Even in today's comparatively liberal climate, psychedelia and psychedelics are still a difficult topic to address. So much cultural baggage has become attached to the terms - most of it taking its cue from images of hippies looning around at the Roundhouse or gurning ravers in their fluorescent finery - that it is generally forgotten that humans have been altering their consciousness at least since the birth of society, and probably longer. However, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in psychedelia as an integral part of the human experience; perhaps by happy coinicidence, this has come at a time when more people are experiencing psychedelics for themselves than at any point in recent years.
To date, most histories of psychedelia have concentrated on the modern psychedelic experience, with each author patiently lining up to speak in awed tones of Hoffman's bicycle ride, of Michael Hollingshead and his mayonnaise jar, of the persecution of Leary and the explosion of LSD into modern society. All this is, admittedly, to be found in Devereux's book, but here it forms a brief introduction to the author's own interest in the subject, and merely sets the scene for wonders to come. And wonders they are.
As indicated by the subtitle, Devereux's main concern is not the modern but the archaic. He takes as his mission the task of examining and interrogating the archaeological record for evidence of use of psychedelics, and succeeds amply. As one might expect, many of the standard cases raise their heads here: Siberian amanita muscaria shamanism, American peyote rituals, the "mushroom people" of the Tassilli rock art, the oracle of Delphi. Being Devereux, of course, there are plenty of more obscure references. However, although these are The Long Trip's raison d'etre, and they do indeed form a valuable contribution to the field, they are only half the story.
Danny Sullivan - Devereux's successor as editor of the Ley Hunter Journal - ruffled many fuzzy mystical feathers with his speech at UnConvention 97 on how leys may be based entirely on the shamanic psychedelic experience, rather than representing "energy links" between sacred sites.
Devereux here floats many similar, and perhaps more radical ideas. He is not the first to do so; most famously, Terence McKenna has suggested in the past that religion, language and perhaps even society itself owe their genesis to ingestion of psychoactive plants, particularly those containing dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and its chemical relations. However, Devereux does not pin down these milestones to any one particular substance, but he does show by reference to copious evidence that psychoactive substances have played a massive part in the human experience.
For example, he argues a convincing case for the importance of various hallucinogens, psychedelics and narcotics in ancient societies. The Oracle at Delphi, he suggests, was burning not eucalyptus but opiates in her brazier; the temple at Chavin de Huantar was constructed to provide shamanic experiences under the influence of San Pedro cactus; the construction of many passage graves and burial chambers strongly suggests that they were designed for the consumption of cannabis; and so on. This is all extremely valuable material; while much has been written on the importance of psychedelics to various societies, previous examinations have tended to concentrate on contemporary "primitive" societies - in particular in South America - and their current psychedelic usage. Devereux is certainly one of the first to properly address the issues around psychedelics in ancient society. Moreover, while previous studies of psychedelics have tended to concentrate on one area - anthropology, ethnobotany - Devereux draws in ideas and theories from across a whole slew of disciplines, taking in linguistics, archaeology, biology, psychology and a good deal more besides.
Where The Long Trip really becomes intriguing is insetting out Devereux's own opinions and ideas. While imparting details of his wide-ranging researches, Devereux delightfully digresses into the many ways in which interest in psychedelics has remained as a distinct - if often subterranean - thread in society, invoking the likes of Coleridge and de Quincy as witnesses to his cause, all the while offering comparisons between their more contemporary experiences and their ancient counterparts. Both Coleridge and de Quincy, for example, reported opium dreams of vast caverns; Devereux compares this to the caves in which the Oracle gave her pronouncements, or to the shape of underground ritual chambers - extending this even to the appearence of temples in classical antiquity. More explicitly, he points up the direct similarity of many of the motifs found in rock art and other "primitive" art-forms and the imagery induced by various psychedelics.
It is this willingness to speculate that it is both the book's strength and its weakness. Every field needs its dangerous thinkers, those who dare to suggest that all might not be as we believe; there is an everpresent danger, however, that speculation will take the place of evidence, and in one or two places, Devereux comes dangerously close to swamping the reader in "could", "might" and "it may be supposed". This is, it should be emphasised, not a fault in the book, since raising questions is one of the most important tasks of the revolutionary thinker; it may, however, provide ammunition for detractors.
A genuinely radical book, The Long Trip draws deep from the well of history to back up its speculations.
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