My presentation deals with the sacraments of ecstatic dance rituals, as well as the ritual structures of dance rituals within a cross-cultural context. The presentation draws on work that I did for my honours thesis "Substantial Spirits: Substance and Meaning in Psychedelic Dance Parties and Rituals of Collective Ecstasis". For this thesis I analysed the ritual elements and structures of a range of dance rituals from different cultures using methodologies drawn from studies in religion and the anthropology of consciousness.
I compared and contrasted some Australian doofs with these other dance rituals and found a considerable degree of similarity, sufficient—I argued—that all of these rituals could be considered as belonging to the same structural class of "rituals of collective ecstasis". These ritual frameworks are very well conserved in a great variety of different cultures were "ecstasy" of "experiential transcendence" is valued.
The ceremonial use of entheogens as catalysts for achieving states of communal ecstasis has a wide geographical spread. A broad survey of the world's; entheogenic practices reveals that the majority of the more frequently used entheogenic sacraments contain substances that are pharmacological equivalents of the western category of "psychedelics" (Ott 1996, Schultes and Hoffman 1980). Entheogens are used in a number of different ritual contexts.
Entheogenic rituals which are focussed on divination, medical diagnosis, and healing through spiritual intercession often have an intimate, serious, and somewhat introverted character. Examples of such shamanistic and ethnomedicinal ceremonies include the Mazatec "mushroom([1])" ceremonies or Veladas of southern Mexico (Wasson 1974), and the healing ceremonies of Peruvian Curanderismo involving the San Pedro cacti (Trichocereus pachanoi) (Caldéron et al 1999) or the ayahuasca potion (Luna 1986). These rituals involve resolving the problems of troubled clients. Even such apparently introverted rituals have an implicitly community-oriented objective. Most shamanistic models of illness posit that sickness and misfortune arise from malevolent intentions or sorcery—an idea similar to western concepts of psychosocial causes of illness (Dobkin de Rios 1992). Insofar as sorcery can be seen as a product of social disharmony or discontent, the sorcerer or hostile agent is thus performing a social action. Similarly, the diviner attempting to uncover the preternatural source of illness is performing a diagnosis of social disharmony, and the healer is acting to maintain or reinstate social cohesion.
Rituals of initiation are also implicitly social in that they involve a passage from one part of the social structure to another, even though they often involve a "separation" phase (Turner 1969). In addition, the ‘incorporation’ phase of rites de passage usually involves a public participation framework (van Gennep 1909).
Thus, even apparently highly personal ritual operations such as those connected with divination, sorcery and healing may be considered supplementary to the maintenance of social relations—they provide for the fine tuning of society as a sacralised entity.
Rituals that explicitly promote large-scale social cohesion and shape community identity have a special dynamism and interest. Public rituals have also often been more accessible to ethnographers than entheogenic curing rituals, rites of passage, or practices of ensorcelment. Further we are interested in the exploration of broad parallels between entheogenic rituals and psychedelic dance parties and these parallels are most clearly expressed in community-oriented entheogenic rituals. It is therefore worthwhile to consider some of these accounts of rituals in detail, and to try to trace their essential structures.
The principal ethnographic accounts that I’ve analysed are Stacy B. Schaefer’s 1996 description of the ritual uses and meanings of peyote among the Mexican Huichol, focusing on the annual "peyote pilgrimage" supplemented with the observations of Barbara Myerhoff’s (1974) description of the Huichol pilgrimage; Geraldo Reichel-Dolmatoff’s 1975 account of yajé (ayahuasca) sessions among the Barasana of Colombia and James W. Fernandez’s 1982 monograph on the ritual use of Eboka by members of the Bwiti cult among the Fang and Metsogo of Gabon, West Africa.
These accounts are representative and thorough. Each account provides an exemplary study of the particular forms entheogenic ritual takes in a given cultural milieu. Together, the accounts range across three continents, and three very different societies, and they are representative of the wide range of cultural approaches to the sacred generally and to entheogens in particular. Also, to simplify the analysis I chose accounts where the entheogen is ingested by the same route—orally—rather than as an ointment, enema, snuff, smoke, vapour, or injection. One might reasonably expect that materials taken orally partake in the symbolism of food and drink, that substances that are inhaled partake in the symbolism of the breath, and that substances taken intravenously partake in the symbolism of blood. I have selected just three examples of rituals, which I believe are exemplars of community-oriented entheogenic ritual as a class. Regrettably, I have no first-hand experience with any entheogenic ritual outside a western, post-modern context—this is "armchair anthropology"—however, the accounts have elements which resonate so strongly with the psychedelic dance-party experience that I feel their examination is more than warranted.
The entheogenic rituals that I looked at share a number of structural elements. These can be organised under the rubrics preparation, ritual space and time, music and dance, pharmacological aspects, and social relations. I’d like to briefly discuss these similarities.
All three rituals involve preliminary ritual modifications of the self. Fasting, special diets, sexual abstinence or libido regulating practices, prayer, confession, and the fulfilment of ritual or social obligations may be required for the participants to attain a ritually "pure" condition.
Such preparations are a common feature of many kinds of ritual contact with the sacred and are not peculiar to entheogenic ritualism, although they may take on new physiological and psychological significance within the entheogenic context. Fasting can conceivably impact on the extent and rate of absorption of psychoactive substances, and the physical strain induced by hunger may also lower the psychological threshold for visions, as might sexual abstinence. Substances present in foods might also interact at a pharmacological level with some entheogens, possibly leading to adverse reactions. Thus, some dietary regulations may have a biochemical basis.
The transformation of appearance through elaborate and beautiful ceremonial costume or cosmetic modifications also occurs in all three rituals. Practices such as beautification, fulfilling or releasing obligations, confession, and prayer exert a strong influence on "set"—the mood and expectation factors that can impact on an individuals’ experience of entheogenic ritual.
Ritual space is established in all rituals.
In the case of the Huichol, the high desert Wirikúta is sacred space, the point of cosmic origin. The camp fire provides a further sacred centre within this space, while the orbits of circling candles outline a sacred perimeter (Schaefer 1996).
The Barasana ritual takes place in any of several large Malocas. These communal houses are also modelled on the form of the sacred cosmos (Hugh-Jones 1979, Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971, Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975). The space is prepared for ritual by clearing the central area for dancing and by lighting special resin-torches which emit intense red light (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975, Schultes and Raffauf 1992).
The Bwiti rituals take place in and around chapels replete with esoteric meanings. The centre of the chapel is a pillar which serves as axis mundi, conceptualised as linking the living and the dead, above and below, in an enduring relationship . The chapel also has a female and a male side, the setting up of polarities being an important preliminary to their synthesis—the Bwiti "one-heartedness". The Bwiti chapel also represents an androgynous cruciform human figure (Fernandez 1982).
Another similarity between these rituals is their brief duration and nocturnal setting. While the Huichol pilgrimage is lengthy, the actual time spent in the intense, visionary world of Wirikúta is very brief. The climax of the pilgrimage is a nocturnal ritual of music, circumambulation, and meditation. The Barasana yajé session lasts a single night, as does the Metsogo Bwiti ritual described by Fernandez. There is perhaps an endeavour here to preserve the integrity of routine patterns by temporally locating the majority of the ritual in the depths of night, beyond the regular realm of waking consciousness. In each instance the rituals transport the participants through the undifferentiated amorphousness of night to emerge eventually into the pristine splendour of a new day. Here, the cosmic order of day and night are given human meaning through ritual.
Another common feature of these rituals is their employment of music—especially percussive sound, and sonorous chanting.
The Huichol mara’akáme is a "singing shaman" whose chanting transports souls along a "journey". The Huichol pilgrims circle the ceremonial fire in precisely determined patterns to the accompaniment of the mara’akáme’s song. The voices of Barasana participants in a yagé ceremony rise and fall to the croaking of a turtle shell instrument and to the thumping of dancing feet and stamping tubes, song and dance become "fused" like a single organism. The Barasana dance becomes precise and highly coordinated. Similarly the Bwiti ceremonial dances are "of superb quality and highly coordinated" (Fernandez 1982:437). Over many hours the music of the various Bwiti instruments reaches a plateau of aesthetic sensitivity which echoes the attainment of deep solidarity and psychic interrelatedness.
The substances or combinations of substances used in these rituals share a number of key pharmacological similarities. The major similarities are that they each produce a sense of dissociation or depersonalisation, they all have a net stimulating effect, and they are all capable of producing visions or a sense of contact with transpersonal realities.
Peyote produces wakefulness, depersonalisation, and visions. The entheogenic effects of peyote are largely referrable to its principal active constituent, the ‘prototypic psychedelic’ mescaline, although small amounts of related alkaloids are also present (Anderson 1996).
The visions associated with drinking yajé are partly attributable to the DMT it contains, another ‘classic psychedelic’. Drinking yajé also produces visions and depersonalisation. Yajé by itself is not an effective stimulant, indeed, it tends to produce an irresistible torpor. However, when yajé is used for ceremonial dances it is taken in conjunction with large quantities of Amazonian coca (Erythroxylum coca var. ipadu) which helps to counter the yajé lassitude so that participants may easily remain awake through the night (Ott 1996).
The effects of eboka are somewhat more difficult to classify. The most studied alkaloid of eboka, ibogaine, is a tryptamine derivative and is chemically related to DMT, psilocybin, and LSD (Shulgin and Shulgin 1997). In large doses it produces visions comparable to those produced by mescaline or DMT, however, it is generally taken at lower doses that function as a strong stimulant to increase ‘ritual output’. Eboka can also exert a ‘depersonalising’ effect (Fernandez 1972).
The structural continuities found in these three rituals are not arbitrary, rather, they are present in all the cited instances because they are effective in inducing ecstasy at the collective level. These ‘techniques of ecstasy’ appear to orient the participants in the various rituals toward a similar functional goal—renewed and intensified group identification at an immediate level. This is precisely the condition that Victor Turner (1969) referred to as communitas.
Paradoxically, the collective entheogenic ceremonies also accentuate awareness of the individual self—Schaefer speaks of the Huichol’s use of peyote as a "quest for the self", and Fernandez remarks about "greater possibilities of the self" accessed by Banzie—but these excursions into selfhood occur in parallel to a reciprocal atonement (in the more archaic sense of that word) with the matrix of the communal self.
While visions also constitute a powerful form of experiential transcendence for the individual, it is as affirmative and shared signs of community that entheogenic ecstasies are primarily valued. Throughout the accounts we repeatedly find references to related ideas of one-heartedness, moving as one, or being as one, membership, and the "uniting of the souls".
These general themes—preparation, ritual space and time, music, dance, pharmacological aspects, and social relations— have also been salient features of psychedelic dance parties or doofs in South-East Queensland, Australia (Tramacchi 2000).
[1]The mushrooms involved are psilocybin and psilocin-containing members of the genera Psilocybe (including Stropharia cubensis) and Panaeolus, as well as Conocybe siligineoides (Stamets 1996). These mushrooms are used by the Mazatec, Chinantec, Chatino, Zapotec, Mije, and Nahua curanderos, and possibly by curanderos of some other south Mexican peoples (Schultes and Hofmann 1980). ... back