Peyote cults are groups which use peyote for spiritual practice, where the Indians say that unless one is morally upright, he can not partake of the peyote. Peyotism is the religion of the Native American Church, founded in 1918 and may have come about as a way to deal with the defeat of their culture. Peyotism is a religion of submission and withdrawal, and one of its primary values is contemplation.

The effects of drugs are known to be variable cross-culturally and even within a single culture. For one the effect might be paradise, for another hell. Addiction and overdose are real dangers inherent in the use of drugs and the use of ritual settings may help to prevent “madness”. Drugs have been used throughout the centuries, from the ancient Greeks, through medieval times and into modern day society. It is the purpose of their use that has changed.

There are varied perspectives on the phenomena of altered states of consciousness or ASC. From shamanic trance and sex, to “raves”, a gamut of ASCs exist. Brazilian Spiritist healers induce a trance during which they perform surgeries. These are not “psychic” surgeries as performed in the Philippines, but are actual intrusions into the bodies of patients using scalpels, tweezers, and other medical instruments. These are done without anesthesia, sterilization, or sophisticated equipment and the results are typically achieved without significant blood loss, infection, or complications. There are many different healers and some of their somewhat gruesome and remarkable surgeries are extremely efficacious. But it should be pointed out the healer is not the only one experiencing an ASC. More interesting is the ASC exhibited by the patient. This patient ASC could be what really explains the results obtained by these healers who use no antisepsis or anesthesia, don’t wash their hands between patients, and perform surgeries with minimal blood loss, no pain, no infection and few complications.

None of the patients are induced by drugs or ritual into an ASC, yet videotapes seem to indicate that their consciousness is certainly altered. The human organism is hypothesized to be a communication system wherein information crucial to its functioning is constantly flowing. This information may be accessed through an ASC to aid in healing and cure by the mind of the patient. The receptivity of the patient to enter into an ASC may make this all possible. This approach could depend upon a highly specialized belief system, frame of reference, and world view. This means that the Brazilian culture and the susceptibility of the Brazilian people to “suggestion” may be how the patient achieves the ASC. With an affinity to fantasy, these patients are also believers in the powers of supernatural entities that they believe are real and are there to help them. They learn through their culture to enter an ASC easily, they trust their patron, and therefore no formal induction is needed to move the patient into an ASC. Unconscious cues given by the healer may result in the patient being able to access the bodily information and systems to achieve the astounding results of these surgeries. They may slow the flow of their blood, reduce blood pressure, access their immune systems, and speed up the healing of the wounds they suffer. And all is done in an unconsciously induced, culturally aided and founded altered state. Fascinating!

Read Altered State of Consciousness…Part 1

Drugs are the ingestion or application of any substance for other than nutritional reasons. Lewin developed a classification of drugs published in 1924 that includes the categories of Euphorica, Phantastica, Inebriantia, Hypnotica, and Excitania. A modern category has been added, known as Ataraxics. These categories include sedatives, hallucinogens, depressants, and stimulants.

Differences exist between western and traditional drug use. In modern culture drug use is primarily limited to medicinal and recreational use. Traditional use was primarily religious in character. These differences can be directly attributed to a culture’s view of reality. Modern society recognizes science as the causative force in nature, while the supernatural holds this distinction in more traditional cultures. Traditionally, drugs were used to move into the spirit world, to touch the reality “on the other side”. Use was typically limited to a religious practitioner with years of experience and training. In modern society, drugs are used or have been used by virtually every individual. Other uses include the search for power, the eternal pursuit of immortality, control over the minds of others, and for recreation and experimentation.

Traditionally drugs were used by a shaman to move into the spirit world where he controlled the spirits for the benefit of his community. These drugs include, but were not limited to, tobacco, datura, psych-tropic substances like mushrooms and peyote (Huichol and Cora), and cannabis. There were many varieties of other drugs derived from things like the Banisteriopsis vine, caterpillars, and peppers. Sedatives were also used by the practitioners. Cocaine, opium, and alcohol were typical. It is interesting to note that these drugs were not only taken orally, but could be applied externally or even delivered by means of enemas. The recent discovery of this method of delivery has become apparent from works of art depicting the act. While medical enemas had been used for centuries to treat constipation, they had in the past not been recognized a drug delivery system. The previously named drugs are all found naturally. Modern day science has devised ways to synthetically produce many of these drugs, or derivatives from them. Derivatives of opium, anesthetics, synthetic narcotics, stimulants, and hallucinogens are now mass produced. Drug problem, anyone?

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Part 2 now available.

With the growing complexity of western culture individuals are increasingly fearful and anxious. They are stressed by being pigeon-holed into a role that does not recognize them for “who they are”. They are often associated with either their past or their potential, not the individual they are in this moment. This creates great stress, which they seek to relieve through the use of drugs, whether they are medically prescribed (valium, lexapro, and oxycodone) or legally or illegally obtained (alcohol, nicotine, ecstasy, and cocaine). Young people seeking their own identity in a rapidly changing society participate in group drug use and the induction of altered states of consciousness at gatherings called “raves”. Addicts retreat into a world outside of “normal” society, huddling on subway grates to stay warm.

Certainly, the goals and values espoused by American society are questioned by many, me included. “Work hard”, get rich, and conform. The pursuit of these goals often leads to heart attack, fatigue, and mental breakdown. Forgotten are the wonders of nature and relaxation; qualities often found in drug induced states. Drug use in America has now become big business. Millions of dollars are spent on advertising drugs for new diseases like restless leg syndrome. Illegal drug dealers become millionaires. And always the demand increases as we struggle to cope with this reality we have created through fear and conformity. Drugs have become a symbol much different than the symbol they represent to primitive society. Drug use in America has become a religion unto itself and its members include the executive with his martinis, the hypochondriac and her oxycodone,  and the homeless with his syringes.

Burning Incense Is Psychoactive: New Class Of Antidepressants Might Be Right Under Our Noses, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080520110415.htm

Treatment of disease is determined by its cause. Ethnomedicine may treat headaches with sucking, as the cause is an object intrusion created by magic. Western medicine may treat the same headache with synthetic anti-inflammatory drugs like naproxen, identified by its chemical signature C₁₄H₁₄O_3. Epilepsy may be treated in non-western society by performing a ceremony to find and retrieve a lost soul because it is caused by soul-loss, while in the west it is treated with anti-seizure drugs which inhibit the wild firing of neural impulses.

Because of the belief in supernatural causation of disease in ethnomedicine, treatment is very often of a spiritual nature. In the west, all causation is natural and treatments are with pharmaceuticals. In some cases the supernatural treatments are more effective than western treatment for the same disease, as in the case of mental illness. Cure rates using ethnomedicine are more than double those in the west. Because of the tenant of science that requires proof before belief, there are no supernatural causes of disease. It is most interesting to note, though, how effective retrieval of a soul can be in curing a disease. It is belief (religion) that may hold the key.

Geertz’s article, “Religion” is basically an historical summary of the anthropology of religion since the mid-nineteenth century. I do find it interesting that there is nothing mentioned of the musings of pre-nineteenth century thinkers. But then, “publishing” was not the way of many thinkers prior. Certainly in an area as ripe for speculation as this, there have been thinkers thousands of years old.

Geertz tells us of the development of the anthropology of religion from the late 19^th century onward. He begins with evolutionism and Tylor, certainly a great thinker of his day. His theory was intellectualistic. The belief in spirits was a way to rationalize death, dreams, and possession. “Belief in spiritual beings” was a way to order the world. Polytheism and monotheism grew from this animistic belief. The practice of religion became more sophisticated. “Cause”, “category”, and “relationship” began to emerge. The world is seen to have become more rational. The “primitives” began to arise from darkness into a more ordered and understandable world. This, it was argued by evolutionists, transformed into the more stable, regularized practices of “modern” religion. These were the “evolutionists” that were soon to be taken on by the anti-evolutionists. And the debate was on. But the debate was for naught, as neither side was persuasive.

The positivist movement against historicist thought began to take hold. Sigmund Freud took the front on a psychological approach, while Durkheim took another. The psychological approach argued that religious rituals and beliefs are derived from deep psychosocial wounds suffered in childhood, while the sociological approach argued for the integrity of social order as the root of religious beliefs. This theory argued that all sacred beliefs were derived from “inward social necessities. And this gave rise to “functionalism”, or “structuralism”.

Structuralism focused on the theory that religion was to “celebrate and sustain the norms” that society is built upon. Promulgated by Radcliff-Brown, the focus became the content of sacred “symbols” These symbols were connected to the people’s well-being. Social and natural needs were reflected in sacred symbols that merged both into a cultural “world view”. Yet this left all mystery, and fascination with these symbols unexplained. And the symbols themselves were vexing. Why one symbol for one culture and another for a neighboring culture? It was theorized that these symbols derived their importance from their “functional” utility in everyday life. It does appear that religious practices of “primitives” do reflect the moral, functional values of a culture. This is an important connection. But what about the emotional connection? What about the philosophical origins. We are still lost in the wilderness of an anthropological explanation.

And so we come to “semantic studies”. As of the sixties, there was no central theory of semantic studies, but Geertz postulates that one of the “most disarming” is to simply accept that expressions of the sacred are real. We need only track them, record them, and compare them. Yet the metaphysical questions are left aside. We are provided with an historical record, but there is no delving into the reasons why religious phenomena occur. What is the purpose? All metaphysical questions and considerations are left aside.

So what was the primitive mind thinking? Why establish this set of beliefs as opposed to that set of beliefs? Perhaps it was a result of a distinctive mode of thought; only now perceptible by a primitive mind. What was the “concept of meaning”? How could this effect further research? Was it possible that the primitive mind was capable of logical, original, and bold thought? Radin sought to establish that it was. Of course it was. The primitive mind was no different than our own. This has become nearly universally accepted. Malinowski, however, broadened the argument. He postulated that the primitive mind knew the distinctive lines between empirical, magic, and religious. The problem is that this isn’t even distinctive today. But who is to say the primitive mind was not more advanced than ours?

Levi-Stauss, working with classification systems, focused on how tribal peoples ordered their objects and their world. He focused on the symbolic structures and they way they are formulated and applied. The concrete images of these structures are of supreme importance. They form the connection between the everyday world and the supernatural. The use of good symbols from everyday life form a nexus that contributes to good thinking.

In the end, Geertz admits that all of these approaches, historical, psychological, sociological, and semantic, still can’t explain “religion”. He is convinced that a comprehensive approach, utilizing all of the above and more, is coming. I hope that it has.

The lecture notes for this week were very informative, and merged nicely with the Geertz article on the history of anthropology of religion. The notes reflect a present day “look back” on western civilization and the current thought existent today.

Using the word “we”, as I am a member of the descendants of the white imperialist ancestors, I decry the atrocities we have perpetrated on “primitive” peoples. Our excuses for slavery, ethnocide, and oppression are sorely lacking. I think the “civilized” peoples were the ones persecuted.

Dreaming and death are certainly phenomena to be pondered. How does that happen? It must be a separate part of us we don’t experience in the “real” world. Belief in souls, belief that all things have souls is a natural outgrowth of our inquisitiveness. My dog looks me in the eye, he sees me. He knows when I’m happy or sad. He has a soul. Animism is a given to me.

Neanderthals must have experienced the same thing. We all have, throughout history. “There is no society without religion”. But there are substitutes, functional-equivalents.  They fulfill the need to explain the universe, to explain our relationships, and to give us a meaning for life. Fundamentalism is a cancerous outgrowth of this need.

So what is the meaning of life? Why am I here? What is my purpose? Is this all chaos?

Chaos is a threat to the meaning of life. It is the experience of life without meaning. Bafflement, suffering, and ethical paradox all threaten our perception. Evil also threatens us. Why aren’t things the way they SHOULD be? Who did this to me anyway? My “religion” is supposed to tell me. Where are you, God?