Engines of Chaos

Erisian Engines: Doofs, Psychedelics and Religious

Experience

In a place affectionately referred to as “Disco Valley”, the music has been

pumping continuously for hour after kaleidoscopic-light-filled hour. The
sun is beginning to rise over the rainforest mist; dancing feet create
intricate patterns of tread over the geological patterns of earth; the rock on
which we dance seems to breathe, to be flesh. The ecstatic and tender
expressions on the faces of participants reveals that they have shared in
something ‘other’, perhaps in something ‘sacred’.

The preceding vignette strives to convey that very special place that participants in
doofs can access when all the elements of ecstasy enter into alignment. In this chapter
I use perspectives and methodologies of studies in religions and the anthropology of
consciousness to examine aspects of the quest for experiential transcendence and
spiritual autonomy within DIY parties, or doofs.

Much of the material presented in this chapter is informed by my personal

experiences attending various outdoor psychedelic dance-parties in southern QLD and
northern NSW—including “Stomping Monster Doof #3”, “The Nam Shub of Enki
CD launch and Partee” and “Dragonflight 1998-1999”. However, what I offer here is
not an ethnographic description of doofs, or a detailed analysis of their ritual
structure, but rather, a discussion of some of the theoretical implications arising from
the study of doofs as these affect other cultural, spiritual, and political domains.

My analysis focuses on the use of psychedelics as an ingredient in the doof rapture,

but I do not wish to imply by this that everyone who goes to a doof uses substances.
Drug use at doofs is a matter of personal choice. While people may ingest LSD,
Ecstasy, cannabis, “shrooms” et cetera, others are happy to become exhilarated
through “dancing all night to beautiful music, in nature and under the stars” (PIP
1996). Nonetheless, tripping has been a central and significant practice and I feel that
its rôle in parties warrants more serious discussion.

It is my contention that the various psychedelic dance-cultures contain virtually all the
elements of putative new religious movements. Indeed, certain characteristics of “the
sacred” are present to a remarkable degree. I wish to pursue four different themes in
connection to psychedelic dance parties and spirituality. The first theme—Substantial
spirits—deals with the controversy that has been associated with the spiritual uses of
psychoactive substances in the “western” context. The second theme, Sacred leisure,
relates to how changing conceptions of “sacred” and “profane” impact on the spiritual

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uses of materials like LSD. Trance and transgression focuses on the central
importance of transgression in psychedelic parties. Finally, Sacrificial NRG considers
the relative absence of the ritual acknowledgment of sacrifice in doofs as compared to
entheogenic (an entheogen is a substance that purportedly induce experiences of
divinity) dance rituals in other societies. I argue that this absence of the sacrificial is a
consequence of the cultural context of psychedelia within what some sociologists
optimistically refer to as “late-capitalism”.

Substantial spirits
The religious quality of the use of psychoactive plants and fungi as elements in ritual
practices in various non-Western societies is generally accepted (Furst 1976, Harner
1973). However, controversy has hovered for some time around the question of
whether or not the ‘psychedelic experience’ as a western phenomenon is a properly
religious experience (Pahnke 1963, Smith 2000, Zaehner 1972). The psychedelic
movement has been accused of agnosticism, disrespect for civil authority, and
rampant eclecticism: none of which constitute sufficient grounds for excluding it from
the category ‘religious’1.

Leaving the question of the religiosity of the psychedelic movements aside,

psychedelic parties suggest—at the very least—systems for inducing and using
collective ‘peak-experiences’. Psychedelic dance parties are all the more interesting
for their being ostensibly secular, yet borrowing liberally from the terminology and
iconography of religion and spirituality.

As Abraham Maslow (1976) has emphasised, many psychoactive substances certainly

seem capable of triggering ‘peak-experiences’, and ‘peak-experiences’ are
intrinsically valuable2. Indeed, the term “peaking” is used by “trippers” to describe the
more intense phases of a psychedelic experience. The individual approaching
substances for peak-experiences has a lot to gain, but also stands the chance of
undergoing an unproductive or unwelcome experience. By socially constructing a
context for psychedelic peak-experiences, trippers may be creating a psychological
and emotional support system for their experiences. In the process, the psychedelic
subculture as a whole acquires a compelling emotional charge and its members share
in a collective experience of social regeneration.

The motif of communality has been one of the more recurrent elements in discourses
about psychedelic parties (Hill 1999, Jordan 1995, Nolan 1998) and there exists a
general consensus about the centrality of experiential transcendence—sometimes

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conceptualised as “dance-delirium” or the “implosion” or “disappearance” of

subjectivity among party-goers (Hopkins 1996, Lyttle and Montagne 1992):

The overall impression is of losing oneself or transforming oneself

through shared, multifaceted sensation…participants understand their
experience in terms of community, interconnectivity and mass
unity…This feeling of extending the self to become other, is a kind of
imagined metamorphosis…representing fascination not with forces but
with metamorphosis…Metamorphosis occurs as the self is destabilised,
disembodies and “dispersed across social space”…
(Hopkins 1996:15)

Sam Keen has suggested that “LSD, DMT, and mescaline” may give rise to a
“Dionysian consciousness…based upon a body ego of the polymorphously perverse
body” in which the self is reduced to a focused awareness of sensations and the world
becomes “totally eroticised” (Keen 1969:182). This collective consciousness is
especially pronounced at parties where MDMA is a conspicuous element. During the
plateau of MDMA effects interpersonal differences appear to evaporate producing a
condition of almost total identification of self with other. Within the psychedelic
dance rapture, participants may lose or suspend subjective experience of themselves
and merge into a kind of collective body, a place where desire and production meet
one-another in a state of flow (Jordan 1995).

In forest settings this magickal transcendence is very potent, as the

energies are charging and morphing and zinging around people and the
ether. We may become little ‘animals’ investigating the primal, orgiastic,
instinctual aspects of our nature. We may find ourselves in swirling
vortexes and see people moving as one with each other — completely
tranced out and sharing some unknown luv.
(Kath 1998:1)

Marghanita Laski (1961) has argued that the attachment of religious “overbeliefs” to
experiences of aesthetic or ecstatic intensity are gratuitous rather than essential. Laski
felt that ecstasy is more important than ideology3. The question of whether what
psychedelic parties facilitate is truly a state of ecstasy continues to be debated.
Margaret Mead, while accepting the mystical validity of some LSD experiences, is
careful to distinguish variations in individual responses:

It must be recognized, however, that there is no necessary relationship

between the use of drugs and religious experience. The ordinary LSD
“trip” has no more necessary relationship to mystical experience than the
drinking of ten cocktails has, after which many people experience various
alterations of consciousness.
(Mead 2000:81)

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Indeed, much of orthodox religious practice has no necessary relationship to religious

experience either, but the point is still a valid one: not all who have ‘tripped’ at a
happening, rave, or doof have had epiphanies, and not all arrive at the same
interpretations of their experiences.

Sacred leisure
The problem of the ‘religiosity’ of the psychedelic dance rapture can be examined
from the perspective of the culturally-specific dialectics into which it falls. Lévi-
Strauss asservated that cultural worlds are composed of a series of socially
constructed and sophisticated dialectical structures, or cognitive distinctions of a
binary nature (Lévi-Strauss 1967). Religion could be said to be characterised by “the
sacred” and to be complementary to “the profane” or “the everyday”.

Elaborating on the work of Max Weber (1958), Victor Turner has argued that since
the industrial revolution, “the everyday”, which once involved immersion in
biological rhythms associated with a more-or-less self-sufficient village lifestyle, has
been superseded by the modern patterns of “work” (Turner 1982). This shift in the
nature of “the everyday” had serious consequences for the continued relevance of “the
sacred”. A new dialect arose: “profane” and “sacred” were eclipsed by “work” and
“leisure”. This model can be elaborated to explore the ways in which energies and
functions once associated with the sacred sphere are gradually leaking into the world
of leisure and play. Using this model “recreational drug-use” can be seen as an
explicit instance of a process whereby ludus comes to equate with worship and
hedonism comes to function in a fashion analogous to asceticism.

In a sense, the ‘religious sphere’ consists of creative arrangements of those culturally

manageable kratophanies or ‘appearances of power’ which are incompatible with
‘everyday life’. In the post-industrial age, inebriation (being poorly compatible with
the rhythms of ‘working life’) is relegated to the complementary ‘sphere of leisure’.
Thus, inebriation must alternate with work, as for example in the idea of the coffee or
cigarette “break” which punctuates phases of productive labour, or that eagerly
anticipated weekend helping of beer or methamphetamine. This pattern of cultural
regulation is generally compatible with production, because alcohol and stimulants
have little action suggesting other than leisure effects. The regulation of the
work/leisure dichotomy is however jeopardised by the existence of purportedly
‘recreational’ substances, such as LSD and MDMA which are just as capable of
catalysing a spiritual epiphany as they are a ‘good time’.

Trance and transgression

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The most frequently used and most favoured psychoactive substances at psychedelic
parties are LSD and MDMA. Because of the current illegal status of these materials,
their use necessarily constitutes a form of social transgression. The psychedelic dance
communities sometimes identify as “the underground” or “the psychedelic
underground”, dancing to “underground music”. The idea of an underground is bound
up both with the idea of cultural resistance and with the idea of movement into other
dimensions—a chthonian otherworld.

Transgression literally means “to step across” (Morris 1975:1363). The social and
religious worlds have a moral character. Rules, laws and taboos govern society.
Taboos are kinds of fault-lines or pivots in social structure. Georges Bataille (1986)
has written extensively about the ways in which taboo and transgression fulfil and
complement each other. In the writings of Bataille we find another link to the
opposition between the world of work and sobriety on the one hand, and a sacred
sphere of activities that extravagantly or even violently exceed that other world’s
boundaries. For Bataille, taboos circumscribed activities that are ‘violent’ in the sense
that they are intimately connected to the vertiginous cycle of reproduction and death.
Taboos attach to ‘violent’ behaviours such as sexuality and murder because these
behaviours are antithetical to work, which Bataille constructs as humanity’s attempt to
deny the explosive profusion and wastefulness of nature—an unstoppable
extravaganza in which life annihilates and replaces life. In such a vision, nature in its
orgy of creativity and destruction possesses both poles of the Holy: the mysterium
tremendum and the mysterium fascinans.

These twin qualities are also conferred on taboos which are attracting and difficult to
resist: the transgression of taboo is tantalising, yet to complete the transgression is to
invoke terror of the consequences. Transgressing the taboo does not eliminate the
taboo; indeed it reaffirms it. Yet, perversely, without the taboo the transgression is
less attractive and yields less pleasure. In any case, taboo and transgression are ideal
ritual tools for creating a sense of the strong emotional paradox that is the Holy.

Transgression of laws provides a valuable mechanism for transcending the logic of

the everyday. Transgression is therefore frequently one of the ingredients in the
category disruption that is a central mechanism of liminality. At the very least, the
possibility than any rule may be transgressed is indicative that cultural categories are
not absolute. Transgression can also be a sign of inconsistencies within the moral life
of a community—that the rules and organisational principles of one part of a society
are not adhered to by another segment of the same society. However, such a lack of
moral unity may be not so much a sign of social dysfunction as an indicator of a

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society’s vigour: a sign that there are works to be performed and there is still room to
create.

What then of the general taboo against chemical modification of consciousness?

Inebriation takes the chaos of nature to new dimensions of extravagance. The
instability and discontinuity that accompanies life is in total sympathy with the
dizzying onset of substances such as MDMA, tobacco, or the yajé potion of the
western Amazon. The insistent sensuality of many psychoactive substances, and the
conundrums into which they lead the intellect speak of the close affinity of inebriation
with sexuality and death. The triad of inebriation, sexuality, and death are related by
their sensual aspect, and defined by their opposition to work.

Huston Smith has argued that the psychedelic movement of the Sixties responded to
the moral inconsistency of western society by adopting a strongly antinomian stance.
Antinomianism refers to the belief that the individual can develop their moral
faculties to the point where external laws become obsolete (Smith 2000). The Sixties
counterculture was influenced by a melange of philosophies stressing self
determination, epitomised by catchphrases like “be free” and “do your thing” (Drury
1989). Among the more important of these individualistic philosophies were
existentialism and the ideals of Gestalt Therapy as practiced by Fritz Perls at Esalen
(ibid). The ethos behind doofs is also one of freedom, expression, and resistance. One
of the most vocal contemporary proponents of antinomianism is Hakim Bey, author of
T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone (Bey 1991). Bey’s iconoclastic and
anarchistic “poetic terrorism” has exerted a considerable influence on the cultural
style of the neo-psychedelic movement (Tramacchi 2000) and Australian edge-culture
generally (St John 1997).

The use of LSD and MDMA at dance parties in Australia is a transgression of the
various State laws, and this transgression accentuates the fundamental division of
moral unity at the level of the State: the split between the State as a republic of free
citizens, and the State as an abstract, sometimes repressive, law-dispensing authority.
This transgressive act can be seen as a method for rupturing the continuity of
‘structure’ and entering the ‘liminal’ orbit. Transgression of public morality is of
course a common element of the liminal phase of rites of passage and amorality is
also a frequent characteristic of the Holy4.

Transgression of identity can be achieved through metamorphosis. Many doof

participants transform their appearance through highly elaborate and beautiful
costumes. Examples include a Halloween witch costume; a rainbow-coloured, plumed
headdress and a long white robe; Chaplinesque garb; bizarre, electronic, bleeping

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glove puppets; leonine prosthetic tails; and a menagerie of other costumes composed
of furry, shiny, luminescent, and metallic looking materials. One striking costume
observed at ‘Dragonflight’ consisted of a pink and white gingham bodice clasped
around the form of a chrome-haired woman with enormous matching gingham
platform shoes—like the diva of ecstasy itself—mouth full of fragrant bubble-gum,
and clasping in each hand the attribute of a lit magnesium sparkler, frenetically
dancing like a fleshy avatar of the goddess of meteors.

Dancing can also be a powerful mode of transgression. The movements of bodies at

doofs can be read as social texts defining new and creative lines of flight. Hard-house,
trance and other new forms of electronic dance-music played at doofs catalyse new
modes of dancing. Free-form dance promotes exploration of novel ways of being
embodied:

Disco, heavy metal, grunge, punk, acid house, and hardcore techno pose
generic ‘rules’, and these distinctions are manifested by diverse
behaviours on the dancefloor. Dance music radically alters bodily
expectations and possibilities … The aural space between the amplifier
and the ear is a site for political struggle. This is a queer space for bodily
circulation … Dance music is continually being restyled, importing aural
sensations and defamiliarising the semiotic encounter with the mobile
body.
((Brabazon 1997:104-114)

The fluidity and flexibility of the body is used by dancers as a loom on which to
restructure the fabric of social identity. Ingesting psychedelic materials that give rise
to dramatic changes in somatic awareness would appear to augment this process of
corporeal de-subjectification. The ‘ecstatic’ body becomes a consecrated alembic in
which social identity is transformed. The dancing bodies of doofers are potent sites of
resistance, experimentation, autonomy, and transcendence. Psychedelic parties
provide expressions of body-oriented awareness that reflect changing attitudes toward
sexualities, socialities, and genders.

Tripping at doofs can be truly recreational in the literal sense of facilitating the
dynamic re-creation of social beings. This is a process of stepping across the limen,
with a strongly initiatory sub-text; and, significantly, it takes place in a highly public
and communal ‘participation framework’ (Goffman 1981).

Tripping is usually discursively constructed as pertaining to the mind, but it is as

much about the body and in fact only minuscule quantities of any orally ingested
psychedelic ever make it to the brain. If we free ourselves from the Cartesian model
of body/mind, then tripping can be analysed as a kind of ritual sub-cellular body

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modification in which vast numbers of psychedelic molecules are temporarily

attached to receptor sites on the surfaces of sensory neurons within the Central
Nervous System (CNS). This act, ingesting a psychedelic, is charged with great
political and ontological significance. These cellular surfaces are perhaps the most
hotly contested regions of the body, as they are the interfaces between the sense-
mediated environment (which is controlled by exterior power regimes) and the
transcendent subject (and the anarchic order of the Self). Psychedelic drugs may be
used to reconfigure unsatisfactory relations to external control regimes and to affirm
the autonomy of the transcendent subject.

Another form of transgression associated with psychedelics is the transgression of

states of consciousness. The sixties counter-culture borrowed freely from the
philosophies of Hinduism and Buddhism (Brown 1992, Fuller 1999, Zaehner 1972).
Many of these philosophies have since diffused into popular awareness, especially
through the proliferation of new religious movements, particularly the polymorphic
New Age. The concept that ‘reality’ of everyday sense perception is actually maya—
an illusory construct—has become axiomatic among many contemporary spiritual
seekers. States of inebriation can be interpreted as configurations of maya which are
more “transparent” or which contain “flaws” that afford glimpses into “ultimate
reality” or “ground state”. Psychedelics, after all, are said to ‘alter’ or ‘distort’ the
perception of reality; reality is said be illusory: ergo, psychedelics might provide a
portal to a non-illusory condition. When used in this way psychedelics represent an
aspect of the quest for ultimacy.

Sacrificial NRG
Psychedelic dance parties in Australia can be compared and contrasted with
entheogen-oriented all-night dance rituals in a number of other societies. Such rituals
are widespread, and are particularly well-represented among the many indigenous
peoples of the western Amazon (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975), the Huichol of Mexico
(Schaefer and Furst 1996), and members of the Bwiti cult of Gabon in equatorial west
Africa (Fernandez 1982). One is particularly struck by the similarities between doofs
and these other rituals. Even a perfunctory analysis reveals a great deal of overlap: all
the rituals involve special preparations such as fasting and beautification; ritual space
is always created; the music is nearly always loud, continuous and hypnotic with a
pronounced percussive component; ecstatic group dancing is used as a trance
technique; coloured light-sources are often used; the psychotropic substances used all
have a net stimulating effect, but also induce visions and a degree of dissociation or
“de-subjectification”; and sociality always takes the form of an immersion into a
collective state of Gemeinschaft or communitas.

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In view of all these similarities the differences that do exist require explanation. Why,
for example, is the idea of “sacrifice” extremely important in these other rituals, but
less evident in doofs?

The theme of this collection is “free NRG”, but at this point I wish to introduce the
possibility that there is a cost associated with psychedelic energy, and I don’t mean
the cost of the generators or outrageous price of “e”. The first law of thermodynamics
predicts that energy inevitably has at least one cost, and that price is transformation.
According to the foundation myth of ‘western’ physics, the energy of the universe is
constant: it cannot be created, only transformed. Living systems such as ourselves are
subject to a series of surrenders and transformations that collectively comprise the
condition of mortality. One series of transformations which intersects the human
condition are those related to nutrition. Solar light is transformed into bio-chemical
energy by plants, and some of these plants are subsequently converted into chemical
energy, cellular growth, and excrements by herbivores, which may be subject to
further predation or may become hosts to other organisms or to ideational systems.

The theoretical model proposed by Maurice Bloch (Bloch 1992) places the dynamics
and emotions associated with predation close to the heart of religious ritual and
sentiment. From the Blochian perspective rites de passage involve instilling in those
undergoing initiation, in the first instance, a sense of vulnerability—of being prey—
through such devices as being ritually stalked or otherwise victimised. In the next
phase of ritual the initiate is brought into a sense of power and an identification with
the hunter. These “prey into hunter” ideas of Bloch’s converge with the very
widespread religious idea of “sacrifice”, in other words the ritual acknowledgment of
the transformational costs of energy.

Another theorist of religion, Georges Bataille (1986) emphasised a further set of

transformations involving the shift from states of continuity to states of discontinuity.
Human reproduction involves a series of cellular shifts to and from continuity and
discontinuity, commencing with the sudden ejaculatory discontinuity of spermatozoa
from their genitor and ending with the discontinuity of expulsion from the womb. Life
is conceptualised by Bataille as a state of anguished isolation from other orders of
existence, while death and putrefaction constitute an eventual relaxation of
discontinuity and merging into continuity with other matter.

Human energy requires that other organisms are sacrificed to sustain us, and it also
means that we ourselves are destined to become the fuel of other transformations.
Some of our bodies will fuel the funeral pyre, while Bataille speaks eloquently for the
buried ones…

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…death will proclaim my return to seething life. Hence I can anticipate

and live in expectation of that multiple putrescence that anticipates its
sickening triumph in my person.
(Bataille 1986:57)
For Bataille, both eroticism and the religious impulse are part of the human response
to these life and death transformations. In other words religion involves coming to
terms with sacrifice and discontinuity.

Religions afford a number of ways of coming to terms with discontinuity. One of the
most effective ways that religion creates continuity is through the formation of strong
social bonds; in its ideal form the intimate and immediate sociality that Victor Turner
(1969) calls communitas.

Continuity in the form of communitas is an important feature of psychedelic parties.

From the collective psychedelic “dance delirium” (Jordan 1995) to the extended,
unconditional embraces of MDMA “puppy piles” and the acid “mind-meld”,
subjective continuity with others is sought and often actualised. While this experience
of continuity may be fleeting, the resulting long-term changes in outlook can be
profound, as attested to by the many personal accounts of psychedelic transformation
(Adamson 1985, Stolaroff 1994).

Sacrificial motifs are frequently prominent in the mythology associated with

entheogenic dance rituals in other societies. Many instances could be cited, but the
reader can gain a reasonable impression of their prevalence from the three examples
cited below.

Throughout the western Amazon the entheogen yajé5 is taken in conjunction with
stimulating Amazonian coca, tobacco and cashirí—a kind of beer—during ecstatic,
night-long dance rituals (Hugh-Jones 1979). The myths relating the origins of yajé
often centre on themes of sexuality, sacrifice and death (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971). In
the mythology of the Desana people of the western Amazon yajé was first obtained by
their ancestors as a result of their tearing apart the luminous, newly born, incestuously
begotten child of the supernatural Yajé woman (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975).

Another instance of entheogenic sacrifice can be found among the Huichol. The
Huichol Indians of Mexico ingest the vision-inducing cactus Hikuri (Lophophora
williamsii) during a sacred pilgrimage to a high desert called Wirikúta where the
cactus grows in abundance (Myerhoff 1974). Hikuri or “Peyote” is also harvested for
later use in a ritual known as the Hikuri Neixa or “Peyote dance” (Schaefer and Furst
1996). The Hikuri has a central sacrificial aspect. It is mythologically associated with
both deer and maize. During the harvesting of Hikuri it is first stalked as if it were an

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actual deer. The pilgrimage leader, the mara’akáme, ritually slays the Hikuri/deer by
firing an arrow into it (Schaefer 1996). The hikuri is later ceremonially divided
between the pilgrims (ibid).

Among the Fang people in Gabon, west Africa, members of the Bwiti religion eat the
powdered roots of the stimulating and visionary eboka plant (Tabernanthe iboga)
during all-night religious dance ceremonies (Fernandez 1972, Pope 1969). The last of
the Fang creator beings—Zame ye Mebege—is said to have made eboka from the
slain body of the Pygmy Bitumu (Fernandez 1982). Zame cut the little fingers and
little toes from the corpse and planted them throughout the forest; they grew into
eboka bushes. Eventually Bitumu’s wife learned how to use the eboka roots to
communicate with her dead husband and with the ancestors before she herself was
ritually and willingly killed by strangulation (Fernandez 1982).

The above examples are sufficient to demonstrate that entheogens in other societies
generally have a sacrificial character and are often viewed as intermediaries between
the realms of continuity and discontinuity. These sacrifices are often recounted or
alluded to during ritual. On the surface, sacrificial themes appear to be absent from
Australian psychedelic dance cultures.

Two elements of sacrifice comes to mind in connection with DIY psychedelic parties.
The first is the idea that the party itself is an offering. The party is often an
extravagance that is not firmly anchored in the mundane profit-oriented economy, and
which often involves a great deal of volunteer effort. Further, the party participants
must contribute a lot of energy in order to “make it happen”, so there is considerable
expenditure of sacrificial or “free” energy. The second sacrificial aspect of the
psychedelic party is a volitional and temporary sacrifice of individuality to the
“collective body” (Jordan 1995). In particular, the use of LSD at high doses is
frequently associated with a phase of consciousness sometimes known as “ego-death”
or “ego-annihilation” (Grof 1976). Ego-death involves a suspension of subjectivity
and a surrender to perceived transpersonal realities (ibid.). Such an experience may be
extremely confronting for some people, but is often seen as psychologically or
spiritually liberating (Grof 1985). While this kind of sacrifice is an intrinsic aspect of
psychedelic parties for some, there is little explicit aesthetic, mythological, and ritual
representation of sacrifice as compared to those representations found in Desana,
Huichol, and Bwiti traditions.

The relative lack of sacrificial expression in psychedelic party culture may be linked
to certain tendencies of the western form of modernity to suppress or censor overt,
explicit expressions of sacrificial reality. Indeed, capitalism and consumer culture

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require that the sacrifices of production remain concealed in order to fortify

monopolies and to obscure the unpalatable links between the chic boutique and the
“Third World” sweatshop. Capitalism is embedded in myths of free energy or
“unlimited growth”. In this regard Berger (1977) has characterised capitalism as a
variety of “cargo-cult” that assumes that commodities can manifest in a socially
equitable manner. Christianity, industrialisation, and the sciences can all be seen to
emerge out of a striving to dematerialise sacrifice.

The major “sacrament” of the dance cultures—LSD—is a product of organic

chemistry, a tradition emerging from an alchemical philosophy that sought to
transcend sacrifice and halt “corruption”. LSD is a semi-synthetic substance. The
production of LSD generally proceeds from ergotamine tartate (Shulgin and Shulgin
1997). For commercial purposes, this substance is usually extracted from submerged
cultures of the fungus Claviceps paspali (Sankar 1975). The fungus is sacrificed to the
process. Another cost associated with the production of substances from clandestine
laboratories is the environmental impact of procedures involving toxic solvents and
reagents. In the popular imagination LSD is often perceived of as “synthetic”, which
is to say that it is somehow created ex nihilo without any need for sacrifice and
without any connection to the biotic world. This is in sharp contrast to societies such
as the Desana, Huichol, and Fang Bwiti who, where participation in a reciprocal web
of sacrifices promotes personal psychological affinities to the “spirit” of substances6.

Having made the above distinctions regarding sacrifice, DIY parties nonetheless
provide a vital response to the way of life that Berger (1977:22) describes as “…the
insensate offering up of lives to a petrified concept.” The psychedelic party eclipses
many religious forms in terms in the arena of techniques for inducing and sustaining
deep trance states. The party can be seen a great engine of ecstasis containing
numerous synergistic triggers: auditory and photic drivers, archetypal symbols,
aesthetic objects, “freaks”, “trippers”, planet Earth and a big dose of , spirited high
energy, PLUR, wonder, and “happy vibes”. At an experiential level, doofs open a
juncture where individuals are able to share in a kind of agape or collective ecstasis
that mitigates against the sense of ennui and isolation so often associated with
modernity. Doofs also provide an opportunity to experiment with new social forms,
meanings, and identities through a variety of modes of creative transgression. Finally
parties afford the possibility of a more concrete engagement with life through “ego-
death” and experiential transcendence.

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References
Adamson, S. (1985), Through the Gateway of the Heart: Accounts of Experiences
With MDMA and other Empathogenic Substances, . San Francisco: Four
Trees Publications.
Bataille, G. (1986), Erotism: Death and Sensuality. Translated by Mary Dalwood.
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End notes
1
Sometimes psychedelic humour is construed as irreverence, especially by
members of mainstream religious and social institutions who may feel they are being
mocked. For example the catechism and handbook of the Neo-American Church The
Boo Hoo Bible (Kleps 1971) was interpreted by United States District Judge Gerhard
A. Gessel to be irreverent and clearly agnostic, “showing no regard for a supreme
being, law or civic responsibility” (Roberts and Hruby 1995:41).
2
Incidentally, Maslow felt that “…LSD and psilocybin, give us some possibility of
control in this realm of peak-experiences. It looks like these drugs often produce
peak-experiences in the right people under the right circumstances, so perhaps we
needn’t wait for them to occur by good fortune.” (Maslow 1976:26). However, in
general Maslow advises a moderate approach, warning against becoming attached
to the peak experience as an end in itself, or trying to “escalate the triggers” without
integrating the experience (Maslow 1976:ix).
3
Laski’s published views on psychedelics (in particular mescaline) were that they did
not constitute a form of ecstasy. However, Laski (1961:263-273) wrote at a time
when there were relatively few accounts of psychedelic experiences; and she seems
to have succumbed to the kind of fallacy of relevance known as the “converse
accident”, arguing that, as some accounts of mescaline (such as that of R.C.
Zaehner) are clearly more absurd than blissful, then those of others (for example,
Aldous Huxley) who claim to have been graced by beatific visions must necessarily
be mistaken.
4
Numerous examples of the morally transgressive and lawless nature of the Holy
could be cited. One thinks of the destructive character of divinities such as Shiva and
Dionysus; the sexual adventures of Zeus; the unknowable will of Allah, the inhuman
indifference of Brahman; Indra who boasted of throwing the Arunmukha ascetics to a
pack of hyenas (Zaehner 1972); not to mention Carl Jung’s childhood vision of a
scatological God (Jung 1961).
5
Yajé or ayahuasca is compounded from a number of different plants. The
entheogenic properties of yajé are the result of a unique and sophisticated
pharmacological synergy (Ott 1996). The basic ingredient is nearly always the stems
of the vine Banisteriopsis caapi. Depending on the region, leaves of other plants,
especially oco-yagé (Diplopterys cabrerana) and chacruna (Psychotria viridis), are
added to intensify the enchanting properties of the drink (Schultes and Raffauf 1992).
These latter plants are rich in the psychedelic N,N-dimethyltryptamine or DMT.

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Substances ( carbolines) found in Banisteriopsis caapi have distinct psychoactive

properties, but also facilitate the more spectacular visionary action of DMT (McKenna
and Towers 1984).
6
The entheogenic or “psychedelic shamanistic” sensibility that has emerged during
the last decade can be seen as a move to redress the western alienation of spirit
from substance and an active engagement in the sacrificial processes of cultivating
and harvesting entheogenic organisms. The current popularity of the entheogenic
epistemology can also be seen, in part, as a counter-trend to the commodification of
some post-rave dance-cultures. For entheogenists, the production of semi-synthetic
psychedelic materials in laboratories is superseded by the extraction of natural
products using simple kitchen equipment.

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