PROLOGUE ONE BRIGHT MAY MORNING
1. Huxley 2004 [1954], 3.
2. Huxley 1980, 42.
3. Huxley 2004 [1954], 7.
4. Huxley 1980, 107.
5. Huxley 2004 [1954], 2.
6. Ibid., 48.
7. Life, 3 June 1957, 16.
8. Heywood 1964, 229–30.
9. Bird 2010, 9.
10. For example, The Doors of Perception also draws on his friend William Sheldon’s then-fashionable somatotype theory of ectomorphs, endomorphs and mesomorphs; his previous book, The Devils of Loudun (1952), was underpinned by William Sargant’s Cold War-era theories of brainwashing and mind control.
11. He refers to him incorrectly as ‘Ludwig Lewin’.
12. Ellis 1898, 7.
13. Ibid., 13.
14. Huxley 2004 [1954], 14.
15. Nahua refers to speakers of the Nahuatl language, which includes those often referred to in western sources as Aztec. There are still many native speakers of Nahuatl in Mexico today.
16. There is no single satisfactory term for the indigenous inhabitants of America. ‘Indian’ is of course a post-colonial concept – there was no need of it before the arrival of Europeans – but many native American groups have used and continue to use the word to describe themselves. In the Pueblo cultures of the American Southwest, for example, it is preferred to ‘Native American’; however, it is rarely used among the First Nations of Canada. According to the US Census Bureau in 1995, 50 per cent of indigenous respondents chose to identify as ‘American Indian’ and 37 per cent as ‘Native American’. Given the diversity of indigenous American cultures and the breadth of historical contexts, I have not attempted consistency; I use what I hope is the most appropriate term in each case. I make a distinction between the more general ‘native American’ and the capitalised ‘Native American’, which has a specific meaning in the USA (and, as we see in chapter 5, was originally adopted in the context of the peyote religion).
17. Arthur Heffter, the chemist who first extracted mescaline from peyote in 1897 along with five other related alkaloid compounds, asserted that it was entirely responsible for the cactus’s visionary effects. This claim now requires some qualification. It turns out that mescaline is one of over fifty alkaloids found in different quantities in the cacti; some are closely related to mescaline, while others contribute a different spectrum of effects such as lowering blood pressure, increasing heart rate and boosting dopamine levels. For the alkaloids present in peyote, see Anderson 1996 [1980], 138–44; for their medical properties see Perrine 2001, 7–10.
1. Huxley 2004 [1954], 1.
2. The taxonomy of the San Pedro cacti is tangled. The genus Trichocereus was subsumed in many classificatory systems into the larger genus Echinopsis before recently being restored (see Albesiano and Kiesling 2012). In Albesiano and Kiesling’s scheme pachanoi is a subspecies of what they regard as the type species in the genus (Trichocereus macrogonus subsp. pachanoi). The closely related Trichocereus peruvianus is sometimes referred to as San Pedro and sometimes by a different common name, Peruvian Torch. Some cactologists and growers have reverted to Trichocereus while others still use Echinopsis. No nomenclature is universally accepted. See also Trout 2005, 106.
3. See Fung 1972. She doesn’t confirm the identity of the cactus or explain why the skins have been separated and rolled; however the mescaline in San Pedro is concentrated in the cortex area under the skin, and the rolls may have been a mode of preparation or storage.
4. Forbes and Clement 2011 claimed to identify mescaline in some species of acacia in south Texas, but their findings have been questioned and remain unconfirmed. They also claim to have found amphetamine, methamphetamine and nicotine in their samples.
5. See Trout 2005, 272 for a list of around eighty cacti which have been reported to contain mescaline, some unconfirmed.
6. Anderson 2001, 136. Early surveys suggested that as many as 90 per cent of the cactus family contained alkaloids, but the pharmacologist and peyote specialist Jan Bruhn’s 1971 survey put the figure at around 40 per cent.
7. Mescaline has a lower affinity for serotonin receptors than the tryptamines, which is why it requires a larger dose to achieve its psychoactive effects. It is also less effective at penetrating the blood–brain barrier, which accounts for its longer onset time. There are many subtypes of serotonin receptors; although their relative contributions are unclear, it seems that mescaline’s distinctive spectrum of effects is related to the subtypes with which it has a particular affinity and the adrenergic responses that it elicits alongside them. See Kennedy 2014, 100–1.
8. Fogleman and Danielson 2001 and Kopp 2012 describe the emergence of a new species of fruit fly in the Sonoran Desert that evolved to tolerate the alkaloids in a species of columnar cactus that is toxic to flies of related species.
9. The range of perspective techniques deployed in Chavín art makes it possible that the grooved ribs are a two-dimensional schematic representation of a plant with a larger number of sections (see Cordy-Collins 1977, 356, Trout 2005, 17).
10. The main psychoactive compounds in Anadenanthera seeds are bufotenine and N,N-dimethyltryptamine.
11. See Torres 2008 for an illustrated overview of the iconography of psychoactive plants at Chavín-era sites. Mulvany de Peñaloza 1984 has argued that all the plant designs on the Tello obelisk, a carved pillar at Chavín decorated in a similar style to the Lanzón, may be representations of psychoactive species.
12. For example the Wichí in Bolivia and Argentina.
13. Torres 2018, 247. It is unclear whether and how DMT in chicha could be orally active; it has been argued that the metabolites of the ethanol might include beta-carbolines that inhibit the enzymes that break it down, much as the DMT in the ayahuasca brew is potentiated by the beta-carbolines present in the yagé vine. In the northwest Amazon, people such as the Yanomami sometimes chew the yagé vine while snuffing vilca; this may be a historical antecedent of the oral preparation ayahuasca.
14. See Cordy-Collins 1977 and Burger 1992, 157: ‘The central role of psychotropic substances at Chavín is amply documented by its graphic representations on the sculptures’. This has been confirmed by the more recent archaeological work of Shady Solís 2007 and Fux (ed.) 2013, though none of them have proposed in more detail how the plants might have been used ceremonially.
15. Burger 1992, 226.
16. See Mulvany de Peñaloza 1994.
17. Sharon 1978, 43.
18. There is wide variation in assays of mescaline content in both peyote and San Pedro; average estimates may be skewed by outlying and inaccurate readings but they probably also reflect a wide range of potencies between different specimens. Broadly, San Pedro is typically around 0.5–1 per cent mescaline by dried weight (though it may reach 2 per cent), while peyote is around 3–4 per cent but may reach 6 per cent. See Erowid Plant Vaults: Psychoactive Cacti, online at https://erowid.org/plants/cacti (accessed 29 October 2018).
19. Sharon 1972, 132.
20. This was probably prompted by the claim that Fischinger was one of the subjects in Kurt Beringer’s mescaline experiments in Heidelberg in the 1920s (described in chapter 6), and became obsessed with putting the ‘furious succession’ of images he experienced onto film. His animation for Fantasia, to Bach’s ‘Toccata and Fugue in D Minor’, was allegedly the result of this obsession. Unfortunately this claim seems to have no earlier verifiable source than an unreferenced assertion in Stafford 1992, 113, and is probably an urban legend that emerged after the film was re-released in 1969 with a psychedelic-style promotional campaign.
2 THE DEVIL’S ROOT
1. Šnicer, Bohata and Myšák 2008.
2. Bruhn, De Smet, El-Seedi and Beck 2002 dated the samples to 3700 BCE; Terry et al. 2006, working with the same material, found a slightly older date of 4045–3690 BCE.
3. Stewart 1987, 19.
4. Clendinnen 1991, 221.
5. Burkhart 1992, 91.
6. Stewart 1987, 19.
7. Anderson 1996 [1980], 8.
8. Taylor 1944, 176.
9. Cervantes 1994, 16.
10. Earle 2014, 83–99.
11. See Dawson 2018 and Jenkins 2004, 94–5.
12. United Nations, ‘Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs’, 1961; online at https://www.unodc.org/pdf/convention_1961_en.pdf (accessed 29 October 2018); preamble: ‘. . . a serious evil for the individual . . . fraught with social and economic danger to mankind’.
13. Cervantes 1994, 63.
14. Nesvig 2017, 37. >
15. Edict of the Holy Office, ANG-1, Vol 3, exp. 35, 1620, quoted in Leonard 1942, 325–6.
16. Stewart 1987, 25–6.
17. La Barre 1938, 36.
18. Lumholtz 1903, vol. 1, 357.
19. Ibid., 363.
20. Ibid., 365.
21. Ibid., 368.
22. Ibid., 375.
23. Ibid., 377.
24. Ibid., vol. 2., 156.
25. Ibid., 177.
26. Ibid., 268.
27. Ibid., 277.
28. Myerhoff 1974, 73.
29. Ibid., 189.
30. Ibid., 149.
31. Furst, Royal Anthropological Institute, RA55, film, 22 minutes.
32. Ibid., 34 minutes.
33. Myerhoff 1974, 164.
34. Ibid., 226–7. ‘A man’s life . . .’: Among the Huichol both men and women take peyote and participate in the peyote hunt. The pilgrimage Myerhoff joined was ‘typical in its wide age range and inclusion of both sexes’ (ibid., 118) comprising five men and two women.
35. Ibid., 262.
36. Furst (ed.) 1990 [1972], 137.
37. Fikes 1993, 170.
38. Myerhoff 1974, 190.
39. Kennedy 1978, 148.
40. Zingg 1938, 383–5.
41. Ibid., 259–60.
42. Myerhoff 1974, 74.
3 MAKING MEDICINE
1. Bass 1954, 253.
2. Ibid., 250.
3. Ibid., 917.
4. Moses 2002 [1984], 61.
5. Bass 1954, 254.
6. Mooney recorded its name in Comanche (Numunu) as wokowi, in Mescalero as ho and Tarahumara as hikori.
7. Mooney 1896b, 10.
8. Ibid., 8.
9. Bass 1954, 255.
10. Moses 2002 [1984], 20.
11. Mooney 1896a, 777.
12. Moses 2002 [1984], 68.
13. Mooney 1896a, 657.
14. Ibid., 929.
15. Ibid., 940.
16. Ibid., 942.
17. Mooney 1896b, 8.
18. Subsequent anthropologists have noted that the conditions against which peyote has been regarded as most powerful, such as consumption and alcoholism, are diseases of the white man (see Calabrese 2013, 103).
19. Mooney 1896b, 10.
20. Ibid., 9.
21. Mooney 1910, 237.
22. Mooney 1896b, 11.
23. Morgan 1976, 72.
24. Bender 1968, 160.
25. Bruhn and Holmstedt 1974, 357.
26. Ibid., 356.
27. Bender 1968, 160.
28. Parke, Davis & Co., 1975 [1885].
29. Hoefle 2000, 30.
30. Bruhn and Holmstedt 1974, 358.
31. Mitich 1971, 210.
32. Morgan 1976, 44.
33. Ibid., 66.
34. It was perpetuated by William Safford, botanist at the US Department of Agriculture in Washington, whose 1915 paper ‘An Aztec Narcotic’ identified peyote with teonanacatl, the ‘flesh of the gods’ recorded by Sahagún and other early Spanish sources. Teonanacatl was subsequently identified by Richard Schultes and others as the psychedelic mushroom Psilocybe mexicana.
35. Weston La Barre and others have argued that the older ‘mescal bean cult’ prefigured and prepared the ground for the adoption of peyote by the Plains tribes (La Barre 1969 [1938], 105).
36. New Orleans Picayune, 30 September 1856, 1.
37. Bruhn and Holmstedt 1974, 354.
38. Ibid., 360.
39. Ibid., 362.
40. Perrine 2001, 46.
41. Bender 1968, 164.
42. In a feature by Lida Rose McCabe, Chicaco Inter Ocean, illustrated supplement 20 August 1893.
43. La Barre 1937, 42.
44. Ibid., 109 ff., Stewart 1987, 45 ff.
45. Mooney 1897, 330.
46. I am indebted to Sia, the Comanche Nation Ethno-Ornithological Initiative and Piah Puha Kahni (Mother Church) of the Numunuh (Comanche) Native American Church, for many details of their people’s story. The names of their deceased are traditionally not spoken and I thank them for their permission to record them here.
47. Hagan 1993, 31.
48. Ibid., 60.
49. Ibid., 53.
50. Ibid., 55.
51. University of Oklahoma, Western History Collection, Indian Pioneer Papers 9452, 309.
52. Hagan 1993, 57.
53. For the classic description of the Comanche rite see La Barre 1937, 43–53.
54. Perrine 2001, 23.
55. Cornell University Library, House Resolution 2614, 1918, 71.
56. Perrine 2001, 24.
57. Cornell University Library, House Resolution 2614, 1918, 71.
58. Ibid., 72.
59. Perrine 2001, 21–2.
60. In 1901 the core of the reservation was designated a national park, now the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. In 1956 Quanah’s house was moved a few miles away to Eagle Park, on the edge of the small town of Cache. It was registered as a National Historical Site in 1972 and is still standing, though in a severely dilapidated state.
61. The glass plate negative is held in the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives (BAE GN 01778a 06305400, undated, labelled as ‘Peyote Ceremony’).
62. Cornell University Library, House Resolution 2614, 1918, 72.
63. Mooney 1896b, 10.
4 BRILLIANT VISIONS
1. Prentiss and Morgan 1895, 580.
2. Ibid.
3. Coppin and High 1999, 36.
4. Ewell 1896, 624.
5. Ibid., 626.
6. Prentiss and Morgan 1895, 580.
7. Ibid., 581.
8. Ibid., 582.
9. Prentiss and Morgan 1896, 6.
10. Peyote: Hearings on House Resolution 2614, pt. 1, Feb 21–25 1918, 52–3.
11. Ibid., 62.
12. Mooney 1896b, 11.
13. It now seems likely that it was the species known today as Lophophora diffusa, which has a smaller and more southern distribution than L. williamsii and little or no mescaline among its alkaloids.
14. Bruhn and Holmstedt 1974, 365.
15. Ibid.
16. Mitchell is perhaps best remembered today for his ‘rest cure’ for neurasthenia, which has become infamous through Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), a fictionalised narrative of the treatment to which he subjected her.
17. Earnest 1950, 154.
18. Mitchell 1877, 52.
19. Mitchell 1896, 1,625.
20. Ibid., 1,626.
21. All ibid., 1,627.
22. All ibid., 1,628.
23. Ibid., 1,627.
24. Earnest 1950, 154.
25. Ibid.
26. Nicotra 2008, 210.
27. James 1890, 224.
28. Ibid., 620.
29. Nicotra 2008, 210.
30. James 1985 [1902], 388.
31. Ellis 1898, 7.
32. Ellis 1897, 1,541.
33. Ellis 1898, 8.
34. Ibid.
35. All ibid., 9–10.
36. Ong 2002 [1982], chapter 4.
37. Benjamin 2003, 328.
38. Ellis 1898, 11.
39. Review of Reviews, January 1898, 55.
40. British Medical Journal, 5 February 1898, 390.
41. Ellis 1898, 10.
42. Ibid.
43. ‘And yet I am the lord of all, / And this brave world magnifical . . .’; ‘Haschisch’, December 1896.
44. Beckson 1987, 169.
45. Symons 2014 [1899], 6.
46. Ellis 1898, 12.
47. Ibid.
48. Perrine 2001, 11.
49. Ibid., 43.
50. Holmstedt and Liljestrand 1963, 208.
51. Ibid., 209.
52. Lewin 1998 [1924], 3.
53. Ibid., 81.
54. Ibid., 89.
55. Holmstedt and Liljestrand 1963, 209.
5 HIGHER POWERS
1. Holmstedt and Liljestrand 1963, 209
2. British Medical Journal, 11 November 1899, 1,357.
3. Dixon 1899, 71.
4. Ibid., 72.
5. Ibid., 79.
6. Ibid., 80.
7. Ibid., 83.
8. Crowley’s oeuvre is the context in which Louis Lewin’s nomenclature is best remembered today.
9. King 1987 [1977], 63.
10. Daily Sketch, 24 August 1910.
11. Archer 1932, 94.
12. Ibid., 101.
13. Ibid., 102.
14. Ibid., 103.
15. Ibid., 105.
16. Ibid., 107.
17. Everitt 2016 offers the most detailed analysis to date and proposes that Crowley’s magickal diaries and rites contain many concealed and coded references to peyote and its extracts.
18. Equinox 1.2, 1909, 36.
19. Equinox 1.3–6, 1910–11.
20. Everitt 2016, 38.
21. Sutin 2002, 229.
22. Ibid., 230.
23. Crowley 1929, 386.
24. Sutin 2002, 253.
25. Equinox 3.1, 1919, 16.
26. Sutin 2002, 282.
27. Smith 1918, 111.
28. Ibid., 213.
29. James 1914, 9.
30. Ibid., 16.
31. Smith 1918, 62.
32. Ibid., 42.
33. Ibid., 107.
34. Ibid., 111.
35. Ibid., 112.
36. Ibid., 181.
37. Barnes 1998, 98.
38. Tommasini 1997, 84. I’m very grateful to Alan Piper for the references from his 2016 paper, ‘A 1920s Harvard Psychedelic Circle with a Mormon Connection: Peyote Use among the “Harvard Aesthetes”’.
39. Piper 2016.
40. Tommasini 1997, 84.
41. Rudnick 1984, 74.
42. Ibid., 64.
43. Luhan 1936, 266.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 268.
46. Ibid., 270.
47. Ibid., 275.
48. Ibid., 277.
49. Ibid., 278.
50. Rudnick 1984, 129.
51. William James wrote of New Thought as an integral part of the ‘mind-cure movement’ and believed its growth through the late nineteenth century meant that ‘it must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power’ (James 1902, 94).
52. Rudnick 1984, 150.
53. Rudnick 1996, 16.
54. Ibid., 91. ‘Red Atlantis’ invoked the teachings of Theosophy and the belief of its founder, Madame Helena Blavatsky, that native American rock art and pictographs were the survival of an ancient system of knowledge dating back to Atlantis.
55. Smith and Snake (eds) 1996, 126.
56. Jenkins 2004, 95.
57. It seems that peyote had been known in some Pueblo cultures as a medicine, though not as the focus of an organised religion. Spanish records show that as far back as 1719 a Taos pueblo resident was tried for having drunk a beverage of ‘the herb peyote’ (Parsons 1996 [1939], 1,095).
58. Ibid., 1,094.
59. Luhan 1937, 176.
60. Ibid., 287.
61. Ibid., 288.
62. Ibid., 289.
63. Ibid., 310.
64. Ibid., 331.
65. Cornell University Archives, House Resolution 2614, 1918, 3.
66. The pattern and timing of peyote’s diffusion across the US between 1890 and 1920 is complex and disputed. Mooney’s account was revised by Ruth Shonle (1925) and hers has subsequently been challenged and amended by, among others, La Barre 1938 and Stewart 1987.
67. Ibid., 176.
68. Ibid., 20.
69. Ibid., 45.
70. Cornell University Archives, House Resolution 2614, 1918, 21.
71. Ibid., 60.
72. Ibid., 52.
73. Ibid., 53.
74. Ibid., 63.
75. Ibid., 74.
76. Ibid., 82.
77. Ibid., 74.
78. Ibid., 99.
79. Ibid., 144.
80. Ibid., 143.
81. Ibid., 146.
82. Ibid., 79.
83. Kavanagh (ed.) 2008, 6.
84. I am indebted for this and many of the following stories to Charlie Haag, grandson of Mack and current president of the Native American Church of Oklahoma (interview, 10 October 2017).
85. Stewart 1987, 135.
86. Marriott and Rachlin 1971, 86.
87. Stewart 1987, 224.
88. Smith and Snake (eds) 1996, 136.
89. Moses 2002 [1984], 204.
90. Stewart 1987, 222.
91. Moses 2002 [1984], 216–17.
6 DER MESKALINRAUSCH
1. Späth 1919.
2. Anderson 1996 [1980], 147.
3. Bruhn and Holmstedt 1974, 367. Heffter had suggested in 1901 that mescaline was 3,4,5-trimethoxybenzylmethlyamine, but reversed this identification in 1905.
4. Klüver 1929a, 446.
5. Knauer and Maloney 1913, 427.
6. Ibid., 426.
7. Ibid., 425.
8. Ibid., 427.
9. Ibid., 428.
10. Ibid., 426.
11. Prentiss and Morgan 1895, 581.
12. Moreau 1973 [1845], 17.
13. Knauer and Maloney 1913, 429.
14. Ibid., 432.
15. Ibid., 435.
16. Beringer 1969 [1927], 31 (my translation).
17. Klüver 1966 [1928], 51–5.
18. Mayer-Gross 1951, 318.
19. Beringer 1969 [1927], 113–14.
20. Klüver 1966 [1928], 17.
21. Ibid., 19.
22. Ibid., 40.
23. Ibid., 41.
24. Ibid., 30.
25. Klüver’s ‘form-constants’ have been recognised in a wide range of conditions including epilepsy, migraine and out-of-body experiences. They were used by Ernst Gombrich in his studies of the history of decoration in art. Since the sixties they have become a common motif in op-art and other psychedelic styles. They are the basis for the theory popularised by David Lewis-Williams in The Mind in the Cave (2002) that patterns and motifs in Palaeolithic and hunter–gatherer cave art are depictions of entoptic or drug-induced visual phenomena.
26. Klüver 1966 [1928], 22.
27. Ibid., 23.
28. Ibid., 31.
29. Ibid., 53.
30. Ibid., 55.
31. Ibid., ix.
32. Ibid., viii.
33. Hofmann 2013 [1980], 39.
34. Klüver 1966 [1928], 54.
35. Fernberger 1932, 375.
36. Rouhier 1989a [1926], 233.
37. Rouhier 1989b [1926], 5.
38. Ibid., 10.
39. Rouhier 1989a [1926], 340.
40. Ibid., 348.
41. The other alkaloids originally isolated by Heffter – pellotine, anhaline (hordenine), anhalonine, anhalonidine and lophophorine – are, as Rouhier argued, quite varied in their pharmacology: for a summary see Perrine 2001, 8–10.
42. Rouhier 1989a [1926], 353.
43. United Nations 1959, 25–6.
44. Klüver 1929b, 421.
7 PROFANE ILLUMINATIONS
1. Kandel 2012, 205.
2. ‘Surrealism, noun, masc.’, First Surrealist Manifesto, 1924.
3. Balakian 1974, 99.
4. Lotringer 2015 [2003], 179. In response to persistent rumours about his use of mescaline, mushrooms and LSD, Salvador Dalí famously pronounced in 1982: ‘I don’t do drugs. I am drugs!’
5. Gerould 1981, 15.
6. Ibid., 16.
7. A list that included nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, morphine, ether, hashish, Eukodal and harmine.
8. Witkiewicz 1992 [1932], 250.
9. Ibid., 258.
10. Witkiewicz 2018 [1932], 67–8.
11. Witkiewicz 1992 [1932], 247.
12. Ibid., 259.
13. Ibid., 260.
14. Witkiewicz 2018 [1932], 79.
15. Witkiewicz 1992 [1932], 262.
16. Witkiewicz 2018 [1932], 79.
17. For example, Brzecki, Kobel-Buys and Buys, 2002.
18. Witkiewicz 2018 [1932], 92.
19. Witkiewicz 1992 [1932], 261.
20. According to Oisteanu 2010, 356–8 Marinescu experimented with a total of seven artists; apart from Michailescu he has identified two others, Paul Molda and Ludovic Basarab.
21. Marinesco 1933, 1,864 (my translations). Marinescu generally published in French medical journals, where he used the Italianate spelling of his surname.
22. Ibid., 1,865.
23. Ibid., 1,866.
24. ten Berge 1999, 259.
25. Bakewell 2017, 39.
26. Boon 2002, 236.
27. Sartre and Gerassi, 2009, 62–3.
28. Ibid., 194.
29. Merleau-Ponty 2002 [1945], 397.
30. Ibid., 391.
31. Ibid., 393.
32. Ibid., 396.
33. Ibid., 399–400.
34. Benjamin 2006, 1
35. Benjamin’s fragmentary writings on hashish and mescaline were published in German in 1971 and translated for On Hashish (2006), which includes valuable introductory material and extracts of his writings on drugs from previously published sources.
36. Ibid., 117.
37. Ibid., 123.
38. Ibid., 132–3.
39. Ibid., 87.
40. Ibid., 95.
41. Ibid., 88.
42. Ibid., 97.
43. Ibid., 133.
44. Ibid., 122.
45. Ibid., 132.
46. Ibid., 96.
47. Ibid., 126.
48. Ibid., 95.
49. Ibid., 97.
50. Artaud 1976 [1947], 77.
51. Ibid., 82.
52. Knapp 1980 [1969], 125.
53. Artaud 1976 [1947], 3.
54. Ibid., 20.
55. Ibid., 24.
56. Ibid., 77.
57. Le Clézio 1993, 170.
58. Ibid., 166.
59. Artaud 1976 [1947], 27.
60. Ibid., 28.
61. Ibid., 16.
62. Ibid., 32.
63. Ibid., 35.
64. Ibid., 38.
65. Ibid., 42.
66. Ibid., 48.
67. Ibid., 49.
68. Now more commonly referred to as The Adoration of the Child; the attribution to Hieronymus Bosch is disputed.
69. Artaud 1976 [1947], 50.
70. Ibid., 26.
71. Le Clézio 1993, 170 observes that there is no authentic detail in Artaud’s description of the peyote dance that could not have been drawn from published accounts. He proposes Carlos Basauri’s ethnographies of indigenous Mexico in the 1930s as the most likely source.
72. Artaud 1976 [1947], 52.
73. Ibid., 54.
74. Ibid., 94.
75. Knapp 1980 [1969], 147.
76. Ibid., 48.
1. Stewart 1987 237
2. Smith and Snake (eds) 1996, 128.
3. La Barre 1969 [1938], 8.
4. Ibid., 43
5. Ibid., 54
6. Ibid., 19–20
7. Ibid., 93
8. Ibid., 113
9. Klüver receives a dedication in Plants of the Gods (1979), the classic illustrated survey of plant hallucinogens co-authored by Schultes and Albert Hofmann..
10. Lees 2017 has shown that William Burroughs, who met Schultes in Colombia in 1953 while they were independently researching ayahuasca, wrote to him the following year with the observation that the ayahuasca brew derived its power from the combination of the yagé vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) with the chacruna leaf (Psychotria viridis). Schultes acknowledged Burroughs’ precedence in 1973 after he had unravelled the biochemistry of the combination.
11. Schultes 1937.
12. Davis 1997, 81.
13. Schelling 2017, 11–12.
14. Oriflamme, Journal of the Agape Lodge, vol. 1, issue 1 (21 February 1943).
15. Pendle 2006, 218–19.
16. Waters lived in an adobe building beside Tony Luhan’s private house, on the edge of the grounds directly bordering pueblo land. Tony’s house is currently empty, and Waters’ residence was badly damaged by a later fire but still stands as a ruin.
17. Waters 1962 [1942], 83–4.
18. Ibid., 91.
19. Ibid., 93.
20. Rudnick 1996, 179.
21. Angel, Jones and Neve (eds) 2003, 131.
22. Guttman and Maclay 1936, 197. In this paper they use the spelling ‘mescalin’, a more direct transposition of the German Mezkalin; in subsequent papers they also use the more common English spelling, ‘mescaline’.
23. Ibid., 201.
24. Guttman and Maclay 1937, 190.
25. Maclay suspected that these colourful and ‘disintegrating’ cats were produced by Wain during his psychotic episodes, a supposition that was developed by later researchers who assembled some of his cat paintings into a series that purported to illustrated the artist’s progression from sanity into psychosis. The sequence is now familiar from its reproduction in dozens of art and psychiatry textbooks, but recent scholarship has shown it to be without foundation. Wain’s ‘disintegrating’ cat pictures are undated and he painted them sporadically throughout his career: he referred to them as his ‘wallpaper patterns’ (his mother had designed embroideries and carpets). There is no demonstrable match with the various stages of his illness and he was in any case diagnosed with dementia rather than schizophrenia (see Allderidge 2016).
26. Maclay, Guttman and Mayer-Gross 1938, 51.
27. Guttman and Maclay 1937, 190.
28. Beaumont later changed his professional name to Basil Rákóczi.
29. Trevelyan 1957, 74.
30. Ibid., 75.
31. Ibid., 76.
32. Bethlem M03/3, Beaumont report, October 1936.
33. All ibid.
34. Bethlem M03/3, Stephen to Guttman, 27 October 1936.
35. Bethlem M03/3, Guttman to Stephen, 31 October 1936.
36. All ibid.
37. Bethlem M03/3, Beaumont to Guttman, 29 October 1936.
38. Trevelyan 1957, 76.
39. Stockings 1940, 30.
40. Ibid., 46.
41. Ibid., 47.
42. The phrase was apparently coined in a 1922 report in the Los Angeles Record, on a case where scopolamine had been used to induce ‘twilight sleep’ during childbirth (Streatfeild 2006, 37n).
43. Marks 1991 [1979], 6.
44. Streatfeild 2006, 36.
45. The US Naval Technical Mission published their findings in the 300-page ‘Technical Report No. 331–45, German Aviation Research at the Dachau Concentration Camp’.
46. Streatfeild 2006, 39.
47. Ibid., 40.
48. Marks 1991 [1979], 5.
49. Frederking 1955, 262.
50. Ibid., 265.
51. Jünger 2013 [1970], § 298. There is no authorised English translation of Annaherungen; rather than pagination I have referenced the numbered sections, which are mostly around a page in length.
52. Ibid., § 59.
53. Ibid., § 167.
54. Ibid., § 300.
55. Ibid., § 16.
56. Ibid., § 36.
57. Ibid., § 103.
58. Hofmann 2013 [1980], 113.
59. Jünger 2013 [1970], § 300.
60. Ibid., § 301.
61. Ibid., § 299.
62. Ibid., § 303.
63. Hofmann 2013 [1980], 110.
64. Ibid., 18.
65. Ibid., 19.
66. Ibid., 38.
67. Ibid., 39.
68. Ibid., 114.
69. Ibid., 115.
70. Frederking 1955, 264.
71. Ibid., 265.
72. Ibid., 264.
73. Denber and Merlis 1955, 466.
74. Ibid., 465.
75. Rouhier 1989a [1926], 194–6.
76. Osmond 1952, 4.
77. Ibid., 6.
78. Ibid., 9.
79. Osmond and Smythies 1952, 311.
80. Ibid., 314.
81. Ibid., 312.
82. Mayer-Gross 1951, 320. Patients would of course have been correct in attributing the derangement of mescaline to the same people who were keeping them locked up.
83. Osmond and Smythies 1952, 311.
84. Mayer-Gross 1951, 317. Osmond and Smythies registered their disagreement with Mayer-Gross in a letter to the British Medical Journal (vol. 2, issue 4,731 (1951), 607), in which they also acknowledged that ‘It remains to be seen what, if any, relationship exists between schizophrenia and mescal intoxication’.
85. Osmond and Smythies 1952, 313.
86. Ibid., 314.
87. Ibid., 315.
88. Barber 2018, 53.
89. Smythies and Smythies 2005, 30.
90. Hoffer, Osmond and Smythies 1954, 30–1.
91. Ibid., 39.
92. Ibid., 40.
93. Ibid., 42.
94. Ibid., 43.
95. Osmond and Smythies 1953, 133.
96. Ibid., 139.
97. Ibid., 141.
9 THE DOORS BLOWN OPEN
1. Huxley 1980, 36.
2. Bedford 1974, vol. 2, 120.
3. Ibid., 130.
4. Huxley 1980, 13.
5. Ibid., 23–5.
6. Ibid., 29.
7. Ibid., 36.
8. Huxley 2004 [1954], 5.
9. Ibid., 7.
10. Nelson and Sass 2008, 348.
11. Huxley 2004 [1954], 13.
12. The antecedents for this idea reach back further than Bergson. A similar metaphor can be found in the first scientific trials of a consciousness-altering drug, the nitrous oxide experiments undertaken by Thomas Beddoes, Humphry Davy and some thirty volunteers at the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol in 1799. One of the subjects, the physician Peter Mark Roget (of Roget’s Thesaurus fame), described how under the influence of nitrous oxide ‘thoughts rushed like a torrent through my mind . . . as if their velocity had been suddenly accelerated by the bursting of a barrier which had before retained them in their natural and equable course’ (see Jay 2009, 179).
13. Huxley 1953, 11.
14. Huxley 2004 [1954], 16.
15. Ibid., 19.
16. Bedford 1974, vol. 2, 163.
17. Time, 13 July 1953, 40.
18. Siff 2015, 52.
19. Huxley 1980, 86.
20. Dyck 2008, 37.
21. Huxley 2004 [1954], 44–5.
22. Ebin (ed.) 1965 [1961], 242.
23. Philp 1974, 79.
24. Ibid., 81.
25. Ibid., 84.
26. Ibid., 87.
27. ‘The Opened Door’, New Yorker, 25 September 1954, 80.
28. Ibid., 88.
29. Ibid., 90–1.
30. Eskelund 1957, 12.
31. Ibid., 69.
32. Ibid., 76–7.
33. Burroughs 1977 [1953], 145–7.
34. Ebin (ed.) 1965 [1961], 302–4 (originally published in 1960 in the special drugs issue of Birth, a mimeographed magazine edited by Tuli Kupferberg).
35. Ginsberg’s 1961 collection Kaddish and other poems would include a short poem entitled ‘Mescaline’, grouped together with ‘Laughing Gas’ and ‘Lysergic Acid’.
36. Torgoff 2004, 60.
37. Jenkins 2004, 147.
38. B. Morgan 2006, 184.
39. Michaux 2002 [1956], 9.
40. Ibid., 59.
41. Ibid., 14–17.
42. Ibid., 63.
43. Ibid., 28–9.
44. Ibid., 7.
45. Ibid., 80.
46. Ibid., 112.
47. Ibid., 126–7.
48. Ibid., 141.
49. Ibid., 85.
50. Michaux 2002 [1956], 38.
51. Interview with Conrad Knickerbocker, ‘The Art of Fiction No. 36’, Paris Review, issue 35 (Fall 1965).
52. Burroughs 2012, 3–5.
53. Huxley 1980, 61–2.
54. Cholden (ed.) 1956, 27.
55. Marks 1991 [1979], 62.
56. Barber 2018, 188.
57. Mills 2010, 18. The psychoactivity of adrenochrome is still disputed, but Osmond and Hoffer’s reports remain extreme outliers in the self-experimental literature. The few experience reports filed at Erowid Chemical Vaults: Adrenochrome (online at https://erowid.org/chemicals/adrenochrome; accessed 29 October 2018) suggest slight perceptual changes and markedly unpleasant side effects. It is possible that adrenochrome has a range of different effects in solutions with different pH values.
58. Pearson and Dewhurst 1955, 143.
59. Garson 2017.
60. Hollister 1962, 88.
61. Hofmann 2013 [1980], 127.
62. Hofmann 2008, 65.
63. Jünger 2013 [1970], § 43.
64. Ibid., § 305.
65. Hofmann 2013 [1980], 49.
66. 21 March 1954, quoted in Watt (ed.) 2013 [1975], 394–5.
67. Smythies and Smythies 2005, 36.
68. Jung 1976, 172–3 (italics in original).
69. Zaehner 1957, xx.
70. Ibid., 219.
71. Ibid., 221.
72. Ibid., 222.
73. Personal communication with author, 12 December 2017.
74. Zaehner 1957, 226.
75. Wilson 2004, 231.
76. Ibid., 232–4.
77. Christopher Mayhew, ‘An Excursion out of Time’, Observer, 28 October 1956.
78. All ibid.
79. Sections of the film have subsequently been used in other documentaries and some are available, together with later footage of Mayhew recalling the experiment, on YouTube where they have garnered hundreds of thousands of views.
80. Antonio Melechi private collection: Observer assistant editor Charles Davy to Mayhew, 3 November 1956.
81. Eliade 1989, 157 (5 February 1962).
82. Antonio Melechi private collection: A.G. Pape, 28 October 1956.
83. Ibid., Philip Metman, 28 October 1956.
84. Ibid., John D Solomon, 30 October 1956.
10 TRIPPING WITH MESCALITO
1. La Barre 1969 [1938], 230.
2. Ibid., 228. Huxley’s use of the term ‘mescal’ in The Doors of Perception is perhaps another example of Havelock Ellis’s influence.
3. Ibid., xiii.
4. Ibid., 230.
5. Torgoff 2004, 61.
6. La Barre 1969 [1938], 230.
7. R.J. Smith, ‘King of the Cats’, Los Angeles Magazine, 1 June 2005.
8. Smith 2012, 48.
9. Interview recording presented at Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest, New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, 2017.
10. Ibid.
11. Deloria Jr 1969, 113.
12. Castaneda 1970, 13.
13. Ibid., 38–44.
14. Ibid., 49.
15. Ibid., 100.
16. de Mille 1978 [1976], 113.
17. Letcher 2006, 215.
18. de Mille 1978 [1976], 77.
19. Castaneda 1970, 132.
20. Fikes 1993, 62. Castaneda’s notion of Mescalito as peyote’s tutelary spirit was co-opted into the personal mythology of Robert Anton Wilson. In Cosmic Trigger (1977) Wilson writes that after reading The Teachings of Don Juan he recognised Castaneda’s description as the warty green-skinned sprite he had himself encountered in 1963, when he experimented with peyote purchased by mail order.
21. Simon Romero, ‘Peyote’s Hallucinations Spawn Real-Life Academic Feud’, New York Times, 16 September 2003.
22. Fikes 1993, 13.
23. Znamenski 2007, 208.
24. Ibid., 208–9.
25. Lee and Shlain 1985, 69–70.
26. Dodgson 2013, 117.
27. Stevens 1989, 312.
28. Dodgson 2013, 139.
29. Ibid., 118.
30. Watts 2013 [1962], 97 itemises his chemical allies, without further comment, as ‘LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin, dimethyl-tryptamine (DMT) and cannabis’.
31. Stevens 1989, 256; Oram 2016 argues that although the FDA regulations are commonly described as a ban on psychedelic research, in reality they simply brought it into line with new pharmaceutical guidelines.
32. Weil 1975 [1972], 33–4.
33. All ibid.
34. Ross 2017 gives a full account of US Army studies 1955–67 and the follow-up report in 1980.
35. Hermle et al. 1992.
36. Tsao 1951; this synthesis was given in full in underground chemistry manuals such as ‘Synthesis and Extraction of Organic Psychedelics’, published anonymously in 1969 by the Buzz Communications Company (samizdat, twenty-two typed and stapled pages).
37. Erowid: Microgram Journal, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, US Department of Justice, vol. 1 (1968–69).
38. The Lee and Hendrix session generated ‘The Everlasting First’ (which appeared on Love’s 1970 album False Start), two takes of a cover of ‘Ezy Rider’ and a jam titled ‘Loon’, which eventually showed up on an acetate offered on eBay in 2009 (it can now be found on YouTube). The Grateful Dead’s ‘mescaline show’ was at Springfield Civic Centre on 11 May 1978 and is archived online at https://archive.org/details/gd78-05-11.moore.minches.18658.sbeok.shnf/gd1978-05-11d3t005.shn (accessed 29 October 2018).
39. Thompson 1972 [1971], 31.
40. Ibid., 33.
41. Ibid., 49–50.
42. Ibid., 58.
43. Published in Thompson 1990.
44. Thompson 2000, 155.
45. Thompson 1990, 101–6.
46. Acosta, an attorney and Chicano activist who had worked with Thompson on some of his investigative assignments, was not pleased at being transposed into a ‘300-pound Samoan’.
47. Ibid.
48. Thompson 1972 [1971], 12.
49. Ibid. The popular confusion of mescaline and mezcal persists to this day in the urban legend that the worm in mezcal bottles is hallucinogenic. Putting a worm (in fact a caterpillar) in some commercial mezcal bottles is a relatively recent practice, dating from the 1940s. Its purpose is disputed: some say it’s added to show that the spirit is distilled from genuine maguey (agave), others that it demonstrates the alcohol content is high enough to preserve it. Added at the end of the process, just before bottling, the worm contains no mescaline and has no hallucinogenic effects, but it gives customers a sense of authenticity and an opportunity to display machismo by eating it.
50. Thompson 1972 [1971], 122–5.
51. In an early scene in The Matrix (1999), the protagonist Neo asks, ‘You ever have that feeling where you’re not sure if you’re awake or still dreaming?’ The answer is: ‘It’s called mescaline. It’s the only way to fly.’ In The Simpsons episode ‘D’oh-in’ in the Wind’ (1998), Homer unwittingly markets a vegetable juice containing peyote that makes his customers hallucinate; in ‘The Mysterious Voyage of Homer’ (1997) he eats a super-strength chilli that sends him on a Castaneda-style desert trip where he meets a talking coyote.
52. Shulgin and Shulgin 1991, 16.
53. Ibid., 34–7.
54. Ibid., 69.
55. Ibid., 72.
56. Ibid., 74.
57. Ibid.
58. Full chemical nomenclatures: 4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine and 2-[2,5-dimethoxy-4-(propylsulfanyl)phenyl]ethan-1-amine.
EPILOGUE UNDER A COMANCHE MOON
1. Sia, the Comanche Nation Ethno-Ornithological Initiative, have bred, raised and released into the wild several hundred endangered hawks and eagles. Moulted feathers are preserved, microchipped and distributed among Native American tribes for ceremonial use.
2. See Tófoli and Araujo 2016, Dasgupta 2017.
3. United Nations 1959, 18.
4. Nonetheless, the legal victories of the NAC, particularly the 1994 peyote amendment to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, established valuable precedents for more recent rulings in favour of ayahuasca worship by the UDV (União do Vegetal) and the Santo Daime Church (see Patchen 2017).
5. Terry and Trout 2016, 2.
6. Terry and Trout 2017, 152–4.