Liquid oil projection using a powerful lamp has been used to project swirling colours onto screens since the 1960sCadillac Ranch, an example of psychedelic art
A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly ordinary fetters. Psychedelic states are an array of experiences including changes of perception such as hallucinations, synesthesia, altered states of awareness or focused consciousness, variation in thought patterns, trance or hypnotic states, mystical states, and other mind alterations.[3]
These processes can lead some people to experience changes in mental operation defining their self-identity (whether in momentary acuity or chronic development) different enough from their previous normal state that it can excite feelings of newly formed understanding such as revelation, illumination, confusion, and psychosis. Individuals who use psychedelic drugs for spiritual purposes or self-discovery are commonly referred to as psychonauts.
The term was first coined as a noun in 1956 by psychiatristHumphry Osmond as an alternative descriptor for hallucinogenic drugs in the context of psychedelic psychotherapy.[4] It is irregularly[5] derived from the Greek words ψυχή psychḗ 'soul, mind' and δηλείν dēleín 'to manifest', with the meaning "mind manifesting," the implication being that psychedelics can develop unused potentials of the human mind.[6] The term was loathed by American ethnobotanistRichard Schultes but championed by American psychologist Timothy Leary.[7]
Seeking a name for the experience induced by LSD, Osmond contacted Aldous Huxley, a personal acquaintance and advocate for the therapeutic use of the substance. Huxley coined the term "phanerothyme," from the Greek terms for "manifest" (φανερός) and "spirit" (θύμος). In a letter to Osmond, he wrote:
To make this mundane world sublime,
Take half a gram of phanerothyme
To which Osmond responded:
To fathom Hell or soar angelic, Just take a pinch of psychedelic[8]
It was on this term that Osmond eventually settled, because it was "clear, euphonious and uncontaminated by other associations."[9] This mongrel spelling of the word 'psychedelic' was loathed by American ethnobotanistRichard Evans Schultes, but championed by Timothy Leary, who thought it sounded better.[10] Due to the expanded use of the term "psychedelic" in pop culture and a perceived incorrect verbal formulation, Carl A.P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott, and R. Gordon Wasson proposed the term "entheogen" to describe the religious or spiritual experience produced by such substances.[11]
History
This section is missing information about the origins of psychedelic culture available for copy at Acid rock#Origins and ideology. Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.(January 2017)
From the second half of the 1950s, Beat Generation writers like William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg[12] wrote about and took drugs, including cannabis and Benzedrine, raising awareness and helping to popularise their use.[13] In the same period Lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, or "acid" (at the time a legal drug), began to be used in the US and UK as an experimental treatment, initially promoted as a potential cure for mental illness.[14]
In the early 1960s, the use of LSD and other hallucinogens was advocated by proponents of the new "consciousness expansion", such as Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley and Arthur Koestler,[15][16] their writings profoundly influenced the thinking of the new generation of youth.[17] There had long been a culture of drug use among jazz and blues musicians, and use of drugs (including cannabis, peyote, mescaline and LSD[18]) had begun to grow among folk and rock musicians, who also began to include drug references in their songs.[19][nb 1] In the UK rock scene, some notable users were groups such as the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and the Moody Blues.[21]
By the mid-1960s, the psychedelic life-style had already developed in California, and an entire subculture developed. This was particularly true in San Francisco, due in part to the first major underground LSD factory, established there by Owsley Stanley.[22] There was also an emerging music scene of folk clubs, coffee houses and independent radio stations catering to a population of students at nearby Berkeley, and to free thinkers that had gravitated to the city.[23]
From 1964, the Merry Pranksters, a loose group that developed around novelist Ken Kesey, sponsored the Acid Tests, a series of events based around the taking of LSD (supplied by Stanley), accompanied by light shows, film projection and discordant, improvised music known as the psychedelic symphony.[24][25] The Pranksters helped popularize LSD use through their road trips across America in a psychedelically decorated school bus, which involved distributing the drug and meeting with major figures of the beat movement, and through publications about their activities such as Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).[26]
Leary was a well-known proponent of the use of psychedelics, as was Aldous Huxley.[27] However, both advanced widely different opinions on the broad use of psychedelics by state and civil society. Leary promulgated the idea of such substances as a panacea, while Huxley suggested that only the cultural and intellectual elite should partake of entheogens systematically.[citation needed]
In the 1960s, the use of psychedelic drugs became widespread in modern Western culture, particularly in the United States and Britain. The movement is credited to Michael Hollingshead who arrived in America from London in 1965. He was sent to the U.S. by other members of the psychedelic movement to get their ideas exposure.[28] The Summer of Love of 1967 and the resultant popularization of the hippie culture to the mainstream popularized psychedelia in the minds of popular culture, where it remained dominant through the 1970s.[29]
Modern usage
A retro example of psychedelia; the dancer combines 1960s fashion with modern LED lighting.
The impact of psychedelic drugs on western culture in the 1960s led to semantic drift in the use of the word "psychedelic", and it is now frequently used to describe anything with abstract decoration of multiple bright colours, similar to those seen in drug-induced hallucinations. In objection to this new meaning, and to what some[who?] consider pejorative meanings of other synonyms such as "hallucinogen" and "psychotomimetic", the term "entheogen" was proposed and is seeing increasing use. However, many consider the term "entheogen" best reserved for religious and spiritual usage, such as certain Native American churches do with the peyote sacrament, and "psychedelic" left to describe those who are using these drugs for recreation, psychotherapy, physical healing, or creative problem solving. In science, hallucinogen remains the standard term.[30]
This section should include only a brief summary of Psychedelic art. See Wikipedia:Summary style for information on how to properly incorporate it into this article's main text.(January 2017)
Advances in printing and photographic technology in the 1960s saw the traditional lithography printing techniques rapidly superseded by the offset printing system. This and other technical and industrial innovations gave young artists access to exciting new graphic techniques and media, including photographic and mixed media collage, metallic foils, and vivid new fluorescent "DayGlo" inks. This enabled them to explore innovative new illustrative styles including highly distorted visuals, cartoons, and lurid colors and full spectrums to evoke a sense of altered consciousness; many works also featured idiosyncratic and complex new fonts and lettering styles (most notably in the work of San Francisco-based poster artist Rick Griffin). Many artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s attempted to illustrate the psychedelic experience in paintings, drawings, illustrations, and other forms of graphic design.
The counterculture music scene frequently used psychedelic designs on posters during the Summer of Love, leading to a popularization of the style. The most productive and influential centre of psychedelic art in the late 1960s was San Francisco; a scene driven in large measure by the patronage of the popular local music venues of the day like the Avalon Ballroom and Bill Graham's Fillmore West, which regularly commissioned young local artists like Robert Crumb, Stanley Mouse, Rick Griffin and others. They produced a wealth of distinctive psychedelic promotional posters and handbills for concerts that featured emerging psychedelic bands like Big Brother and the Holding Company,[31]The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. Many of these works are now regarded as classics of the poster genre, and original items by these artists command high prices on the collector market today.
Contemporary with the burgeoning San Francisco scene, a smaller but equally creative psychedelic art movement emerged in London, led by expatriate Australian pop artist Martin Sharp, who created many striking psychedelic posters and illustrations for the influential underground publication Oz magazine, as well as the famous album covers for the Cream albums Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire.[32]
Other prominent London practitioners of the style included: design duo Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, whose work included numerous famous posters, as well as psychedelic "makeovers" on a piano for Paul McCartney and a car for doomed Guinness heir Tara Browne, and design collective The Fool, who created clothes and album art for several leading UK bands including The Beatles, Cream, and The Move. The Beatles loved psychedelic designs on their albums, and designer group called The Fool created psychedelic design, art, paint at the short-lived Apple Boutique (1967–1968) in Baker St, London.[33]
Blues rock singer Janis Joplin had a psychedelic car, a Porsche 356. The trend also extended to motor vehicles. The earliest, and perhaps most famous of all psychedelic vehicles was the famous "Further" bus, driven by Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters, which was painted inside and out in 1964 with bold psychedelic designs (although these were executed in primary colours, since the DayGlo colours that soon became de rigueur were then not widely available). Another very famous example is John Lennon's psychedelic Rolls-Royce – originally black, he had it repainted in 1967 in a vivid psychedelic gypsy caravan style, prompting bandmate George Harrison to have his Mini Cooper similarly repainted with logos and devices that reflected his burgeoning interest in Indian spirituality.
Psychedelia Design
The Psychedelia movement in the 1960s had a large impact on graphic design and architecture during the movement. During this time period, it was all about being taking creative risks. This movement was experimental and colorful. There was a political unrest because of Black and Indigenous groups trying to get their rights. With African Americans, it was the civil rights movement. Michael Parke-Taylor includes Native Americans in the conversation. For Indigenous or Native Americans, they "represented the perfect symbol of those marginalized and persecuted in contemporary American society."[34]
The Graphic Design during this era was playful and colorful. This was because of the drug known as LSD. The Hippies took over the psychedelic designs. Jeffrey Meikle understood what the Hippies wanted to create. He knew that the "Hippie artists energized American visual culture with rock concert posters, record jackets, extravagant, and underground newspapers."[35] Milton Glaser has a poster design of Bob Dylan. The poster is colorful and playful. Glaser wanted to get away from the black and white designs of posters and trade that in for a more experimental design. These designs were usually hand painted and printed. The typography was the same as the poster which was playful and colorful. Juliana Duque mentions the typography was "organic patterns, kaleidoscopic textures, and waving (nearly encrypted) lettering combined with intense colors."[36]
There were a few architecture designs that came out during this period. The graphic design elements on buses were just as colorful as the posters. They employed psychedelic elements to craft immersive environments and foster an interactive space. Luke Dickens explores the overlooked architecture in the 1960s. He mentions The Fifth Dimension as being "highly inventive, utopian “fun palace” used advanced modular technologies... and deployed psychedelic sensibilities as a novel form of disruptive politics to induce critical dispositions towards the built environment."[37] The theme of bright colors was evident in this fiber glass domed-shaped building. This building was meant to trigger psychedelic responses. similar to The Fifth Dimension, there was a geodesic dome and a dymaxion car made by Buckminster Fuller. The geodesic dome was complex. Meikle explained that Fuller followed the psychedelia era by wanting to speak "to a counterculture claiming to reject American Materialism."[35]
The electronic dance music scene is strongly linked to the consumption of psychedelic drugs, particularly MDMA. Drug usage in the EDM scene can primarily be traced to British acid house parties and the Second Summer of Love, which marked the beginnings of rave culture; these movements, however, were distinct from and mostly unrelated to 1960s psychedelia.
A psychedelic festival is a gathering that promotes psychedelic music and art in an effort to unite participants in a communal psychedelic experience.[41] Psychedelic festivals have been described as "temporary communities reproduced via personal and collective acts of transgression... through the routine expenditure of excess energy, and through self-sacrifice in acts of abandonment involving ecstatic dancing often fueled by chemical cocktails."[41] These festivals often emphasize the ideals of peace, love, unity, and respect.[41] Notable psychedelic festivals include the biennial Boom Festival in Portugal,[41]Ozora Festival in Hungary, Universo Paralello in Brazil as well as Nevada's Burning Man[42] and California's Symbiosis Gathering in the United States.[43]
Conferences
In recent years there has been a resurgence in interest in psychedelic research and a growing number of conferences now take place across the globe.[44] The psychedelic research charity Breaking Convention have hosted one of the world's largest since 2011. A biennial conference in London, UK, Breaking Convention: a multidisciplinary conference on psychedelicconsciousness[45] is a multidisciplinary conference on psychedelic consciousness. In the US MAPS held their first Psychedelic Science conference,[46] devoted specifically to research of psychedelics in scientific and medical fields, in 2013. In Australia, Entheogenesis Australis has been hosting the world's longest ongoing conferences around psychedelics and ethnobotany since 2004.[47]
Psychedelic rock is a rock music genre that is inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelic culture, which is centered on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music incorporated new electronic sound effects and recording techniques, extended instrumental solos, and improvisation. Many psychedelic groups differ in style, and the label is often applied spuriously.
The Summer of Love was a major social phenomenon that occurred in San Francisco during the summer of 1967. As many as 100,000 people, mostly young people, hippies, beatniks, and 1960s counterculture figures, converged in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and Golden Gate Park. More broadly, the Summer of Love encompassed hippie culture, spiritual awakening, hallucinogenic drugs, anti-war sentiment, and free love throughout the West Coast of the United States, and as far away as New York City. An episode of the PBS documentary series American Experience referred to the Summer of Love as "the largest migration of young people in the history of America".
The Doors of Perception is an autobiographical book written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1954, it elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision", and reflects on their philosophical and psychological implications. In 1956, he published Heaven and Hell, another essay which elaborates these reflections further. The two works have since often been published together as one book; the title of both comes from William Blake's 1793 book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during or around 1964, and spread to different countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City's Greenwich Village, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago's Old Town community. The term hippie was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularize use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier.
The Human Be-In was an event held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park Polo Fields on January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol of American counterculture and introduced the word "psychedelic" to suburbia.
Humphry Fortescue Osmond was an English psychiatrist who moved to Canada and later the United States. He is known for inventing the word psychedelic and for his research into interesting and useful applications for psychedelic drugs. Osmond also explored aspects of the psychology of social environments, in particular how they influenced welfare or recovery in mental institutions.
Acid rock is a loosely defined type of rock music that evolved out of the mid-1960s garage punk movement and helped launch the psychedelic subculture. While the term has sometimes been used interchangeably with "psychedelic rock", acid rock also specifically refers to a more musically intense, rawer, or heavier subgenre or sibling of psychedelic rock. Named after lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), the style is generally defined by heavy, distorted guitars and often contains lyrics with drug references and long improvised jams.
The psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was first synthesized on November 16, 1938, by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in the Sandoz laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. It was not until five years later on April 19, 1943, that the psychedelic properties were found. Today, the discovery of LSD is celebrated worldwide during the annual Bicycle Day holiday, serving also as the day celebrating the psychedelic revolution in general.
Psychedelic art is art, graphics or visual displays related to or inspired by psychedelic experiences and hallucinations known to follow the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, and DMT. Coined by British psychologist Humphry Osmond, the term "psychedelic" means "mind manifesting". By that definition, all artistic efforts to depict the inner world of the psyche may be considered "psychedelic".
A psychedelic experience is a temporary altered state of consciousness induced by the consumption of a psychedelic substance. For example, an acid trip is a psychedelic experience brought on by the use of LSD, while a mushroom trip is a psychedelic experience brought on by the use of psilocybin. Psychedelic experiences feature alterations in normal perception such as visual distortions and a subjective loss of self-identity, sometimes interpreted as mystical experiences. Psychedelic experiences lack predictability, as they can range from being highly pleasurable to frightening. The outcome of a psychedelic experience is heavily influenced by the person's mood, personality, expectations, and environment.
The Psychedelic era was the time of social, musical and artistic change influenced by psychedelic drugs, occurring from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. The era was defined by the proliferation of LSD and its following influence in the development of psychedelic music and psychedelic film in the Western world.
Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity". The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings. The 19th-century philosopher and psychologist William James uses the synonymous term "self-surrender," and Jungian psychology uses the synonymous term psychic death, referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche. In death and rebirth mythology, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition, as described later by Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the Hero's Journey. It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary western thinking.
Psychedelic music is a wide range of popular music styles and genres influenced by 1960s psychedelia, a subculture of people who used psychedelic drugs such as DMT, LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin mushrooms, to experience synesthesia and altered states of consciousness. Psychedelic music may also aim to enhance the experience of using these drugs and has been found to have a significant influence on psychedelic therapy.
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon and political movement that developed in the Western world during the mid-20th century. It began in the early 1960s, and continued through the early 1970s. It is often synonymous with cultural liberalism and with the various social changes of the decade. The effects of the movement have been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights movement in the United States had made significant progress, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and with the intensification of the Vietnam War that same year, it became revolutionary to some. As the movement progressed, widespread social tensions also developed concerning other issues, and tended to flow along generational lines regarding respect for the individual, human sexuality, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, rights of people of color, end of racial segregation, experimentation with psychoactive drugs, and differing interpretations of the American Dream. Many key movements related to these issues were born or advanced within the counterculture of the 1960s.
The hippie subculture began its development as a youth movement in the United States during the early 1960s and then developed around the world.
"Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a counterculture-era phrase popularized by Timothy Leary in 1966. In 1967, Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and phrased the famous words, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". It was also the title of his spoken word album recorded in 1966. On this lengthy album, Leary can be heard speaking in a monotone soft voice on his views about the world and humanity, describing nature, Indian symbols, "the meaning of inner life", the LSD experience, peace, and many other issues.
The Zihuatanejo Project was a psychedelic training center and intentional community created during the beginning of the counterculture of the 1960s by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert under the umbrella of their nonprofit group, the International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF). The community was located in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico, and took up residence at the Hotel Catalina in the summers of 1962 and 1963.
Researchers have noted the relationship between psychedelics and ecology, particularly in relation to the altered states of consciousness (ASC) produced by psychedelic drugs and the perception of interconnectedness expressed through ecological ideas and themes produced by the psychedelic experience. This is felt through the direct experience of the unity of nature and the environment of which the individual is no longer perceived as separate but intimately connected and embedded inside.
Entheogenic drugs have been used by various groups for thousands of years. There are numerous historical reports as well as modern, contemporary reports of indigenous groups using entheogens, chemical substances used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context.
References
↑ Rubin, Rachel, 1964– (2007). Immigration and American popular culture: an introduction. Melnick, Jeffrey Paul. New York: New York University Press. ISBN978-1-4356-0043-0. OCLC173511775.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
↑ A. Weil, W. Rosen. (1993), From Chocolate To Morphine: Everything You Need To Know About Mind-Altering Drugs. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 93
↑ W. Davis (1996), "One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest". New York, Simon and Schuster, Inc. p. 120.
↑ J. Campbell, This is the Beat Generation: New York, San Francisco, Paris (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), ISBN0-520-23033-7.
↑ R. Worth, Illegal Drugs: Condone Or Incarcerate? (Marshall Cavendish, 2009), ISBN0-7614-4234-0, p. 30.
↑ D. Farber, "The Psychologists Psychology:The Intoxicated State/Illegal Nation – Drugs in the Sixties Counterculture", in P. Braunstein and M. W. Doyle (eds), Imagine Nation: The Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s (New York: Routledge, 2002), ISBN0-415-93040-5, p. 21.
↑ J. Shepherd, Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Media, Industry and Society (New York, NY: Continuum, 2003), ISBN0-8264-6321-5, p. 211.
↑ Wilson, Andrew (2007). "Spontaneous Underground: An Introduction to Psychedelic Scenes, 1965–1968". In Christopher Grunenberg, Jonathan Harris (ed.). Summer of Love: Psychedelic Art, Social Crisis and Counterculture in the 1960s (8ed.). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. pp.63–98.
↑ V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN0-87930-653-X, pp. 1322–3.
↑ Labate, Beatriz Caiuby; Cavnar, Clancy (2011). "The expansion of the field of research on ayahuasca: Some reflections about the ayahuasca track at the 2010 MAPS "Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century" conference". International Journal of Drug Policy. 22 (2): 174–178. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2010.09.002. PMID21051213.
Magic Mushrooms and Reindeer - Weird Nature. A short video on the use of Amanita muscaria mushrooms by the Sami people and their reindeer produced by the BBC.
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