Related Research Articles
Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into the physical world for the purpose of healing, divination, or to aid human beings in some other way.
Psychedelia refers to the psychedelic subculture of the 1960s and the psychedelic experience. This includes psychedelic art, psychedelic music and style of dress during that era. This was primarily generated by people who used psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mescaline and psilocybin and also non-users who were participants and aficionados of this subculture. Psychedelic art and music typically recreate or reflect the experience of altered consciousness. Psychedelic art uses highly distorted, surreal visuals, bright colors and full spectrums and animation to evoke, convey, or enhance the psychedelic experience. Psychedelic music uses distorted electric guitar, Indian music elements such as the sitar, tabla, electronic effects, sound effects and reverb, and elaborate studio effects, such as playing tapes backwards or panning the music from one side to another.
Psychedelics are a class of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary states of consciousness. This causes specific psychological, visual, and auditory changes, and often a substantially altered state of consciousness. The "classical" psychedelics, the psychedelics with the largest scientific and cultural influence, are mescaline, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT.
Terence Kemp McKenna was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s", "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism", and the "intellectual voice of rave culture".
Entheogens are psychoactive substances that induce alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, or behavior for the purposes of engendering spiritual development or otherwise in sacred contexts. Anthropological study has established that entheogens are used for religious, magical, shamanic, or spiritual purposes in many parts of the world. Entheogens have traditionally been used to supplement many diverse practices geared towards achieving transcendence, including divination, meditation, yoga, sensory deprivation, asceticism, prayer, trance, rituals, chanting, imitation of sounds, hymns like peyote songs, drumming, and ecstatic dance. The psychedelic experience is often compared to non-ordinary forms of consciousness such as those experienced in meditation, near-death experiences, and mystical experiences. Ego dissolution is often described as a key feature of the psychedelic experience.
Alex Grey is an American visual artist, author, teacher, and Vajrayana practitioner known for creating spiritual and psychedelic paintings. He works in multiple forms including performance art, process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and painting. He is also on the board of advisors for the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and is the Chair of Wisdom University's Sacred Art Department. He and his wife Allyson Grey are the co-founders of The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM), a non-profit organization in Wappingers Falls, New York.
N,N-Dipropyltryptamine (DPT) is a psychedelic entheogen belonging to the tryptamine family. Use as a designer drug has been documented by law enforcement officials since as early as 1968. However, potential therapeutic use was not investigated until the 1970s. It is found either as a crystalline hydrochloride salt or as an oily or crystalline base. It has not been found to occur endogenously. It is a close structural homologue of dimethyltryptamine and diethyltryptamine.
Psychonautics refers both to a methodology for describing and explaining the subjective effects of altered states of consciousness, including those induced by meditation or mind-altering substances, and to a research cabal in which the researcher voluntarily immerses themselves into an altered mental state in order to explore the accompanying experiences.
Ralph Metzner was a German-born American psychologist, writer and researcher, who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. Metzner was a psychotherapist, and Professor Emeritus of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he was formerly the Academic Dean and Academic Vice-president.
Deliriants are a class of hallucinogen. The term was coined in the early 1980s to distinguish these drugs from psychedelics and dissociatives such as LSD and ketamine, due to their primary effect of causing delirium, as opposed to the more lucid and less disturbed states produced by other types of hallucinogens. The term generally refers to anticholinergic drugs, which are substances that inhibit the function of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Common examples of deliriants include plants of the genera Datura and Brugmansia as well as higher than recommended dosages of diphenhydramine (Benadryl). A number of plant deliriants such as that of the Solanaceae family, particularly in the Americas have been used by some indigenous cultures to reach delirious and altered states for traditions or rituals, such as rites of passage, divination or communicating with the ancestors. Despite their long history of use, deliriants are the least-studied class of hallucinogens in terms of their behavioral and neurological effects.
Daniel Pinchbeck is an American author. His books include Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, and Notes from the Edge Times. He is a co-founder of the web magazine Reality Sandwich and of the website Evolver.net, and edited the North Atlantic Books publishing imprint Evolver Editions. He was featured in the 2010 documentary 2012: Time for Change, directed by Joao Amorim and produced by Mangusta Films. He is the founder of the think tank Center for Planetary Culture, which produced the Regenerative Society Wiki.
Mayanism is a non-codified eclectic collection of New Age beliefs, influenced in part by Pre-Columbian Maya mythology and some folk beliefs of the modern Maya peoples.
Urban shamanism distinguishes traditional shamanism found in indigenous societies from Western adaptations that draw on contemporary and modern roots. Urban shamanism is practiced primarily by people who do not originate in a traditional indigenous society and who create unique methods that do not follow or claim authenticity in any prior tradition. Urban shamanism traces its beginnings to efforts by Westerners to come to terms with psychoactive plant experiences using their own modern frames of cultural reference influenced by, but outside of, the indigenous rites in which plant medicine is traditionally based. The related terms digital shamanism and digital psychedelia are schools of thought born out of the convergence of technological changes, art movements, and Eastern philosophies during the late 20th century. They parallel and are often associated with technopaganism. In practice, the digital psychedelic process is the fusion of the biological and technological to seek self-knowledge.
Jonathan Ott is an ethnobotanist, writer, translator, publisher, natural products chemist and botanical researcher in the area of entheogens and their cultural and historical uses, and helped coin the term "entheogen".
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.
Michael James Harner was an anthropologist, educator and author. His 1980 book, The Way of the Shaman: a Guide to Power and Healing, has been foundational in the development and popularization of Core Shamanism as a path of personal development for adherents of neoshamanism. He also founded the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.
Manchu folk religion is the ethnic religion practiced by most of the Manchu people, the major-Tungusic group, in China. It can also be called Manchu shamanism by virtue of the word "shaman" being originally from Tungusic šamán, later applied by Western scholars to similar religious practices in other cultures.
The consumption of hallucinogenic plants goes back to thousands of years. Psychoactive plants contain hallucinogenic particles that provoke an altered state of consciousness, which are known to have been used during spiritual rituals among Mexican subcultures such as the Aztec, Maya, and Inca. The Maya were indigenous people of Mexico and Central America that had significant access to hallucinogenic substances. Archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic data show that Mesoamerican cultures used psychedelic substances in therapeutic and religious rituals. The consumption of many of these substances dates back to the Olmec era ; however, Mayan religious texts reveal more information about the Aztecs and Mayan civilization. These substances are considered entheogens because they were used to communicate with divine powers. "Entheogen," an alternative term for hallucinogen or psychedelic drug, derived from ancient Greek words ἔνθεος and γενέσθαι. This neologism was coined in 1979 by a group of ethnobotanists and scholars of mythology. Some authors claim entheogens have been used by shamans throughout history, with appearances in prehistoric cave art such as a cave painting at Tassili n'Ajjer, Algeria that dates to roughly 8000 BP. Shamans in Mesoamerica served to diagnose the cause of illness by seeking wisdom through a transformational experience by consuming drugs to learn the crisis of the illness
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
- 1 2 Jim DeKorne (26 July 2011). Psychedelic Shamanism, Updated Edition: The Cultivation, Preparation, and Shamanic Use of Psychotropic Plants. North Atlantic Books. p. 81. ISBN 978-1-58394-290-1.
- ↑ Sussex Publishers, LLC (October 1987). Spy. Sussex Publishers, LLC. p. 61.
- ↑ Shulgin, Alexander and Ann (1997). TIHKAL (1st ed.). California, US: Transform Press. p. 430. ISBN 0-9630096-9-9.
- ↑ Maria Victoria Mangini (2000). "Yes, Mom Took Acid:" the Sociohistorical Influence of Prior Psychedelic Drug Use in Adults. University of California, San Francisco.
- ↑ Jesse Jarnow (29 March 2016). Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America. Da Capo Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-306-82256-8.