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i
High Culture
ii
iii
High Culture
Drugs, Mysticism, and
the Pursuit of Transcendence in
the Modern World
z
CHRISTOPHER PARTRIDGE
1
iv
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
v
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. Technologies of Transcendence 9
Technologies of the Self 9
Psychedelic Gnosis and the Transcendence of Ordinary
Consciousness 12
Perennialism and the Experience of Oneness 17
Shamanism and Ekstasis 19
Concluding Analysis: The Drug Problem? 23
2. Opium Dreams 30
Opium in Britain in the Early Nineteenth Century:
Some Background Notes 30
The Art of Dreaming 34
The English Opium-Eater 38
Opium and the Orient: Fear and Fascination 46
Concluding Comments 56
3. Anesthetic Revelation 60
A Ladder to the Heaven of Heavens 61
Syntax, Surgery, and Celestial Visions 68
Benjamin Blood’s Anesthetic Revelation 71
Anesthesia and the Society for Psychical Research 74
Concluding Comments 84
vi
viii Contents
4. Hashishdom 88
Cannabis and Clinical Research in the Nineteenth Century 89
The Old Man of the Mountain and the Assassins 95
Artificial Paradises 102
The American Hashish-Eater 107
Concluding Comments 121
Contents ix
Notes 343
Index 437
x
xi
Acknowledgments
This is one of those books that had a long gestation period. Had it not
been for a sabbatical granted by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at
Lancaster University, it would still be a series of scattered notes, annotated
texts, and half-baked ideas. Likewise, I am thankful to the staff of Lancaster
University library for their help in securing some relatively obscure material.
I am grateful to Cynthia Read at Oxford University Press for her encourage-
ment. I also want to extend my gratitude to Joan Kleps and members of the
Original Kleptonian Neo-American Church for their generous assistance.
Finally, my understanding of psychedelic mystical states has been greatly
assisted by those who have, over the years, generously shared their profound
and often life-changing experiences with me.
xi
1
Introduction
Who will ever relate the whole history of narcotics?—It is
nearly the history of “culture,” of our so-called high culture!
—F riedrich Nietzsche 1
from 12.9 million to 17.35 million, users of cocaine rose from 13.4 million to
17 million, and users of cannabis rose from 147.4 million to 160 million.6 High
culture is often also a culture of tragic misadventure.7 As the Czech psychia-
trist and psychedelic researcher Stanislav Grof found, “a consuming need for
transcendence seems to be the core problem of alcoholism and narcotic drug
addiction.”8 The problem is that “for a hurting individual who is desperately
looking for help and is incapable of accurate discrimination, the resemblance
[between mystical states and inebriation] seems close enough to seduce him
or her into systematic abuse.”9 Grof, we will see, made a distinction between
altered states induced by psychedelics, which he understood to be genuinely
mystical and psychologically beneficial, and states induced by alcohol and
opiates, which are fundamentally detrimental to physical, psychological, and
spiritual health.
This brings us directly to the subject of this book. Psychoactive substances
induce states of transcendence that frequently are invested with mystical sig-
nificance. As Robert Masters and Jean Houston found during their research
in the early 1960s:
Introduction 3
produce, which results you should enjoy,” and so on.18 This is high culture,
which is important, because not only does it reduce the incidence of unpleas-
ant effects, but it does so by providing a vocabulary and an interpretative
framework that help users both to expect certain experiences and to make
sense of them. Moreover, not only are techniques, technologies, and interpre-
tations shared within high culture, but psychedelic occulture constructs the
experience as enchanted reality. As we will see in Chapter 1 and particularly
Chapter 7, this type of thinking is often discussed in relation to the “set” (the
user’s mind-set) and the “setting” (the physical and sociocultural environ-
ment within which the drug is taken).
Introduction 5
This highlights a problematic bias in the use of the term “entheogen.” If “hal-
lucinogen” carries too much baggage of one variety, “entheogen” carries too
much of another variety, referring as it does to “the condition that follows
when one is inspired and possessed by the god that has entered one’s body.”27
6
Introduction 7
— Kyllevi!
Kyllevistä tämä oli niin oudon juhlallista, ettei hän tiennyt, pitikö
hänen itkeä vai nauraa. Hän päätti nauraa.
— Lupaatteko?
8.
— Mitä hittoa! sanoi Ensio Vaahti. — Jos kerta muutatte alaa, niin
ruvetkaa sitten lukemaan lääketiedettä. Se vasta jotakin on.
— Sanoitteko te jotakin?
Ensio Vaahti hymyili enkelimäisen kärsivällisesti.
— En minä ärsytä.
— Juu.
— Ei.
Ensio hymyili.
— Ulkonainen…
9.
Päivällisen jälkeen, kun muut joivat kahvia salissa, Elvi vei Veikko-
Ilmarin omaan huoneeseensa hieman erilleen muista. Kyllevi seurasi
tarkasti heidän hommiaan avonaisesta ovesta. He keskustelivat
vilkkaasti ja istuutuivat molemmat vieretysten Kyllevin sohvalle.
— Kittiä vielä, täti kulta! En minä ole opiskellut yhtään. Olen vain
istunut Fazerilla ja leffandessa kaiket päivät. Olen suuttunut koko
opiskelemiseen. Se on minusta ihan yhtä turhaa kuin että sialla on
sarvet ja torpparin hevosella kaksi häntää.
— Entä Mairesta?
— Don Quixote?
Elvi nauroi.
— Pyh pihkaa, sanoi Kyllevi. — Sinä nyt aina olet noin nokka
solmussa, kun minä yritän pitää hauskaa.