, they experience themselves as not themselves (assuredly, each to a different degree), but rather as someone (a false persona) or something (a role or a function) other. So who or what are these visionary DMT aliens? Carl Jung (1959) was of the opinion that Flying Saucers were a psychological phenomenon, independent of any degree of objective reality they might also possess, a position that seems to be supported by the tendency of DMT to induce visions of space crafts and aliens. Some researchers have gone so far as to propose that UFOs and alien abductions, along with Near Death Experiences and most of religion, are caused by unusual but natural electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe (Persinger, 1987, 1989). Rick Strassman (2001) has tentatively postulated a hypothetical over-production of endogenous DMT as a possible explanation for ‘close encounters’. Regardless of the aetiology, UFO contact experiences overlap in certain of their symbolic particulars with ecstatic experiences of a religious nature, so that we might consider them para-religious: “The abduction experience is a condensation of the strange and unfamiliar. As encounters with the Other, UFO abductions are essentially religious. Humanity seems to innately separate the prosaic from the unfamiliar, and the sacred from the profane. Things which do not fit into the definitions of the familiar humanity tends to sacralize. The sacred, the numinous, is that which is “wholly other,” completely beyond the pale of human experience as normally considered. Abductions by aliens certainly falls into that category, and this is perhaps the reason for the tendency of abductees to interpret their experiences within some sort of religious framework.” (Whitmore, 1995:79-80) Rick Strassman, who conducted DEA approved biomedical research administering DMT to human volunteers in the United States between 1990-1995, draws a close comparison between UFO-abduction experiences and the encounter experiences reported by his DMT subjects. Both experiences often begin with a bright light, followed by peculiar physical sensation such as high frequency buzzing and tingling that feels as if it penetrates to the cells or even vibrates the very atoms of the subject’s being. This is followed by paralysis, helplessness, or torpor, occasionally Out-of Body Experiences, mystical or philosophical insights, and confrontation with entities so unexpected or bizarre that a mild to severe state of shock is induced. The entities either instruct or study the subject, sometimes performing medical, psychological, or scientific examinations (dissecting, intruding, page 125

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methodically eliciting emotional responses, or taking samples from the subject’s body), intuitive or telepathic communication is common; often there is some memory loss. Sometimes healing is performed. The range of life forms extends across the field of humanoids, reptiles, insects, sentient energy fields, robots, and so forth. The sense of space odyssey that DMT can sometimes elicit is illustrated by the following account: “There was a space station below me and to my right. There were at least two presences, one on either side of me, guiding me to a platform. I was also aware of many presences inside the space station—automatons, androidlike creatures that looked like a cross between crash dummies and the Empire troops from Star Wars, except that they were living beings, not robots. They seemed to have checkerboard patterns on part of their bodies, especially their upper arms.” (Strassman, 2001:189) Sometimes the UFO abductee or the DMT psychonaut feels a special connection to one of the aliens. Strange technologies and visits to alien worlds are reported in both DMT visions and UFO abductions. Both kinds of experience are often described as hyper-real rather than dream-like or hallucinatory. Both kinds of experiences may leave a powerfully “transformational or spiritual” (Strassman, 2001:219) impression with the subjects, and fear of death is sometimes reported to be greatly reduced, implying perhaps, an unmapped affinity between the alien territories and those of death. Strassman takes the next logical step in hypothesis building and posits that, as there is a known correlation between DMT visions and 5HT 2A receptors, there may also be a similar neurological basis for alien abductions, an explanation that is elegantly simple, and which fits accepted scientific models, but which, unfortunately, is unlikely to cut ice with people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. I suggested the hypothesis to a young man who claimed to have seen a UFO at close proximity, and he became upset that I did not believe that his experience was objectively real. Of course, all experiences are mediated by neurotransmitters, and are thus subjective experiences, and in this the neurosciences amply confirm the tenets of philosophical idealism, on which the methods of phenomenology are premised; but it is important to make the distinction that DMT users are not as likely to insist that their experiences could be corroborated by an objective observer71. 71

There is, however, the possibility of a ‘subjective consensus’. Some DMT subjects do report visionary experiences that are corroborated by other psychonauts. Indeed, in Australia around 1995, one of the terms used for DMT was “Direct Mental Telepathy.” Reports of shared subjectivity are especially common page 126

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The aliens encountered on DMT are not necessarily extraterrestrials, but could perhaps be described as ultradimensionals. Although psychonauts definitely report beings from other worlds and travelling to other planets while under the influence of DMT, entities seem to also come from worlds separated from ours in more esoteric ways, whether by ‘vibration’, ‘frequency’, strange ‘angles’, or other quirks of physics. Some DMT users have rationalised these perceptual changes as quantum differences between the physical properties of DMT as opposed to the more usual receptor ligand serotonin. They experienced an alien Umwelt by virtue of their modified instruments of perception. Some of the aliens are alien in the extreme: as much faerie as alien. These beings are described variously as ‘tykes’, ‘elves’, ‘leprechauns’, and ‘children’. They are usually intensely curious, joyous, frequently shiny, friendly and often appear sweet and innocent. They are reported to play in a rumpus-room world full of toys and outlandish machines. Although often child-like, they change form continuously and seem to bewilder, amaze, and disconcert as a matter of course: “it's completely paradigm shattering. I mean, you know, union with the white light you could handle. (laughter) An invasion of your apartment by jewelled self-dribbling basketballs from hyperspace that are speaking demotic Greek is *not* something that you anticipated and could handle.” (McKenna, 1992b) http://www.deoxy.org/t_weeke1.htm

I conclude this section with an analysis of a complex, multi-figure composition entitled “DMT” by Danny Gomez (see Figure 8 below). The painting incorporates a number of elements that recur in other accounts of DMT experiences, including some highly specific motifs that will be examined in greater detail in the next section. Of particular interest is the range of ways that the eye symbol is treated. In the upper centre of the painting is a large butterfly or dragonfly-like insect — this motif occurs also in another painting “Diosa madre tierra” (2003) by Carey Thompson, which I treat in more detail later. The among groups using the more chemically complex, DMT-containing entheogen ayahuasca (Luna, 1986; Luna & Amaringo, 1991). The sharing of visionary experiences is perhaps the basic mechanism of effective shamanic treatment. It is unclear what rôle is played by ritual cues and shared cultural understandings, and what is due to pharmacology alone. So prevalent are the indigenous Amazonian reports of telepathically shared visions that one of the alkaloids found in the ayahuasca potion was for a long time known as telepathine (Perrot, 1927). Telepathine was subsequently renamed harmine when it was established that the two compounds were identical, and that harmine, having been described earlier had nomenclatural precedence (Schultes & Hofmann, 1980). Harmine, at the levels present in most samples of ayahuasca, is a mild sedative and “…an effective, although modest, promoter of oral activity of DMT” (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997:457). page 127

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dragonfly in Gomez’s painting has eye-like patterns on its wings and its entire face is a single huge eye staring directly at the painter/viewer — this eye is the major focal point in the composition. Around this insect, against a nearly black background72, is a menagerie of beings painted with highly fluid lines, as if they were in the process of various metamorphoses.

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Figure 8 “DMT” (2002) by Danny Gomez .

Dove-like, conjoined birds form the legs of an upright being whose head resembles a skeletal parrot with a claw like mouth and who produces a bubble of some kind from suction caps on the end of its fingers. Elsewhere bulging eyes macabrely spawn fanglined orifices. A dynamic humanoid figure in the foreground shakes its mane of hair and raises its arm emphatically to the sky, or possibly to the dragonfly. This humanoid has, in addition to a regular set of eyes, a large third eye covering most of its forehead. The humanoid’s legs have peculiar organs that look like they might involve hydraulic 72

Very dark or black backgrounds are quite common in representations of DMT visions. They may be merely a convenient artistic convention, or they may allude to the darkness of the unconscious or the depths of the imagination or simply the absence of external light behind the closed eyelids of the DMT smoker. 73 “DMT” (2002) by Danny Gomez73 is reproduced from Erowid: http://www.erowid.org/culture/show_image.php?i=art/artists_g/gomez_danny_dmt.jpg. page 128

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prostheses of some kind: perhaps she/he is a kind of ‘cyborg’ — there is, after all, a certain science-fiction flavour to many DMT experiences. The right leg of the figure stands in a whirling cylinder of energy. Vortices were reported by three of my informants and also occur in one other image. Two large-headed figures with scythe-like arm extensions are also in the revolving cylinder, and appear to have their legs manacled together. Other figures are, for me, too ambiguous to attempt description, except for two faces that are remarkable on a number of accounts. The first of these has a broadly grimacing mouth with many widely spaced rectangular teeth. The eyes are interesting in that there is a second series of eyes immediately above the regular set of two eyes common to most vertebrates. The second face is blue with what looks to me like the top half of a llama foetus projecting from the crown of its head, but otherwise a human face, except that it has two additional series of eye and brow ridges directly above the usual pair: that is there are six eyes in total, forming three parallel series. This is intriguing as a symbol in its own right, but more remarkable in that it is a highly specific image that also occurs in an apparently unrelated image of a vision induced by DMT. We will approach this strange visage more closely in the next section, but firstly a review of the representation of faces in DMT art may be in order.

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Faces and masks.

Figure 9 "Star folk of wood and stream" by Joshua McPherson (2006)

The faces of alien entities or beings from other dimensions are frequently the main subjects of visual representation of DMT experiences, whereas written accounts tend to focus on process or narrative progression. Alex Grey’s painting “ayahuasca visitation” (Grey, Hofmann, Larsen, Kuspit, & Wilber, 2001) is essentially a portrait of the elongated face of a supernatural person whose skin is covered in an ornate pattern of rhomboids, paisley, herringbone, diamond shapes framed in vertical zigzag lines, and oozing oval and tear-shaped droplets similar to garnets cut en cabochon. The lips smile enigmatically. Direct comparison between DMT and ayahuasca is problematic, despite the important contribution of DMT to the effects of ayahuasca. Nonetheless, despite the differences between the two materials there are interesting phenomenological overlaps, and one of these is the many reports of highly decorative “people” seen by those who partake of the respective substances. The ornate patterning of skin has cosmological significance for the

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Cashinahua of north-western Brazil, for whom ritual use of ayahuasca is an important cultural praxis: “In Cashinahua mythology, the cosmic snake Yube has mastered all possible appearances of form, color and design that can be perceived by human eyes. All the phenomena of this world are said to be inscribed in the designs of its skin and can be visualised through the (metaphoric) ingestion of his blood (nawa himi) or his urine (dunuc isun), which are the names of ayahuasca in ritual songs. The eternal renewal or novelty of skin is the eschatological image used by the Cashinahua to visualize eternal life and youth.” (Lagrou, 2000:31) To return from the epidermis to the visage in its entirety: the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas has considered the face as the primary metaphor of the sentient ‘other’. The face is the sign of the other’s otherness and is thus the summation of what is conveyed so powerfully in many accounts of DMT: the radical autonomy of the entities encountered during the DMT trance. The face is the sign of an independent self, of an alien will that impinges on our own experience. Terence McKenna (1991:2) maintained that the shamanic use of psilocybin and DMT provided “effective, dependable, and powerful” access to the “Wholly Other”. The voice of psychological reductionism may come after the fact and assure us that DMT entities are merely objects cast off by the mind: complexes projected by the unconscious or the observing self. But this mentalistic explaining away of the other could equally be applied to everyday experiences that we take for granted and have no interest in explaining away. One could argue idealistically that all qualia are mental projectiles in the presence of a transcendent observing self. However, when dealing with issues of intersubjectivity, I think it is important to at least carry the assumption that although all our impressions may be mental and subjective, they possess objective correlatives in the external world. The question is not the fundamental querying of all facial qualia, but rather questioning why DMT qualia differ from routine qualia, and in this instance, why DMT qualia include faces, and, what is more, faces of inherent meaning: faces that speak.

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Figure 10 “DMT entity” by Roger Essig

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The image “DMT entity” by Roger Essig contains a number of features that recur regularly in the body of western artwork dealing with DMT. The face of an otherworldly being confronts the viewer. The image has a crystalline, irradiated, watery quality. It is brilliantly coloured, and the intensity and array of these colours suggests a fine black opal (of the kind gemmologists call “mackerel sky opal.”) The region of the pineal gland is accentuated and resembles a “third eye.” The eyes are prominent, and resemble the tail feathers of a peacock (we shall encounter the peacock symbol again in this chapter). The throat region is a crossroads of visual energies centred on a Maltese cross configuration. The countenance is somewhat intense, but in this case it seems friendly and possibly amused or even bemused. When subjects emerge from the more intense and introverted initial phase of a DMT experience, often, one of the first things that they see is the actual, this-worldly face of a friend or guide. The face of the guide is often reported by the emergent tripper to emanate an almost Bodhisattva-like benevolence. A number of users have been transfixed by the perceived beauty and kindness of their cohorts during the transitional period between the initial intense dissociative ecstasy and gradated return to baseline. Cohorts may be experienced as avatars of love and compassion who appear 74

DMT entity” by Roger Essig ([emailprotected]) © 2001, used with permission. page 132

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“…so beautiful, so kind and benevolent” (subject [7]). DMT is produced in the pineal gland, which is also the principal site for production of oxytocin, a regulatory hormone known to play a part in orgasm, post-coital bonding, sperm transport, lactation, maternal affection, and which has recently been demonstrated to augment trusting behaviour (as measured in a double-blind study where volunteers were asked to risk financial investments with a trustee for high returns) and affiliation (Kosfeld, Heinrichs, Zak, Fischbacher, & Fehr, 2005). Perhaps these two neurohumors modify one another in the physiological economy just as religious ecstasy and fellow bonding regulate one another in the charismatic economy of the religious collective. The pineal gland is in any case beneath the surface of the exoteric face, only flowering as the ajna chakra on the countenances of deities and exceptional religious virtuosos. In “Illuminated adventures” (Davis et al. 1998) we find many representations of psychedelic faces, often against neutral or void-like backgrounds. In one image (on page 31) an ornately patterned mask-like face is suspended alone amidst the depths of a whirling abyss. The colours are similar to those of coloured electric lights. Neon orange and red spirals, stairwells, serpentine fire-hose-like protrusions and a swirling flower-like diadem form a composite crown on the brow of the carnivalesque face, whose eyes are patterned with roughly triangular contrasting coloured designs. The region of the pineal gland is accentuated with a radial design. Another image, by Roger Essig, shows an eye in a field of complex radial lines, accompanied by the following text: “What one experiences on DMT is often hard to communicate in words, with this picture I have intended to try and show what the opened third eye may appear like with the instantaneous geometric and fractalizing effect that is characteristic of the DMT experience.” (Essig, 2001) http://www.erowid.org/culture/show_image.php?i=art/artists_e/essig_roger_dmteye.jpg

The “third eye” motif recalls the Painting by Danny Gomez, discussed in the last section, which depicted a dragonfly with a single eye between its antennae, surrounded by a multitude of visionary creatures. One of these entities, which I singled out as being of peculiar interest, was a mask-like humanoid face with three rows of eyes, each row with the usual vertebrate allotment of two eyes. A remarkably similar face occurs on the cover of a CD by the electronic music group Shpongle, named for their trance single “Divine

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Moments of Truth” (one of many acronyms used in contemporary western psychedelic cultures to refer to DMT).

Figure 11 "Divine Moments of Truth" album cover by Dusk Neal (2000) This Shponlge track features a heavily distorted, childlike tenor excitedly burbling “DMT, DMT; DMT, DMT…LSD too…I love them all…DMT, DMT…” although the electronic vocal modifications make much of the rest of the monologue difficult to understand. On the album cover, a mask-like human face bursts forward from a wall of dancing flames against a background of darkness. This face also has a total of six eyes arranged in three parallel series. The face or mask is made of a fluid silver or chrome-like metallic substance of extremely high lustre. One might think of quicksilver and its association with the alchemical god Mercurius, but the imagery is complicated on account of the large silver crescent above the being’s brow. The classical attribution would be Diana with her connection to Luna and silver. The face seems more that of a young man than a young woman, or possibly androgenous, even perhaps a male Diana. The six eyes stare from within or behind the silver face/mask. The laughing mouth is open to reveal brilliant

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white light or flame. Tendrils of silvery hair stream out horizontally from the edges of the face/mask. A motley collar hangs around the neck of the face/mask. Perhaps this ambiguity of whether the visage is a face or a mask is the very essence of its symbolism. Is it a face or a façade? Is there really an authentic other here? Or is the other our own mask, a projection of ourselves, not a separate, authentic being? Perhaps these two possibilities exist simultaneously with each other: the face is an authentic face of the other, but beneath a mask of our own creation. Or perhaps it is the other way around: the other is our self, its “otherness” a mask for sameness. One morning I talked with a young man (subject [43]) who had taken ayahuasca the night before. He had been profoundly shaken by his experience. He had very few words. He gestured to me, and to himself and said “Same…Same is my name.” Whatever the case may be, with this image there is the possibility that we may not know, but we are on the very edge of knowing. The mask is almost a frame-animation of unveiling. The parallel rows of eyes suggest the movement of the mask perpetually coming off; continuous revelation. But whose is the identity? There is a precedent for this figure in an engraving from c.1755 entitled Keeper of the Infernal City by Johann Joachim Püschel. The gates of hell are at a crossroads between different spiritual dimensions: between the everyday world and the otherworldly. The “gates of hell” are a similar metaphor to the “doors of perception.” In Püschel’s engraving, a devil stands at the gates of hell. His countenance is of the peculiar multipleeyed kind we have been discussing. The demon sports a short cap, mismatched livery, dragon-like wings, and from within its very long, pointy right ear projects the head of what is probably a bull75. It has two sets of two eyes, arranged (as in the preceding examples from DMT visions), in parallel rows. Perhaps the spirit’s parallel sets of eyes are merely a sign of the spirit’s parallel existence in another world, or perhaps here too a mask is falling away to reveal another identity. But whose identity: Self or Other? From the demon’s mouth come the words “Wer da? “Who’s that?” Who is it? Is someone there? Who?

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It may, of course, also be a bonacon: that dreadful, incontinent bison-like beast most familiar from English heraldry, but mentioned also by Pliny in his Naturalis Historiae (1989). The bonacon, a beast native to Paeonia, would catapult its fiery faeces at the slightest provocation from an aggressor, and lay waste the countryside with its foul and pestilent droppings. The bonacon legend may stem from an exaggerated account of Asiatic bison, however, the mystifying bonacon transcends the categories of truth and falsehood, belonging rather to that “vast and amorphous” field that is the subject of Harry Frankfurt’s (2005) treatise “On Bullshit.” page 135

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Sometimes the other is very difficult to recognise, as in the case of the “cyber-clowns” and “skull-clowns” occasionally reported by users of DMT. In the case of the series of cyber-clowns depicted by artist Dennis Konstantin, the viewer is projected into a face-toface confrontation with the blank stare of an appalling clown-like being with empty, flat, featureless swirls in the place of eyes, or with shadowy or empty sockets. As in the preceding examples, the confrontation raises the spectre of the other’s otherness. In this case the question might be “Is anyone really there or is this other a lifeless mannequin?” Does the other have a soul? Dennis Konstantin has a wonderful talent for communicating the minutiae of DMT visions, reminiscent of the Peruvian artist Pablo Amaringo who has documented his ayahuasca visions with superb skill and insight. One of Dennis Konstantin’s untitled paintings (available from the website: http://www.spiritual phantastic art.htm) depicts a number of common themes and sensations in a remarkably clear and

lucid composite. Near the centre of the painting a figure sits cross-legged. His face has become a vague emptiness as various lines of force escape it to migrate to other regions of the painting. One of the figure’s hands emits a patterned form like a cartoon speechbubble. On the far right is a curious, wonder-filled semi-transparent form (which I take to be the DMT Umwelt or “spiritual body” of the seated figure) reaching out to touch the edge of the painting with his left index finger. Below the figure’s arm is a curved section of alternating black and white tiles like those discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Another figure rises above the seated form, although this figure, with arms upheld has his (possibly her) face concealed by ambiguous veils of energy. From the left of the vanished countenance of the seated figure proceed a series of striated spirals. To the right of the seated figure can be seen a series of eyes amidst intricate designs resembling leaves or feathers. Konstantin’s painting presents us with four kinds of faces: the vanished face; the veiled face; the transparent face of the spiritual body (if this is indeed the proper interpretation) and the face abstracted to a sequence of eyes.

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Figure 12 Untitled image by Dennis Konstantin

Whereas in English the face conveys the idea of confronting another (we face up to our responsibilities, we save face, we were off our faces, we maintain facades et cetera), the French and Latin terms for face convey the idea of vision: the face is that which sees, the visage. The Dutch gezicht conveys the idea of both ‘face’ and ‘that which sees’. While the face is a central metaphor for DMT visions, it is the visage that is the most universal code in DMT art. Faces may have eyes in multiples of two, eyes may be absent in the blank mask of DMT “cyber clowns”, or a single eye may regard us from an alien face. This complex and prevalent symbol has a number of ambivalent features requiring isolated consideration.

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Disembodied eyes “Everything appeared to be glowing and covered with thousands of eyes like sparkling jewels.” Subject [10] (2006) Among the best-known and most technically accomplished connected with the DMT experience is Alex Grey’s painting “Dying.”76 The painting depicts a dying man, reclining on a bed in the classic ‘corpse’ asana, but with head supported by a pillow. The view of the man is from the waste upwards and the perspective is foreshortened. A spiritous vapour arises from his lips and convolutes in the air above the figure’s head, the folds of vapour overlap to form a kind of moire effect. In the background a highly ordered kaleidoscope of open blue eyes radiate like the seeds of a sunflower from a core of brilliant white light. The expression on the face of the dying man is grim, as one would perhaps expect, but tinged possibly with surrender to the inevitable and relief from prolonged suffering. The expression of the corona of eyes that surround the dying man is more difficult to place, and to my mind this is because there is little emotion in these eyes: alertness yes, attention yes, possibly compassion, possibly dispassionate observation. Do the eyes represent pure awareness? And what precisely is the connection to DMT? The connection exists, as this painting has often been used to represent extreme psychedelic states and has featured both on the cover of the special psychedelic issue of the esoteric journal Gnosis, and was also chosen by Dr Rick Strassman (2001) as the cover art for his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule. The implications of this use of Alex Grey’s painting are that it represents, or is broadly seen at some level to represent, DMTinduced ego-death.

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Figure 13 Detail of "Dying" (1990) by Alex Grey.

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During a presentation of some of my research on DMT to a group of practitioners of DMT use this image came up in conversation. One very experienced user of DMT objected to the popular association of this painting with DMT, emphasising that DMT was not a grim thing, but that it was about vibrancy and life, and not some thanatopsis. This deathly interpretation of the ‘psychedelic’ moment was an extremely powerful meme of the 1960s psychedelic movement, given enormous impetus by Timothy Leary’s (1964) psychedelic guide book based on the Bardo Thodol, and arguing that the psychedelic experience parallels the bardos or states of experience encountered by dissociated awareness after the death of the body. The informant’s point is well taken, there is indeed a vitality to DMT experiences, commented on by many users as well as commentators like Sam Keen (1969:185), who maintained that DMT qualified as “…pure Dionysian consciousness”, but in many instances this vitality co-exists with a splendid display of the emblems of death and transformation, so that, as we shall see as we progress through the inventory of recurring DMT icons, it is not just Alex Grey who adopts these morbid symbols when communicating the nature of DMT ecstasy. The fusion of life and death are characteristic of the natural and Dionysian mode of experience, despite the paradoxical mental sensation the combination arouses in the repressed brain. The eye symbol is so intrinsically linked to DMT in Alex Grey’s iconography that elsewhere in his oeuvre we find a rendering of the molecule in which each atom is a bulging, lidless eyeball, the many eyes fused together as per the formal chemical model. The eyes cannot hide behind lids but perhaps they can fold and unfold, as they are each faintly patterned with lotus petals. The eye-studded molecule soars on gleaming wings77, perhaps recalling that angelos meant messenger, perhaps alluding to Eros or Nike, perhaps to Garuda or the Simurg. The angelic interpretation would be most consonant with DMT as a partial mimic of serotonin, one of the necessary messengers of the central nervous system.

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The symbol of the winged eye also occurs on a medal of Leone Battista Alberti bearing the Ciceronian motto QUID TUM, minted by Matteo de’ Pasti, and reproduced as figure 86 in Edgar Wind’s Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. Edgar Wind takes the emblem as a sign of a swift and all-seeing God (deus being represented in the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo (Horus-Apollo) as an eye floating in the sky above a whimsical Egyptian city), so that QUID TUM becomes “what then” (on the Day of Judgement?), “…which St Paul said in I Corinthians xv, 52, will come in ictu oculi, ‘in the twinkling of an eye’.” (Wind, 1980: 233). page 140

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Figure 14 “DMT—The spirit molecule” (2000), acrylic on wood panel by Alex Grey

The eye motif recurs again and again in psychedelic art generally, and in visionary art more generally yet, but is particularly prevalent in depictions of DMT experiences. How are we to interpret this ubiquitous symbol in the context of DMT? The eye signifies many different things and many of these different significations are nonetheless related to one another in a meaningful and coherent web of mutual reference. At the outset I would affirm that the eye is a highly multivalent symbol, yet each of its aspects can be separately articulated to gain a more profound sense of what DMT can be to some of our fellows. The eye is such a paradoxical symbol: both a sign of spiritual perception and a mere piece of meat, an idea well summed up in the poetry of the 19th century English psychedelic pioneer78 and magickian Aleister Crowley:

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Aleister Crowley produced a number of writings on various psychoactive drugs, including monographs about his use of absinthe (1994a), cocaine (1995), and hashish (1994b) and also a booklet about peyote, which has long been missing, and a pamphlet on ether inhalation as a narcotic extension of prana yoga. page 141

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‘Beholding all, with eyes whose flashes flood The veins of their own universe with blood.’ (Crowley, 1971:284) The eye is the interface of awareness and non-awareness. It is a “window to the soul” perhaps, but it is also a doorway to the world and a bi-directional highway of experience. The eye sees or is conscious-of things that before seeing were unconscious and hidden but which may have miraculously existed of themselves without our sight (or maybe not, who can tell). When sight looks out of the eyes it is conscious of the seen, but not of the seer, to the extent that attention is focused externally. The reverse holds when attention is directed to the seer and away from the seen. Subsequently, the eye is associated with Carl Jung’s archetypal Self, as the mediator between opposites, and indeed as the interface between the conscious and unconscious, both within and without. The eye then, partakes of opposing natures, and is vigilant to be conscious of this and therefore ignorant of that. Where attention is directed through the eye’s lens toward some object, it is necessarily withdrawn from some other object. This symbolism of simultaneous vigilance and ignorance inheres in the story of the hundred-eyed giant Argus in Greek mythology. Argus was a faithful associate of Hera (anima to Zeus’s animus) who appointed Argus to be vigilant in guarding a mere cow (Hera seems to have willed that her husband’s deception remain for her a deception, rather than allowing Io to return to her true form). Argus was the guardian of Hera’s selfdeceit, a guardian of the unaware or unconscious. The multi-eyed giant was thus, at one level, a symbol connected with the acute vigilance of unknowing. What colossal forces of attention and vigilance must be deployed in order to remain unaware of the tremendous processes of consciousness laid bare by entheogens, meditation, psychoanalysis and functionally equivalent diversions? A hundred eyes were not enough, and the trickster Hermes cunningly lulled each eye to sleep with more deceit and cut the cowherd’s head with the stroke of a sword. We might consider Alex Grey’s painting “Dying” from the perspective of this myth. The multitude of eyes and their arrangement reminds us of a peacock’s tail-feathers, and indeed, Hera placed the eyes of Argus on the tail of her sacred bird, the peacock. The eyes stare out at the body but their gaze is directed away from whatever lies behind them. What lies beyond is sheer white light

often a metaphor for pure awareness, or that state

of unconditioned awareness of which mind is a content and not the knower. It is page 142

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axiomatic of many systems of philosophy, including Gnosticism and Advaita Vedenta, that the mind has a dual nature that distorts a non-dual condition. The mind is like a prism of tourmaline (to use a metaphor from optics) that splits all beams into an ordinary and an extra-ordinary ray. Pure awareness (taken in many religious philosophies to be a primordial or prevailing form of being) enters (or identifies as) mind, and is separated into two rays: awareness and non-awareness; conscious and unconscious content. The cleavage line between conscious and unconscious is the self (signified by the eye, that is, I = eye) although the force that cleaves is thought, not self-being. The peacock’s plumes occur in other mystical iconography: on Indian altars and in miniatures, as caudo pavonis in Alchemical manuscripts (Jung, 1980 [1968]), and in the wonderful LSD-inspired drawings of Sherena Harriette Francis (2001). In the latter two instances the vision of the peacock presages the perfecting of the visionary process: the transformation of the subject into an exulted state. The eyes are also a crucial point of contact between people. Erik Erikson (1977) has focused on the significance of the eye in early infancy. The infant is born with an unruly and uncoordinated set of sensory apparatuses, and their early experience appears to be one of prolonged chaos. In the Eriksonian model the maternal gaze intersects and fixates the wild visionary romp of the child’s gaze and helps to stabilise the child’s sensorium, a theme later ritualised in the game of peekaboo: “…once infants can nurse with open eyes, they are apt to stare at the mother’s face even as they suck on her breast. Thus vision becomes the leading perceptual as well as emotional modality for the organization of a sensory and sensual space as marked by the infant’s interplay with the primal person. To believe this, we need only to enumerate what vision manages to confirm: simultaneity in time as well as continuity in space, permanence of objects as well as coherence of the perceived field, the foreground figure and the fusion of the background, the motion of some items against the stationary position of others � and all this held together by the desired presence of the providing person. This, I believe, is the model of what is felt to be the “really real” enveloping the mere factual.” (Erikson, 1977:47) The gaze of the (m)other, then, is instrumental to the child’s attainment of perceptual calm, and of those disciplines of consciousness that allow us to build a shared sense of reality and identity. Intimate contact between people is a fundamentally touching sight, and that between mother and child partakes of an almost sacred character; such is its page 143

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powerful affect. In the mother-and-child iconography of the Church there are many powerful examples of the connection that exists between mother and child, but few so compelling as those in which the child and the mother catch one another’s gaze, as in Orazio Gentileschi’s Visione de Santa Francesca Romana (1615-1619), wherein the Saint beholds Mary and Christ ecstatically transfixed by one another, orb-to-orb (reproduced in Zuffi (1998), see also Bissel (1981)). The eye is also the furthest and outermost perception in the hierarchy of senses described by Jakob von Uexküll (1926). We can see even further than we can hear. We touch, smell and lastly taste things only when we are assured by the other senses that the sense object is reasonably safe to approach. The eye as distinct from other sense organs thus suggests remote sensory objects such as the moon and stars. The eye is the sign of untrammelled and far-reaching perception. Vision concerns the periphery of experience. There are other meanings clustered around the eye, central as it is to the expression of the faces’ many moods and emotions. The “evil eye” is thought to have defensive or vengeful powers in many times and places including ancient Egypt, the Middle East, the Mediterranean region, and in Latin America. This more wrathful form of the eye symbol does not, however, seem to be actively at work in the representations of DMT we are presently considering. The eye with which we are primarily concerned seems to be more of a sign of objective awareness or even omniscience, but also of compassion and care. As such it shares in the symbolism of the mystical eye in the triangle associated with Freemasonry, or the eyes in the mystical alchemy of Jakob Boehme, as featured in the illustrations from his Aurora (Boehme, 1656), as for instance in the image where God is represented by seven interlocking planetary rings or bands, each studded with dozens of open disembodied eyes. Similar disembodied eyes symbolise awareness in Buddhism, as for instance, in the case of the eyes of the primordial Adi-Buddha frequently painted on Tibetan and Nepalese Stupas or Chörtens and aligned with the cardinal directions (Snodgrass, 1992). These omniscient Buddha eyes are usually combined with a representation of the ‘third eye’ or ajna chackra and a figure representing monadic unity. Disembodied visionary eyes are often eyes in the sky. There are numerous artistic examples of this in the cannon of psychedelic art, as is evident from a perusal of the images in the appendix of this thesis. The eye or eyes are almost always central to the works and in nearly every case appear in the upper reaches of the compositions. Floating eyes are the focus of works dealing with a wide range of psychedelics in addition to

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DMT. One of the stories associated with the sculpture entitled “Umsquamadic peel” (2002, available from Erowid: http://www.erowid.org/culture/show_image.php?i=art/artists_h/hiabx_umpsquamadicpeel.jpg) provides an existential context for the sign of the eye. The artist,

Hiab-X, was lying in his back yard after ingesting some LSD, when he noticed the thing drift across the sky…he implores his viewing audience to contact him if they have ever seen one themselves. The object is, of course, a most peculiar one, consisting as it does of a plump, white, eccentrically pilular levitating form, polka-dotted with red and purple spots of varying sizes with a fine, serpentine tail inserted Uoroboros-style in the region where one might expect its mouth, given the position of the single, benign, lashless and gazing human-like eye. The Object is technically an Unidentified Flying one. The creature (or possibly creator) is radically “other, ” and supernatural in so far as it represents a discontinuity with known natural laws (anti-gravitational and deviating from known evolutionary trends) and social regularities (I see such things very seldom, and others not at all). The eye, like so many other visionary eyes, is blue. Carl Jung noted the ubiquity of blue eyes in the sky in mystical accounts, dreams, and testimonies of flying saucers. For Jung, this was evidence of its Uranic nature: it is, most assuredly, a blue sky eye. But Jung took it further: it was a blue sky high eye. That is to say, the eye of the most high, or for those who like the possibility of knowing “him” personally, the eye of God. The equivalence of the flying saucer and the eye of God is a theme that occurs in science fiction (one of our more dynamic mythologies) as well as forming the most provocative thesis of Jung’s (1959) “Flying Saucers: A modern myth of things seen in the sky”. The disembodied “eye of God” appears on both the cover of the 1977 edition of Jung’s “Flying Saucers” and also Phillip K.Dick’s (1957) 79 science fiction novel “Eye in the sky”, so that it seems these icons and the ideas have now trickled into popular culture if they were not already a part of the collective unconscious. The Phillip K. Dick story centres around a religious fanatic who becomes God-like through a mysterious alien agency, and proceeds to represent himself to unbelievers in the sign of the all-seeing eye. Here the eye is both omniscient and vengeful, providing an indication of how the “evil eye” and the “mystical all-seeing 79

Phillip K. Dick’s science fiction anticipated the cyberpunk genre with its imaginative explorations of machine-brain interfaces and loss of human identity. Dick’s writing techniques are alleged to have incorporated amphetamine use to the point of sleep deprivation and resulting paranoid psychosis, with language, memory and perception pushed beyond their limits: themes that abound in his stories, especially Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (adapted into the movie Blade Runner), A Scanner Darkly, and We can Remember it for you Wholesale (made into the movie Total Recall): see Sadie Plant’s (1999) Writing on Drugs for more discussion of Phillip K. Dick’s amphetamine-influenced novels. page 145

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eye” may be articulated from the one sign. The two variants existed in the ancient Egyptian luminary deity Horus, whose eye was invoked by Isis as an agent of healing, and who was yet also Heru-Behutet, a wrathful deity in the form of an avenging great winged disk (Budge, 1994 [1912]). The eye on the cover of Phillip K. Dick’s novel resembles both a fish (Ichthys) and a newly risen sun (novus sol) which, as Jung noted “…are allegories of Christ, which like the “eye” stand for God” (Jung, 1959:165). The disembodied eye was also a ubiquitous symbol among various entheogen-using cultures of Central America, with eyes occurring on Aztec cylinder stamps from Mexico City (Encisco, 1947), and carved into the stone walls of Teotihucan where their style and context are strongly suggestive of entheogenic visionary ecstasis (Ott, 1986). Teotihucan (‘City of the Gods’), 30 miles north-east of Mexico City, was the capital of the first major culture of the ‘Classic period’ (300-900 AD), and had more than 100,000 inhabitants at its height (Berrin, 1993; Valades, 1984). One of the many palaces at the TepantitlaTeotihuacan site has a famous interior mural depicting Tlalocan: the paradise of the rain god Tlaloc (Klein, 1980; Miller, 1973). Tlalocan is an Aztec afterlife paradise inhabited by the rain god, and those humans who have died specifically water-related deaths. In the fresco from Tepantitla, the crowned and plumed deity sits in the centre of the composition, with fountains of water gushing from his out-held hands. He sits on an ornamented pedestal above an extended horizon of bands with numerous designs that may be botanical in nature, including what may be leguminous seeds and also magenta starshaped forms that resemble tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) flowers. Below these bands are numerous human souls and enormous butterflies engaged in a range of apparently playful activities. On either side of Tlaloc, ornately garbed priests pour libations to the god. Emerging from behind the deity are two interlocking tree-like vines, which entwine and then spread out into a canopy that dominates the mural. This tree or vine has been identified as Rivea corymbosa (also known as Turbina corymbosa) an entheogen in current use among the Zapotec (among whom it is called badoh shnaash (Fields, 1969)) and the Mazatec Indians of Mexico, and which is thought to be identical with the Aztec entheogen known as ololiuhqui (a Nahuatl word meaning ‘round thing’ on account of the small, round, tan-coloured seeds in which the entheogenic principles are concentrated) (Wasson, 1963). Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who created LSD, investigated the seeds of Rivea corymbosa, after Gordon Wasson witnessed their contemporary use as entheogens among the Mazatec. Hofmann discovered that the seeds contained lysergic

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acid derivatives very closely related to LSD and the ergolines that had hitherto been known only from fungi, especially the ergot fungi Claviceps purpurea and C. paspali (Hofmann, 1964). The undulating vines in the Teotihuacan Tlalocan fresco terminate in funnel-shaped corollas that typify Rivea corymbosa, and the association with an other world is suggestive of an altered state of consciousness80, supporting the identification of the plant as “…a highly stylised vine of Ololiuqui…” (Schultes & Hofmann, 1992:160).

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Figure 15 Detail of fresco from Tepantitla, Mexico .

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The link between entheogens and water is significant, especially so in the case of DMT. When I first encountered DMT use in 1995, I was told by the twenty-something year-old woman who was distributing it that “DMT is a water spirit” and that it should only be used in the presence of water. When people wished to smoke it, she would arrive at their abodes with the necessary equipment and would proceed to administer the entheogen only after the space in which the DMT was to be smoked was furnished with water, usually in a large bowl, but taking into account what ever was on hand. It was her belief that water would favour a more excellent DMT experience, and that dryness was anathema to the spirit creatures associated with the substance. So much for the practice. The theory is derived from the writings of D.M. Turner, who devoted a chapter of “The Essential Psychedelic Guide” to the topic: “DMT ~ Water Spirit: a magical link” (Turner, 1994:85-95), outlining his experiments with DMT in environments of varying humidity, and the visionary leprechaun that told him of the link with the aqueous element. Water has a natural affinity with the sacred, as it is the source of life, with lustral fluids having sexual and procreative correlates in human biology. Water is also a symbol of death, which is frequently depicted in mythologies as the crossing of a river or sea as, for example the rivers Styx and Lethe in classical accounts of the afterlife, and the river that flows through the twilight of the Tuat in Egyptian funerary beliefs and is the counterpart of the Egyptian Nile and the Celestial Nile, as well as numerous enchanted Isles such as Avalon whence King Author was transported, Leuke where the souls of Achilles and certain other Homeric heroes were similarly guided, and Hesiod’s Isles of the Blessed. Water is used also in rites of baptism (which recall the amniotic moistness of birth) and healing, and sacred wells and springs often mark points of cosmological significance in rituals of pilgrimage as diverse as the Hajj with its Well of Zam-Zam, and the Huichol Indian pilgrimage to the peyote fields of Wirikúta stopping along the way at the water holes known as Tatéimatiniéri “Where Our Mothers Dwell” (Fernández, 1996:378). 81 Tepantitla fresco reproduced from Grof and Grof (1980:37). page 147

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Droplets of moisture and disembodied eyes ooze from the flowers born on a vine that rises behind the Aztec rain god Tlaloc. A priest pours a libation in the bottom left corner. Insects scurry along the branches as birds flutter about the flowers and substances stream from the funnel-shaped corollas. Some of the flowers emit droplets of nectar or water; the majority emit multi-coloured parallel streamers, perhaps indicative of eidetic visionary patterns. In any case, these banded banners produce further droplets of liquid, and each dripping tear bears a heavy-lidded disembodied eyeball: a symbol which, as we have seen, is in some contexts a sign of divinity, and in others a sign of ecstatic trance, or at least, a certain phase of ecstatic trance. The link with water or tears (or possibly milk or semen) is a recurring complex that we will find in many examples of entheogenic art, including (perhaps especially) those connected with DMT, as we shall soon see. The Tepantitla mural of Tlalocan synthesises a number of symbols that we have already encountered in connection with DMT visions. The insectoid motifs (bugs and butterflies) and the disembodied eye are explicitly brought together in a representation of a realm of disembodied spirit consciousness. This conjunction of symbols, insect and eye, is perhaps seen at its most eloquent and potent when the visionary composition is most simplified. The turbulent life of painter, performance artist and queer activist David Wojnarowicz exemplified Rimbaud’s ideal of the ecstatic visionary artist (Wojnarowicz, 1999). Wojnarowicz’s photographic ‘ant series’ includes the image of a wide-open eye with a dilated pupil in close-up82. A single ant steps from the eyelid onto the white of the orb, with its pincers oriented toward the contracted iris83. The image is profoundly disturbing: almost a glyph of agitation, representing, as it does, the encounter of that which has a protective chitinous exoskeleton with that which is utterly unprotected, soft, and exceedingly sensitive. The irritation implied is perhaps a metaphor for the agony of sensitivity that goes hand-in-hand with the ecstasy of exquisite delicacy. The examples of Tlalocan and the art of Wojnarowicz, as well as other example to be treated below, illustrate that these various emblems co-occur in disparate cultural traditions, where 82

The combination of eye and insect occurs also in a visionary artwork entitled “The tremendous desire to know,” by Erik Meinhardt (2003) (available at: http://www.erowid.org/culture/art/artists_m/art_meinhardt_erik.shtml). In Meinhardt’s drawing, fires burn in the depths of a single ornate eye, the pupil of which is turned upwards and inwards. Above the eye is an eyebrow, but its form is strongly suggestive of a dislocated hind leg from a grasshopper, suggesting the propulsive force of visionary aspiration, or possibly the irritating (locust-like) nature of distracting sensation. 83 The Wojnarowicz photograph to which I refer is reproduced, along with many other images of eyes, in Rick Strassman’s article “Sitting for Sessions: Dharma and DMT Research” in an issue of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle especially devoted to the curious interface of contemporary western Buddhism and psychedelic exploration (Strassman, 1996). page 148

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ecstatic visions, entheogenic or otherwise, are the most salient connecting principal, so that we may conclude that the disembodied ecstatic eye as a symbol of ecstasy appears to have an archetypal quality. What are we to understand by this strange nexus of sight, motion, liquid, death, creation, suffering, and ecstasy? To explore further, we will need to transgress (in the relative comfort of our minds) the horizons of pleasure and pain, in order that we may gain a detached perspective: that of the isolated eye itself. The eye watches its own dismemberment, perhaps deriving voyeuristic satisfaction. Perhaps the eye merely experiences detachment. The combination of the ocular and the moist recalls the central metaphors in Bataille’s (1979) “Story of the Eye,” a widely acclaimed pornographic novel by a renowned historian and philosopher of transgression. In Bataille’s novel the shape of the eye suggests both ovular and testicular referents: vision is a mystical quality linked to fertile gametes, a creative effulgence that Simone, the amoral (anti)heroine in Bataille’s novel seeks to encompass and assimilate through a series of wet and globular substitutions and metaphors (Barthes, 1979). The eye is variously identified with a hard boiled egg (a female gamete), the testicles of a freshly slaughtered bull (male gametes), and the eyeball of a priest (the creative organ of a celibate entity). The eye is thus symbolically a gamete; its tears are a creative essence. The crying eye, alone in the void, is a powerful image of creation and one found not infrequently in an entheogenic context. We shall examine this generative eye presently, but it should be emphasised that eroticism and ecstasy include and transcend both the metabolic and the catabolic, both Eros and Thanatos. Entheogenic ecstasy is similar to eroticism (especially as conceived by the French literary canon descended from Sade), which Susan Sontag describes as “…something beyond good and evil, beyond love, beyond sanity; as a resource for ordeal and for breaking through the limits of consciousness…” (Sontag, 1979:104). The essence of Sontag’s eroticism is also true of entheogens: they exceed normal consciousness, and to this extent both have an intrinsic transgressive quality that is also the source of their social and symbolic potency. The sadomasochistic metaphor that connects the egg and the eyeball with existential suffering is depicted with horrific clarity in the myth of the egg-man Humpty Dumpty, whom no one could put together again: a broken eye; an ovular Icarus; an empty shell of the man he was. Or perhaps, a hatchling, emergent, newborn, pupated84. When describing

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my research into these symbols, one of my DMT-using informants (subject [31]) related an ayahuasca vision that she experienced as she glided “back” from an extremely intense ayahuasca-induced epiphany of crucifixion and dissection by blue and yellow stinging insectoids85. She found herself lying down, still alive, but a mere “empty shell” of her former self. The visions presented her with two different “readings” of what “an empty shell” might mean: in one vision, the devastation of war discarded the concentric smoking ruins of a city around an empty artillery shell. The waves of a second, alternative reading lapped gently against this carnage. In this second world, the empty shell was that of a conch, with its exquisite pink clockwise-winding spiral washed upon the white sands of an island in a gentle sea. Two forms of emptiness. My informant understood from these visions that each way of thinking about things leads to related associations, which can be pleasant or unpleasant, and that mindfulness in such matters is paramount. The conch (shanka or dung dkar), incidentally, has long been used as a deep-toned ritual trumpet in Vedic and Buddhist ceremonies, with the rarer clockwise-spiralling variety (dakshinamukha) being the most highly prized (Beer, 1999). It is attributed with the power to banish adverse spirits and poisons, and is a major emblem of Vishnu and of Arjuna, and a metaphor for certain anatomical marks of a Buddha which signify religious sovereignty and the trumpet-like proclamation of buddhadharma (ibid). The Queen conch of the eastern tropical seas of the Americas is also the source of a rare jewel: the pink pearl (Landman, Mikkelsen, Bieler, & Bronson, 2001). My informant could not resist a pun: the vision was a message from her “un-conch-ious!” The pearl features in a symbolically complex painting by Martina Hofmann entitled “DMT oracle.” The most prominent feature of the painting is a weeping eye, juxtaposed on a woman’s breast positioned in the foreground of the painting between two snakes, which form a more or less diagonal sweep through the composition. Beneath the uppermost serpent (jaws agape in a hostile gesture) is a concentrically marked red globe from which a green shoot issues, possibly a fruit sending forth a seedling, although the object is ambiguous. The arched radiating glories above the eye suggest the Yoni. A Apollonius, in which the goddess Night lays the silver egg from which the god Phanes (often identified with Eros) emerges to set the rest of creation in order (Rice & Stambaugh, 1979). ‘Phanes’ means ‘revealing’ and is therefore connected to the ideas of light and sight, and therefore to the eyes (the light-detecting organs). Thus, the Orphic cosmogony formulates a symbolic equation between Eros, eggs, and eyes, precisely as Bataille has done. 85 Subject [31] claimed that these insects were virtually identical to those depicted by M.C. Escher and reproduced as image 54 on page 157 of Schattschneider (2004), although she had seen blue and yellow insects and those depicted by Escher have red and yellow carapaces. page 150

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series of eye-like emanations descend through these from the top left-hand corner, but these eye-shaped outlines have lustrous pearls instead of irises.

Figure 16 "DMT oracle" by Martina Hoffmann

The metaphoric relationship that the artist posits between the pearl and the crying eye suggests that the tear or physiological essence of suffering is a precious substance: akin to the nacreous layers secreted by pearl-producing molluscs. The presence of the snakes also presents the possible association of tears, milk, and venom. We will unravel the creative and procreative symbolism of tears more in the paragraphs that follow. The relationship of the tear to the female breast suggests life-sustaining nurture (and/or possibly eroticism) arising from psychological and/or physical pain. A crimson net-like film in the background suggests trapping, serpentine scales, lingerie, the weavings of Tantra, or the jewelled web of Indra: the symbols are difficult to interpret decisively. It is also difficult to determine the extent to which the painting alludes to the emblems of Genesis Chapters 2,3 and 4: woman; serpent; fruit; understanding; knowledge; sexuality; nakedness; suffering; death; generation.

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While the emblems in the painting convey fear and awe, the predominant emotion is one of sadness yoked to knowledge: consciousness of pain. The same feeling is evoked in a drawing of an ayahuasca experience made in 1971 by the Peruvian artist Yando (see Schultes and Hofmann (1992:127) for a reproduction of this image). In this line drawing a long-lashed disembodied eye gazes from a void, its pupil contracted in fear. The eye overflows with tears that become a complex hologram of visionary content: a rich world whose outline resembles a human bust beneath which dangles a stalactite-encrusted cavelike placenta (perhaps an allusion to Plato’s allegory) containing a foetus connected through an umbilical cord, but which also contains a myriad of other figures and forms: a seated female figure; ships; lovers embracing on top of an enormous mushroom; two figures sadistically beating a third; a seated figure slumped across a table; a guitar; a female torso—a composite melange formed of tears, the whole constellation arising from an ancient bornless babe. William Blake articulates related symbols in the poem “Auguries of Innocence”: ‘Every tear from every eye Becomes a babe in eternity;’ (Blake, 1994:74) The eye that weeps in the void is a symbol that also occurs in the fantasy art of Patrick Woodroffe. In his fantasy story “The Second Earth” Woodroffe (1987) recounts a story of a self-existent Pan-like being, lone child of the abyss, who becomes aware of his own existence in the void, and of his complete aloneness. The being’s first conscious experience is one of fear and loneliness at existing in the absence of all else, and its first conscious act is to cry in existential pain. Woodroffe represents this act as a series of eyes in a void, each connected to another by a stream of fluid, each weeping in extreme pathos, and each a different colour of the rainbow spectrum. In Woodroffe’s fantasy cosmology, the crying of the child of the void provides the basis for the manifestation of the first star, or primordial light: the eye creates through tears. This fictional being’s sense of isolation is, I suspect, a familiar phase in the existential uncertainty felt by many moderns since Nietzsche confirmed the death of God (presaged, perhaps, by other disillusionments: the tooth fairy fraud, the revelation that political leaders are usually not motivated by universal altruism, the implausible business with Santa Claus), indeed the death of any overarching meta-narrative beyond the individual will.

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Culture and mythic tradition has failed to provide coherence. The individual has reached an existential impasse and has been forced to fall back on a single frail hope of integrity: its own incomprehensible, quintessentially modern Self. Again we come to a point at which the art of Escher touches on the concerns of the DMT experience. Both are occupied with questioning the existential authenticity of the self, and with the hope that either art or alchemy (for chemistry alone will not own these entheogenic matters) will provide some validation of being, some reflective surface for ontology, rather than a dubious beam that vanishes into shadows of its own making. Perhaps in this we have the essential meaning of the eye: that it is the mirror, as much as the window, of the soul. The visionary eye returns the gaze, and in the gaze is a vista in which the egoic self is an element in a coherent scheme of related but distinct things. The eye is a sphere (and the sphere is a symbol of unity and eternity) as well as a mirror; only a spherical mirror can reveal the place of the self in eternity; the flat mirror slices the universe in half and falsely splits the self from the unseen (unless, of course, no-one hears a tree fall in the forest if you don’t). To gaze upon a crystal ball is to seek one’s context, one’s destiny, in a system where that which is not perceived is nonetheless contiguous: it is to seek a complete worldview. Once again, M.C. Escher seems to have been here before the DMT smokers. His 1935 lithograph Hand with Reflecting Sphere (Escher & Locher, 1971:60) shows the artist’s left hand holding a large glass or crystal globe. The reflection of his fingers and palm stretches about the base of the sphere while the arm recedes to the self-portrait at the centre of the ball’s convex surface. The bookshelves of the artist’s study bend about the curving perimeter of the orb, and Escher himself relatively undistorted stares fixedly at the viewer86. Escher, who elaborated the symbolism of the priestly mantis, and who worked his way independently to the root of geometries of psychedelia, likewise found his way to the heart of their existential concerns and the questions they leave unanswered. Reflective surfaces, echoing sound and self-reflection are brought together vividly in this account from an informant (Subject [44]) who describes how, during DMT inebriation, she found herself in a world in which things were “…brilliant, sharp, super-real to the point of sinister…” and yet, paradoxically “…very old, yellowed at the edges, like old paper…” Subject [44] continues:

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Escher’s lithograph has, in its turn, a much earlier antecedent in the form of the mannerist painter Parmigianino’s Self Portrait in Convex Mirror c. 1524. (Oil on panel. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). page 153

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“A familiar yet rare flare of understanding accompanies the traffic of visions and sensations…I feel thrilled yet scared on this crystalline knife-edge…I am made of a melting liquid, like melted onyx or hematite and I am aware of someone sitting before me, a patient presence watching me. I recognise the presence, it is me, I am watching myself though the me I see is a more vital, healthy and vivid version of me, very calm and still. But the presence is secondary to this surreal cushion in time. The feeling of pressure on my chest and of being in an hourglass in which the sound of my own breathing echoes back at me becomes intolerable, I cannot catch my breath. I somehow wrench myself out of this glossy and weathered space.” This place of comprehensive reflexiveness is near the centre of many of the DMT experiences reported to me, and seems to lie beneath the numerous reports of ‘domed rooms’ and ‘glass domes,’ and the following account of a retracting spherical visor: “We could say "evolve" to a "transdimensional viewpoint" but it would be clunky with accumulated baggage. I'd as soon say "xing to Unity One" to describe the place of 360 degree spherical vision. The Visor, I call it, but that would be private slang. The visor goes back and you see behind and above you, where the sky is infinitely deep and summer blue.” (Hunter & McKenna, 1996) Available at http://www.levity.com/orfeo/index.part1.html That humans would seek a “transdimensional viewpoint” raises a number of questions. What is the urge that drives someone to go “xing to Unity One”? Is this the same principle as that underlying Advaita Vedanta? Do people actually seek oneness, or do they seek the monad in order to know the myriad? Many people who are not of the carefree, naïve-realist, “once born” variety87 and who have explored a little of the extracurricular possibilities of philosophy, have brushed against solipsism (the idea that only the individual ego-perspective exists) in one of its forms, and many have been shaken into ontological uncertainty on this account. The possibility that we may not exist—or equally appalling, the possibility that nothing else but the individual egoconsciousness exists—can be extremely painful for the psyche. There is very little in the way of absolute proof to hold against the solipsistic scenario, and the ontological confrontation is very common (anecdotally) among psychedelic or entheogenic explorers and other serious seekers. Some people operate successfully (if 87

The carefree, “once born,” naïve realist is a psychological type to be contrasted against the existentially confronted “twice-born” individual. The binary distinction was originally proposed by Newman (1852), and adopted and popularised by William James (1977 [1901-1902]:68). page 154

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narcissistically) on the assumption that they and they alone exist, and, while some have come round to embracing this as an empowering (or even omnipotent) position, there is nonetheless a real possibility of emotional isolation and unresolved existential trauma. This, by my diagnosis, is our collective modern affliction; a radical scepticism that prevents us from bonding effectively as a community. Why should we reach out to others when we doubt that they exist? Solipsism is a “false consciousness” par excellence, an insidious poison of the social body that keeps people profoundly alienated from oneanother. We are ideologically poisoned. ‘Is there anyone there?’ we ask. Such is our uncertainty. Even when we collect ourselves and get on with life day-to-day the uncertainty may linger unresolved. This uncertainty is almost a scaffold for modernity, the contours of existentialism (solipsism) and capitalism (alienation) overlap, each the blueprint for the other, with science (agnosticism) as method. Little wonder the eye weeps. If western entheogen use is indicative of a shamanistic way of thinking (entheogens being associated with many forms of shamanism), and if shamanism is (at least to a large extent) about healing, and if, in addition, a great number of westerners are adopting entheogens (and this is indeed the case), then we could expect a psychospiritual illness to be present in equally epidemic proportion. Perhaps western society is experiencing “soul loss”, or maybe a form of spiritual pollution to parallel the polluted state of our western cites. We might surmise from the convergence of symbols of alienation and spiritual loneliness in psychedelic art that the entheogens are used in the hope that they can cure our uncertainty as regards the Other. This is, I believe, the case with DMT. The great reputation of DMT rests on its ability to give rise to encounters with the other than self, even if in psychological terms we interpret this to mean our own other. Even within ourselves we are not alone. This is existentially vital because any Self needs an Other in order to be itself: “For Novalis… …The self depends on the other, as it posits itself through the imagination: “We leave the identical in order to represent it”…The “I” can only imagine its identity as a momentary sign that necessarily expresses nonidentity, it imagines its otherness, “Self through Non-Self”…Creative imagination is the reflection upon the division of the “I”.” (Langbehn, 2005:621) We are not alone. Can this be? This is the key to DMT’s great attraction: that it may heal us of our existential wounds by confronting us with an absolute autonomous will. It is a page 155

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shamanic medicine for a modern form of soul-loss illness: alienation. It is not enough that we experience the external other, the other waits within as well. The self is the interface of parallel differences. A strong DMT trip brings us eyeball-to-eyeball with the Other. Not that it always achieves this powerful meeting of the ways, but rather that this is its implicit promise, its healing potential. With this insight, we can now look to the 1960s and again in the late 1980s with its ecstasy-fuelled “second summer of love” (1987 onwards, really) and understand why both periods produced not only psychedelic resurgences, but also periods of intense religious experimentation (Fuller, 1999; Jenks, 1997; King, 1972; Watson & Beck, 1991). Psychedelics and religions, or entheogens as a form of religion, are responses to the same need for healing, and it is not so much a need for wholeness, as need to feel part of. To borrow a distinction made by Levinas (1999), wellness involves not being a standardised cell in a totality, but rather, living one’s own unique life in, and part of, an infinity.

(Near) death and (nearly) dying Earlier I mentioned that the eye, in the hierarchy of the senses outlined by Uexküll (1926), is the furthest ranging of the senses. The eye relates to the periphery, the horizon, the edge, and for mortals the outer edge is death. Alex Grey’s painting “Dying” has already been discussed in the section on ‘disembodied eyes,’ and it is this image that has come to signify the quintessence of the DMT trip. The twin themes of life and death abound in accounts of DMT experiences, and the art work through which they are represented88. Death and dying are not always easy topics to address, and this is one of the reasons why DMT is likely to remain an entheogen with a unique corona of sacredness:

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Cross-culturally entheogens are often associated with death, suffering and soteriological systems. The closeness of these entheogens to the dead is attested to mythologically. The myths relating the origins of ayahuasca often centre on themes of sexuality, sacrifice and death. For instance, in the mythology of the Desana people of the western Amazon ayahuasca (yajé) was first obtained by their ancestors as a result of their tearing apart the luminous, newly born, incestuously begotten child of the supernatural Yajé woman (Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1975); the idea that ayahuasca arose from the transubstantiation of the flesh of a legendary ancestor is also reported for the Záparo of Eastern Ecuador and is likewise associated with urban shamanism in Peru (Luna & Amaringo, 1991). Indeed, the very word ayahuasca is Quichua for “vine (huasca) of dead people (aya)” or “vine of the soul” (Schultes & Raffauf, 1992) and the terms “dying” and “suffering” are metaphors for the often frightening and nauseating inebriation the potion provokes (Taussig, 1987). page 156

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“…by smoking it we kind of open the doors to other dimensions and it can seem like dying…treat it with respect” (Bentessentials, 1998) http://ann.nrg.com.au/edgecore/ravesraps.html

Rick Strassman has hypothesised that the pineal gland releases active levels of DMT “…when we die, or nearly die…”, and that Near Death Experiences (NDEs) may actually be endogenous DMT trips (Strassman, 2001:221). This has not been categorically established however, and there are a number of rival theories about what endogenous substance or substances are the best candidates (Carr, 1981; Jansen, 1989, 1997). Carr proposes an endorphin, whereas Jansen puts forward a ketamine-like substance. The theories of Jansen and Strassman each have their merits, and in any case, the phenomenological similarities between DMT and ketamine have already been highlighted. The ketamine data is slightly complicated by the fact that some NDEs in clinical contexts are reported to have occurred after the patients were actually given ketamine injections as an anaesthetic: in these cases it is scarcely surprising that their experiences of gnosis, radiance, and dissociation from their bodies resembles ketamine inebriation. Regardless of whether endogenous DMT is responsible for NDEs, many DMT users operate on this assumption, and use the entheogen to try to get on better terms with the whole question of death and dying: a kind of ‘dry run.’ I heard from many DMT users the belief that the ‘spirit world’ that they access through DMT is commensurate with the world beyond death, and for some users of DMT this belief has considerably alleviated their anxiety about death, to the extent that some express sentiments along the lines of one of Rick Strassman’s subjects: “If we all knew what was waiting for us, we’d all kill ourselves. That’s why we stay in this form for so long, to figure that out” (Strassman, 2001:225). For some, DMT provides a world of disembodied bliss in which bodies, words, thoughts, and physics do not restrain experience in the same way; such people see the body as “a five-sensory prison” (subject [45]). For others, loss of the body is a terrible thing — to be stripped of our familiar material, linguistic and sensory pleasures. Although there may be some correlation between DMT and NDEs, it is important to note that in both cases the subject returns, so that the ultimate mysteries of death remain shrouded. While nature furnishes us with certain rudimentary and disturbing truths about animation

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and in-animation, much of what we call death is a deep crust of socio-historical constructs. DMT, like any good psychedelic, brings cultural ‘truths’ under profound scrutiny, so that likewise, our assumptions about death are very likely to come into question when we start ‘dosing up.’ Earlier I mentioned the cosmic snake Yube, who embodies, in Cashinahua cosmology, all combinations of transformations and designs (Lagrou, 2000). This is a way of looking at the world in which the DMT-containing entheogen ayahuasca is deeply implicated. The following western account of DMT smoking, which features a number of commonly recurring DMT motifs, is part of a narrative of death and rebirth with distinctly shamanic and Dionysian elements. In this vision death is treated as one facet or potentiality of a being who, like the serpent Yube, is characterised by unlimited transformation: “The stuff hit me instantaneously. MILLIONS of brilliantly colored little ‘skull clowns’ swarmed me in a most visionary way while emitting crickling, tinging sounds which looked like violet sparks coming out of their mouths. These tiny skull clowns were laughing most musically as I died in the light. Melt down – feels like drowning and being electrocuted at the same time. Some fear is good though, and pretty soon the skull clowns had laughed me through death to a place of jeweled (sic) coiling roots and capillaries, swaying endlessly in gem lit sea… The glowing, ember-like afterimage instantly swirls and shatters into blue and red sizzling domes that pinwheel ecstatically into a Creative, God-Thing with a trillion jeweled (sic) eyes that dissolves into an atomic ocean. This is the multi-eyed God that is my Creator, Master, Destroyer. I am nothing compared to this Thing which has no ego boundaries whatsoever and can turn into anything it damn well wishes, even death itself if it wants to!” (Turner, 1994:55-56) The symbols in the passage all point toward a singular omnipotent thing, so that we may read an equivalence between many of the signs we have already encountered in the preceding sections: skulls, clowns, high frequency sounds, music, dying, multiple eyes, jewelled surfaces, domes, the atomic ocean. Many signs, but all converging on one meaning, and that meaning is not so much ‘death,’ as life and change.

Transformation DMT visions often accentuate transition and metamorphosis. Sometimes these transformations are experienced as powerfully shamanic. Subject [27], referred to earlier in the section on visionary cats, felt that he was fundamentally transfigured by his DMT

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encounter, which, as described in the following transcript, was an encounter with the ferocious dual forces of death and life: ASSISTANT: You said it was too beautiful to describe. SUBJECT: Yeah, it still is…I wish I could remember it…I can remember it… ASSISTANT: You said it was a dying shaman… SUBJECT: I saw him on the wall, that’s right! Yes! thank you ASSISTANT [laughter], I saw him on the wall, and he was lying in a swamp of blood, it was like blood, and he had skulls all around, it was like he was lying on this morass of bodies in a swamp, there was blood instead of water, and the skulls were all around his head like a halo, and they were covered with vomit, which was coming out of their eyes…[sigh]…and that’s it, that was all there was…[heavy breathing]…but it was the most benevolent, you know, and benevolent because of the power…it’s as if, you know, I could do this, but I don’t. It’s like absolute benevolence…absolute benevolence…[inaudible]…It was orange and red, and there were circulating patterns, asymmetrical circulating patterns…It was this consciousness there as well…[heavy breathing]… In a sense the power was the ability to contain the horror, there was such an intense horror at the heart, but it wasn’t really the heart, because somehow there was consciousness there as well, and it was like “Here consciousness is standing, in the midst of this, and it’s not…it’s triumphant, the consciousness is there, but it’s not succumbing to this horror, it’s not afraid, it’s just standing there and watching, it’s the master of this…and it can show other people the same horror, and through mastering it, it becomes incredibly powerful…it becomes…it has this amazing power…but it chooses not to manifest this power…it chooses…it’s this incredible benevolence, it’s as if somehow benevolence was synonymous with consciousness…it’s…that’s really it… [sigh] DMT smoking is an experiment in submitting to complete change. When the stresses of the environment become intolerable for particular functions the consciousness transforms. This is similar to the phase change in material substances. DMT has this chemical transformation (solid-liquid-vapour) running parallel to the consciousness transformation. The painting “Diosa madre tierra” (2003) by Carey Thompson (see Figure 17 below) conveys a sense of transformation through a highly complex symbolism. My initial response to the imagery was that it seemed somehow too “pretty” to match the DMT experiences that I had collected to that point. The soft pastel colours and harmonious arrangements of form seemed sugary. The dragon at the zenith of the mandala reminded me a little of a child’s toy. But as I examined the detail of the image I realised how

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misleading my first impression had been. The image conveyed some very powerful ideas. To begin with, the composition of the mandala is a quarternity, in the centre of which is a crucified woman whose form is the subject of extremely powerful opposing forces. Above the crucified form is the handsome dragon referred to above. The horizontal axis of the cross is covered in a uniform pattern resembling four-petalled flowers. The central figure holds the moon in her right hand and the sun in her left: this is a variant of the coniunctio or coincidentia oppositorum symbol found in Western alchemy (Jung, 1970 [1963]). Her feet rest on the Earth. The downward vortex beneath her feet recalls the conch shell of the ayahuasca vision discussed earlier in this chapter, especially as it spirals down towards the ocean. The ocean, incidentally, occurs also in a DMT narrative that was related to me. In that account (a male in his mid-twenties trying DMT for the first time) the subject reported being sucked into a cylindrical wave at the beginning of the experience and then finding himself high above an “ocean” of finely detailed undulating geometric forms, towards which he slowly drifted before opening his eyes and becoming reaccustomed to his usual surroundings.

Figure 17 “Diosa madre tierra” (2003) by Carey Thompson.

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In the painting “Diosa Madre Tierra”89 there is a second diagonal cross formed by multiple energy fields that resemble butterfly or dragonfly wings and which extend from the transfixed woman in the centre, suggesting, perhaps, transcendence through sacrifice. Concentric rings of rainbow light surround the central four-fold intersection, perhaps emanating from the central figure. Eye-like forms adorn the upper wings, although these may be intended to represent eyes like those on peacock plumage. This would be interesting, in that both the peacock and the rainbow are attributes of the goddess Hera, the former through the story of Argus and the latter on account of the Hera’s rainbowtransiting messenger Iris (a goddess also associated with the eye). Other eye-like forms flank the central figure’s face, causing a composite image similar to an owl’s face, or possibly an eagle’s face. Additional eyes glare forebodingly from the dragon’s breast. Above these is a most remarkable symbol. Overlaying the neck of the dragon is a faintly discernable figure that appears to be that of Scorpio, its legs intersecting the wings of the crucified figure, its mandibles spread wide as if to feast on the sacrifice. The scorpion is a remarkable symbol in this connection, because in some western traditions it was believed to be the only animal capable of killing itself when its environment became intolerable, as for example, if it were surrounded by flames. It is thus a symbol of self-transformation, just as in this image the scorpion presides over the self-transformation of the central figure, who, we might reasonably assume, has taken DMT in order to submit to change. Although DMT can be used for transformation, it does not follow automatically that change will occur. The subject must will change and actively work towards it if there are to be enduring consequences: “…the distinction between “the religious experience” and “the religious life,” and how the former may be only one ingredient in the latter, may be recalled…Perhaps a parallel discrimination might be noted between “the psychological insight” and “psychological growth”; the former may contribute to the later, but does not itself guarantee it. The religious life, like psychological growth, would seem to demand personal effort and discipline within an interpersonal and Sociocultural matrix in addition to the experiential discovery of unique psychological events, however awesome and impressive

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“Diosa madre tierra” (2003) by Carey Thompson is available from Erowid: http://www.erowid.org/culture/show_image.php?i=art/artists_t/thompson_carey_diosamadretierra.jpg. page 161

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they may be. Nonetheless, mystical and archetypal experiences often do seem to constitute a powerful fulcrum for personal growth, and to give an initial impetus towards further self-actualization.” (Richards, 1978:125) The above quotation concerns the responses of experimental subjects given DPT (n,ndipropyltryptamine), a very near analogue of DMT. The subjects all reported intense numinous experiences, but the researcher felt that not all DPT subjects were able to anchor their experiences in equally meaningful ways. The eye motif provides further tropes that help us to distinguish between those who engender lasting changes through their visions, and those who remain ‘voyeurs’ of the sacred. The eye is not always an impartial, transcendent observer in the visions. I have already discussed the active sexual or reproductive allegory of the eye, but the underlying logic of the symbol is not altogether obvious. How is it that the eye regenerates and transforms? Perhaps the most satisfactory approach would be to extend Freud’s model of phases of development (anal, oral and genital) to include an “optic phase”. In some respects, the seer is the pre-eminent mode of the (post)modern person, and the (post)modern person, especially in the west, is also an avid consumer of experiences. Seeing has become inseparable from experiencing for the majority of modern westerners, attuned as we are to television, cinema, and the Internet, as well as the daily spectacle of the shopping mall. Because our seeing is so often welded to our consuming, vision has become the first stage of nutrition and assimilation. We see the commercial, then we buy the product/experience and transform it into ourselves. Seeing leads to nutritive regeneration. Earlier in this thesis I suggested that the psychonaut identity is a kind of flâneur. Indeed, there is sense in which some psychonauts are more like detached and aimless pedestrians rather than shamans with a professional agenda. The psychoflâneur is sometimes an idle tourist in the spirit world, wandering about, looking at this and that, self-transforming as they assimilate the colour and richness of new experiences. The metaphor of the modern westerner as a “stroller of city streets” was developed by Charles Baudelaire to describe the kind of immersed objectivity of modern consciousness, a kind of participant observation of self and environs. Another Baudelairian phrase to describe the flâneur is the “botanist of the sidewalk”. We might characterise the psychonautic flâneur as a kind ethno-botanist of the sidewalks of the mind. So the flâneur wanders about more-or-less aimlessly looking at this and that, taking their time, maybe visiting an art gallery or a new

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bookstore, not really needing any assistance from the store-keepers: “just looking”. But the flâneur is actually ingesting through sight, digesting the images, growing. This seems to be what goes on in ‘other worlds,’ in those Umwelten accessed through arcana such as DMT. The vision is modified to include beautiful, awesome, and unusual images, and the psyche grows in beautiful, awesome, and unusual ways. The flâneur is video-centric: our tourism, our voyeurism and our pursuit of spiritual visions are modifications of our scopophilia. Scopophilia is enjoyable in part because it leads to growth: it is a kind of psychological nutrition, so we have this idea of the eye as an organ of nutrition and assimilation. How is that to be reconciled with our analysis of the visionary eye as a sexual organ? The processes of sexuality and assimilation are not necessarily strangers as is explicated in Sigmund Freud’s theory of anal, oral and genital phases of development. In each of these stages of growth, asserts Freud, the subject experiences the concentration of erotic attention in one or another of these organs (Freud, 2000 [1905]). In each stage the subject desires to assimilate experience through one of these openings, but this fixation shifts at different stages of development with the genital phase being considered mature and healthy, at least in terms of Viennese society in the time of Freud. Hence we have a wellattested model in which organs of erotic enjoyment are also nutritive or assimilative90. In Freud’s model the infant is originally polymorphic-perverse, which is to say that prior to the fixation of eroticism in various organs, the child experiences a total sensuality diffused into all areas of the body (ibid). Sensuality in this ‘original’ mode is distributed through the entire nuero-sensory sphere. This polymorphic-perverse mode of senseexperience is perhaps the closest to the operating mode experienced during entheogenic inebriation, as Sam Keen has suggested: “LSD, DMT, and mescaline….” may give rise to a “…Dionysian consciousness…based upon a body ego of the polymorphously perverse body” in which the self is reduced to a focused awareness of sensations and the world becomes “…totally eroticised…” (Keen, 1969:182). This polymorphic-perverse sensuality may partly represent a psychological regression to these features early childhood. This is supported by the general symbolism of the fons et origio and oceanicconsciousness that are a leitmotif of both entheogenic ecstasy and mysticism in the major world religions. Although elements of polymorphic sensuality are indeed present in DMT 90

It should be noted that “Freud minimized the important role of eyes in both Oedipus Rex and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman,” declaring them generally to be substitutes for the genital organs. Hence he asserts the self-blinding of Oedipus to be “a mitigated form of the punishment of castration�the only punishment that was adequate for him by the lex talionis.”” (Benson, 1994:111). page 163

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visions, the visionary component is particularly prominent both in terms of the primarily visual mode in which DMT ecstasy is assimilated, and in terms of the eye symbol itself. This represents a further ‘fixation’ of attention from a polymorphic awareness to the visual system, and this may indicate a novel developmental phase in which Eros regresses from the socially-sanctioned genital production, back to the polymorphic phase via entheogenic ecstasis, and then recondenses in the visual field, to provide a fittingly optical mode of creativity and nutritive assimilation for the post-modern scopophiliac personality. DMT thus becomes a way of equipping the flâneur with a suitable orientation, in which case, through the agency of DMT and functionally equivalent techniques, we may be able to extend Freud’s series of developmental fixations to include an optical phase. In this scenario the psyche experiences craving or hunger for some unknown visual quality. In this case the flâneur/psychonaut is not so different from the shaman: both seek a remedy for some unsatisfactoriness. Shamans are consulted in a professional capacity for a wide range of unsatisfactory conditions, from physical illness, to soul-loss and misfortune, but are also responsible for ritual cycles (for example the pilgrimages and religious dances of the Huichol (Myerhoff, 1974)), and ecological dynamics (such as the spiritual regulation of game animals by Desana shamans (Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1971)). By contrast our psychoflâneur is far less culturally instituted, less cognizant of any rôle, and much more bewildered. Yet each works as best they may with the technologies and cultural scaffolding at hand: the results depend a great deal on innate ability, temperament, and personal history. In the previous chapter I suggested that our affliction is profound alienation from the Other, and that the moment of encountering the Other contained within it the possibility of psychic wholeness. DMT can provide a brief and intense encounter in which that which appears to be alien and that which appears to be the ego perspective face one another and attempt integration, but this requires a commitment to engage with the visions. While the psychoflâneur obtains scopophilic pleasure from visions without producing viable issue of any kind, there is another mode of vision that is perhaps more like celibacy. In this alternative mode the visionary remains an aloof observer, neither producing nor consuming what occurs but simply abiding and observing what happens.

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Regardless of the maelstroms into which the psyche is propelled, despite the colossal forces of the initial DMT rush, it is not only possible to be ‘still,’ but there is a point that is inherently still. There are a number of churches in South America that hold services essentially structured around the effects of drinking ayahuasca, of which DMT is a major constituent. Neophytes to the ayahuasca potion usually experience intense visions, nausea and vomiting. But after many experiences with the potion the veteran ayahuasca drinker can merely sit comfortably and observe the ‘light’ and their responses to the light. In addition to the shamanic transformation, the western psyche is engaged in a tradition of existential questing related to the intentionality that runs from the subject to the object and back again to the subject. This quest is partly related to the problem of knowing whether objects actually exist apart from the mind, and this fundamental epistemological scepticism has its social implications: are we alone in the universe? Can we truly know another? The death of God has left this existential wound in all of us, and we each have our ways of ignoring it. We may regard DMT qualia, or even all qualia, as objectifications escaping a transcendent ego. This pure observing self, aloof, immaterial, is also present even at the dizzying heights of DMT ecstasy. This mysterious watcher observes the glass pipe with its reality shattering crystals, it observes the breath and the taste of plastic, the crescendo of attentional awareness that seems almost to rip the Umwelt from the bioprocess. This ego sees the pain and fear, the wonder, the amazement, colours, movements, others. This absolute ‘I’ DMT paints like a chiaroscuro: the more qualia mutate the more we wonder “what is this that does not change”. DMT can be an extremely keen tool this way: a nanomachine molecule to show the ‘eye’ to the ‘I’. Occupational therapy for wounded healers. “Only in the encounter with the radically other can the subject be catapulted out of its complacency.” (Caldwell, 1997:41)

Corroborating ethnographic evidence In late June of 2005 I was presented with an opportunity to receive direct feedback on my ideas about why westerners use DMT from the people who might best be expected to know. I was invited to speak at the 2005 Victorian Ethnobotany Conference, Entheogenesis, where a broad cross-section of people with a keen interest in entheogens gathered over four days amidst sub-zero temperatures in a camp high in the Grampians Mountain range. The feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive, so that I felt page 165

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strongly encouraged to proceed with my analysis. Until that point I had been unsure that my own perspective on DMT was compatible with the broad range of experiences I had heard and read from my informants. I was not at all sure how well I could represent the entheogen-using community, who I do not want to misrepresent to the broader society, and especially those in the broader society who may be fearful of altered states of consciousness or hostile to any form of perceived deviance. The psychedelic community has been politically and legally persecuted for the last forty-five years, and the mechanisms are in place for much greater persecution in the future unless a deeper level of tolerance and respect is forthcoming. In any case, at a public presentation of my ideas about DMT visions, the audience, which consisted of about a hundred people, warmed to the topic and some solid discussion was generated around the idea that the recurring symbols in the DMT visions, such as faces, eyes and mantises represented aspects of the encounter of the Self with the Other. Many people came up to me during the next two days to provide generally positive feedback and some very good additional leads. Comments were mostly along the lines of “this is stuff that I’ve been thinking for some time but haven’t been able to put into words.” It was extremely useful to know how my ideas about DMT visions ‘sat’ with this sample of psychonauts and other interested parties. From an ethnographic perspective I feel fortunate that I was able to re-present my findings to a representative portion of the entheogenic community, face-to-face and eyeball-to-eyeball. That weekend conference was also a remarkable coming together of souls, a compassionate acknowledgement of ego, and a reminder to all of us to be clear in our intent; to be aware of how each thought is a seed of other thoughts. Confirmation also came in the form of the art presented at the conference. The event had been advertised as both a conference and a dance party, however, on the night that the party was supposed to happen, the generator, which had been brought into the forest for the occasion, “blew up,” something to do with an amp, some said. The risk of damage to the main sound system precluded a highly energetic party, although a smaller system playing mellower beats ran for some time, to the accompaniment of “cheesy” ‘70s alleged investigative journalism documentaries about flying saucers and disappearing Professors (the repeated catch-cry of the program was “Brain Drain!”), as well as a film adaptation of Hunter S. Thomson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The atmosphere around the fires was that of a psychedelic “jamboree” (the completely unfounded rumour of the

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arrival of a horde of boy scouts ran riot for many hours). The site had been beautifully set up for the party that never happened, with exquisite animation, installation and black light work provided by a small team of artists from Adelaide, and many of the motifs that I admired were consistent with those of DMT art that I had previously analysed. Perhaps the best way to discuss this psychedelic art, which has a distinctly situationist aspect to it, is to shift into participant observation mode and report my experience as reconstructed from my field diary. What follows is a recounting of participant observation in a culture strongly influenced by DMT, but at no stage did I observe any actual use of DMT.

A Forest of Symbols On the night on which the Entheogenesis party was scheduled I had already presented my talk on DMT and prepared to relax and enter into a loving, communal state of consciousness91, together with two dear friends. Our trio ventured out into the night, to the area behind the cabins of our camp; a zone we had not previously ventured into. The air about us was soon alive with rainbows and reflections from prisms, mirror balls and video projectors. We explored the multimedia matrix before us. At the back of the cabins was a gallery of dark luminescence (reproduced in the figure on the last page of this thesis), portraying the wondrous people of the entheogenic imagination. Black light work is a popular and beautiful medium for rendering psychedelic visions, and for viewing them while in the embrace of pharmaceutical or herbal charis. An electrical current passes through a glass vacuum tube containing a little mercury vapour, causing the mercury to emit photons in the ultraviolet range. The less physiologically harmful UV rays pass through a blue/violet filter and bathe the environment in invisible or “black” light. This light is absorbed by phosphor containing pigments and then re-radiated at wavelengths within our visible spectrum. Unfortunately the medium does not translate well to film viewed in ordinary light and must be experienced first hand for full impact. Five large canvases, each about five metres high and about two wide, hung against the wall. UV lights bathed the glow-in-the-dark pigments in profound fluorescences of all the prismatic colours. Here, in the paintings, spirits of DMT (as confirmed through subsequent conversations with the artist) danced against the velvet blackness of space or unconsciousness, amidst formations like storms of comets, while others held magic mushrooms. One scene showed two DMT people: sweet, elfin, lavender and blue with

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great black eyes full of loving emotion. Their fingers reached out and entwined like tentacles as they moved as one on a film of their own watery reflection, profoundly loving one another, the supple antennae on their brows connecting tenderly in silent communion. It is as if the aloneness of the self encounters itself in the humanising of the alien, in the self-likeness of the other.

Figure 18 Black light painting of DMT spirits, Courtesy of the “Adelaide crew,” Entheogenesis 2005.

We arrived at a roaring bonfire surrounded by forty or so of our fellows. The atmosphere around the fire was one of affection, empathy, introspection and identification. And art appreciation. After some time around the fire talking with people and keeping warm, our little group decided to investigate the proposed dance site. We crossed the frozen field, leaving imprints in ice crystals gorged on moonlight. Moving into the woods we discovered small groups of people in animated conversations, and, just above our head level, a great tree wore a mask reminiscent of wooden carvings from Dahomey, Nigerian and Yoruba sacred art, but strangely fringed and textured. The fringe or mantle about the face was made from long white plumes of pampas grass. I felt compelled to reach up and

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touch the “skin” of the velvety face, which to my surprise was actually made of soft beige carpet. The next wonder to arrest our gaze was a giant gilled mushroom, coated with a strange jelly-like substance emitting phosphorous pinks, blues, oranges and greens. Again I felt the need to touch the material to determine its composition, in this case suspended drippings of translucent silicone gel. The mushroom was clearly a mushroom, and despite its similar tryptamine chemistry, it was a sign of itself, and not of DMT. The conference took place in the cold short days of late June. The fruiting of the local psilocybin mushrooms (Psilocybe subaeruginosa Cleland) had been delayed by late rains, but they were now emerging in great gregarious swathes in secret locations known to few, sending caramel caps through the grassy understorey of the moist Eucalypt forests on thin, indigoblotched silvery stems, and releasing their minute spores from dappled grey gills. And they were being collected by those who love the mushrooms and their teachings92. I was later able to talk to one of the artists about their work and was told how DMT had indeed been a major influence on their art, and especially on some of the black light paintings. The painter later introduced me to his brother, who showed me some of his work, which related strongly to DMT and ayahuasca. He used a projector to relay animation from a lap-top onto the curved wall of a large concrete water tank. Coloured molecular models of DMT spun through kaleidoscopic space, the colours changing, the space unfolding. The DMT molecules would regularly involute into radiant spheres, which would then shimmer and expand. The shivering, shimmering effect was distinctly reminiscent of certain optical effects of ayahuasca, as the artist affirmed. The DMT molecules were replicated in four linearly symmetrical fields, producing an instance of the fourfold mandala that Carl Jung averred to be a representation of the self archetype and a hallmark of individuation, and reminding me of other quaternities I had observed in DMT art. Although the revolving DMT molecules were arrayed as four intersecting fields, the centre was occupied by a fifth molecule of DMT at that crux where, in Jungian thought, the self mediates between opposites. Periodically the four fields would contract into the form of the Maltese cross, then collapse into points, expand into spheres, and shimmer before resuming their quadrants.

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The following night, after another extremely busy and satisfying day, I returned to the fireplace to warm myself. Nearby, on the ground, was a peculiar arrangement of small, pale intricate objects against a dark cloth laid upon the earth. In the flickering light of the bon-fire I initially took this to be an avante garde installation made of mass-produced biscuits of different kinds, but my astonishment spiralled wider as I realised that here lay astonishing magistri carved in bone: tiny horned masks, caduceuses, yoni and lingam, rood and anhk, lotuses, faces, and many, many sacred eyes. Eye and protruding tongue; Cyclops scarab; eye and green god of the woods; eye in triangle, each unique and each intricately carved in bone by a master of the scrimshaw’s art. I spoke to the scrimshander93 for a while and heard about his art, the materials that he used and something of their meaning and origins. The presence of these bone carvings at a conference devoted to knowledge of entheogens gives some indication of the resonance these powerful symbols have with the entheogenic imagination. That inscribing and extracting meaning from the mortal remains of man and beast can lead to similar meditations and the selection of identical symbols, suggests that the trajectory of DMT ecstasy does indeed intersect that of death, despite the possibility that one or both lead on to regeneration. I’d like to step back again from the ethnographic frame now and make clear why I have chosen to conclude my discussion of DMT visions with an ethnographic account. I have found participant observation to be especially valuable as an adjunct to phenomenology, partly because it requires its own epoché, or bracketing of the researchers assumptions, but especially because, as a participant observer, one is frequently placed in a position of having to let down one’s barriers and try to experience as others experience, in a word, one is compelled to cultivate empathy, and empathy along with epoché, are two of the most necessary, if not sufficient, ingredients of good phenomenology. The motifs I have identified in western DMT art are also incorporated into the culture and lived experience of the people I have studied, and these motifs do seem to represent deeper, ongoing ontological concerns, and particularly those identified in the preceding sections of this chapter, namely, intersubjectivity, identity, relating, life and death.

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These are perennial concerns of religion and philosophy, DMT serves to make them more existentially present and to alter the perspective of the subject in such a way that new insights are possible. Vision without insight falls short of its full promise. The ways in which these possible insights are expressed and the uses to which they might be put are of broader sociocultural import then the visions themselves, however interesting the latter may be. Visions, of themselves, might be seen as a sudden ‘flowering’ of consciousness. The final chapter of this thesis offers some speculations on what kind of ‘fruit’ DMT visions may ultimately bear.

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Chapter 7 Conclusions The previous chapter explored the terrain of the phenomenology of DMT and possible meanings of the more recurrent themes and motifs of DMT visions. This phenomenological investigation was the central goal of this thesis, but in surveying the phenomenological terrain certain sociological “outcroppings” were observed, which are beyond the immediate scope of this thesis, but nonetheless recommend themselves to further investigation. In this final chapter these sociological loose-ends are discussed, and this discussion moves us on an expanding arc from psychological considerations outward towards broader social considerations, and back, via religious symbolism, into the body and the subjective universe of the psyche. DMT experiences are often intense and personal experiences, and consequently it is not altogether obvious how they relate to the broader social world. This apparent separation from consensus reality is part of what makes DMT experiences sociologically interesting. DMT experiences are polarised from sociality in remarkable ways. Many intense religious experiences are tightly framed by ritual. Ritual is, in a sense, the link between private and public religious experience. But where is the ritual framework in the case of western DMT use? On the basis of my ethnographic study of DMT use, both in Australia and also through the World Wide Web, it would appear that western DMT use is generally marked by a relative lack of ritual elaboration. DMT manufacture, distribution, and consumption resembles ritual in so far as it comprises a series of formulaic actions intended to produce numinous feeling. But these procedures do not serve to tightly bracket the DMT experience itself. The actual moments before smoking DMT and those directly following are, from the reports of most of my informants, surprisingly free of ritual action. The frequent presence of a “sitter” or guide to help the DMT smoker with the act of smoking and to offer empathetic support can be interpreted as ritual behaviour, but it can also be interpreted more prosaically as technical assistance and companionship. My ethnographic sample is admittedly limited; it may well eventuate that there are groups or individuals who smoke DMT in a more explicitly ritualised context. Nonetheless, most of my informants described their use of DMT as entheogenic, or spiritual, or religious. The relative absence of ritual elaboration does not necessarily preclude an activity from the realms of spirituality, religion or magic. Religion may be completely independent of ritual. When a formula for religious ecstasy is effective further page 172

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elaboration is unnecessary. In the case of DMT, the minimal formula of smoking the DMT in a peaceful, introspective setting is often sufficient to achieve an ecstasy and a lived sense of transcendence that is adequate to the needs and expectations of practitioners. Of all the DMT psychonauts I met, the most experienced, and a person with an almost evangelical enthusiasm for sharing DMT with others, squarely rejected deliberate ceremonialisation of the DMT experience. Yet, this same individual has apparently conducted hundreds of group DMT sessions and appears to have obtained results that they found satisfactory, and which were allegedly most satisfactory to the great majority of people participating in his group sessions. Of course, if we choose to define ritual as the stereotyped or formulaic actions of the bodies of participants in a group dedicated to achieving a sense of ecstasy, insight or transcendence, then we would conclude that twenty people sitting in a circle and smoking DMT fits the bill rather neatly. A religious collective is not necessarily a ritual collective, but we are so accustomed to considering actions as ritual simply because they are shared by a group that it is not easy to think of other ways to formulate collective action. Perhaps the distinction we should make is between ritual and technique. Technique can be distinguished as that which is necessary and sufficient in (empiric or naturalistic terms) to achieve an effect. While a ritualist might argue that a ritual of banishing is sufficient and necessary to remove invisible entities, there is no empiric and naturalistic basis for such a claim that would satisfy a reasonably sceptical observer, and hence, by the above definition, banishing behaviour would be ritual and not technique. If however, the same ritualist had drunk a copious amount of alcohol prior to their ritual then this would be technique because there is a reasonable empiric basis for maintaining that the alcohol lowered their threshold of impressionability. Obviously there is a very fine line here between ritual and technique. Ritual starts where technique ends and the dividing line is that of reasonable scepticism which must remain as unfixed as the legal concept of “common sense”. Another important distinction to make between technique and ritual is that, unlike technique, ritual gestures and words are tropes that substitute or stand for something else, just as the bread and wine stand for the body and blood of Christ, or as a statue of an Indian deity stands for that deity. It is important to note here that for the hardcore believer, the bread and wine is the body and blood of the redeemer, not a mere substitution; and the statue of the deity, if made with the correct prayers and invocations, is literally the deity, not a mere representation. The way that the sign

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becomes the thing signified is by virtue of an intermediate symbol, and symbolic activity mediated by the body is ritual. This mechanism, by which that which is an apparent trope (the unbeliever might say a transparent trope) becomes a reality to the believer, is the essence that most clearly distinguishes ritual from technique. Such a distinction is not without precedent in religious studies but merely recapitulates for ritual points (1), (4) and (5) of Clifford Geertz’s famous functional definition of religion: “(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” (Geertz, 1973:90) In practice it can be difficult to distinguish when an action is technique rather than having symbolic or representational aspects. Symbolic connotations may be explicit or nonexplicit. In some instances the substitutional or symbolic nature of action is readily apparent while in others it is not. In the case of DMT let us assume for the sake of argument that the effect a practitioner wishes to achieve is experiential transcendence of the material world. By all accounts, it would be necessary and sufficient to smoke the DMT in a safe place free of distraction. Ritual would be a stylised or formulaic extension of figurative words, thoughts or gestures beyond what is strictly necessary to achieve a desired effect. In our example the DMT user might place a bowl of water in the centre of their chosen space to acknowledge the wishes of water elementals whose belief they entertain. If the DMT user has a preferred spiritual practice apart from the use of entheogens then they may wish to incorporate these practices. Actions that exceed prosaic technique I would consider ritual sensu stricta. In a broader sense, the techniques of ecstasy can, at a stretch, be viewed as rituals in their own right, and can be analysed as ritual actions, in so far as any action whatsoever might be viewed as ritual if it carries symbolic meaning or is thought to produce numinous affect. The act of sitting quietly and smoking DMT can be conceived of in terms of ritual. Indeed the mere act of sitting quietly might be considered ritual if it is routinely performed in the same fashion as is the case with the various forms of meditation and Yogic asanas. Crossculturally, the act of smoking a psychoactive substance is a pivotal action in diverse rituals, with notable examples including Native American Sacred Pipe rituals (Black Elk & Brown, 1971), the use of tobacco smoking in South American shamanism for curing or

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spirit communication (Wilbert, 1987), and the religious smoking of Cannabis in the worship of Indian deities including Kama and Vishnu, and especially in Shaivite and Shaktéya cults (Green, 2002). That pharmacological techniques can be seen as rituals hinges on the fact that the desired outcomes of these technical operations (such as communitas, shamanic healing, communion with deity et cetera) contain symbolic referents of a “uniquely realistic” nature (Geertz, 1973:91). Some of my informants have reported including ritual in combination with DMT smoking, but overt ritual activity is the exception rather than the rule. The basic method of entering DMT ecstasy is for the psychonaut to sit calmly and quietly, focussing the mind and clearing it of distractions, and taking a few moments to breathe deeply before vaporising and inhaling the DMT with the aid of a lighter and a glass pipe. After inhaling the DMT vapour deeply and holding it in the lungs for as long as possible, the psychonaut either tries for a second inhalation of DMT vapour or, especially after a few seconds when the DMT begins to make its effects felt, the psychonaut may lay the pipe down or pass it to an assistant, before closing the eyes and reclining for several minutes as the DMT ‘tryp’ begins. DMT smoking requires concentration, especially attention to breathing, to lighting a flame and regulating that flame very carefully in order to melt the DMT in a pipe (it melts and vaporises very slowly and smoking it correctly requires far more knack than Cannabis or tobacco), inhaling the vapour, resisting the desire to gag despite the acrid, plastic-like taste of the vapour, and reclining on a soft surface as the visions commence. Apart from the technical difficulty of vaporising and inhaling DMT, and the aura of concentration and apprehension, there is little to distinguish the act from smoking Cannabis or tobacco. Indeed, the gestures and preliminary actions are almost identical: only the sacrament (DMT) and the intended outcomes are different. For example, some people smoke tobacco to increase their concentration on manual tasks. DMT could not easily be used this way because it tends to dissociate consciousness from the body. Cannabis is often taken for quiet relaxation; DMT routinely produces astonishment and abrupt ruptures of consciousness that are far from relaxing. The bodily symbolism is also identical: the sacrament is inhaled through the organs of free-flowing breath. Respiration is re-spiritualisation. ‘Respire’ and ‘spirit’ have the same relationship that the ‘Numa’ and ‘pneuma’ have: spirit and breath are psychological or symbolic homologs. Smoking pertains as much to fire as it does to air, and is thus not simply a means of inspiration, but

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also a means of inspired enthusiasm, which word is in alignment with the entheos that entheogens are held to induce. If we focus on the period immediately preceding and following DMT use we may not find a great deal of ritual behaviour (of course many forms of religion are minimal in terms of overt ritualism, this does not in any way detract from their religious authenticity). Singing, chanting, prayer or drumming is sometimes used as a prelude to DMT smoking. Retreat to a special locale such as a rainforest, seashore, or rock-pool is fairly common (ten of my informants reported having explored natural settings). Lights may be dimmed and candles lit. The alleged link between DMT and water has been emphasised in some preliminary ritual. One subject (subject [10]), a practitioner of ceremonial magick, told me that he considered that DMT would combine well with techniques of deity invocation (provided that the deity being invoked was harmonious with DMT). The same subject told me that he had very good experiences taking DMT in a candle-lit room full of vermilion-coloured tapestries and oriental carpets94. While such ritual does occur, it seems surprisingly infrequent. Complex stereotyped patterning of behaviour surrounds a great many substances. Generally speaking, DMT visions seem to be far more independent from ritual than those of, for example, alcohol, ecstasy, LSD or ayahuasca (despite the presence of DMT ayahuasca). The explanation for this may be that DMT is also far more dissociative than alcohol, ecstasy, LSD or ayahuasca. Whereas the latter two entheogens allow the psychonaut to retain a portion of awareness in a socially shared world (while another portion of awareness experiences otherworldly visions), DMT can radically isolate ego awareness from the usual socially shared world, so that there is no point in co-ordinating ritual behaviour with other social participants. DMT can direct attention almost exclusively to alternative Umwelten, so that the presence of ritual cues in ‘consensus reality’ becomes irrelevant (at least with very large doses). Later in this chapter I highlight the work of the anthropologist Mary Douglas concerning what she calls ‘cults of dissociation’ and their relation to society as mediated by the body as a focus of social control. In short, it may be that substance use is ritualised to the extent that it is socialised, and the body is the nexus of sociality. 94

This subject [10] reported seeing the walls of the room hung with tapestries become covered with watchful visionary eyes. The same subject also reported a vision of a clown. As discussed in the previous Chapter, both eyes and clowns are ‘typical’ DMT motifs. Subject [10] was very surprised to hear that both eyes and clowns were commonly reported by DMT users and affirmed that he had no prior ‘priming’ to expect to see these motifs. page 176

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DMT dematerialises the social body, whereas substances that are ritualised accentuate the body (in pleasurable or unpleasant ways). Another important factor in this minimising of overt ritual is that ritual tends to augment or supplement the sensed potency of numinous experience and, generally, most psychonauts attest that DMT visions are potent enough, perhaps overwhelmingly so. There is an additional aspect to DMT ritualism that merits consideration, and that is that DMT users frequently describe visionary rituals, often of an initiatory nature. For example, one DMT user describes being taken by masked and robed ceremonial officers into temples or halls and having organs replaced (this is a typical feature of shamanic initiation described by Eliade (1964)); others are shown mysteries, ranging from Terence McKenna’s (1992) ‘tykes’ with their magical toys, through to nightmarish or erotic visions. Perhaps DMT has little conspicuous ritual associated with it because the visions themselves can possess an intrinsically ritual-like quality.

Ritual, social patterning and ecstasy A little appreciated aspect of set and setting is that they may be thought of as operating independently from any exogenous psychoactive substance. Techniques of ritual predispose Homo religiosa to numinous sensations and conceptions. For example, the displaying of relics such as the Turin shroud during ceremonies of ostentions may be sufficient to cause religious ecstasy among participants. Such rituals provide ‘set’ and ‘setting’ while the individual’s endogenous neurochemistry provides the ‘drugs’ and the ‘dose’ (see Zinberg (1984)). Set and setting are greatly augmented by the presence of an extraneous drug, but can be sufficient by themselves to cause psychosomatic changes. Tendencies and expectations form the basis of the well-known placebo effect, where a drug-like effect is produced when an inert substance is administered to a subject who believes that the substance is a genuine drug. The importance of suggestion and make believe in producing pharmacological effects are delightfully illustrated in the story of Peter Pan: “‘And now Peter,’ Wendy said…‘I am going to give you your medicine before you go.’ She loved to give them medicine, and undoubtedly gave them too much. Of course it was only water, but it was out of a calabash, and she always shook the calabash and counted the drops, which gave it a certain medicinal quality.” (Barrie, 1992 [1911]:153)

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The power of set and setting is also a factor in the Pavlovian-like response of a subject who experiences craving in the presence of cues associated with drugs such as chocolate or morphine. Placebo response and physiological arousal in the presence of drug-cues is not unlike sexual arousal in the presence of a fetish, or religious arousal in the presence of a relic. All result from a psychic displacement within the subject caused by a kratophany or manifestation of psycho-spiritual power. Indeed, we note that that all these forces— drugs, erotica, religion— produce emotions or sensations capable of displacing psychic categories, especially socially instilled contents such as rational, ethical and dialectical ideation. When categories are so disturbed, a metaphor results (for example relic for saint, apparel for Eros, bicarbonate of soda for crack cocaine, water for wine). Enduring tropes like these are traces by which the passage of the mysterium tremendum may be tracked. Although these metaphors may have their genesis in nature or the effervescent social/sacred (‘human nature’), as they age they furnish culture with forms, models, traditions, institutions and may at history’s whim, become mere empty gestures. The ‘power’ of entheogens is impersonal and intangible and is perceived primarily through its creative and disruptive manifestations. It is an effect without a cause, and although it may be stored in an object or a person, it may also abruptly withdraw. In an important sense the disruptive power itself is not really stored in an object such as a fetish or medicine. Rather, a dislodged portion of the subject’s psyche has been relocated to the object and it is this relocation that has become associated with the kratophany. The power drawn from a sacred substance is the power of repossession of these displaced psychic contents. There is however the possibility of increased vitality when psychic material is recollected, especially if the disruption has somehow purified or exalted the regained part of the self. The psychological force in entheogens could be compared to the Polynesian concept of mana (Firth, 1940), especially so because as a general tool in religious studies and anthropology the term has come to be closely associated with the notion of taboo. Our society is by no means the only one to place taboos on selected95 psychotropic substances. Entheogens are almost universally hedged about with religious or legal sanctions serving both to insulate the power from profane contamination and to protect the profane realm 95

The western embrace of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine-containing plants and medical pharmaceuticals are rare but culture-moulding instances of the pharmacological equivalent of Max Weber’s notion of the routinisation of charisma or Victor Turner’s institutionalisation of liminality. Even these legal drugs are subject to various rituals and social sanctions. page 178

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from the danger and disruption of the sacred . The psychological force of a fetish is not to be confused with the material that houses it. In a “power-object” a distinction can always be made between the power and the object. The psychological charge of DMT is a separate thing to the substance itself. Nonetheless, the object or substance must by its nature metaphorically express some essential aspect of the psychological force it represents. A comparison with spiritualised substances from different religions can deepen our understanding of these psychological mechanisms. For example, in Indian religion ghee is the substance of choice to stand for the psychological or spiritual force we call love. Ghee is a purification of the milk with which the mother cow nourishes its calf96. Ghee is therefore seen as the essence of maternal love, and by extension, love in general. John Stratton Hawley (1979) has argued persuasively that ghee, as the refined essence of milk, represents love, as typified by the bond between mother and child. Thus, when the child Krishna steals ghee, as enacted perennially at Brindavan in the play mTkhan corU lUlT, he is stealing love. Here the trope of ghee is used to convey a number of implications about the nature of love, such as the notion that it is permissible, indeed desirable, to steal love, because it is love’s nature not to be withheld or owned. Ghee is a perfect symbol for love, which, although it may be stored temporarily in jars, may also be spread wantonly over everything and make a big mess. Ghee is thus an ideal medium to illustrate the contrasting approaches to love in the play: cathexis (storage in jars) and cartharsis (the ghee orgy at the climax of the mTkhan corU lUlT). The play also conveys the idea that the child Krishna was not really stealing it anyway, because it was in his own home. Krishna already owned the ghee because it was an emanation of himself, a part of his household. The comforting, integrating dairy metaphors found in Indian religion seem a natural extension of a monistic world-view where all things are related aspects of a transcendent unity. Krishna is not separate from the ghee, but rather, the ghee is a symbol and manifestation of his nature.

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In Indian religions divine love often has a dairy flavour (in contrast to the “wine” of devotion in the Christian tradition). From the inception of the cosmological order in the epic churning of the milk ocean, through to the peculiar role of clarified butter — ghee � in sacrificial and devotional practices, milk derivatives are closely associated with the gods. The archetypal entheogen of the Vedic tradition, the deity/drug Soma, is generally said to have issued from the churning of the primeval milk ocean by the devas and asuras. A parallel tradition maintains that the soma plant originally grew in the mountains where the celestial spirits known as Gandharvas dwelt and was presented to the devas by the goddess Vach, “the melodious cow who milked forth sustenance and water”(Ions, 1967:20). page 179

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In the Christian tradition wine represents the sacrificial and redemptive blood of Christ, as well as connoting Christ’s miraculous transformation of water into wine, a motif also found in the Old Testament wherein Moses transubstantiates the waters of the Nile into a river of blood. Alcohol, as a potent intoxicant, has long been recognised as a vehicle of religious ecstasy (the central role of wine in the cults of Dionysus being the paramount example of this (Otto, 1965)) and this attribute of ecstasy and toxicity is a natural sign for an incarnate and suffering Son of God97. The question of transubstantiation has fascinated Christian theologians, some of whom have considered the transformation of wine into the blood of Christ as literal, while others have interpreted it figuratively: “…Aquinas thinks that there is more than one way of being in a place, so that it might well turn out that something both is and is not in a place provided that the manner in which it is in the place is not the manner in which it is not in the place. The normal way of being in a place, Aquinas thinks, is by filling it up, and in that sense Christ is not present on the altar. Another way of being present somewhere is by being there sacramentally, and in that sense Christ is present on the altar.” (Cassidy, 1994:199) Metaphysics and sacramentality aside, the psychological presence of Christ is conveyed by sacramental wine and the love of Krishna takes form in ghee; but what psychological quality does DMT represent? I would argue that the unique pharmacological properties of DMT predispose it as a symbol of the emancipation of consciousness from society98. Such a radical freedom of consciousness is only to be sought in a substance that causes profound dissociation from the body, for reasons I will discuss in the following section.

97

Cognitive freedom, psychedelics, salvation and the blood of Christ are potentially resonant and interrelated meanings, as evidenced by the lyrics of the psychedelic funk band Parliament: “My mind is mine, and mine my mind will always stay. No way of life, no man, no law’s gonna take it away. I’ve seen the light, I’ve tasted the blood of his soul. And it tells me to come on home, and it tells me to carry on…” (from “Fantasy is Reality” track 14 on Parliament’s 1971 album Osmium). DPT is taken as the Eucharist in the New York-based Church, The Temple of the True Inner Light (Ott, 1996b); psychedelics were often compared to the sacraments of Christianity during the 1960s (King, 1972; Kleps, 1971); and entheogens fulfil explicitly sacramental roles in a number of syncretic churches, including the Santo Daime (De Alverga, 1999), the UDV (Grob, 1999); and the Native American Church (Laycock, 1989). 98 A similar emancipatory claim has been made for LSD and for psychedelics in general, this notion being central to Timothy Leary’s platform (Leary, 1963, 1977; Leary & Potter, 2000). Whereas LSD and most psychedelics can exert a depersonalising effect� where the subject does not identify with their body or ego� high doses of DMT regularly produce a sense of complete dissociation from the body and the usual bodily senses. This dramatic effect is one probable ground for the frequently made claim that DMT is “even stronger” or “more intense” than LSD. page 180

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Abandoning the body DMT frequently causes a sense of dissociation from the physical body and immersion in a radically different Umwelt. This is a very peculiar and dramatic effect of the entheogen, and one that is symbolically and sociologically significant. In this section I wish to examine the social meanings of the act of temporarily abandoning of the body. Is it simply escape from an oppressive consensus reality on the part of the socially deprived? The ethnographic evidence that I found hardly supports such a view. My informants were generally bright, motivated, socially competent people with good networks and very good access to resources. The very fact that most of my visual data was collected on-line is itself compelling evidence that many DMT users have ready access to the gears of our increasingly technocratic society. The anthropologist Mary Douglas has devoted a great deal of attention to dissociative behaviour and the various explanations put forward to account for the phenomenon. While criticising a lecture by Ioan Lewis (1966) on spirit possession, Mary Douglas says “For lack of a hypothesis about why these people should incline towards cults of bodily dissociation, the argument insidiously slides towards deprivation as the explanation and means of recognizing peripheral possession cults” (Douglas, 1973:117). Douglas’s use of the word “peripheral” suggests an alternative reading. Individuals can be (socially) peripheral without suffering deprivation from social resources and networks. Peripheral here means the capacity to move outside of the societies classification systems, or what Douglas calls grid. Grid as an analytical category contrasts with Douglas’s notion of group (ibid). Generally, in societies where individualism is strong group is weak, and where group is strong social obligations are seen as more important than individual desires. The individual body is a strategic centre through which the individual is controlled by society, or through which the individual impresses their will on society. In either case, the socially conditioned body is a political fulcrum subject to regulation and control, and the site of both desire and frustration. The pessimistic view of the body is expressed in many religious systems; from the Cynics to the Christians, from the Vedas to Jain and Buddhist philosophies, the body has been portrayed as a prison from which the soul desires escape. Mary Douglas has emphasised that bodily control is social control of the person through the body � the aspect of the person that is vulnerable by being spatially present in society (Douglas, 1973). One way of expressing dissidence or autonomy is the

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deregulation of the body, and the wild or unkempt body has ever been the symbol of radical social revolution (ibid). One form of the religious impulse is very close to the impulse to freedom and autonomy so that we often find wildness and unkemptness routinised in religious behaviour, be it the orgies of Dionysus, spirit-possession cults, the ash-covered Sadhus, or John the Baptist and the other Prophets wilder than the very wilderness they haunt. Asceticism, trance-possession, and inebriation are all means of shifting consciousness beyond the socially conditioned body/ego into transpersonal modes. Full dissociation from the body represents a very radical social shift. The concept of ‘dissociation’ used in this thesis is consistent with the medical concept ‘dissociative anaesthesia’: a characteristic of some anaesthetics drugs, especially ketamine, PCP and pharmacologically similar substances. The mind is said to dissociate from the body (this is the patient’s subjective experience and has no bearing on the contested Cartesian body/mind divide). A phenomenologically similar state of much shorter duration can be induced with short-acting tryptamines (especially DMT) and by salvinorin a. These materials do not produce identical effects, but each, in its own way, cuts off bodily sensation while maintaining consciousness and providing perceptions that are not related to the ordinary Umwelt in any obvious way. Provided the dose has not been excessive, subjects retain many memories and impressions of their experience after the have ‘re-associated’ with their bodies, although much of the content remains inexpressible and difficult to integrate with the baseline Umwelt. A difficulty emerges when this idea of dissociation is transposed to the field of religious anthropology where dissociation has a slightly different connotation. My analysis of DMT and its relation to ritual is indebted to Mary Douglas’s work on body symbolism and agrees largely with her schematics, however, Douglas uses the expression “cults of dissociation” to encompasses spirit-mediumship and trance possession, both of which exhibit significant differences to the pharmacological notion of dissociation outlined above (Douglas, 1973). It is important to distinguish these different modes of consciousness, as trance possession forms a uniform category distinct from bodily dissociation caused by DMT or ketamine. The trance characteristic of spirit possession in many African religions and syncretisms like Candomblé and Vodou has elements of dissociation, but overall the condition is dissimilar to that produced by ketamine and DMT. When, during ceremony, a person becomes possessed by a Loa (the spirit personages associated with Vodou) they usually undergo a complete behavioural change,

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taking on the well-known characteristics of a particular Loa, such as the ravishingly lovely Erzulie, or the ravenous Ghede (Deren, 1953; Kristos, 1976). Not only does the personality appear to change utterly during possession, but also, in the aftermath of the possession, the person usually has no memory of their activities while possessed (ibid). The DMT smoker, on the other hand, retains their personality and memory during trance: they are dissociated from ordinary perception of the physical environment and from their ordinary bodily responses. Further, the body of the possessed person in Vodou and other so-called ‘dissociative cults’ retains its motor reflexes and moves with near super-human agility while the Loa uses the body to interact socially with the membership of the congregation. In contrast, the DMT user’s body remains immobile and socially isolated for about a quarter of an hour or until the trance diminishes and the subject feels reincorporated. What DMT use shares in common with the kinds of cults that Douglas describes as ‘dissociative’ is that the body is deliberately abandoned, in the case of possession it is offered up to a possessing spirit, while with DMT the body is abandoned while the mind voyages. The obvious comparison to make is not between DMT and trance possession (or mediumship for that matter), but between DMT and shamanic trance, and, as discussed earlier, Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and Out-of Body Experiences (OBEs). This is not to loose sight of the fact that these categories are ideal types: that actual trance possession can have elements of mediumship; that OBEs can accompany shamanic trance, and that DMT can sometimes produce the features of spirit possession, NDEs, or mediumship. These are complex, chimerical phenomena. Nonetheless, Douglas’s remarks about the abandonment of the body as a hallmark of social marginality are of great interest in our assessment of the motives of DMT western use. Leaving aside the issue of whether traditional shamans are cognitively ‘marginal’ to their respective societies despite the social centrality of their roles, users of prohibited substances in our society probably are marginal, partly because of the prohibitive laws and partly because they are prepared to bend the laws, because they seek to access existential knowledge beyond the society’s legally-defined margins. In a sense we have already examined beyond the margins in the previous chapter on phenomenology. The margins themselves invite our closer inspection. Mary Douglas (1973) describes the texture of social space in terms of group (the degree to which the desires of an individual in a given society is subsumed to what was once

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called the ‘greater good’) and grid (the classification system/s of a given society). These twin factors determine the extent to which members are constrained by the society they indwell. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (2003) have also analysed the cognitive and material constraints on individuals in society, although their analysis has focussed on the institutionalised sequences that channel individual life energies and resources into stereotyped social patterns. These institutional sequences they call molar lines � these seem to me reminiscent of Weber’s traditional authority: things are done a certain way because they always have been. Attempts to break the mould are called (in the jargon of Deleuze and Guattari) lines of flight. Lines of flight correspond loosely to Weber’s charismatic authority. Innovations in institutional or molar systems that attempt to curtail lines of flight are generally conservative and legalistic (recalling Weber’s rational or legal authority) and are called by Deleuze and Guattari molecular lines (Deleuze & Guattari, 2003). Mary Douglas argues that bodily deregulation and dissociation are means of transcending the social constraints of group and grid. Deleuze and Guattari argue that lines of flight are the means of evading the social constraints of molar and molecular lines. In the model proposed by Deleuze and Guattari we have an interesting development in that the object of lines of flight is the creation of a condition they call the Body without Organs (BwO) which is life without organisation (Deleuze & Guattari, 2003). Society organises through what Mary Douglas calls grid and through what Deleuze and Guattari call molar and molecular lines. To provide some idea of how these models relate to a religion, and especially to soteriology, I offer the following example from a mainline tradition. In Christian iconography the typical socially conditioned, organised body would be the crucified body of Christ, emphasised by the tortured bodies of the later martyred Saints. The ideals of the individual have come up against the laws of society and the dissenting soul is duly punished through an intensification of society’s constraining effect on the body. The ideal BwO would be the resurrected body of Christ and the ascended bodies of the Saints so often depicted flying about among the nimbus on the right hand of The Lord. The BwO is figured in virtually all religions99, as examples, the theme of aerial ascension 99

One would expect from Deleuze and Guattari’s model that lines of flight would be more common in societies with greater degrees of social inequality (stronger molar and molecular lines). This is in agreement with Greenbaum (1973) who found significant correlation between dissociative trance and high levels of social stratification and/or a history of slavery. One might expect a similar correlation to exist between religious motifs of ascent and vertical social hierarchy: spiritual aspiration as sublimated social aspiration. Such a model would tally with the assertion of Noel (1997) that Eliade, unconsciously influenced by Christian conceptions, overemphasised the motif of ascent in his study of shamanisms and neglected page 184

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and flight are a prelude to divine revelation in stories concerning Enoch, Ezekiel, and Muhammad, as well as being a primary theme in accounts of shamanic ecstasy and the condition of the soul after death. That the deregulated body is attained through flight, and especially “flight” from traditional and legal authority (molecular and molar lines) is pertinent to this study of DMT, where the subjectivity of the individual experiences a kind of “spiritual flight” from the dissociated and blissful body. The DMT-inebriated body may be identified as a form of the BwO just as Jordan (1995) identified the BwO with the raving body of psychedelic dance culture. The models of Max Weber, Mary Douglas, Deleuze and Guattari all point to a trajectory where the psyche and the body liberate themselves from social conditions in a sacred interstitial moment. In that place, where charisma flows in the place of rule, change becomes possible. But the BwO is its own cause and is an end in itself. Change is not guaranteed and many are content simply to create (and recreate) the moment of liberation from constraint. Whether change occurs depends on the capacity and desire of each person to psychologically grow from the experience and to bring back some new way of being in the world. This is possible because, during ecstasy or dissociation, the body is free from stratification and socially conditioned, Oedipalised desire. It is thus able to engage, as a BwO, with the myriad flows in the adjoining world that are forbidden under the ordinary regime (Protevi, 2001). This adjoining world, from which all organisms are selectively assembled, is called, in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, the “prepersonal.” It is the realm of Dionysus, of polymorphic desire, and it is a place where Self and Other are reconciled: “…Deleuze’s position is consistent with the now common place understanding that the Self and the Other are not fundamentally other than each other precisely because the Self contains elements of the Other, including those which it repudiates in the process of becoming who it is, in the process of acquiring an identity, insofar as both Self and Other are composed out of the same prepersonal field. No “I” can represent itself as being fundamentally and thus separable from its Other precisely because it is impossible to identify the virtual components of that “I” as distinct from elements of an Other “I”.” (Colwell, 1997:20)

counter-balancing themes of descent among shamans in egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies. page 185

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In the “prepersonal” condition in which our identities arise we have the fusion ground of Self and Other, and it is perhaps the prepersonal even more than the Other that attracts people to DMT. As with other psychedelic substances, DMT frequently induces the sense that perception and identity is dissolving. In Deleuzian thought the prepersonal is exactly what one dissolves into when the subject dissolves, it is exactly what one fragments into when the subject fragments, and this is so because despite our delusions to the contrary the prepersonal is exactly what we already are. Dissolution is simply the clarification of the ‘big picture’. If we think of DMT inebriation in these terms, then we can see the DMT user as someone who is dissatisfied with the socially constrained organism, and seeks release in the “prepersonal.” But in what form does the DMT user emerge from the prepersonal, and what new modes of organisation are adopted?

Seeing and being Just as dissociation can be read as a desire to transcend the boundaries of the socially conditioned self, so also can the engagement in visionary consciousness be seen as an impulse to exceed socially conditioned consciousness, to see beyond the everyday world into an extended Umwelt. The impulse to exceed limits is itself consistent with the widely observed drive of general life to adapt itself to more and more environments. Just as life, as conceived from the orthodox evolutionary view-point, gradually adapted itself to conditions as diverse as deep-sea hydrothermal vents, surface water, coastlines, and eventually dry land, so too many animals seek out substances capable of extending their Umwelten and providing a greater range of sensory and motor experiences (Samorini, 2000; Siegel & Jarvik, 1975). This drive to adapt reaches a limit in the organism’s physical and psychological capacity to endure new experiences. Umwelt extension may satisfy psychological needs for challenges and interesting experiences, but the “doors of perception” can be opened too far for comfort. Psychoactive substances are not the only means of Umwelt extension, and even in the 17th Century, the theologian Richard Bentley (1662-1742) expressed concern about the extent to which perceptual expansion was desirable: “If the Eye were so acute as to rival the finest Microscopes, and to discern the smallest Hair upon the leg of a Gnat, It would be a Curse and not a Blessing to us; it would make all Things appear rugged and deformed; the most highly polished Crystal would be uneven and rough; the Sight of our own selves would affright us; the smoothest Skin would be beset all over with ragged Scales and bristly Hairs…Such a Faculty of Sight, so disproportioned to our

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other Senses and to the Objects about us, would be very little better than Blindness itself …” Richard Bentley quoted in Goddman (2004:219) Bentley’s nightmare scenario illustrates the potential trauma of an over-extended Umwelt. Anxiety over perceptual extension is not merely a modern concern generated by the psychonautic forays of the psychedelic counter-culture. It has deep roots in the world’s religions, and in the Abrahamic monotheisms this has often become associated with God’s supposed monopoly on omniscience. An expanded glimpse into the merest iota of God’s creation is thought sufficient to overwhelm mortal reason, as when a googolplex of angels is alleged to cavort on the head of a pin. The discombobulating world of spirits is succinctly described in the Talmud: “If the eye had the power to see them, no creature could endure the demons. Abaye says: They are more numerous than we are and surround us like the ridge round a field. R. Huna says: Every one among us has a thousand on his left hand and ten thousand on his right hand.” The Talmud, Berakoth 6a. (Simon, 1961:23) Around the world, religion and mythology attest to teeming, sentient, invisible forces such as the jinn of Islam, the demons of Christianity, the devas and asuras of Hinduism. In the eastern traditions, Advaita (in the Vedic tradition) and enlightenment (in Buddhism) provide analogues to the western notion of omniscience, except that these states of awareness may be approached by contemplatives and are not the exclusive attribute of a particular God. This is not to say that human consciousness is not overwhelmed by the occasional revelation of infinity: Arjuna, as a notable example, is suitably awed by his brief glimpse of the cosmic form of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, but generally, a philosophy emerges where the Other is viewed as an alternate manifestation of the same substance as the Self. This viewpoint dovetails closely with Deleuze in those moments where he argues that both Self and Other are alternate manifestations of the prepersonal. This position is close to the Indian doctrine that Atman is identical with Brahman, and finds expression also in Buddhist philosophy, as when the narrator of The Tibetan book of the Dead admonishes the listener from becoming involved with the various deities and spirits that haunt the Bardos. This is not because of any inherent danger posed by these beings, but because the very act of becoming intersubjectively involved as a Self with an Other necessitates abandoning the indivisible, diamond-like, non-dual consciousness and thus being page 187

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condemned to eventual rebirth in a body with organs. In a different strand of Buddhism, the paradox of Self and Other is suggested in the following line from a poem accompanying the final picture in the series of Zen Buddhist allegories usually referred to as Gentling the bull: “Wide open the palace gates to the one who on meeting himself yet remains unknown.” (Myokyo-ni, 1996:133) The continuity of the beholder and the beheld emerges gradually during introspection. This fusion of subject and object can also erupt abruptly during entheogenic ecstasy. DMT experiences and the culture that accrues around them present a curious fusion of opposing ideas: cosmic union through physical dissociation; ecstasy through surrender; knowledge through the suspension of mentation; Life through death; the Word through the Unspeakable; Self through Other. The meaning of DMT is ultimately to be sought in the synthesis of such dialectics rather than in any given thread of the tapestry, and as the search for meaning is itself an integral part of the overall meaning of DMT, we can safely assume that the search will remain an unfolding mystery, as valuable in itself as any incidental findings. The contradictory nature of the soul is hard to conceal for any length of time. The psyche wants to expand its Umwelt to include its own concept of its limits, but, given such opportunities as delivered by DMT, it encounters new and formidable limits in the very process of transcending the old. The soul with DMT is like a handsome and narcissistic basilisk before a full-length mirror: DMT delivers a revelatory flash in which the forces of attraction and repulsion precisely balance each other. DMT is a catalyst of a dynamic equilibrium in which one pole of the psyche shrinks in awe at the very moment that the other pole dissolves old limits and solidifies new existential territories. While the psyche inebriated by DMT experiences dynamic changes, something in its nature remains unshaken. There is no net change in the nature of being, just awesome fluctuations of energy at the level of awareness; but the fundamentals of ontology are unchanged. The Self remains a stranger, and the Other, as it has of old, becomes, by minute increments, increasingly familiar. DMT energises this eternal process, raising it to an encounter with awareness, and in this, despite its imperfections, it is a tool for the fusing of psychic opposites, for individuation.

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Appendix A: Glossary of terms Acacia The Acacias are a large and widespread genus of trees and shrubs in the Mimosaceae family (New, 1984). Many Acacias contain DMT and related tryptamines (Trout, 1998). In Australia, DMT is usually extracted from Acacia obtusifolia, although A. maidenii and the rare A. phlebophylla have also been used. Alkaloid An alkaloid is an alkaline organic substance usually of plant or fungal origin containing at least one nitrogen atom and a ring structure (Uvarov, 1979). Most pharmacologically active drugs—including most psychoactive drugs—are alkaloids (Schultes and Hofmann, 1980). A small number of psychoactive drugs, such as the cannabinoids, salvinorin A, and the kava-lactones are not alkaloids. Ayahuasca Ayahuasca (a Quechua word meaning “vine of the souls”) is an entheogenic and purgative potion consumed for shamanic, diagnostic, curative, social, and religious purposes throughout the western Amazon (Schultes & Raffauf, 1992). Ayahuasca is generally made from the pulverised stems of Banisteriopsis caapi after prolonged boiling with other medicinal plants. Among the most common additives are Psychotria viridis and Psychotria alba (both of which contain DMT), and Diplopterys cabereana (which contains 5-MeO-DMT). Substances (�-carbolines) in Banisteriopsis caapi potentiate DMT and 5-MeO-DMT, rendering them orally active (McKenna, 1984). Ayahuasca-analogue Many plants that have not traditionally been used as entheogens contain potentially entheogenic substances. Western entheogen users have combined the seeds of the �carboline-rich Syrian rue (Peganum harmala) with various DMT-rich plants (especially Phalaris, Acacia, Desmanthus and Mimosa species) to produce entheogenic and purgative teas (ayahuasca-analogues) substantially similar to ayahuasca (Ott, 1994). Banisteriopsis caapi Banisteriopsis caapi is a giant forest liana that comprises the central ingredient of the entheogenic Amazonian brew ayahuasca (Schultes & Hofmann, 1980).

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Bufotenine Bufotenine, or 5-hydroxydimethyltryptamine (5HO-DMT), is an entheogenic tryptamine that occurs widely in plants and animals (especially frogs where it is often accompanied by highly toxic substances). Bufotenine is a major constituent of the Anadenanthera seeds that have long been used as snuffs in South America, and which were once used by the Taíno people of the Caribbean Islands (Torres, 1996). DMT DMT (n,n-dimethyltryptamine) is an alkaloid that occurs naturally in many plants and animals, including humans. When DMT is vapourised or injected it produces profound but short-lived alterations to consciousness. These changes to consciousness are described in Chapters 5 and 6 of this thesis. The plant-derived DMT extracts most frequently smoked by western entheogen users are of unknown purity and may sometimes include substantial amounts of the somewhat similar substance 5-MeO-DMT. Because my informants are not usually able to guarantee the composition of the “DMT” that induced the visions described in this thesis, the reader should bear in mind that “DMT” — in the context of this thesis — actually stipulates any of various tryptamine-rich alkaloid extracts derived from plants, in which the predominant effects are those typical of DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, or a mixture of these, and where the subject using such substances asserts the identity of the material as “DMT”. DMT freebase DMT freebase refers to a basified (rather than acidified) form of DMT. DMT freebase vaporises readily and is easy to smoke, in contrast to the water-soluble salts of DMT. Entheogen The term ‘Entheogen’— a substance that induces a sense of divinity — has been defined by Ott (1996a:205) as “… a broad term to describe the cultural context of use, not specific chemistry or pharmacology; as an efficient substitute for cumbersome terms like shamanic inebriant, visionary drug, plant-sacrament, and plant-teacher.” Extract In the context of this thesis, an extract refers to an entheogenic product obtained from a plant by solvent extraction in order to isolate and concentrate any DMT present in the plant.

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5-MeO-DMT 5-MeO-DMT is one of the most potent naturally-occurring entheogens (Ott, 1996b), being active at 6-20mg, whereas 60-100mg of DMT is required to produce a comparable inebriation (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). 5-MeO-DMT is often considered a more welcoming “cosmic consciousness type of experience” characterised by excitement and wonder, but not necessarily with the sense of alien-encounter and otherness typical of many DMT experiences (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997:533). Organic In chemistry, “organic” refers to the chemistry of carbon compounds. Carbon atoms bond in innumerable ways and the chemistry of living or organic things is essentially the chemistry of carbon. With the exception of chemically simple anaesthetics like the gases xenon and nitrous oxide, virtually all other vision-inducing substances, including DMT, are organic compounds. Phalaris The species of Phalaris are widespread grasses, many of which are rich in DMT and/or 5MeO-DMT. Psychedelic The term “psychedelic”, meaning “mind-manifesting”, was coined by Humphrey Osmund as way of describing the class of mescaline and LSD-like substances that had previously been given names that reflected the unsubstantiated belief that these materials mimicked psychosis. Peyton and Shulgin (1994) have defined the psychedelics in chemical terms as comprising the family of analogues derived from mescaline, thiomescaline, 2CD, 2CT, TMA, DOM, DMT, psilocybin and LSD. Many important entheogens, such as tobacco, Tabenanthe iboga, Amanita muscaria mushrooms, and Datura fall outside these parameters. “Psychedelic” has also come to connote a distinct cultural style, and on this account is unsuitable as a way of describing entheogens or psychointegrators used in different cultural contexts. Psychotria Psychotria viridis and Psychotria alba are DMT-containing plants that are commonly added to Amazonian ayahuasca potions.

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Psychonaut Coined by Ernst Jünger (1970), the term psychonaut designates people who alter their consciousness to attain a subjective sense of excursion or inner exploration. Set and setting Set and setting are the two non-pharmacological variables that influence the subjective experience of an individual who has taken an active dose of a psychoactive substance or a reputedly psychoactive placebo. Set refers to the subject’s moods, motivations and expectations. Setting refers to the environment in which the substance is taken. For a definitive overview of set and setting see Zinberg (1984). Synthetic A synthetic substance is once that has been created via artificial chemical combinations, irrespective of whether the substance is already known to occur naturally. DMT occurs naturally, but may also be synthesised, using indole as a starting material. Umwelt Umwelt refers to an organism’s environment insofar as that organism’s sensory apparatus is equipped to perceive it, in conjunction with the outputs or operations that the organism is able to perform in their perceived world.

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Appendix B: Pilot questionnaire

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Appendix C: DMT-containing plants

Traditional DMT-containing entheogens DMT and related compounds occur in many different flowering plants or angiosperms (Ott, 1994; Smith, 1977)100, but only in South America has their potential as vehicles of ecstasy been fully realised to any verifiable extent or attained any wide cultural significance (La Barre, 1970; Lindgren, 1995). The plants containing DMT and/or 5MeO-DMT used in Amazonian shamanism and sorcery can be broadly considered as belonging to four principal constellations of inebriants, viz. the Ayahuasca complex; the epéna complex; the cebíl, vilca, cohobo, nopo complex; and the Jurema complex. While some western growers cultivate the more hardy of these traditional neo-tropical entheogens, the majority are poorly adapted for dry or cool climates. Many of the plants are extremely rare outside of the Amazon. As an example, the western use of Virola snuffs is virtually unheard of, while in 1996 genuine ayahuasca was so scarce in the United States that “…pre-mixed cocktails of ayahuasca plus chacruna (Psychotria viridis) were available sporadically on a rudimentary black market, selling for as much as $800 per dose!” (Ott, 1996b:244) � well beyond the reach of the majority of entheogenists. The overview of traditional DMT-containing shamanic inebriants given here is far from comprehensive. This particular thesis is, after-all, dedicated to investigating the visions resulting from the smoking of DMT freebase: a peculiarly western tradition. The traditional DMT-containing entheogens are briefly described in this appendix for two reasons. Firstly, to provide the reader unfamiliar with these entheogens with a point of access to available literature, and secondly to give the reader a sense of the parallel traditions which inspire many western entheogenists, and which provide resources for sharing and appropriation.

100

DMT is also reported to occur in the seaweed Ecklonia maxima (in a brand of seaweed concentrate liquid fertiliser) (Crouch, 1992). DMT occurs in many animals. It is found in mammalian cerebrospinal fluid (J. C. Callaway, M.M. Airaksinen, and J. Gynther., 1994; McKenna & Towers, 1984) and has also been isolated from the Mediterranean gorgonian fan-coral Paramuricea chamaeleon (Cimino & Stefano, 1978). The venom from the parotoid glands of the Sonoran Desert Toad Bufo alvarius is extremely rich in 5-MeO-DMT (Weil & Davis, 1994). The unfortunate amphibian is occasionally subjected to the indignity of “milking” by humans for this smokable tryptamine-rich venom (Lyttle, Goldstein, & Gartz, 1996), and the toad is revered by at least one religious collective (The Church of the Toad of Light) (Ott, 1996b). page 208

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Epéna Epéna or ebene refers to snuffs traditionally used for shamanic purposes by Indians in the western Amazon and adjacent parts of the Orinoco basin, especially among the tribes collectively known as Waiká (Schultes & Hofmann, 1992; Seitz, 1967). Epéna is prepared by scraping the exudate from the inner cambial surfaces of bark stripped from Amazonian rainforest trees of the genus Virola especially Virola theiodora101 Virola calophylla and Virola calophylloidea, Virola elongata, as well as Iryanthera species, all members the nutmeg family, Myristicaceae (Schultes, 1979a). The exudate is extracted in water and then concentrated into a resinous paste, which can be further processed into a snuff powder (ibid). The resin is also active orally due to the presence of monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and is consumed as ‘pellets’ by Bora and Witoto Indians (McKenna et al., 1985; Schultes & Hofmann, 1992). The primary alkaloidal constituents of the epená snuffs are tryptamines, especially 5-MeO-DMT, followed by smaller amounts of DMT, NMT (n-methyltryptamine), and monoamine oxidase inhibiting �-carbolines (Holmstedt & Lindgren., 1967). The ethnology, ethnopharmacology and chemistry of epená snuffs is extremely complex, and of only marginal concern to our present consideration of DMT smoking. The Virola trees require humid tropical conditions and both the plants and the processed snuffs are extremely rare beyond their native range. The effect may be mimicked with the use of synthetic 5-MeO-DMT and �-carbolines alkaloids extracted from Peganum harmala seeds (Ott, 2001), and such epená “facsimiles” have been distributed among entheogen aficionados to a limited extent. It should be emphasised that these materials resemble DMT but differ in terms of dosage, duration, and qualitative factors such as the more intense physical sensations of 5-MeO-DMT as compared with the more ethereal flight of DMT ecstasy. The situation is complicated by the fact that some tryptamine-rich plant extracts sold as “DMT” may well contain substantial quantities of co-occurring 5-MeO-DMT, especially in “DMT” obtained from Phalaris grasses (Culvenor, 1964)and possibly those from Acacia obtusifolia. In any case, some Western entheogen users associate Indigenous Amazonian use of snuffs with DMT and construct their own use of DMT loosely around South American shamanic models in which the snuffs are used to obtain communication with spirit beings and to facilitate an ecstatic “flight” of the soul to other spiritual worlds. The analogy is supported also by the similarity of the cylindrical glass-pipes used to smoke DMT with the elongated tubes of 101

Botanists can be prosaic. Theiodora: that’s actually “smelling of tea,” not “gift of God”! page 209

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bamboo, wood, or bone used to blow epená and other snuffs into the nasal cavities of South American entheogen users.

Cebíl, Vilca, Cohobo, Nopo Cebíl, vilca, cohobo, and nopo are names for a snuff powder prepared from the roasted seeds of the wide-ranging South American genus Anadenanthera. The Anadenantheras are leguminous trees belonging to the Mimosaceae family. DMT is relatively common among the legumes and especially so in the Mimosaceae. We shall encounter plants of these taxa again in this thesis in the Brazilian Jurema cult, and in the form of novel entheogens belonging to the genera Desmanthus and Acacia from which western entheogen-users extract DMT. The use of Anadenanthera seeds102 as entheogens has, in all probability, an unbroken tradition of use reaching back to at least 1200 B.C.(Torres, 1996) and continuing into the ethnographic present (Torres & Repke, 1996), which to put it in a global context, means that it has roughly (give or take a few hundred years) the same age and continuity as that estimated for the Agnihotra and Soma rituals of Hinduism (Bush et al., 1993). “The oldest archaeological evidence for entheogen-use in the world comes from the Quebrada de Humahuaca in northwestern Argentina, and consists of puma-bone smoking pipes filled with charred remains of Anadenanthera seeds, as well as the seeds themselves, which catalyzed entheognosia in one of our revered ancestors some 4000 years ago!” (Ott, 2001:20) The roasted seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina and Anadenanthera colubrina continue to be used throughout South America as a source of entheogenic snuff powders (de Smet, 1985; Torres, 1996; von Reis-Altschul, 1972), for smoking (Torres & Repke, 1996), and as enemas (de Smet, 1983; de Smet & Rivier, 1987). The parallel use of Cohoba snuff from Anadenanthera peregrina by the Ciguayo and Taíno of the Caribbean Islands was suppressed during the genocide of the Taíno people by Spanish invaders (Rouse, 1992; von Reis-Altschul, 1972; Wassén, 1967). Anadenantheras are thought by many entheogenists to contain DMT (based probably on incomplete or obsolete reports in the older literature), but there are conflicting reports about the actual levels of DMT, as opposed to bufotenine and 5-MeO-DMT, that make direct comparison with pure DMT or other plant extracts problematic. For example, different samples of Anadenanthera 102

The seeds of Anadenanthera are occasionally sold or traded by ethnobotany enthusiasts. The closely allied genus Piptadenia is likewise a rich source of tryptamines (Fish et al., 1955). page 210

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colubrina have been found to contain widely varying levels of DMT, with many samples containing only bufotenine (Holmstedt & Lindgren., 1967; Ott, 2001; Torres & Repke, 1996). It is phytochemical complexities of this kind that have dissuaded me from attempting any systematic cross-cultural comparison between the uses and effects of these different “DMT containing” entheogens: while DMT and 5-MeO-DMT are similar (and bufotenine is scarcely comparable to either), they are not strictly equivalent drugs (Holmstedt & Lindgren., 1967), and so any variations in the phenomenology of the resulting trances can not be confidently ascribed to culturally mediated “set and setting”. Furthermore, because Anadenanthera inebriation is often characterised by bufotenine rather than DMT, I have excluded accounts of its use from consideration in this thesis.

Jurema Jurema is the name of a complex of DMT-containing potions made from the root bark of certain Brazilian Mimosas. Like the Anadenantheras, the Mimosas are members of the Mimosaceae sub-family of legumes—they are indeed the typical genus of this grouping. The aptly named Mimosa hostilis is a fiercely armed small tree covered in sharp spines. The root bark is rich in DMT (Gonçalves de Lima, 1946) 103. Mimosa hostilis or Jurema prêta (‘black Jurema’) was traditionally decocted to make a reputedly psychoactive potion (Mors, 1966), now generally known as vinho de jurema, which was the basis of ceremony known as ajucá once practiced by the Pankarurú Indians of northeastern Brazil, and also taken as a sacrament by the Karirí, Tusha, Fulnio, Guague Acroa, Pimentiera, Atanaya and other tribes (Schultes & Hofmann, 1980:154). The use of jurema potion was apparently very ancient but has been thought to be presently extinct (ibid). Eye-witness accounts of Jurema date from 1788, and one account from 1843 describes how the users “pass the night navigating through the depths of slumber” (ibid:154). It is unclear whether the contemporary use of another species Mimosa verrucosa by the Karirí-Shoko people of north-eastern Brazil, as described by Clarice Novaes da Mota (1997), is a modified survival or a revival of the earlier tradition of M. hostilis use. Mimosa ophthalmocentra, another species known in Brazil by the name “Jurema”, was also found to contain DMT (Batista, 1999). Da Mota describes a widespread Jurema complex in north-eastern Brazil and emphasises that the Indian tradition uses different and secret ingredients to that of the popular Umbanda-influenced variants of Jurema. Jurema is a pharmacological anomaly. 103

This report by Goncalves de Lima was the first instance of DMT being discovered as a natural product (it had previously been synthesised and described as an artificial compound by Manske in 1931). Goncalves de Lima, who was unaware that the DMT had already been identified, named the alkaloid he found ‘nigerine’ and it was many years before the synonymy of the compounds was demonstrated (Pachter, 1959). page 211

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The potion contains potentially active levels of DMT, but DMT is not of itself orally active. As was the case with the “Phalaris staggers” described earlier in this chapter, we are dealing with unknown pharmacological factors. It is possible that the plant contains some other principle that renders it active, but the situation is complicated by conflicting reports as to the brew’s entheogenic efficacy. Sangirardi (1983:201-202) reports that the effects are compared to those of hashish and relates from his own experience that the potion produces no visions, but rather “a feeling of complete joy, of peace with the world and with ourselves, of empathy with all creatures”104. Increasing mobility and cultural exchange promotes religious innovations in entheogenic plant use. In 1997 Yatra da Silveira Barbosa (1998) travelled to Brazil to investigate the ritual use and curative potential of Jurema. Yatra was herself Brazilian-born, although residing in Amsterdam, and had also been a member of the Santo Daime Church which uses ayahuasca in its services. After a curing ritual with the Truká tribe da Silveira Barbosa realised that: “…the brew that they were drinking did not have psychoactive properties. With the gap in time, the tribes people had lost the knowledge of the ßcarboline-containing plant used to activate the effect of the DMT-containing Jurema…I had Peganum harmala seeds with me, and I proposed that we do a ritual with a combination of Jurema and P. harmala. We demonstrated how to prepare them together, and in the evening we held the ritual…It was incredible…Sometimes, some panic would emerge, and we all kept singing until it passed away. The master had to lay down most of the time and reported having an amazing journey…I left the next day to visit the Atikum tribe on the mountain of Umã, leaving some P. harmala seeds for the Trukás to plant, and some already extracted for them to drink and do their rituals with. (da Silveira Barbosa, 1998:27) If da Silveira Barbosa’s innovations have taken root among the Truká then we now have a situation in which a Brazilian tribe is employing an ayahuasca analogue105 made from Mimosa hostilis and seeds of a Middle-Eastern herb (Peganum harmala) in order to maintain tradition. What indigenous plant might once have played the part of Peganum harmala is left for future investigators to uncover. Perhaps da Silveira Barbosa is presuming too much and the powers of the Jurema potion are of a subtler kind than those 104

I am indebted to James Wafer for translating this passage from Sangirardi into English. Wafer’s ethnography of Candomblé, “Taste of Blood (1991), also provides a discussion of Jurema, with an emphasis on its syncretism with Umbanda. 105 The Peganum harmala/Mimosa hostilis combination is, incidentally, one of the most frequently reported ayahuasca analogues used for entheogenic purposes in the Northern hemisphere. page 212

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of ayahuasca, but the description given by Robert H. Lowie (1946:559 ) conveys reports of “glorious visions of the spirit land” and “Thunderbird shooting lightning from a huge tuft on his head” and thus suggest that the archaic version of the brew was far from subtle.

Novel DMT-containing entheogens Legumes The pea-family, Leguminosae (or Fabaceae), is a very large family of herbs, shrubs and trees with a world-wide distribution (Heywood, 1978). It is divided into three subfamilies each of which contains species grown or harvested as sources of tryptamines. The Papilionaceae includes the DMT-containing genus Desmodium (Banerjee, 1969; Trout, 1997) and the closely allied species Phyllodium pulchellum (previously known as Desmodium pulchellum) (Ghosal, 1972). The Desmodiums are, for the most part, widely distributed forage plants, many of which are naturalised in Australia (Hacker, 1990) where they are on rare occasion used for entheogenic purposes. The Caesalpiniaceae subfamily includes the inland Australian desert shrub Petalostylis labicheoides R.Br. var. casseoides Benth. from which Johns et al. have isolated DMT (Johns, 1966). But it is the Mimosaceae sub-family that furnishes the most abundant assortment of DMT-rich plants. The Mimosaceae, or “Mimosa family” is a cosmopolitan family of flowering plants that includes many species rich in DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, bufotenine, as well as an assortment of other compounds. A number of these mimosa-like plants have extremely long histories of use as entheogens. We have already touched upon the traditions connected with the Anadenanthera and Mimosa. Two additional genera of Mimosaceae are significant sources for the extraction of DMT for entheogenic use: these are entheogenic Acacias, discussed in Chapter 4, and certain North American species of Desmanthus. High yields of DMT has been extracted from the root bark of ‘Illinois bundleflower’ or ‘prairie mimosa,’ Desmanthus illinoensis (Thompson, 1987). During the last decade, Neoentheogenists in North America and elsewhere have employed extracts of Desmanthus illinoensis (Ott, 1994) and D. leptolobus ( the ‘narrowpod bundleflower’) (De Korne, 1994b) as DMT sources and in the composition of analogues (sometimes called “prairieuasca”) of the Amazonian entheogen ayahuasca (ibid) (Appleseed, 1993). The inconspicuous plants are common in many parts of North America and are usually cultivated or wild-crafted there for use as a DMT source-plant (De Korne, 1994a; Trout, 1995).

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Grasses The grasses—Graminaceae (also known as the Poaceae and Gramineae)—contains many species that are potential sources of DMT and related compounds (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). Researchers in India have isolated DMT, bufotenine (5-HO-DMT), 5-MeO-DMT and other tryptamine derivatives from the flowers and rhizomes of the giant grassy reed Arundo donax (Ghosal, 1971, 1969)106. The roots of the fresh-water reed-grass Phragmites australis have also been reported to contain DMT and related bases (Wassel, 1985). Both of these species have been traded among entheogen growers, but neither has, to my knowledge, been exploited as a source of DMT to any significant extent. Indeed, K. Trout reports an absence of DMT (but the presence of related bases) in North American samples of Arundo donax, and at least one allergic reaction to the alkaloid extract has been reported (Trout, 2002). Many other grasses remain to be chemically investigated: the bamboos are a one of many promising areas for future research (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). But by far the most studied and most utilised of DMT-containing grasses are those of the genus Phalaris. The leaves (or ‘blades’) of some species of Phalaris produce high levels of entheogenic tryptamines. The most frequently utilised species for entheogenic purposes are Phalaris tuberosa (also known as P. aquatica); P. arundinacea and P. minor, but also P. paradoxa; P. truncata; P. brachystachys; and P. stenoptera —and one Italian strain of Phalaris tuberosa has been reported by Festi and Samorini (1996) to contain the highest concentration of DMT of any known plant. This ‘AQ1’ strain is now widely sought and grown by entheogen-users. Phalaris species occur naturally throughout Europe, Asia and North America, but have become widely naturalised as a result of their extensive use as pasture grasses and soil stabilisers. In Australia Phalaris species are naturalised in Victoria, New South Wales, southeastern Queensland and southwestern Western Australia. Introduced varieties have also become extensively naturalised in North America and South Africa. The alkaloid levels in Phalaris vary between strains, with some plants containing very high concentrations of DMT, bufotenine, and 5-MeO-DMT, while others contain different alkaloids or negligible quantities (Culvenor, 1964). Levels of tryptamines are also affected by environmental factors such as stage of growth, season, temperature, light intensity and nitrate supply (Marten, 1973; Moore, 1967), so that 106

In a completely different context we find that Arundo donax has a second way of inducing trance quite independent of its chemistry. The hollow stems of the reed furnishes the traditional basis for the Ney flute that provides the musical accompaniment to the ecstatic sema or sama ritual of the Mevlevi or Whirling Dervishes (Jenkins & Olsen, 1976). page 214

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extraction of alkaloids from Phalaris often produces mixed results. Nonetheless, the availability and abundance of this grass has contributed to a great deal of clandestine research for entheogenic purposes, and once a strong strain or clone of Phalaris has been discovered, environmental factors can often be controlled by persevering growers or wildcrafters to maximise alkaloid yield. Alkaloid extracts of these grasses can produce an inebriation characterised primarily by 5-MeO-DMT (generally regarded as more intense than DMT, more somatic, less colourful, ‘brighter’, and causing a loss of the sense of separate identity, followed by a ‘rebirth’ or ‘reincorporation’ experience during ‘descent’ from the trance107), and the effects are also potentially augmented by the presence of �carbolines in some strains (Frahn, 1971). The experience can also be adversely affected by the presence of gramine or other toxic constituents (Marten, 1973). I have read and heard many glowing reports from smokers of Phalaris extract, and the general consensus seems to be that the effects are more intense and ‘driven’ than Acacia or Mimosa extracts. I have also encountered several reports of adverse effects such as transient nausea, vacuousness or catatonic lapses of mentation lasting several minutes (this could be considered a mystical accomplishment were it under voluntary control), and muscular tremors similar to kriyas in Kundalini yoga108. These symptom reminds us of the great unresolved health concern with regard to Phalaris strains that are not “tried and true”: the vague association of tryptamines with a widespread neurological disease of grazing livestock known as “Phalaris staggers” (McDonald, 1942, 1946). Sometimes livestock grazed on Phalaris tuberosa pastures in locations as diverse as Australia, Italy and the United States develop disturbing muscular symptoms that can result in fatalities (ibid). Gallagher and associates claimed to have been able to induce the symptoms of Phalaris staggers in sheep (including death at higher doses) by administering the tryptamine extracts of Phalaris, of which 5-MeO-DMT appeared to be the most potent toxin (Gallagher, Koch, Moore, & Steel, 1964). This is extremely peculiar because, as Alexander Shulgin points out, neither DMT nor 5-MeO-DMT are orally active (in humans at least), and the sheep most certainly did not smoke or inject their fodder. Alexander Shulgin suggests that, unless the sheep have some unprecedented enzyme deficiency, Phalaris staggers must be due to some other orally active toxin, possibly a 107

5-MeO-DMT has been described by entheogen-users as “the Power” and DMT as “the Glory” with the combination being “the fear of God” (De Korne, 1994b:106). 108 An intriguing aspect of 5-Meo-DMT tremors is that they are often perceived as having psychological and spiritual qualities in addition to being physiological effects. They therefore resemble other physio-spiritual manifestations such as kriyas in Kundalini yoga (Greyson, 1993; Krishna, 1971) or the num energy associated with the kia trance among the !Kung (Katz, 1976). page 215

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lysergic acid derivative109 originating in an inconspicuous fungal parasite concealed in the tissue of the Phalaris grass, requiring microscopy to detect during most of its life-cycle (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). While the tryptamines are not responsible for the occasional toxicity of Phalaris, unknown strains are still potentially hazardous. The great advantage of Phalaris, in these times of prohibition and religious persecution of entheogen-users, is that the grasses are extremely inconspicuous and virtually indistinguishable from pasture or lawn, unless one is trained in the minutiae of grass taxonomy with its formidably arcane ‘glumes’ and ‘lemmas.’ Jim De Korne highlights the possibilities presented by this inconspicuous grass: “Phalaris DMT is something brand new — derived from one of the ayahuasca analog plants, it is a natural form of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT which can be grown by anyone anywhere on the planet outside of the polar regions. It has no somatic side effects (nausea, vomiting), nor is it dependent for its extraction on complicated laboratory procedures, equipment or knowledge; hence it isn’t necessary to rely upon a profit-oriented monopoly of dealers to obtain…Here for the first time, untainted by High Technology, Drug Dealer Capitalism, Cultural Unfamiliarity or Somatic Malaise, is the most potent entheogen imaginable freely available to anyone willing to take the trouble to grow and extract it. (Since the plant resembles your front lawn, any law banning it will be virtually unenforceable.) Given the historical context of this sudden gift, it is difficult not to see it as a potential catalyst for a quantum shift in awareness, nothing less than a challenge from the imaginal realm to take the next step in human evolution.” (De Korne, 1994b:105)

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Some lysergic acid derivatives are toxic, for example the substances responsible for convulsive (or dystonic) ergotism, a human disease caused by eating bread made from grains of rye grass infested with the endophytic fungal parasite ergot (Claviceps purpurea) (Matossian, 1989). This disorder is characterised by psychic disturbances, writhing, tremors, and muscular convulsions similar to “Phalaris staggers” (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1997). page 216

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Figure 19 Black-light paintings by "the Adelaide Crew" at Entheogenesis 2005. The alien Self in the bottom left foreground encounters a magical Other who manifests in the rising vapours.

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