Gestalltning 1
I will be illustrating what some counter-culture philosophers, anthropologist, biologist and artist call The Fall, or The Fall into History. I will combine biology, philosophy and shamanism in order to cast a different light on the emergence of the human spirit and also the emergence of power, oppression and hierarchy. The first half of my project is a presentation of the theorizing of Terence McKenna, an American art historian, philosopher and psychonaut that has gained underground fame as a counter-culture writer and lecturer during the 60s and up until the 90s. The other half is a look at current history from the previous perspective.
We begin in the cradle of mankind, Africa. Africa is changing; the rainforest is retreating due to increases in temperature, leaving room to the expanding grassland. The hominid had already evolved for about 30 million years, living in the canopy of the African rainforest. However the retreat of the rainforest forced the hominid to the ground, a different environment. This environmental change also exposed the hominid to something that is called dietary pressure; other sources of food had to be found in order for the species to survive. All animals are conservative about their diet, as different foods results in mutation in offspring, which can be disastrous. It is during this time that McKenna suggests the hominid encountered a mushroom called Stropharia Cubensis, which contains a psychoactive substance called psilocybin. According to McKenna the influence of psilocybin acts on the evolution of mankind in three steps. The first step, small amounts of psilocybin, amounts were you would not notice its psychoactivity, increases visual and auditory acuity. There is a study to prove the increase of visual acuity, where subjects took standard eye tests, and then later they did the test again after being given the threshold amounts of psilocybin. The subjects did significantly better under the influence of psilocybin. The researcher responsible, during a conversation with McKenna, exclaimed in his broken English, “Here we have a drug, where you see more of reality, than if you didn’t take the drug!” What this meant to the hominid was that in the competitive environment of the African grassland, increased perception would make the difference between if you where the successful hunter or the hunted.
Stage two, when a larger amount was eaten the mushroom would act as a CNS (central nervous system) stimulant, in other words an aphrodisiac, which would increase sexual drive. These two first stages in combination means the users of this tool would have increased hunting success, in other words would bring back more food to the group, and more children which would survive to reproductive age. Anyone unwilling to use the mushroom would be outbred.
The third and last stage is about the full-blown psychedelic experience. Being both herbivores and carnivores, mankind had the same advanced consciousness of a predator, a mind that can internalize the behavior of the prey, but having the social mind of an herbivore gave the complexity of relating emotionally towards members of the group, it was a mind of flexibility and of the external and internal. So when even larger amounts of psilocybin were ingested, an amount that would clearly be psychoactive, the human mind was catapulted into the Unknown, the Mythos, the Transcendental. It is an experience that we cannot even today grasp even a fraction of, even with all our science, philosophy, technology and poetry. We have many long words to describe aspects of this experience but they all fall short. This experience is the foundation for religion, which is believed to be the reason for the first expressions of art. Another phenomenon that can occur during a psychedelic experience is called glossolalia, which is syntactical behavior in the absence of meaning, in some religions it is called talking in tongues. McKenna suggests that this repeated experience of glossolalia is the foundation of language.
All primates live under the dominance of the alpha male, it is in the biology of all primates even the small cute ones. However the emergence of human consciousness under the influence of psilocybin, according to McKenna, medicated out the tendencies of male domination resulting in, for a few million years, a paradise.
It was also, most likely a woman that found the mushroom in the first place, as it was the broad chested males of the primate group that did the hunting and the smaller women that did the gathering. McKenna wasn’t restricted by only science as he presented his theory, but also looked at the Bible. In Genesis it is written about the Garden of Eden, a paradise in which mankind lived in harmony with nature and the animals – however the Bible spins the eating of a particular item as the cause of the dissolution of Eden, McKenna suggests the Tree of Knowledge is in fact the Stropharia Cubensis. There is one verse in Gensis which, when having the mushroom in mind, takes on a new light:
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat”
On the note of languages and women, McKenna suggests that they were the primary developers. The noises produced during glossolalia were probably first used as something similar to song and a development of the already established, but limited, forms of communication that were in place even before the encounter with the mushroom. But the phenomenon of meaning, using a specific sound and attaching that to a specific object, was probably developed primarily by women as it would be beneficial as a gatherer of plants to communicate which plant was which, which was food, which was medicine or which was poisonous.
Stropharia Cubensis grow in a not so glamorous medium, the droppings of grazers. As the importance of the mushroom for hunting, sex and ritual became more integrated and the intelligence of the human animal increased we probably drew the connection that the mushroom and the grazers where linked, where the grazers did their business, the next moon the mushroom appeared. What happened was that man followed the migration of herds and later attempted to form a relationship to these animals, a symbiotic relationship where the animals were protected, cared for and given food and the humans were given mushrooms, fur and meat. Hunting became less important and as we followed the seasonal migration of the cattle a new lifestyle appeared, one which is still practiced by some native people such as the Tuvan, nomadism. Up until about 40 000 to 50 000 years ago, the culture of mankind was that of nomads herding their cattle on a yearly round. Because of the explosion of human culture through the main channel of shamanism we had philosophy, poetry, music, art, craftsmanship, storytelling and ceremony and ritual. From this time we find cave paintings of geometric patterns, strange humanlike beings, animals and shamans – imagery that remind one of the psychedelic experience. Shamanism is the pinnacle of this evolutionary trajectory. Another thing that Stropharia Cubensis does is open the mind to Nature, and what shamans claim even to this day is that Nature possesses some kind of awareness; it has Spirit, which is to say that it is conscious. While in Nature in a state of trance, stoned or unstoned, shamans can communicate with this mind or open themselves to its influence. The shaman, as a social role, would be central to the life of the tribe. By communicating with Nature, the shaman would have access to information unavailable to the rest of the tribe. The shaman would through trance, entered by dancing, meditation, drumming and such, enter the Spirit World, a non-physical reality where different Spirits would avail information. Spirits, a word bereft of any understanding in the modern world, could be explained in modern terms as a morphogenetic field. Each animal species would have such a field, acting as what Jung describes as the Collective Unconscious, which the shaman could extract information from. Even things like elements, such as fire, would be possible to communicate with. In my own shamanic practice I have done just that. The shaman is also the first doctor, using his own spirit to balance disharmony within a patient’s psyche that would otherwise express itself as the physical symptom of illness. The shaman was also the conductor of ceremony, one of which would have been monthly. As it takes a Stropharia Cubensis about a month, from one fullmoon to the other, to reach its harvest growth, the ceremony would take place at each full moon, and so the Moon would be worshiped like a deity. During the ceremony the people would be dancing, singing and drumming while under the influence of psilocybin. They would feast and probably engage in sexual activity, even orgy. A result of this phenomenon, wild sexuality, would make it impossible for patriarchy to emerge, as it wouldn’t be possible to trace lines of male paternity. The children were instead regarded as the tribe’s children, the responsibility of everyone rather than a mother and a father. But female maternity was possible to trace, and for the first few years the child was close to its mother just like with animals. The ability to instead trace female maternity gave the women the reverence of the life-bearers. Every adult woman, initiated by her first pregnancy would probably have been referred to as “Mother” by all tribe members, a title of high status. As Nature gave that which a mother gave each individual during their childhood, Nature itself was regarded as feminine and worshiped as the Great Goddess. The integration of Stropharia Cubensis into the culture suppressed instinctual male dominance.
Later, we drew another connection, when we returned a year later on our yearly round plants had grown in the garbage pile were we had camped the year before. We started to strategically plant seeds in order to control the tribe’s food supply. Much later this developed into agriculture.
So what happened to Paradise? According to McKenna, the same catalyst that made this possible also put a stop to it – the drying of Africa, as the temperatures rose even further, that which had turned into grassland turned into desert. This proved to have detrimental effects. The mushroom became scarcer, became available only during the rainy season. The tribes must have made attempts to preserve the harvest of mushrooms; one possible solution is preservation in honey. However natural honey contains more water than the one found on shelves at the local store. So honey itself can turn into a psychoactive drug – alcohol, or in this case mead. And alcohol promotes completely different social values and behaviors. It promotes violence, inflated ego, and disregard for personal boundaries. The lid on male dominance flew open, and what was a matriarchic shamanic nomadic tribe in harmony with nature turned into a patriarchic warrior agricultural people. Male dominance took over, and men thought of children and women in terms of ownership. These times of drought and scarcity led men to violence and dominance under the guise of protection of what they felt to be theirs. We no longer followed the cattle through the vast grassland, but instead kept them in one place, while we worked the soil. What happens when humans become stationary and dependent on what they can produce from the earth is the idea of ownership – this piece of land is mine. There is evidence of this culture in places like Göbekli Tepe, where large men are the most dramatic feature in the architecture, and the animals are smaller. These circular and massive stone structures are not built by nomads, but by a stationary people that were both farmers and hunters. There are evidence of priesthood too, in other words a rigid hierarchy that made sure they only had access to the groups dictated idea of the divine – before each tribe member could participate in the sacred at each fullmoon. This priesthood was involved in sacrifice, of most likely cattle and other hunted animals. The priests were still much like shamans, but it took on a different much darker guise of blood magic and death cults. When a shaman died, their heads were cut off, their power were believed to come from the head, in order for the shaman not to curse anyone after death.
Another consequence of agriculture, which is found in the story of Jericho in the Bible, is that if one farm has a failed crop they would die if they didn’t steal from another farm. This promoted hostility, so the grain towers, like the one in Jericho, had to be walled and defended. So when your hungry neighbors came around you had to drop rocks on them or throw wooden spears. This created the need for soldiers, both on the defense of offense. As each farm grew, some farms created alliances. There was now need for a smith, a leatherworker, a general and so on. Role specialization came about around the same time as the first city-states such as Ur and Uruk in the region called Mesopotamia. Here we have clear hierarchy of kings, noblemen, officers, officials, craftsmen, soldiers, farmers and the poor. There was constant warfare and coupes in the city-states and between them.
Now most people lived behind great walls, separated from nature. Around this time the subconscious was created, parts of our mind became no longer available to us. What we call spiritualism is essentially a process of reclaiming these lost parts and the tribes of prehistoric Africa had all of these mental aspects at their disposal. The mind was split, and under the oppression of the king, who was the embodiment of the divine, in other words the king claimed ownership over the divine, the people toiled away. You could imagine they were not very happy.