Oversoul, Alex Gray, 1997

In the Fall 2010 issue of Anthropology of Consciousness, Marc Blainey looks at the “discord in the West between viewing psychoactive substances as either ‘hallucinogens’ or ‘entheogens’,” and makes the case for renewed interest in ethnometaphysics. His article has me thinking more about anthropologists produced by a (mostly) entheophobic culture looking at practices and people who are more entheophilic and the ways in which those biases against certain states of consciousness affect the ethnography.

Synchronistically, I recently wrestled with this issue in my review of  Lee Gilmore’s new ethnography, Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man. While Gilmore’s book is a beautifully written portrait of her experiences as an insider at the festival, she elected to exclude entheogens from the volume.  In this section of the review, I address one of the reasons Gilmore chose to exclude entheogens, namely that she does not engage in the practice herself:

Gilmore explores areas of inquiry in this ethnography that once fell outside her personal experience, but does not explain why she was unwilling to become a participant observer in the area of ritual entheogen use as she did in other experience-far arenas. In the introduction to this volume, she cites James Clifford in support of her reflexive ethnographic strategy (p. 12). Clifford critiques the authoritative voice of the ethnographer in his analysis of experience as an “effective guarantee of ethnographic authority” (The Predicament of Culture, 1988 & Writing Culture, 1986) and cautions against smoothing over informants’ many voices with the ethnographers own “monophonic authority” as narrator and interpreter. Through much of the ethnography, Gilmore is careful to avoid this problem by regularly quoting festival participants. However, we do not hear from participants on the question of entheogen use, and are instead left only with Gilmore’s voice assuring us that the practice is not relevant. (Oman-Reagan, 2010)

Reading Blainey’s article, I wonder if her choice to exclude entheogens might arise partly from her ethnometaphysical positioning. Perhaps this kind of exclusion of certain practices (almost taboo practices for some in ‘this’ culture) marks the work as closer to the entheophobic side of our culture that perceives psychedelic use as hallucinatory rather than revelatory or entheogenic.  Here’s a relevant section from Blainey:

As an example of the utility of ethnometaphysical analysis, I point to the question of why the earnest ritual ingestion of entheogens (psychoactive plant and chemical substances used as spiritual sacraments [Forte 1997]) is so widespread amongst ideologies that have been categorized (albeit problematically) as “shamanistic”? Following R. Gordon Wasson’s (1980: xv; Winkelman 2000:3) partition of cultures according to their keenness for or aversion to mushrooms (mycophiles and mycophobes respectively), I will term cultures with a dedication to entheogens as entheophilic, while those (like our own) that largely disdain the effects, calling them “hallucinogens,” are classified as entheophobic.

Perhaps the most fruitful classificatory venture with respect to the ethnometaphysical distinctions underlying entheophilic and entheophobic worldviews is the neurophenomenological model, which designates Euroamerican culture as monophasic while recognizing most other cultures as polyphasic (see Laughlin et al. 1992; Winkelman 2000:3). Winkelman (2000:25) identifies the neurophenomenological approach as a “structural monist perspective,” accounting for both physical (matter) and spiritual (mind) extremes, as well as pondering the interaction between them. In identifying the deeply ingrained disinclination of the standard Western enculturation process to esteem atypical forms of consciousness, monophasic logic arguably stems from a foundational view of the observer as merely a passive window looking out unidirectionally on an external materiality. This echoes Charles D. Laughlin’s (1999) characterization of Euroamerican culture as “materialist,” in that it is “primarily concerned with tracking external events while in the waking state.” Such a portrayal is quite similar to Benjamin Whorf’s (1941) model of the Standard Average European (SAE) worldview where the reification of externality relegates internal consciousness to the epiphenomenal domain of the “imaginary.” Regardless of the label used, one need simply consider the legal and religious norms of Western society where the only sanctioned psychoactive substances are coffee, nicotine, alcohol, and painkillers (aimed at lessening both physical and mental discomfort without prompting deep existential reflection). For the average Euroamerican, any suggestion that the external world’s integrity is to some extent reliant on the observer’s observing of it (such as with some esoteric corollaries of quantum mechanics or as is commonly experienced in altered states of consciousness) presents a grave threat to ideological norms. Hence, the popular disapproval of entheogenic experiences as “hallucinatory” invokes accustomed ethnometaphysical beliefs that routinely become defensive whenever the primacy of external reality is questioned in our culture. (Blainey, 2010)

The ethnometaphysical approach, Blainey writes, “avoids partialities towards any one ontological system.”  This strikes me as an approach that can be readily applied productively to ideas of being and consciousness within “our own” culture.  For example, in rave and dance music culture, entheogenic spirituality movements, ayahuasca centered  neo-shamanism and so on.  The ethnometaphysical approach can help to address the bias of the entheophobic culture that Blainey describes so perfectly:

In contrast to the dominance of dualism and physicalist monism in the West, I suggest that what we are dealing with when we consider the various accounts of both Westerners and non-Westerners who claim to have had beneficial experiences with entheogenic intoxication is a fondness for a metaphysics of mystical monism. For instance, the traditional stance of Western science with regard to entheogens has been to identify them as “hallucinogens” and their effects as “hallucinations,”—characterizations that disclose the dualist/physicalist inclinations of Western thought in general. This is furthered by the “objective” portrayals found in pharmacological volumes where the ingestion of “hallucinogenic” mushrooms containing the active compound psilocybin are said to cause “disturbances in thinking, illusions… and impaired ego functioning” (Julien 2005:612 emphasis added). (Blainey, 2010)

References

Blainey, M., 2010, Special Section: The Future of a Discipline: Considering the Ontological/Methodological Future of the Anthropology of Consciousness, Part II. Anthropology of Consciousness, 21: 113–138.

Oman-Reagan, M.P., 2010, Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man. Lee Gilmore. Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review, Volume 1, Number 2, November 2010 , pp. 176-180

I looked forward to hearing Andy Letcher speak at Horizons.  I hadn’t heard of his work or his book “Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom,” but the synopsis for his presentation sounded interesting:

For those who have encountered the sacred mushroom, the psilocybin experience is like an ancient codex whose glyphs are at once baffling and clear. To make sense of it, each must perform an act of translation or interpretation by which the strange is rendered familiar. But how should this be done? In the post-war period alone an original psychological framework has given way to mysticism, itself replaced in turn by the language of shamanism.

Here, I want to draw attention away from the mushroom experience itself – the usual province of trip-lit – to a consideration of the ways it has been interpreted throughout history. For, contrary to received wisdom, very few cultures have decoded the mushroom as we do. I shall ask a fundamental question: does the mushroom bring genuine transcendence, or are the experiences it occasions forever bound by culture?

(Horizons Conference Program, 2009)

Letcher began by situating himself in academia and describing how he arrived at religious studies.  He had started with an interest in ecology and direct action and was then invited to pursue a PhD in religion.  He explained that he was looking critically at the beliefs of the psychedelic community and we might not like his findings.  He discussed hermeneutics and told the audience that they to, even if they didn’t know what it meant, were hermeneuticists.

He made it clear that his is a scholarly approach, and he won’t give a pass to any of the myth making that is going on in the psychedelic community.  In fact, he wants to debunk those myths.  He expressed his intent to “debunk” the UFO cults, the 2012 movement, the valorization of R. Gordon Wasson, and other mythologies constructed within the psychedelic community.  He discussed the problem of ‘seeing’ mushrooms in ancient art when they aren’t there – and suggested that this can be debunked because they are not in fact mushrooms.  Why?  Because they don’t look like mushrooms.

I agreed with his main point that our interpretations of experience are based (to some degree) in culture, and that we are always engaging in a process of meaning making when we interpret, describe, recount and mythologize experience.  But what wasn’t clear to me is why he seemed to be so hostile toward the mythologies that were being constructed within the psychedelic community. So I asked:

“I understand why you would like to see a more rigorous academic discourse on psychedelics, but aren’t the myths being constructed around Terence McKenna and the 2012 communities not something to be debunked, but something we should look at using that same academic rigor?”

He took this question (which I realize now I should have phrased more precisely) as an opportunity to discuss why he didn’t like the 2012 movement – an answer that boiled down to two things: because it’s millenarian, and that it doesn’t leave room for free will (this answer seemed to exclude the Daniel Pinchbeck brand of 2012ism/mayanism).  If I’d had a chance for a follow up, I would have been more specific and a little more forceful in my critique, asking:

“Why would a scholar of religion be interested in debunking ANY myths?  Isn’t myth the object of our study?  Are you also, for example, interested in debunking the myth systems of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam or is your interest in debunking restricted to these specific new religious movements and myths developing around the psychedelic community?”

OGMA releases his his first album. His ecstatic music can be heard on myspace.

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

From the plurality decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHEASTERN PA. V. CASEY, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). Could this set a precedent for an argument about a right to choose a state of consciousness, aka a right to mental privacy?

Via Liz, The Ayahuasca Foundation volunteer opportunities include creating myspace pages for the plants.

Playing tonight, here:
The Wild Project, 195 East 3rd St., New York, NY
(Doors 7p, screening 8p sharp, $10)

Entheogens are the open source religious software that was built to run natively on all of our operating systems.

* The foods of the gods are free.

The Temple of Awakening Divinity. There’s something to this, my friend and I in elementary school used to say while high-fiving: “we’re the TOADS, totally outrageously awesome dudes!”

Little did I know we were right, but it actually stood for Temple Of Awakening Divinity Supplicants.

Learn about the Temple of Awakening Divinity on The Entheogenic Evolution podcast.

It’s time to develop a reasoned argument for the rights of spirituality.

This is free-writing in this post, a list of ideas:

* Spirituality is a right.

* In the mode of historical pursuits of social justice struggle a new cafeteria-style liberation theology must be written.

* All states of consciousness, even those which do not directly obviously produce capital, must be allowed, protected and encouraged.

The only place I would disagree with McKenna here is when he says that the Shaman has the ‘paid’ version of the software – which is more advanced. In fact, we all have the ‘paid’ version and it is inferior to the open source version – which is openly available from nature’s pharmacy to anyone.