Inför handeldning 2
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 going through environmental change; the rainforest is retreating due to increases in temperature, transforming into an expanding grassland. In the canopy of the African rainforest, the hominid has been evolving for more than 30 million years. Some animals achieve evolutionary climax, like the ants, but when conditions change, the animals has to change or perish. When environmental change happen a species have to find other sources of food in that environment, this challenge is called dietary pressure. Animals that are close to evolutionary climax have a harder time to be flexible enough to survive the change. However a younger species, like the hominid, is still malleable enough to go in the direction of the change. The hominid was also a highly sentient animal, making it flexible. The hominid was a social animal with a relatively sophisticated communication, living in pack with an alpha male as their leader. They ate fruits, vegetation and small insects. They kept themselves to safety of the canopy, away from the predators on the ground.. The retreating rainforest forced the hominid to the ground, a different environment than it was used to. It is during this time that McKenna suggests the hominid encountered a mushroom called Stropharia Cubensis, which contains a psychoactive substance called psilocybin. What are mushrooms? They are an animal kingdom of themselves, neither plants nor animal. Long ago, before the dinosaurs, even before trees, the forests of Earth were covered with giant mushrooms, covering the Earth in a network of mycelium. The mycelium, the roots of the mushroom is the main body of the organism, and can connect through an entire forest. A trait of mushrooms is symbiosis, forming a mutually beneficial relationship with another organism. Some mushrooms form a bond with trees, to help it communicate with other trees - the mushroom gets vital nutrients in exchange. Other mushrooms act as balancer between life and death, keeping an entire forest’s ecology in check; some mushrooms do this by eating dead vegetation in order for new saplings to grow in the fresh soil Lichen is actually two species, a fungi and an algae, and it is one of the oldest organisms on Earth. The mushroom is an ancient organism, which has gone from a giant tree like behemoth to a small highly diverse and specialized organism that forms symbiotic relationships with other organisms and fills crucial roles in maintain the balance of life on Earth – the mushroom, like the ant, has achieved evolutionary climax that has lasted for millions of years. Psilocybin is psychoactive, in other words in animals it alters their perception, experience and behavior. McKenna postulated that this substance could affect the hominid in three different steps or stages. The first step, small amounts of psilocybin, amounts were you would not notice its psychoactivity, increases visual and auditory acuity, the senses sharpens and reflex is faster. At first the hominid, would remain in the canopy, and come down to the ground only to forage for food, but the hominid was adapted for swinging between branches rather than moving around on the ground, its hind legs would was not designed for moving it forward. In this situation increased vision and hearing would help the hominid to detect predators, which would increase its chances of survival. Later as the hominid became more confident in the new environment and had changed it diet to include meat, from small animals such as rodents, the increased perception aided it in hunting. It did this through changing the primate’s vision. The thicket of the rainforest supports a vision that is detailed and fast in reflex response, this does not suffice in the grassland environment. So the psilocybin helped evolve binocular vision, being able to judge the size of object further away. Increased hunting success meant more food for the group. The hominid would experiment with different doses of mushroom, and increased amounts would have different effects. Stage two, a larger dose than step one, would make the mushroom a CNS (central nervous system) stimulant. A CSN stimulant results in arousal, which means erection in males and lubrication in females. This would mean more offspring, increasing the group’s size. The two first stages in combination means more individuals survive gathering of food, increased hunting success, more children and more food means more individuals survive to procreate themselves.
Stage three, as a more generous amount, about a fistful of mushrooms, is eaten the effect of the psilocybin showed its real colors. From 3 g and up psychedelic mushrooms gain another psychoactive quality, it becomes psychedelic. The psychedelic experience is characterized by vivid colors, emotional breadth and depth, increased rational and logical thinking, increased creativity, hallucinations such as fractals, the sense of the world around you as living, no sense of time or distance due to increased concentration and sense of the “now”, increased empathy and sympathy, openness, trance-states, catapulting into the imagination or the subconscious, contact with different realms of existence, communication with other entities and much more. Being both herbivores and carnivores, the hominid had the same advanced consciousness of a predator, a mind that can internalize the behavior of the prey – a mind of the external world, but having the social mind of an herbivore gave the complexity of relating emotionally towards members of the group behaving according to norm behavior. It was a flexible mind of the external and internal. The psychedelic experience would move the hominid into a state of mind which would increase its ability understand itself, others and the environment, this increased cognition exponentially increased the intelligence of the hominid during millions of years, playing a major role in the transition from ape to early human. The psychedelic experience is impossible to understand, even today with all the sophistication of science, psychology, technology, art, music and poetry. One of the reasons why this is, is because language is limited yet the basis for most of human communication and understanding, but the psychedelic experience demonstrates that beyond language there is a whole plethora of non-verbal understanding of the self and the world, this expands the mind into a mental space which seems to have no end and prompts continuous cycles of change. This ecstatic experience is the foundation for religion, the sense of the numinous – that which is larger, above and radiant. The human ape started creating crude tools such as sharpened rocks for cutting, but perhaps also other artifacts made of less durable materials such as bone, skin, wood and rope made from the plentiful grass. Another phenomenon that can occur during a psychedelic experience is called glossolalia, which is syntactical behavior in the absence of meaning. Some religions, like Christianity call this talking in tongues. McKenna suggests that this repeated experience of glossolalia is the foundation of language. 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. The primate is a social animal and has one of the most sophisticated forms of communication in higher animals. 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.
All primates live under the dominance of the alpha male, even small primates like lemurs. 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, an equality paradise. Rather than assigning roles based on gender and physical strength, roles were assigned based on intelligence and the unique abilities of individuals. It was also, most likely a woman that found the mushroom in the first place, as it was the broad chested males that did the hunting and the smaller females 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 animals. The difference is how the Bible, written thousands of years later in a strongly patriarchic culture, and McKenna portrays the role of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The Bible portrays the act of eating the fruit as the reason behind the dissolution of Paradise (to add, it is commonly believed that it was a fruit, namely an apple, but this is a misconception because artists painted an apple as it was a symbol of wisdom). McKenna suggests that the Tree of Knowledge was in fact the Stropharia Cubensis, which would make the story in the Bible not a metaphor but an allegory. There is one verse in Genesis 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”
The other verses in Genesis speak of how God warned Adam and Eve of eating the “fruit” as it would make them “be as gods, knowing good and evil” - one of the traits if human consciousness and thus culture is morality, which evolves from a desire of keeping the group alive and without conflict. The psychedelic experience is like a coin, on one side is happiness, ecstasy, serenity, enlightenment and light, on the other side is pain, confusion, suffering, madness and darkness. This dualistic emotional bedrock is the foundation upon which morality stands – and morality tend to bend towards the light as it is more beneficial. Religious artwork from 10th and 11th century Europe depicts mushrooms in paintings of Adam and Eve. There is a fresco painted in 1291, in Plaincourault Abbey in Indre, France of Adam and Eve, and between them is not a tree but a massive mushroom, with smaller mushrooms curving around the larger. Another one can be found in Hildesheim, Germany in the St. Michaels Church and it was painted in 1192. It depicts the standard symbolism of Adam and Eve with the Tree between them and the Snake spiraling the trunk. However in the background is a large red disk with an unusual decoration, it has small marbles made out of brass, which is to say they are raised from the flat surface of the wood which the art is depicted on. This is the iconic mushroom, the Fly Agaric mushroom, Amanita Muscaria with its bold red cap and white dots. One interesting detail is that Eve does not hold an apple in her hand, like in the standard paintings of the time, but one of the brass marbles, in other words a piece of the mushroom – what was the artist trying to say? The Amanita Muscaria is also psychoactive but much less potent and potentially deadly, where the Stropharia Cubensis is very potent and in no way physically harmful. One of the main reasons for not depicting Stropharia Cubensis is simply that in 10th and 11th century Europe this mushroom did not exist; it thrives in warmer climates and prefers rainforests. The Amanita Muscaria had a history of usage in Europe; it was used before by herbalists and shamans. So the Amanita Muscaria was the only mushroom known to the Europeans at the time to be able to open the mind to the divine. Yet another artwork is the Eadwine Psalter, painted ca 1150, the first six panels depicts the creation of the Universe and the creation of Adam. The first panels depicts God with tools as the Architect, the second depicts the creation of the Heavens. In the third God creates earth and water, and depicted sprouting from the earth is four colorful mushrooms, these are not Amanita Muscaria. In the fourth one God creates the sun and the moon, and around the mushrooms plants grow, the next panels depict the creation of animals and later Adam. It is interesting to wonder how 10th century monks would know the correct order of the evolution of life on Earth. The next six panels out of the total twelve depict the creation of Eve, the eating of the “fruit” and the casting out from the Garden of Eden. Panel eight, nine and eleven shows the Tree of Knowledge as the same colorful mushrooms as in the previous panels, suggesting that the Tree was not a tree at all.
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, mankind lived as nomads, herding cattle on a yearly round in the African grassland. Humankind broadened their horizons and no longer lived in smaller territories but migrated through vast landscapes. Later, even Africa was not vast enough and mankind migrated into Asia Minor, Asia and Europe. Because of the explosion of human culture 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, as it is a mindset that pushes ever onwards in all directions (within, without, higher and deeper and in ever larger cycles). 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. All living things (animals, plants, minerals etc.) has beyond its physical form a unique frequency of energy that communicates with the other energies around it – this totality of energy, or Spirit, constitutes the mind of Nature, an overarching hive mind that guides and maintains the balance of life on Earth. While in Nature in a state of trance, stoned or unstoned, shamans can communicate with this mind or open themselves to its influence and gain insights that can be crucial in maintaining this balance. The mushroom, acting as an emissary of Nature, was given the task to work with the primate in order to initiate it for a special role – that of guardian. From this emerged the shaman, a human being that could go between the physical world and the Spirit World, communicate with animals and plants and perform healing with Spirit. Through the knowledge of the shamans the tribes would intimately understand the ecosystem around them, with the addition of the Spirit that weaved it all together. Hunting became careful, so as to not disrupt the balance and for several thousand years mankind lived its destiny, as guardians of the planet and caretakers of the natural world. One unique aspect of the human mind, which in nearly forgotten in the modern world, is that human thinking, being and acting portrays characteristics of animal behavior. Evolving in the African grassland the hominids increasing intelligence would go towards understanding the animals and plants around them, so much of the modeling of human consciousness would be through the understanding of animal behavior. This could explain the shamanic phenomenon of Spirit Animals, which is a personal bond with the Spirit of a particular animal species that portrays the characteristics of your own personality. 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. 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 spirit is an overarching modality of the physical, and when an imbalance occurs in the spirit it will lead to a physical symptom, cancer is such an imbalance. The shaman was also the conductor of ceremony; one ceremony 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. The overall look and coloring of the mushroom is reminding of the Moon, and as it heralded the growth of the mushroom they would be connected. 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. Nature itself would be regarded as feminine as it created life, provided nutrients and protection, the idea of Mother Earth was born and nature became worshiped as divine.
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. As the population of humans had risen, and territories became smaller, conflicts must have arisen. Mankind looked beyond Africa, and the migration into Asia Minor began. 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, as it is naturally antiseptic. However natural honey contains more water than the store-bought brand. Honey contains sugar and water and the mushroom contains mold, from this another psychoactive drug is created – alcohol, or in this case mead. And alcohol promotes completely different social values and behaviors, it would act to shift the current cultural climate. It promotes violence and dominance, inflated ego, and disregard for personal boundaries. As humans had never come into contact with alcohol before there would be no genetic tolerance, like modern people have. Alcohol intoxication gradually closes of parts of the brain, until only the reptile brain is left – in other words alcohol drastically reduces intelligence. 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 at them. This created the need for soldiers, both on the defense and 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.
Today we live in a patriarchic society that is actively engaged in war, structural racism, suppression of the feminine and destroying the environment in order to produce endless varieties of products to be bought by vast masses of people who spend their entire life working for the political and economic elite which oppress and shut down the mind of its subjects in order to control them for whatever other pursuit they have than power and greed. So if the mushroom did help humans evolve consciousness and form a harmonious relationship with Nature, why is it not a part of our culture? Well it might seem like an ignorant question, but it is rhetorical. The unifying quality of psychedelics is that they are boundary dissolving, meaning that they dissolve personal boundaries caused by trauma, boundaries between people such as partners, friends and groups and it erases boundaries between fantasy and the perceived world. But most importantly, it erases the boundary between your humanness and your social self, in other words it dissolves cultural programming. And what is culture? It is a set of values and norms, in other word it is a list of “you have to do this” and “you are not allowed to do this”. This is the main reason why psychedelics are illegal, as it erases the control of culture, meaning that people who use them and are politically conscious will realize the corruptness of the world they live in. If large groups would organize themselves, backed by the depth of spiritual resolve, they would become a power that could threaten the control of patriarchy. What is the history of psychedelics in Western culture? It is very short, the researcher Gordon Wasson and his wife Valentina found the Mazatec people in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. Gorgon Wasson had already done considerable research on Amanita Muscaria, but what he found with the Mazatec was a different mushroom which they had revered within their culture for thousands of generations while it had been forgotten in most of the world, namely the Stropharia Cubensis. They spoke to the head shaman, later to become famous herself, Maria Sabina. A specimen found its way to the already famous chemist Albert Hoffmann, who had already synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) as a cure for alcoholism, from the mold of ergot rye. Hoffmann synthesized psilocybin in pill form, which then later found its way back to Maria Sabina. She tried it, and all she had to say after was “It has lost its Spirit, but it could help me do my work during winter when there is no mushroom to harvest”. The future of psychedelics as medicine and a therapeutic tool seemed promising. Even the government had interest in them, the CIA thought it could be used as a kind of truth serum, but it seemed to be unpredictable because at some doses it caused the subject to become so unattached that even simple questions could not be answered, some experienced great trauma and others became highly perceptive and impossible to extract any information from. In the sciences it dawned on people invested in this research that it was a useful tool for cognition as well as therapy, and sessions with scientist that had hit dead ends in their researcher were made available. The results showed promise and many of the subjects had great success in their research. It all seemed very promising until it was shut down by the government, and LSD was made illegal. Strangely without any research psilocybin was also made illegal together with many other substances that hadn’t even been looked at independently for their medicinal value. Instead LSD hit the streets and campuses of America and sparked the hippie revolution of the 60s. Because of the ravings of researcher and later political figure, Timothy Leary, the government perceived the psychedelics as a threat to their control and order and pushed for a fear and smear campaign of anti-drug propaganda which later justified the unscientific prohibition against any psychedelic as class one drug, in other words no medical use whatsoever. This short period of history shows clearly the intention of the government towards any kind of a psychedelic. These days things are starting to shift again. After its 50 year prohibition against cannabis is lifting in many states as a medicinal issue, in some it is even allowed to be used recreationally. But cannabis is minor psychedelic, and major psychedelics are still illegal except for some cases of allowed religious use such as peyote in Native American ritual or Ayahuasca for the Brazilian Church Santo Daime who recently won a lawsuit against them. Research on psychedelics has also picked up in the most recent years, the institute MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) was started and has done promising work on the therapeutic values of LSD and MDMA.
No longer will we skip naked through the crystalline river streaked and lush grassland of Mother Africa, herding our cattle, experiencing the Ineffable Mystery under the full moon next to a roaring bonfire that speaks to us about the past that has been and hints the future to come. But the first rays of hopeful light are shining upon those who work for a better future for all life in this Earth. And as always, the future really does lie in your own hands…