Coming up fast, over the last week of March, is the next Metageum conference. The last one was a fascinating event in Malta; this time, we’re in the slightly less megalith-rich, but hopefully more humanly hectic environs of London. Specifically, at the ever-conducive venue, Treadwell’s.

Speakers so far include Paul Devereux, Peter Lloyd, David Luke, Lydia Oukhaneva, Toni Perrott, Peter Knight, Donal Ruane and Deborah Marshall-Warren.

And me. I’m on March 28th at 1.30pm—sign up and I’ll see you there!

My talk has changed slightly from the blurb currently posted there. Here’s the latest version:

Darwin, Rock Art, and the Human Animal

Commemorating this year’s double anniversary (of Darwin’s birth and the publication of The Origin of Species), this talk will delve into the complex influence of evolutionary theory on both the study of prehistoric rock art in particular, and modern attitudes to “primitive” man in general. From the surprising origins of the myth of “the noble savage” in Victorian ethnology to Stephen Pinker’s contentions about prehistoric violence; from Terence McKenna’s mycological speculations to recent archaeological controversies about shamans and visions. This will be a wide-ranging trip through our varying perspectives on the prehistoric mind, what it means to be an animal with imagination, and the bearing of these stories on the ecological crisis we find ourselves in.

It’s a while since I published my essay and booklet on Verbeia, the Romano-Celtic goddess from Ilkley. I did a revised edition of the booklet in 2000 or so, to include new information; but now that more information has come to my attention, I decided to try and create an easily referenced consolidation of Verbeia research that I can keep up-to-date.

I’ve added some bits to the Wikipedia page, but I suspect some of the speculation there (pretty tame by my standards) may, strictly speaking, have overstepped the boundaries of Wikipedia’s style guidelines.

Well, I’d recently heard of one of Google’s latest ventures, knol. “A unit of knowledge” that say—which seems a little forced to me. It’s still in beta, but it’s got some interesting differences from the Wiki. There’s the usual Google attention to usability and neat detail. You create your own pages on anything. You can collaborate with others if you want, but that’s on a strictly voluntary basis. Obviously it has different strengths and weaknesses to the Wiki, but it seemed ideal as a place to collate my Verbeia research.

So, here’s my Verbeia knol.

It’s set to “moderated collaboration”, so anyone logged in can suggest additions or corrections that I then vet.

A small lesson from publicizing this came from posting a link on the Modern Antiquarian’s Swastika Stone page. I thought I’d found some new info about Verbeia and the Swastika Stone’s relationship. Just after I posted my new link, I noticed the venerable Kozmik Ken had posted the same info four years ago. Ah well, I’m only just getting back into this research lark…

by Gyrus

Most of the writings in this book were written during a very strange, obsessive and fruitful time in my life. I was, as ever, experimenting with various ways of altering consciousness and interacting with the environment in magical ways. My own trip, the various complexes that I’d become aware of in my psyche, seemed to resonate uncannily with certain aspects of the prehistoric landscapes I was exploring—for the most part, Ilkley Moor and the Avebury monuments. As I dug deeper into their histories and associations, it sometimes felt like I was unearthing buried contents of my own mind.

There’s no certain outcome from getting into stuff like this. You can go off the rails a bit; you can publish some very dubious theories that say more about you than prehistory. My own approach was to keep my critical mind alert, but to embrace the fact that there’s a grey area between digging into your own unconscious and unearthing the realities of prehistoric life. How could it be otherwise, if we shake off the modern illusion of individual isolation, and accept that all our roots tangle together in the deep past?

There’s a long tradition of overlap between psychology and the study of the past. Carl Jung wanted to study archaeology, but his family couldn’t afford to send him to a university that taught the subject. So, he ended up doing medicine, which led him to psychiatry. The metaphor of archaeology remained with him, though. The crucial dream of 1909 that led to his theory of the collective unconscious involved him descending into the lowest level of the basement underneath a house, passing through a Roman level before encountering scattered bones. “This must be a prehistoric cave!” he exclaimed before waking up.

Oddly enough, my own plunge into the past was largely triggered by something above, in the sky. I had a nasty experience with chemicals at Glastonbury Festival—as you do—where I saw a vortex in the sky that threatened to drag me into it, to my death. The image of the vortex haunted me for years.

Looking back, with a playful eye for the movements of fate, I wonder… What led me after that experience to move to Leeds, a short bus ride from Ilkley Moor? And what led me to Ilkley Moor, where I was gobsmacked to find oodles of prehistoric rock art, the type of exotic and mysterious creations that part of me assumed were confined to caves in the Australian desert?

I had already written most of my essay The Devil & The Goddess, which takes ancient snake goddesses as a central theme, when I discovered by chance that a Romano-Celtic snake goddess—Verbeia—was worshipped as an embodiment of the River Wharfe, which runs past the moors and through Ilkley. I delved deep into etymology, and found that both “Verbeia” and “Wharfe” had potential roots in words referring to turning, swirling, and vortices. I quickly made connections with the turning, swirling Swastika Stone carving on the moor, and the vortex-like concentric circles of the common cup-and-ring marks carved onto many of the moor’s stones. Endless details, myriad connections, all gave me the vertiginous sense that I had psychically meshed with the local landscape and its history. My own association of the vortex with death and altered states permeated my reading of the rock carvings. I railed against the narrow-mindedness of academia (without having actually read much academic research, of course), and proffered my own visionary interpretations in the small press.

Before long, I was reading Richard Bradley’s book on the predominantly cup-and-ring rock art of Atlantic Europe. This was around 1997. Almost a decade before, David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson had caused a storm in archaeological circles with their paper, ‘The Signs of All Times’, which proposed that much Palaeolithic art was inspired by shamanic trance states. Drawing on their ideas about geometric shapes—grids, spirals, dots, and so on—representing the hallucinations from the early stages of trance, archaeologists like Bradley started to speculate about the Neolithic and Bronze Age cup-and-rings. Could they represent these early parts of the shamanic altered state? Lab tests had shown that vortex-like imagery was common as people were drawn into the deeper levels of trance. And entry into the Otherworld was frequently associated with death by shamanic cultures. Could the occurrence of spirals and cup-and-rings at the entrances to Irish passage graves be explained by this connection?

Well, of course it could. I’m all for keeping an open mind about prehistory, this vast period that we’ll never be certain about. But the logic and coherence of the “shamanic trance” theory of rock art, while it obviously can’t be applied anywhere and everywhere, means to me that it has to be placed in the foreground of our collection of possible models for the origins of this art.

Now, I’m really interested in how I managed to come to this conclusion independently, after a few years of messing around with strange drugs and staggering about West Yorkshire’s moors, when earnest academics had taken most of their careers of diligent study to get there. Does this mean that we can throw all our books away and get to the truth of the past by wrenching the lids off our minds? Sadly not. However, I’m not entirely convinced that it was blind luck that led me to this theory that academia has now validated. There really is something to be said for getting down to the basic structures of the psyche through experimentation, and using the data gathered from this first-hand experience to speculate about that period when these basic structures were being laid down—and, for the first time, expressed in material artifacts. It’ll never be an exact science, but it can function as an extremely valuable adjunct to scientific exploration. Some common-sense participation in the ways of magic, animism and altered states could, I believe, help ground abstract theories in the realities of the human body and the many qualities of the human mind that persist through changing historical circumstances. Anthropologists often go a bit native and live their subject’s life a little; why not archaeologists too?

If personal experience can contribute to the study of the past, what can the past contribute to our experience now? For me, history was always my worst subject at school. I’m still pretty patchy on all that stuff that happened between the Romans and the 20th century. My route into the past was Terence McKenna’s theories about the role of psychedelic mushrooms in the origins of human consciousness. Suddenly, someone was drawing compelling links between the direct experiences in my life that fascinated and inspired me, and the grander, often bewildering sweep of human history.

Recently, Andy Letcher’s book Shroom has taken this type of theory to task, heavily criticizing modern psychedelic culture for projecting its own agendas back onto the past. And many pagans, lead by Ronald Hutton, who was a big inspiration for Letcher, have for a while been taking apart the historical fantasies of Wiccans and others who believe themselves to be continuing a genuine lineage of magical practice. Why should we need validation for our current activities so much that we’re prepared to delude ourselves about history?

I do value the hard information and refreshing cynicism of Letcher and Hutton’s work—it’s priceless among subcultures that often succumb to insular illusions. But I think their views can be seen as the flip-side to the fantasies of historical validation that they try to demolish. To polarize things a bit: one side is so blindly in need of validation, that they are prepared to be certain about things that are up in the air; but the other side seems to carry itself with a kind of modern intellectual machismo that believes this need for validation from the past can be disposed of entirely. Science is the watchword, and despite the archaeological cliché that “absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence”, if hard proof isn’t forthcoming, we have to turn away. This seems to be as modern as Wiccan revivalism, and at least as damaging as they believe any uncritical reconstruction of past beliefs is.

We can’t just believe what we want about the past. But I feel we can’t just leave it be, or accept the “hard evidence” of orthodox archaeology as all that remains. The past is alive, and constantly expresses itself through the present, into the future. This isn’t determinism, it’s just the way things are. You can take a more complex angle if you want, and say that it’s our relationship to the past that is alive. The imagination is one of the most potent forces in human life, and it loves the past. Especially ancient times. It seems wise to engage consciously with this love, to nurture it and guard against its excesses, rather than decry it and hope it goes away.

Dreams, as Jung found, are particularly enthused about the past. Nothing is simple and straightforward in dreams; their metaphoric nature and tricksterish layering of meaning always defy any rational attempt to codify and delineate them. But they respond eagerly when you feed your head with images and stories of ancient things. The outward forms of prehistory, when they permeate your waking life, can seep into your dream world and help give shape to long-neglected patterns in your personal history.

Anyone’s deeper complexes can be as uncertain and hard to pin down as the forever lost—but deeply resonant—rituals of prehistoric tribes. Just as we can’t pin down such archaic events with archaeological certainty, the precise identification of our own ancient moments of significance may forever elude us.

But likewise, just as the lingering, intangible traces of these moments can profoundly shape our lives from behind the scenes, we will never be able to fully wipe away our subtle bonds to the deep past of the species. In both personal and collective psychohistory, our unceasing curiosity should be tempered by a light touch that respects the reality and the importance of the past’s essential unknowability. The lack of hope for solid conclusions needn’t be a cause of despair; it can animate our investigations with a playful delight, and a respect for irreducible mystery.

by Gyrus

The bulk of these essays were directly inspired by my experience of Ilkley Moor in West Yorkshire. The essays range wide across topics such as evolution, sacrifice, Kundalini experiences, shamanic cosmology, models of history, and psychedelic plants; but really, for me, Ilkley Moor was where it all started. It initiated me into thinking more deeply about the past, and into trying to make my interactions with the landscape an integral part of that thinking.

Ilkley Moor is covered in stones that are carved with various patterns, apparently abstract arrangements of lines, cup-marks and concentric rings. These are three thousand or more years old. More recently, the region has accumulated more than its fair share of odd folklore, from black dogs to little green men. It’s a bizarre place that practically urges you to map the strangeness of your present experiences there back onto the layers of weirdness from the past.

And that’s what I did. I plunged into studying the moor’s rock art, and eventually the Romano-Celtic goddess of the nearby River Wharfe, called Verbeia, paying close attention at all times to my dreams & synchronicities, and folding the more tantalizing of these back into my research. I performed rituals to ask the moor and Verbeia for help in conducting my research into their histories, and my experience was that this worked—abundantly.

Ilkley Moor isn’t just a major inspiration for these writings, it’s also part of why I’ve invited Phil and Robert along tonight. I arrived in Leeds in 1993, shortly after Phil had left for London, and soon became aware of the recently deceased Chaos Magic scene in the area. After I discovered the moors, the kind of “urban” reputation of Chaos Magic left me slightly surprised that Ilkley Moor was one of the chief stomping grounds for Yorkshire’s Chaos Magicians. This was yet another layer of history on the moor for me; this one place, eighty pence on the bus from where I lived, had a millennia-old reputation for attracting cultural oddities which was still alive and kicking.

I’ve come to know Phil as having a sound appreciation for in-depth scholarship, alongside in-depth magical experience, so that’s another part of why he’s here, this intermingling of our academic and magical traditions; and this brings me to Robert.

I came to realize that my independent research into these prehistoric glyphs happened to be running alongside a new current in rock art research in academia—one which holds that these patterns and forms, from the cup-and-ring art that’s found across northwest Europe to the painted caves of southern France or Africa, may have been derived from visions seen in altered states of consciousness. Specifically, the apparently abstract Ilkley-style art has been associated with the so-called “entoptic” phenomena seen during early stages of trance—lines, grids, dots and vortices, all taken to be hard-wired into the optic nerve in some way. Perhaps the earliest landmark paper in this current, published in 1989, is ‘The Signs of All Times’, by two South African archaeologists, David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson.

David Lewis-Williams has since pushed this theory forward, popularizing it in his books The Mind in the Cave and Inside the Neolithic Mind. Thomas Dowson went on to run a now-defunct MA in rock art at Southampton University. I had a friend there doing archaeology, and Thomas was her tutor. When he mentioned he was taking his MA students on a field trip to Ilkley Moor, she put him in touch with me. Along with a fellow independent obsessive in Yorkshire called Paul Bennett, I thus became a kind of wayward local guide to the moor for Thomas and his students—one of whom was Robert. Robert’s also a practicing pagan—author of a book on Norse magic alongside his many academic works.

Now, I’ve lost track of the academic debate since the late ‘90s. I’ve just recently been catching up with it thanks to Robert. And I’m at once heartened and disappointed. It’s heartening that things seem to be moving along, from an entrenched, long-fought squabble over the “neuropsychological shamanic trance hypothesis”, to a wider debate about the general mindset of prehistoric people. Animism has gone through a revival and re-thinking in anthropology of late, and this seems to be slowing seeping through to archaeology.

It’s disappointing, of course, that it’s taking so long. My reliance on obsession wasn’t a sustainable course for research; but within a few years I hit on basic shifts in envisioning the world that have taken some top academics decades to appreciate. There’s a lot of ideas in my essays here that I wouldn’t stand up and defend now; but looking back, it seems to me that my willingness to make my personal experience of magic and altered states filter my reading of archaeology and anthropology greatly enhanced my ability to tap closer into the mindset of the cultures who created these intriguing artefacts. I have more of an appreciation now for academic research, for the value of developing our own traditions of thinking instead of just trading them in for some kind of cod approximation of animism or shamanism. But still I wonder: might we need to sacrifice a good part of our traditions in order to develop them?

David Lewis-Williams writes in The Mind in the Cave on the neurological basis for religious experience. He says in his conclusion:

If these neurobiologists are correct … the fundamental dichotomy in human behaviour and experience—rational and non-rational beliefs and action—will not go away in the foreseeable future. … We are still a species in transition.

It seems clear that he envisions our species as progressing along a linear path from immersion in “irrational” religion, slowly stepping out into the light of rationality.

However, too much rationality is dangerous. In his excellent book The Paradoxes of Delusion, clinical psychologist Louis Sass argues that schizophrenia, far from being a triumph of irrational instincts over reason and logic, as it is commonly seen, may in fact be a dangerous excess of rationality. He describes schizophrenia as:

not an overwhelming by, but detachment from the instinctual sources of vitality; not immersion in the sensory surround but disengagement from a derealized external world; not stuporous waning of awareness but hypertrophy of consciousness and the conceptual life. … a matter of the mind’s perverse triumph over the body, the emotions, and the external world.

I wonder if the protracted stand-offs in academia, such as the debate in rock art over the past decade or so, also demonstrate “reason gone mad”.

Perhaps a fuller, more sensitive embrace of the evidence of embodied experience offers a way forward, not back, out of these labyrinths of the mind.

[audio:2007-11-06-metageum-pauldevereux.mp3]
(Download 99 MB MP3)

Granada

A wonderful city, nestled between the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada and the surrounding near-deserts. The Alhambra is a spectacular must, but also well worth a visit is the little museum up Sacromonte, the hill just opposite the one dominated by the Alhambra. It preserves cave dwellings in use by a famed flamenco dancer and her family until floods in the 1960′s, and houses art left by artists who visit the village in the summer.

Barcelona

Arrived in the morning after an all-night train from Granada. I’d gathered from Flickr’s graffiti tag page that Barcelona’s a modern graffiti hub, but nothing prepared me for the cascades of the stuff adorning the railways sidings, even from many miles outside the city.

Hit a bit of a downer here and didn’t fully appreciate it. Another time. At least the squid ink paella was amazing.

Galicia

A gruelling 18 hour train journey from Barcelona landed me in Santiago de Compostela, the city famed as the alleged burial place of Saint James, and the (near) end-point of the pilgrimage route named after him. I stayed in a good little place called Meiga (“witch”) Hostel on Plaza Galicia. I asked about the witch thing—seemed strange that such a Christian place would be so overflowing with witchiness, to the point of there being performance artists dressed as witches in the square in front of the cathedral. Well, apparently it’s just a local “thing”. Rural Galician villages are supposed to be full of the wrinkly old spell-casters, and tourism has fully capitalised.

Got slightly cornered here by the Easter holidays (my planned drive through the Pyrenees suddenly became very expensive due to rocketing car hire prices), but also by my wish to just go somewhere quiet, camp, search for rock art, and reflect. I spent most of the time here at Camping Ancoradoiro, a great campsite on the end of the peninsula near Muros. It seemed to be run by two brothers, very friendly guys, one of whom ran the campsite while the other ran the adjoined (rather swish) restaurant, and mowed the grass.

I was blessed with some highly unusual (for Galicia in the spring) blistering sunshine, but cursed with a combination of a highly inaccurate “Mapa Topografica” (the closest Spain has to Ordnance Survey maps) and some impossibly elusive rock art. I spent one whole sweaty day getting scratched to shreds by gorse, and found not one of the eight rock carvings I looked for. Oddly, I wasn’t pissed off—the walk through the hills was wholly fulfilling.

A couple of video curiosities. Walking up through a village towards some rock art, I happened upon a little cat with one of those sharp, unmistakable “I been a bad pussycat” wide-eyed expressions. I couldn’t tell whether it had just eaten a lizard or just scared the tail off one, but the tail remained on the ground, squirming with reflexive life (via YouTube). And, walking down a path made out of boulders from a hill behind a monastery, I stopped when I heard a regular drawn-out hissing noise, followed by a thick bubbly sound. It sounded like a massive viper poised for attack in the company of a savage wild boar snuffling in the mud. It actually turned out to be some odd thing going on with the water underneath the path, which I never fully worked out. Watch the seething little pool with awe! (via YouTube)

My time in Santiago convinced me that I want to walk the Camino (the pilgrim’s route) at some point. There seems to be a prehistoric lineage to the route that has some interesting associations—at least from the tidbits I picked up. It being the burial place of Saint James, together with the fact that the route heads westwards towards the Atlantic’s setting sun, obviously associates the pilgrimage with death. What’s more, many pilgrims carry on past Santiago to what they regard as the real end of the road—Finisterra (also called Fisterra), right on the coast. It seems the Romans thought this was the westernmost point in Europe (it isn’t quite), and it’s hard to know whether the correct translation of the placename is the familiar-sounding (and hence less resonant) “Land’s End”, or the more deathly and grandiose “End of the World”. There’s also an etymology of the city’s name that derives “Compostela” from the Latin for “field of the star”. Supposedly Saint James chose his burial place according to a star that hovered over the city. However, if it could be taken as “star field”, or even as having come from a plural, “field of stars”, something more interesting arises. Apparently, the Camino itself has often been referred to as “the Milky Way”, a reference usually casually associated with the sheer number of pilgrims being compared to the density of stars in the galactic band across the sky. However, I (as ever) wonder… Could the association be more to do with the Milky Way’s almost global reputation as the path that souls take after death?

This is how I reasoned from the scraps of information I picked up. Obviously I’ll have to do some proper research to flesh things out. I just found a piece about Galicia that ascribes the “star above the city” myth to someone discovering James’ tomb. Interestingly, that author also refers to Charlemagne having a dream of “a shining path of stars above the Milky Way which led to Compostela”. Also mentioned is the fact that the coastline north from Finisterra is called The Coast of Death. I’d gathered that this was from its long reputation as a shipping hazard, from ancient times through to modern oil tanker disasters. But it’s always worth spreading your net wide before you sort through your catch when fishing for psychospiritual gems in a landscape…

Oddly, and very sadly, death become real at the end of the Camino for a Danish woman I met in the hostel. I was talking with her in the kitchen about a friend of mine whose father is planning on walking the Camino, and about the fact that I’d gathered his wife had some concerns about him doing it due to his recent ill health. The Danish woman said she thought a wife should never stand in the way of her husband doing something, even if she’s extremely concerned for his health. She left the kitchen for a minute, then came back streaming with tears. She’d just found out on the phone that her husband had just died. She said he’d wanted to walk the Camino with her, but was busy with the work he loved so much. Of course she was devastated, but also wracked with a multiplied sense of inexplicability. Why did this sudden, unforeseen tragedy commemorate her completion of this sacred route?

Florence

Impossibly beautiful, everything it’s said to be and more. I instantly loved Florence, and even the hoardes of tourists totally fail to dampen the atmosphere of the city. The famed Uffizi Gallery, home to a staggering array of medieval and Renaissance art, is well worth the two-hour-plus queue (though obviously it’s better to plan ahead and book).

Val Camonica

I’d long been interested in this area through studying rock art in Britain, especially near Ilkley in West Yorkshire, and especially the Swastika Stone—which has a near-identical double here in alpine Italy.

The carvings here are radically different from Britain, though. For a start, the rocks are different—exposed outcrops that dwarf even those in Kilmartin, Scotland—and are made distinct by the sinuous glacial erosion. Interestingly, there are next to no cup-and-ring designs here, which are common in Britain and Galicia, where these cup-marks surrounded by concentric rings often occur near large natural basins in the rock. One carving in Galicia seemed to combine the natural basin and the concentric rings, leading me to wonder if the basins formed some sort of inspiration for the cup-marks, as natural flat-topped hills may have inspired Silbury. There are no basins in evidence in Val Camonica, but the lack of cup-and-rings seems to be more down to just an entirely different tradition than due to a lack of natural basin inspiration. The carvings themselves are very “light”, made with little pecks into the rock rather than deep grooves—possibly down to the hardness of the rock. And most glaringly, even though Galicia’s art sports numerous animals and some people, Val Camonica is in a league of its own regarding representations. Huge chaotic sprawls of carvings depict hunting scenes, ploughing, fighting, dwellings, animals, people, as well as a host of more abstract and “religious” imagery.

If you visit, head for the town of Capo di Ponte and look for signs to the museum or the Naquane park. There are many other sites nearby, but this is the place to start off. My time there was marred by a stunning bout of allergy suffering, my first since I left England. Now I’m back out of the Alps, I’m fine again. Such a shame to be allergic to nice places!

Books I’ve been reading

I spent much of my time chilling in Galicia avidly reading Steven Mithen’s fascinating book The Prehistory of the Mind. It’s a bit old now (1996), but it’s one of the best coherent theories of the evolution of consciousness I’ve read. It’s based on the recently popular concept of “mental modules”, where the mind contains specialized areas (perhaps, but not necessarily, corresponding to neural regions) that deal with major cognitive functions, such as those related to tool use, socialisation, and language (perhaps some invisible debt here to Leary & Wilson’s 8-circuit model?). Mithen argues that proto-hominids evolved these modules, but the extra “something” that made Homo sapiens so special is the ability to apply ideas from one region to another, which he terms “cognitive fluidity”. It basically rests human consciousness on the slippery foundations of capacity for metaphor and analogy. It’s immensely frustrating, though, to read a hefty tome that bases its theory of consciousness on the development of such “fluidity”, that makes no mention whatsoever of psychedelic plants—not even to dismiss the idea that they contributed in some way to the evolution of consciousness. I can hear Terence McKenna turning in his grave, albeit with a wry “What do you expect?” grin on his face. How these people can claim to be doing their job sometimes staggers me. Maybe Mithen will at least tell us why he avoided such an obvious topic (for those who have read the relevant literature and been to the relevant all-nighters) in his more recent work.

For the train ride to Florence and beyond, I picked up a copy of Jared Diamond’s Collapse. His Guns, Germs & Steel had been recommended to me, so his latest, looking at why societies in the past (Mayan, Anasazi, Easter Island, Norse Greenland) and present (Rwanda) disintegrated, seemed worth checking out. It is indeed an excellent book. Even though Diamond started the project aiming to look exclusively at ecological reasons for such collapses, he was forced to avoid “environmental determinism” and take into account other factors—most notably social values, and responses to environmental crisis—as well. What results is a fascinating, detailed lesson (or rather, course) in history, ecology, sociology and economics. Diamond treads an individual enough path to have both strident environmentalists and “eco-sceptics” in sharp disagreement with certain points, but his message is clear: global society is in grave ecological danger, and if we don’t start living within our means pronto, what will result is exactly the kind of nightmare scenario that, in order to dismiss calls for action as “doomsaying”, the sceptics love to attribute to environmentalists. He saves the best until last: a brilliant, scathing and largely unarguable dismissal of the most common “one-liner” dismissals of environmental concerns (such as “Environmental doomsayers have been wrong in the past” and “Technology will save us”). Read it, weep, and get off your arse.

Painted Cave Road

The first thing that caught my eye as I scrolled northwest from LA on Google Maps was the Chumash Painted Cave Park just north of Santa Barbara. Michael had told me before I slept on the hill in Topanga Canyon that we were at the border between old Chumash and Tongva territories, and I’ve been fascinated by archaic/traditional rock paintings for many years now, so it seemed like a good first stop on my journey back towards the Bay Area.

I wasn’t quite sure of where to turn off the 154 snaking north into the Santa Ynez Mountains, but when I saw that the name of the unassuming turn-off I was approaching was “Painted Cave Road”, I thought it was a good bet. Frequently reduced to the width of a car, this road wound up the steep mountainside in ever-tightening twists and turns. The actual cave – just tucked away slightly above a stretch of the road shaded by small trees – was fronted by marvellous natural honeycomb-like formations in the rock. Surely, I thought, a wonder that attracted the people who decorated the cave to this site in particular. It seemed no coincidence to me, either, that just a short clamber down from the road next to the cave was a babbling stream, flushing sparkling fresh water through this parched landscape (many rock art sites in Europe are also oriented in relation to water features in the landscape).

The paintings themselves lurked in the upper rear reaches of the shallow cave, the mouth of which was sealed off with iron mesh. It was only on inspecting photos that I could discern the obvious reason for this protection: pointless contemporary initials and other doodles etched into the original paints. The paintings themselves were crowded clusters of crosses, serpentine figures and circles with all manner of decorations suggestive of solar connections. One curious figure stood out as slightly anthropomorphic, with its apparent waving hands, odd triangular shape and strange top hat-like summit. Well worth visiting, as much for the stunning natural frame as the enigmatic art.

Pacific Coast Highway

Heading north past Lake Cachuma and on towards Santa Maria and the Pacific coast, I jammed the personal stereo adapter I’d picked up in Burbank into the car’s cigarette lighter socket and tuned the radio in to the weak FM signal it started broadcasting my MP3 player on. A nifty little solution, but not necessarily ideal. I pegged Sonic Youth’s blasted guitars as the best soundtrack for the blazing heat and semi-arid hills, but every now and then I’d pass a break in the enclosing landscape and some energetic Latino pop would take over for a minute. A surreal occasional taster of the airborne culture around me.

Morro Bay heralded the start of the breath-taking coastal drive, and by then I’d decided that I would press on to reach Big Sur before the end of the day. So, armed with a huge bag of nachos, some passable salsa, and Spearhead’s bouncing funk, I followed the setting sun northwest.

Big Sur

My main association with this place before arriving has always been the Esalen Institute, a centre for the “human potential movement” whose list of occasional teachers reads like a roll-call for popularisers of modern spirituality who are canny enough to avoid the tacky marshes of the New Age (think Terence McKenna, John Lilly, Colin Wilson, Alan Watts, Robert Anton Wilson and Stanislav Grof, for starters). Heck, Hunter S. Thompson was once the caretaker-cum-security there.

Well, I noticed the “by reservation only” sign for the centre’s 120 acre grounds in passing; Big Sur’s associations with people I’m influenced by were quickly swamped by the mind-stopping beauty of the place. Low, almost perpetually cloud-capped mountains rise to the east, the Pacific waves crash on the craggy shores, and in between Route 1 wends its way through stunning redwood forests. I felt like having a soundtrack, but nearly everything seemed out of place against such a swell of natural grandeur. Early Spiritualized instrumentals eventually fell into place as the perfect accompaniment. (It’s no coincidence that Sonic Youth, Spearhead and Spiritualized are in alphabetical order. As just skipping tracks is a damn sight safer than browsing through my music folders while driving, the fact that the perfect soundtracks for the series of landscapes through which I drove that day were by bands following each other alphabetically was a grand blessing of serendipity.)

I spent a night at the Fernwood motel, reading Michael Ortiz Hill’s book Gathering in the Names, occasionally unable to hold back a tear or two as I drank ale at the Redwood Grill. Co-written with Augustine Kandemwa, Michael’s “spiritual twin brother” in Zimbabwe, who initiated Michael as an nganga (healer), it charts the intertwined course of these men’s lives up to and past their meeting and mutual initiatory experiences. Michael’s experiences as a nurse in the UCLA Medical Centre, tending to the terminally ill, trying to comfort those with hideous facial cancers, dealing with the often cruel practices his job required of him, became the core of his attempts to ground his Buddhist commitment to compassion, via the African tradition of water spirits he had recently taken on. It’s sobering reading.

The nearby Henry Miller Memorial Library is well worth a visit, for books, sculptures, coffee and donation-based net access. (Miller said that Big Sur was the first place he learned to say, “Amen!” That’s quite a claim given the life he’d lived until he moved there, but then, Big Sur really is that stunning.) Of the local state parks, the Pfeiffer had the most humbling redwoods, though the Andrew Molera – with its meadows and big beach – ended up seducing me for the longest time.

After my second night, in a cabin by the redwood-lined Big Sur river, I was refreshed and ready for my last burst of the Bay Area before flying home via New York.

One last night with New York

I was glad I left a night and a day spare between my flight into New York from the west coast and my flight back to London – it gave me a chance to catch up on the whole trip with Gin, a new friend I’d only managed to briefly hook up with on my first pass through the city. It was hot, but not roasting in the extreme as during my previous heatwave-plagued stay, so it was nice to experience the place without nearly keeling over. We ended up bar-hopping in Williamsburg, catching a fantastic thunderstorm just after midnight, getting utterly soaked in gorgeous cooling rain. The next bar had a black-and-white photo booth, so we captured our merry, sodden selves for posterity.

Gin got really excited at the prospect that we might not have missed the free pizza at a bar near her place, but it was past 3am by then and it didn’t seem likely. Happily they were serving until 3.30. Half three in the morning, buy a pint and you get a good, free pizza. I’d not had pizza in New York so far; seemed like a good way to start, at the end.

I woke the next morning to Gin ragging me about London having won the Olympic bid. The proposed construction’s threat to the Lea Valley had left me lukewarm at very best regarding the 2012 Olympics in London, so I couldn’t even muster some playful boasts of nationalistic victory. We just headed over to Union Square to enjoy some cake from the farmer’s market and some stupendously good iced green tea smoothies.

Welcome home

My flight was from JFK at around 6pm, to land at Heathrow on the morning of the 7th July at around 7am (which would be around 2am by my barely-catching-up-with-New-York body clock). I decided to coast through the next day on caffeine and not crash until the next evening as a way of dealing with jetlag, so I drank some beer in-flight, watched National Treasure (my review: piece of shit!), and generally kept awake.

I was on the Piccadilly Line heading into London by around 8.30am, but the train kept stopping every now and then due to some sort of signal failure at Caledonian Road. By the time more delays were piling up – due to “power surges” – as we approached Zone 1, I was wishing I was back in New York with their air-conditioned subways (which I don’t know for sure are more reliable, but the “grass is greener” effect was kicking in as everyone on the tube started cursing London transport under their breath).

My aim for Finsbury Park as my place to switch to the Victoria Line was scuppered by Leicester Square, where the Piccadilly Line service was completely cancelled. I lugged my bags over to the Northern Line, and managed to get up to Warren Street to switch to the Victoria. Any hope of getting straight home was lost by Euston, however, where the tube just sat there.

It’s odd in retrospect; at the time, I was just increasingly irritated at London Transport, my whining Englishness just flooding back into place. Sat with about twenty other people in a tube carriage, doors closed, we listened to the repeated calls in the station for everyone to leave Euston as our driver repeatedly apologised for the delay.

Eventually the doors were opened and we were asked to evacuate the underground station. Up above at the main Euston rail station, it was pretty hectic, people asking staff in exasperation what was going on with very little information forthcoming. I decided to just grab a pastry and some water, go outside and rest for a bit.

It must have been around 9.45am when I was walking away from the continental pastry shop in Euston, when alarms sounded and a call was made for the whole station to be evacuated. It was a minute or two later, as I stood amidst the chaos of people wondering whether I should get out of this mess (still in my dazed mind something to do with transport inefficiencies) or just sit at a bench with the young Asian woman who was tucking into her sandwich, that an almighty BOOM startled us all.

It seemed to me to come from the direction of the station itself, with a muffled quality that suggested it was underground. In the next day’s slightly confused reporting, it seemed that the tube bombs had gone off in a haphazard staggered sequence, and I thought it was perhaps the Russell Square blast echoing back up the tube tunnels. But learning that all the tube devices went off together at 8.50am meant one thing: the bomb I heard was the Number 30 bus to Hackney, just round the corner in Tavistock Square, the sudden boom muffled and deflected by the buildings between it and where I stood at Euston.

My first reaction was to head for the nearest friend’s home, which was Lee’s place off Tottenham Court Road. But as I streamed with everyone else who was heading west along Euston Road, watching the police cars and motorbikes amass, aware of the helicopters above and sirens everywhere, still not really thinking too much about what might actually be happening, I at least thought: “Heading further into central London probably isn’t the best thing to do.” As it happens it seems Lee is currently out of the country, so that would have been a fruitless journey anyway. I was just desperate to be somewhere familiar where I knew I could crash out if necessary (this was around 5am by my time now!).

I headed back past Euston station, looking for signs of smoke from the station itself to no avail. No one was really panicking. Many people were milling about talking on their mobiles, some joking about the chaos, most queueing impatiently for the still operating but gridlocked buses or just walking away. I saw one young woman in tears on her phone. I just walked. Exhausted by lack of sleep and my ever-heavier rucksack, I slipped into the first green space I found, Oakley Square. I used “Oakley” once as a warm-sounding pen name, one that would reassure people that I was an affable old folklore researcher, not a red-haired druggie occultist. Maybe that echo of warmth drew me in, I don’t know. I just took my rucksack off, drank some water, and finished the last few pages of the book that I’d not managed to read on the tube. Sirens blazed down Eversholt Street.

I rejoined that road going north, and decided Angel was my best destination. There’s buses going my way there, the Victoria Line if it starts again, plus a company I do work for, someone familiar faces at least. I bore right, following my nose. A little way down this road, I overheard a girl on her mobile talk about some “gas explosions”. Hah! I chided myself for the panicky torrent of fears about terrorist attacks I’d built up by now. Gas explosions! Of course! (Hindsight note: gas derives from the Greek for ‘chaos’.)

But then my new-found clarity was derailed as the building I was passing became intensely familiar. What was this place? Where did I know it from? The realisation gradually arose out of the swirl of confused familiarity that I’d been here a few weeks before my trip to the States, to attend a Social Dreaming event themed ‘Living in Contemporary Times’. The idea of Social Dreaming is basically free associating between each other’s dreams, sticking to the dreams themselves, to gradually, and collectively, divine the landscapes of dream that we share, that reflect our social, global concerns rather than just our personal peccadilloes. The blurb for the event began:

Contemporary times are suffused by tragedy. Natural tragedies, like tsunami, cannot be avoided, but human tragedies can. AIDS, poverty, genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, threats to democracy, totalitarian-states-of-mind, Holocausts, Gulags, corruption, wherever they occur in the world, are now part of our conscious awareness because of mass communication. They cannot be denied, or wished away. And there is the unintended, silent, looming tragedy of global warming, which may end all civilization. Will the human spirit allow us to survive?

That day was interesting, but not exactly revelatory. Much more existentially shocking was this moment, realising I’d blindly wandered to this spot again. As I turned around to survey the area, I was boggled to see, just across the street, the other end of Oakley Park. It was this park that myself and Jeff Gormly (who invited me to the Framemakers symposium in Ireland) had briefly retired to during the dreaming event to stretch our legs. I’d not recognised it at all when I wandered in from the other end.

Of course, by now I realised I was actually heading for King’s Cross, so I thought maybe I would catch a bus there. However, I bumped into a small group of people on Pancras Road saying, for a start, there’s no way I was getting to King’s Cross, and, what’s more, this really wasn’t about gas explosions.

We were all pretty “up”, all set on getting to Angel whatever transpired, chatting happily to the overwhelmingly helpful people who directed us along the canals towards Angel. None of us really knew what had just happened – we just helped each other on our ways home. Forget “The Blitz Spirit” – this was just people thrown into nervous excitement by having their mostly dreary routine demolished, their weary crusts cracking open to let natural kindness and communal goodwill through.

I got on a 73 bus at Angel, still with no real idea what had happened. Approaching Newington Green, though, a guy got on with a little radio playing for all to hear. It’s strange and unnerving how events take on the hue of “reality” when you hear about them in mass media for the first time. Something between our need to share and collectively validate experience, and the many forms of bastardisation that modern politics and commerce have subjected this need to. In any case, the woman on the radio was talking about explosions on the tube network, plus an apparent bomb on a bus. People were probably safest in buildings, as there had been no warnings and public transport was being randomly targeted.

I wasn’t the only person to get off at the next stop.

I then realised that my MP3 player had FM radio, too, so I stuck that on to see what more information I could gather. It was only as I approached my friend’s hair salon on Stoke Newington Church Street that the reality that people had just lost their lives sunk in. I choked back tears, and arrived to meet the first familiar face of the day.

As I said, the whole series of events in London on 7th July have been very slow to sink in. Thankfully no one I knew was involved in any way – which left me pondering just how close my brush was. Some news sources, like the BBC, seem to have the ill-fated Number 30 heading towards Marble Arch before its diversion, even though the wrecked destination sign in all news images plainly says Hackney. Those going with this as the destination have the bus calling at Euston and then being diverted south towards Tavistock Square. There’s still confusion over the bus bomber’s actions. It seems obvious to me that the destruction of at least one above-ground target would serve the terrorist’s image-motivated purposes, giving us a clear picture of devastation for our fears to totemise. Even so, the speculation that the fourth bomber had caught the Victoria Line south from King’s Cross, only to get off at Euston when his bomb failed, catching the bus there and detonating late… It all inevitably conjures that “alternate timeline” of personal nightmare, where I don’t go to get a pastry, and decide to get on the first bus outside Euston going northeast.

Equally inevitable is the necessity of not dwelling on this, and trying to digest the realities of what happened. Especially, the reality of suicidal bombing attacks happening here and now in the city where I live. I’ve been tremendously encouraged by some of the reactions from Londoners. The refusal to be swept into knee-jerk reactions has been much stronger than I’d hoped – but then, the aftermath of 9/11, and the Iraq War, have really lowered the bar for hope.

I’m doing jury service at the moment, and it’s odd that I’ve had the opportunity of having dinner every day with a group of Muslims (among the rest of the east London cross-section in the juror’s canteen) in the aftermath of this event. Their response is pretty strong and united: why are these extremists wrecking decades of effort at integration in Britain? One woman was denouncing them for claiming support from the Koran, arguing that if it’s advocating murder, it’s not religion by definition. Part of me looked down on this as a bland state of denial; part of me wondered if she’s speaking from the heart, and would argue the case for loving religion in the face of every one of the billions of examples of horrendous violence committed in the name of a higher spiritual power. In all, I just felt it was good to have this close one-on-one contact with Asian Muslims in the wake of these attacks, an experience my routine never gives me. Even if they’re saying the same things that are flashed past you on the news, actually talking with people usually makes a huge difference. (Well, not the greatest revelation, but I need reminding sometimes, OK?)

With talk of laws against “indirect incitement” rumbling around Westminster, my heart sinks. I wonder if British people are feeling each report of bloody deaths due to suicide bombs in Baghdad a little more keenly now we’ve had a taste. It seems it’s only by extending our sympathies (think a little about that often trite phrase) more globally that we might have enough collective insight to unpick this nasty historical tangle we’re in. We already have enough laws to lock up pretty much anyone presenting the slightest danger to society. Passing new ones just looks like a political façade at best, a theatrical display of apparent “action”; at worst, we’re tying our own shoelaces together, setting ourselves up for some serious falls a little way down the line.

At a time when honest, open, fearless dialogue is merely the starting point for moving forward, new laws potentially restricting publishing, art and journalism would be disastrous. Extending our sympathies, in the widest sense, to everyone caught up in this brutalising cycle of oppression, dominion, pride, fear and revenge, requires much more than lip service to today’s victims and the frequent use of the word “evil”.

• Event date: 8th March 2002
• Venue: University of Durham

It’s a good three and a half years since I became too busy with London and web work to follow my interest in prehistoric rock art—carvings or paintings on rock surfaces—as closely as I used to. I attended a lively one-day conference on the subject up at the University of Durham back in 1998, so when I heard about their 2003 conference, entitled "New Developments in British Rock Art", I thought it would be a good chance to catch up on what remains a fascinating topic for me.

Fascinating or not, I didn’t get up in time for the first two lectures, which appeared to promise the most. Richard Bradley, the carefully open-minded author of Rock Art and the Prehistory of Atlantic Europe (Routledge, 1997), delivered a series of updates to this academic milestone. Following this, the much-loved, much-respected, and famously prolific non-academic researcher Stan Beckensall informed the less-lazy-than-myself of his recent perceptions of British rock art landscapes.

Naturally, my missing these two key lectures almost disqualifies me from being able to appraise this conference fairly. In fact, even as the marvellously engaging anthropologist Robert Layton summed up the day’s proceedings, I was writing off the idea of bothering with this review at all. However, the round of questions and answers at the end raised a couple of points that engaged me through making my blood boil. But before I mount my hobby-horse and lead a stampede of controversial ideas, please accept the caveat that I’m consciously using my impressions of this event to address my own obsessions.

A natural rock outcrop cup-and-ring carving in Achnabreck, Scotland (above), and a worked stone with more controlled patterns from Newgrange, Ireland.

Clive Waddington kicked off the afternoon with an interesting lecture that sought to draw contrasts between the European petroglyphs found in passage graves—predominantly in Ireland, but with some further south in France, Spain and Portugal—and those found outdoors on rocky outcrops, all along the Atlantic seaboard, inland in northern England, further northeast in Scandinavia, and down south in Italy. His argument centred on a series of binary oppositions, drawing attention to such contrasts as the predominantly organic, curvilinear forms in the outdoor rock art and the frequently angular, symmetrical patterns found in passage graves. He argued that these contrasts pointed to differing traditions of rock carving, perhaps separated by time, perhaps separated by modes of living.

This series of oppositions definitely had something to them, but were obviously—and I think Clive would acknowledge this—most fruitful if taken as starting points for debate rather than rigid categories. Certainly much of the discussion at the end dealt with elaborations on and refusals of Clive’s schema. I found it interesting in that part of his argument saw the ordered symmetry of patterns from passage graves—such as diamond shapes and zig-zag formations—as originating in human consciousness, and the rougher, less regimented forms out on rocky outcrops—most evident in cup-and-ring designs that blend with the natural weathering of rock surfaces—as being inspired by natural forms.

What caught my attention was the fact that in both cases, the argument was that these forms were inspired by perceived shapes: in the first instance, shapes theoretically perceived in "the mind’s eye", so-called endogenous ‘entoptic’ patterns seen in trance states (see my ‘Form & Meaning in Altered States and Rock Art‘ for more on this); in the second instance, naturally occurring forms seen in the environment, such as ripples in water. One guy grilling Clive about his models used the term "non-representational" as a general description of the glyphs being discussed, immediately reminding me of my old personal maxim, "There’s no such thing as abstract archaic rock art." I brought the issue up, fluffing it slightly due to lack of experience in public speaking, and Clive acknowledged that yes, "non-figurative" is probably a better term. Art can represent things other than human or animals forms.

Of course, this is one of the "puzzles" of British rock art: why are there no unarguable instances of figurative petroglyphs? In more human terms: how come France and Spain get all those lovely famous caves of palaeolithic creatures and we get this jumble of lines and circles? This might seem unscholarly, but it’s a real issue. Modern culture’s lack of appreciation for non-figurative art has resulted in a much greater public focus on the caves of Lascaux and Altimira than on the moors of Yorkshire and the graves of Ireland. Granted, the cave art is much older, but I maintain that our inability to psychologically interact with apparently "abstract" art is one of the biggest hurdles in the way of a successful pan-European project to assess these archaic relics. There was some talk of motions towards such a project at the conference, and funding was obviously the sticking point. But I offer my outsider’s view here: funding follows engagement and interest, and when there isn’t the obvious identification with figurative forms to draw out our human curiosity, we need to probe deeper into consciousness, past such ego-identifications.

In modern terms, "abstract art" and "representational art" stand opposed. Abstraction implies existence in the mind rather than in physical reality; representation means the duplication—allowing for artistic embellishment—of forms perceived in physical reality. In this sense, Clive was arguing that passage grave art is abstract (literally, if it depicts forms from trance visions), while the open-air glyphs lean more towards being representational (even if they are abstracted to an extent to cater for whatever the purpose of the art was).

At the heart of the argument, then, is our ontology: where is the line separating physical and mental reality? To me, the controversy and confusion caused by theories about trance states are rooted in this philosophical minefield. It is true that some trance states bolster the idea of mind being separate from matter; but it is also true that some obliterate this distinction. And sometimes a trance journey encompasses both perceptions, its course being mapped and defined by the constantly evolving relationship between mind and matter. Pursued honestly, this realisation results in a relativist view of consciousness wherein virtually every state of consciousness is a form of trance, and part of the trance’s definition is to what extent it maintains or dissolves the boundaries between mind and body, and between body and environment. This, as Nietzsche might say, is dynamite. It challenges our identities, and our sanity. It is also the least-explored, widest, and most crucial road in our age-old investigative inquiry into the nature of our place in the world.

To ground this vision in the topic of prehistoric art, look at the idea that the more regular, ordered, symmetrical patterns in passage grave art attest to an imposition of the human mind on nature. No doubt this is a strong element in understanding this art—it neatly reflects the growing human control of the environment in the agriculture of the time (the Neolithic). But my own experiences reveal another, vital layer to the issue. While experiencing dynamic visual distortions due to hallucinogenic intoxication, the rough, organic irregularities of the surface of a boulder I was gazing at gradually coalesced into shimmering lattices of regular patterns: diamond shapes, nets, webs, grids… classic entoptic patterns. But I saw this on the rock surface. Due to my cultural background, and the relatively low dosage of drug I had ingested, I could easily recognise this—after the experience if not during it—as the projection of my own neural patterns onto a natural surface.

But how can we be so sure about a Neolithic person’s perception? We can’t be sure in any direction, but all ethnographic evidence points towards primitive cultures holding a much looser conception of the distinction between culture and nature than we do. I’m inclined to believe that 5000 years ago, someone having the same experience as I described above could well see these forms as arising from the rock itself. Besides being evidence of a delusion—mistaking neural projections for environmental phenomena—this also reveals a subtle truth: that our brains are wholly embedded in the natural matrix, and operate in this continuum. It is culture that maintains the boundaries in this continuum. While I’ve no doubt that prehistoric cultures did have boundaries of this nature, I think that our own very rigid boundaries (almost inviolable in most quarters) drastically limit our ability to appreciate this archaic art.

Stan Beckensall unwittingly touched on something important near the end of the day with a throwaway comment about theories regarding the origins of these abstract forms in altered states of consciousness. Other questions from audience members prevented me from trying to get on my high horse in person about this, so please allow me to do so here. His comment was (I’m paraphrasing): "We live in a very drug-oriented culture, so I think we should be wary of this in our thinking. I’m interested in a more naturalistic approach to this, looking at the shapes in children’s drawings."

The first point to raise here, which my friend scribbled to me on my notepad, is that you don’t need drugs to alter consciousness: music, dancing, sensory deprivation, physical pain, isolation, and a host of other techniques work pretty well for many people.

Beyond that, there are a series of what I consider very important points about consciousness-altering drugs. Much as I respect and identify with Stan’s independance of mind and enthusiasm for his subject, his shortfallings are revealed here as a cultural blindspot. It’s a vast blindspot, widely shared by others, so it’s worth addressing here without it being seen as a specific attack on Stan’s views.

Firstly, there is the idea that primitive societies using drugs is somehow contentious. This is without question our own cultural prejudice. I’d be interested to hear about any other cultures in history who have waged such a vigorous war on drugs as us. Again, ethnographic evidence shows us that none of our distant cousins who prefer to live without cities and states are in the slightest bit prudish about sampling plant intoxicants and socialising or ritualising their use. Drug use is as natural to humans as making tools. Indeed, their use may be even more "natural" than tool-use. Zoology tells us that animals, too, like those bits of nature that get them off their heads (I’ve not read it yet, but Giorgio Samorini recently published a definitive book on this subject, Animals and Psychedelics: The Natural World and the Instinct to Alter Consciousness). In this sense, then, in observing children drawing, we are looking at a much less "naturalistic" phenomenon than that of tripping on mushrooms.

Then we come across a more obvious hole in Stan’s comment. Not only is drug-taking apparently an entirely natural part of a conscious organism’s interaction with the environment, the specifically consciousness-altering chemical compounds in many plants are either found as, or are close relatives of, neurotransmitters in the human brain. Most significant, I think, is the tryptamine family, which comprises psilocybin (4-phosphoryloxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine: the main active compound in psychedelic mushrooms) and DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine: found in the Amazonian ayahuasca brew), among others. Sat closely alongside these we find Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine: a very important human neurotransmitter). Actually, DMT itself is found in trace quanitities in human spinal fluid.

This is important enough to warrant repetition: our own bodies naturally contain compounds that, when found in plants and eaten, are viewed by many with suspicion, their ingestion being "unnatural". Once you take this on board, it never fails to astonish!

Observing children drawing is extremely important to understanding pre-literate art. But my view is that it’s effectively the same chemicals at work. Adults often need a neurological boost, in the form of a top-up of tryptamine activity, to access this "uncultured" state. I find it quite funny to be arguing this point now, when four years ago I wrote an article where I tried to demonstrate the primal nature of vortex-like imagery by juxtaposing a drawing given to me by a friend’s young daughter, and a painting I myself did while intoxicated with mushrooms.

Robert Layton’s summing up contained an important observation. In dealing with questions like the origin and meaning of art in prehistoric societies, questions that by definition can never be finally answered, the important thing is knowing when to stop. I immediately recalled Hakim Bey’s discussion of Saussure finding anagrams in Latin poetry (see ‘Aimless Wandering‘). The influential linguist found, for example, that "syllables of character’s names were echoed in words describing those characters". However, he was perplexed when he begun to find such hidden correspondences everywhere, even in prose, and in Latin poetry by modern authors. He wrote to these living classicists to ask if they were

the heir to a secret tradition handed down from Classical antiquity—or are you doing it unconsciously? Needless to say, Saussure received no answer. He stopped his research abruptly with a sensation of vertigo, trembling at the abyss of pure nihilism, or pure magic, terrified by the implications of a language beyond language, beyond sign/content, langue/parole. He stopped, in short, precisely where Chuang Tzu [the Taoist sage] begins.

I would say that the roots of humanity in prehistory qualify as an intellectual abyss equivalent to that of the roots of language: abysses that can be banished, via reductionism, for the purposes of getting on with mundane intellectual work, but which will haunt the theorist if they are not allowed any space to breathe. For myself, I’m continually fascinated by the point where Saussure stopped and Chuang Tzu begins, and the fruits of traversing back and forth across it. Most academics have the comfort of being professionally obliged to stop short of this vertiginous boundary. But I believe this course of inquiry will grow ever more stale if the significance of what lies beyond is continually dimissed.

So, for me at least, there were no new developments at this conference. For people with other obsessions, perhaps there were. All I can say now is that I’m not holding my breath in waiting for a significant number of people in this field to fully digest the implications of the psychedelic experience for the study of the earliest human art.

by Gyrus

Rock art has recently begun to cause more than a little conflict in academic archaeology. Curiously, the controversial discovery that some rock art was inspired by what we call ‘shamanism’ and ‘altered states’ was made through the dogged pursuit of scientific method, not through ‘fringe’ research. But as these areas brush against some of the deepest levels of the human psyche, they have inevitably raised a few hackles.

While not made in reference to these aspects of rock art, Richard Bradley’s comment that rock art research "must contribute directly to archaeology if it is to achieve anything of value" (Bradley 1997: 8) is interesting. Evidently archaeologists are eager to keep their ‘sub-discipline’ firmly in their grasp. It can’t help to have bugbears such as shamanism and altered states arriving on the scene. The first is a classic example of a multi-disciplinary phenomenon, due to it being essentially ‘pre-disciplinary’. The latter, more often than not, utterly transcends such conceptual categories. Gradually, more and more respectable archaeologists, like Bradley, are paying heed to the ‘trance interpretation’ of rock art. But perhaps there is a lingering fear that the act of studying altered states and shamanism will influence those doing the studying, as it has in areas such as anthropology and psychology. Such influences may begin to dangerously loosen the boundaries of archaeology—boundaries that have been diligently erected in archaeology’s long struggle to gain the status of being a ‘science’…

A Trojan Horse?

Western science’s first attempt to grapple with subjective geometric hallucinations (after Dronfield 1996). Images on the left are identified as ‘entoptics’ arising from neurophysiology during altered states; images on the right are identified as possibly arising from such states, but not exclusively.

The ‘entoptics’1 theory of geometric rock art arose from comparisons with hard neuroscience data. But however much the theory was smothered in references to neurological studies, and decorated with reassuring graphs and tables, it carried with it the unmistakable whiff of non-ordinary consciousness. For perhaps the first time, this phenomenon could confidently raise its head in archaeology as well as anthropology, neuroscience and psychology departments. Not the romanticised magic associated with prehistory by early antiquarians; not the megalithic astronomy described by Professor Thom; not even the communal experience of formalised ritual. All these have been dismissed or absorbed by archaeology with relative ease. But the personal experience of losing contact with consensus reality and entering a wholly Other world raises too many questions and, let’s face it, fears. Can we really grapple with this sort of subjectivity when envisioning the distant past? We have so many problems tackling it now!

Altered states can not only shed light on the origin of form in some rock art; they can assist in assessing the possible significance of all rock art. Altered states radically affect our apprehension of meaning, and help considerably in expanding our capacity for modes of signification that are less linear, monolithic and immutable than the traditions Western thought has inherited. Thus, worked with sensitively, they may provide keys to unlocking symbolic possibilities in prehistoric art and architecture—even if these relics’ only connection to ‘altered states’ is the fact that they were created by cultures whose entire mindset was constantly ‘altered’, in relation to our own.

Models of trance

To begin with, we must look at the distinctions made in the ‘pure’ trance theory of rock art. ‘Entoptic’ images are generally understood to be abstract geometrical images (lines, dots, dashes, circles, spirals) that arise in the early stages of a trip to the otherworld.2 ‘Endogenous visual phenomena’ are entoptics whose forms are seen to specifically arise from neural structures, especially those of the optical nerves.

This preliminary arena of geometrical imagery should be familiar to all with even mild experience of altered states. The literature associated with dimethyltryptamine (DMT) seems particularly relevant here. Although DMT occurs in many plants with a history of shamanic usage, and can even occur naturally in the human brain (Most 1986), it is usually used in the West in its smokeable synthesised form. When smoked, one immediately feels its effects; within a minute or two one reaches the peak of the trip. And one returns to ‘normal’ consciousness after about 15-20 minutes. The astonishingly rapid action of this compound means that the various stages of trance are tightly compressed, and are thus made clearer for explanatory purposes. Building on extensive accounts of various people’s experiences, Peter Meyer (1994) breaks the DMT trip into levels, which may be used to model many similar forms of trance:

Level I: Pre-hallucinatory experience

This stage is characterized by an interior flowing of energy/consciousness.

Level II: Vivid, brilliantly coloured, geometric visual hallucinations

Here one is observing a patterned field, basically two-dimensional, although it may have a pulsating quality. One may remember having seen this before.

Transitional Phase (Level IIB?): tunnel or breakthrough experience

One may see or fly through a tunnel… A veil may part, a membrane may be rent. There is a breakthrough to another world (or perhaps even a series of breakthroughs). Alternatively, it may happen that the transition from Level II to Level III is abrupt, almost instantaneous, with no experience of transition.

Level III: Three- or higher-dimensional space, possible contact with entities

This stage is characterized by the experience of being in an "objective" space, that is, a space of at least three dimensions in which objects or entities may be encountered. Sometimes the entities appear to be intelligent and communicating beings.

Level II is the arena of entoptic imagery, and is the prime concern rock art researchers looking at abstract geometrical shapes. It is these forms that are posited as being transcultural, arising from the very structures of the human nervous system. The ‘transitional’ phase also enters this arena in rock art studies. Bradley (1997) associates the concentric circular patterns in cup-and-ring art with tunnel-like images common to entry into profound altered states; Dronfield (1996) associates these images with both the tunnel-like entrances and the spiral art found in passage graves in Ireland.

Level III is what I call ‘full visionary consciousness’, and can relate to rock art that depicts representative forms (e.g. therioanthropic images). This level is seen by most rock art researchers to be culture-bound. That is, the forms of entities (spirits, gods, ancestors) encountered here—and the transformed identity of the voyager—are clothed with culturally-defined expectations. Thus, for example, an Amazonian ayahuasquero‘s3 Level III may be replete with jaguars and anacondas, while a San medicine man’s Level III may be clothed with antelope and giraffe.

An obvious question, though, is whether a San person taken to the Amazon to partake of an ayahuasca ritual will still find the otherworld populated with African fauna. Are Level III’s ‘clothes’ contained within the acculturated portions of a person’s mind, or can they emerge from a highly transpersonal interaction with the immediate ecosystem? A friend visited the Amazon recently and, during an ayahuasca ceremony, saw, alongside angels from his Catholic upbringing, a very unusual animal he had never encountered before. Days later he saw this otherworld animal’s real counterpart in the jungle. Suffice it to say that Level III is much too vast a can of worms to really prise open in this article!

Narrow visions

I’ve only come across one archaeologist who has busied himself with dismissing the ‘trance theory’ area of research. In British Archaeology, Paul Bahn wrote an article called ‘Stumbling in the footsteps of St Thomas’ (1998). He compared the rise in attempts to interpret prehistoric rock art in terms of shamanic altered states to 16th century Christian missionaries who attributed ‘footprints’ in South American rock art to St Thomas. This analogy was in fact a thinly disguised attack on the students of the MA in rock art at Southampton University, which was devised by Thomas Dowson (the analogy also insinuates a degree of hoodwinking in Dowson’s teaching methods). The students on this course responded to the attack, and in his reply to this Bahn said that his article had brought much congratulatory feedback, and that the only negative response was from the students in question. Nevertheless, the only response to the article printed in British Archaeology (not from one of the students in question) rightly criticised Bahn for universally dismissing the ‘shamanic hypothesis’ (Chapman 1998). And in the commentaries on Dronfield’s article in Cambridge Archaeological Journal, from a variety of experts in the field, Bahn stands alone in his dismissal of altered states.

Bahn appears to be quite isolated in his opposition to this field of study, and criticism of his reactionary views may appear redundant. However, his biases are no doubt shared by many other less public voices, and a close examination of what they represent should prove useful in divining and breaking down restrictive attitudes to rock art and altered states in general.

Firstly, it must be said that his main point of criticism is actually based on important perceptions:

Interpretations in rock art studies—and indeed in archaeology as a whole—come in cycles or phases that often reflect their period and cultural background. Hence Lerio-Gourhan’s binary and sexual approach was born of the French structuralism and the sexual revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, and the astronomical approach came into its own during the Space Age. The current paradigm, trend, fad or bandwagon—as one might call it depending on where one’s own sympathies lie—seems to be the direct legacy of the drug culture of the late 1960s and 1970s, with its attendant interest in mysticism and shamanism, hallucinogens, altered states of consciousness, etc., all of which have coalesced into the massive ‘New Age’ literature of the 1980s and 1990s.

Paul Bahn (in Dronfield 1996)

Some crucial distinctions need to be made in this inaccurate morass of classification, if we are to clearly understand the cultural juncture we stand at which has made academic contemplation of theories about phenomena such as entoptics possible.

His use of the term ‘New Age’ implies an awareness of this field not very far removed from that of the average tabloid reader. The social phenomenon that calls itself ‘New Age’ is not really concerned with hallucinogens and authentic shamanism. The "drug culture of the late 1960s and 1970s" has not coalesced into the ‘New Age’. A diversification has occurred, leaving the more fad-driven factions in the public eye. However, far below the cultural horizons of Daily Express readers thrives a bunch of serious researchers concerned with psychedelic shamanism (see works by Terence McKenna, Jonathon Ott & Jim de Korne) and altered states in ritual (see works by Dave Lee, Phil Hine & Jan Fries).

But then all this solid exploration would be neither here nor there to those who see it as some backwash from the sixties. To these people, interest in altered states is merely a decadent and temporary fad, which we’ll probably all ‘grow out of’ sooner or later. Just like the Amazonian ayahuasqueros, Mexican curanderos, Indian tantrikas, African Bwiti cultists and San medicine men, Siberian and Eskimo shamans, Haitian voudon priests, Australian Aborigines, Nepalese sorcerors, Hawaiian Huna healers, Huichol Indians, and Native Americans, I suppose.

The dismissal of the "cycles" of archaeological theory as ‘fads’ amounts to a misperception of the way we are gradually recovering awareness of our environment and experience. Professor Thom’s megalithic astronomy theories may well have been made possible by the cultural milieu of the Space Age; but they uncovered a vital aspect of megalithic culture that now has a firm place in the archaeologist’s collection of lenses with which to view prehistory. The "’shamanism’ bandwagon" we are now "suffering" (Bahn 1998) is neither a bandwagon nor something to wake up screaming about—unless of course your ego structures are so rigid that they view challenges such as altered states with abject terror. No—it is a recovery of awareness.

Interpretations old & new

I have begun to take a shine to the view that all cultures have ‘interpreted’ art and monuments left by previous cultures. And yes, each interpretation says as much about the interpreting culture as the originators. Medieval peasants often ‘interpreted’ prehistoric cup-marks as places to make libations to elemental spirits (see Bennett 1998). The clergy from the same period had very different ideas about such relics, usually involving Satan and his little wizards. Interpretations in the twentieth century have chopped and changed as rapidly as Western culture in this period. But there is a vital distinction to be made between the interpretations of country folk up into living memory, and those made by academic researchers. Pre-twentieth century rustics, unlike most rock art researchers, still retained the archaic feeling that the land is alive with spirit. And, most importantly, they used and interacted with these remnants of cultures long gone.

Most academics, in looking at the "cycles" of modern interpretation, neglect the larger picture. Our current view of archaic art reflects our alienated paradigm, wherein we study the environment in an uninvolved way, never thinking (or daring?) to interact with it. In this sense, there is a much larger gulf between medieval peasants and us than there is between medieval peasants and their Neolithic ancestors. I fully recognise the difficulties in using folklore collected over the past two hundred years to gain ideas about the original purpose of prehistoric carvings and monuments; but even if the specifics are wide of the mark, the essential perception that nature is alive, and bursting with sentience, brings us much closer to understanding these relics than any quantifiable, measurement-based fieldwork.

Another interesting aspect of Bahn’s attack is that he cites our obvious inability to "be sure" what rock art motifs were intended to represent as an argument against the ‘trance vision’ interpretation. All I can say is that a human whose vision is only interested in what can be known with absolute certainty is hideously impoverished. Bahn says that "one of the joys of prehistoric art is that it does not necessarily require interpretation, and can convey huge amounts of information of other kinds—in its technology (including pigment analyses), in its location, … and in its dating." (1998) Joys?! In the end it’s each to their own—but I’d rather not limit myself to such meagre data purely because it’s a ‘safe bet’. That isn’t to dismiss the essential work in the arenas mentioned; it’s just to say that a timid self-restriction to these ‘certainties’ cannot hope to fulfil healthy human curiosity and need for meaning.

Multiple meanings

Various meanings ascribed to circular forms in aboriginal Australian art by aboriginal informants. From information collected over the past 100 years from across the continent (after Layton 1992).

We’ll never decisively nail down the significance of prehistoric rock art, obviously. But why should we not try to unfold the many possible meanings, and let them exist untethered? This may broaden our vistas of past art, and perhaps of present and future art, too. Indeed, much ethnographic evidence (e.g. Layton’s study of Aboriginal art, 1992) suggests that preliterate artists never even intend that elusive singular ‘meaning’, the certainty that scientistic researchers vainly lust for. Abstract symbols such as Aboriginal concentric circles or European cup-and-rings are obviously amenable to polysemy, the existence of many meanings. In Australia we have clear ethnographic accounts to help us in interpretation; in Europe we have scant folklore (though this may often be useful, as I have already mentioned). But even if we cannot safely ascribe Aboriginal meanings to cup-and-rings here, we can at least appreciate the importance of polysemy in preliterate signification—and realise that we can neither nail singular meanings to our prehistoric art nor shy away, in reactionary fear, from attempts to raise plausible possibilities.

Petroglyphs from Puuloa, Hawaii (after Cox & Stasack 1970).

A linguistic example of polysemy, which may show how alien singular meanings are to many non-Western cultures, occurs in relation to petroglyphs in Hawaii. At Puuloa, a large hill of solidified lava, there is testimony from the nearest inhabitants that cup-marks are used when a child is born (Cox & Stasack, 1970). They translate ‘Puuloa’ as meaning ‘Hill of Long Life’; when a baby is born, they go there to carve a new cup. They place the baby’s piko—which may mean ‘umbilical stump’ or ‘umbilical cord’—in it, cover it with a stone, and leave it overnight. "If the piko remained overnight (or disappeared—there is conflicting evidence about which would be effective) long life would be assured for the child." (ibid.) But piko is not limited to only two possible meanings:

As a noun it refers to the navel, navel string, and umbilical cord. Figuratively it can be used to refer to a blood relative and also to the genitals. It can be used to describe the summit of a hill, the crown of the head, tip of the ear, end of a rope, and the place where a leaf is attached to the stem. There are many other meanings, as is the case with very many Hawaiin words.

(ibid.)

Polysemy reveals a richness of signification that has become more and more alien to us since monotheistic literalism and the codification of language represented by dictionaries. The associations that polysemy weaves between different ideas and forms—wonderfully evident in the above example—allow for a perception of the world that owes more to the self-similar hierarchies of fractal theory than to the cut-and-dried isolation of meaning inherent in the Western rationalist paradigm.

But how in hell do you know what someone’s going on about with this many possibilities? In short: the ambiguities of communication are ironed out with context—either surrounding words and symbols, or, more interestingly, bodily presence. In using language that can refer to many things, it is vocal tonality, and the silent expression of gesture, eye contact and generalised ‘body language’ that steers verbal vehicles of expression:

In more traditional worlds … I’ve noticed that people remain much more attuned to the languages of gesture; where there’s no TV & "nothing ever happens", people watch people, people read people… I never knew this till I lived in Asia. Here in America, people react to you most often on the basis of the idea you project—thru clothes, position (job), spoken language. In the East one is more often surprised to find the interlocutor reacting to an inner state; perhaps one was not even aware of this state, or perhaps the effect seems like "telepathy". Most often, it is an effect of body language.

Hakim Bey

Here we need to appreciate the subtleties implied in the term ‘altered state’. It needn’t necessarily imply a wild trance, a voyage into the otherworld. A native of Darjeeling, in relation to our ‘normal’ consciousness, is in a constantly ‘altered state’. Culture is a drug—and each variant has its own nuances, induces differing sensitivities to environmental cues and sensory stimuli. We rarely notice that we’re loaded on culture because most people around us are too. This awareness of ‘altered states’ needs to be applied to signification in prehistoric art—to realise that these carvings were originally perceived from a totally different standpoint to ours, even by ‘passers-by’.

Transcending the borders of sense

Our understanding of polysemy may also be fruitfully enhanced by more intense altered states. Most interesting of all are experiences of synaesthesia (most common when using potent psychedelics), where signification becomes a complex trans-sensory experience that far surpasses frozen words. Polysemy is no longer: "This thing here may refer to that, that, or that"—because the extra dimensions and dynamic nuances involved in psychedelic spaces allow a transcendence of the linearity of language, and the ‘piecemeal’ signification it involves.

Clearly, some form of mutually agreed-upon system of signification is still needed to understand symbols arranged in such a space; but a right-brained task like this may well be simpler for ‘preliterate’ cultures than for our own, just as it is often simpler for someone who is stoned on tryptamines than for someone who isn’t. Terence McKenna’s fieldwork in the Amazon has convinced him that the "magical songs of the ayahuasqueros, the folk medicos of the Indians and mestizos of the jungle back rivers, are not song as we understand the term. Rather they are intended to be seen and to be judged primarily as visual works of art. To those intoxicated and adrift upon the visionary reveries unleashed by the brew, the singing voice of the shaman has become a magical airbrush of color and organized imagery that is breathtaking in its alien and cosmic grandeur." (McKenna 1991)

A mild experience of such synaesthesia once opened me up to new possibilities in rock art. Having taken some 2CB (a synthetic phenethylamine), I went to the Badger Stone on Ilkley Moor to experiment with harmonic chanting. I put my face about 5 inches from a bare, uncarved surface and began chanting. I kept my eyes open. What occurred was a meshing of entoptic phenomena (usually assumed to manifest behind closed eyelids) and exterior reality—in this case the plain rock surface.

But it isn’t ‘plain’ at all. It is alive with the tiny crystalline structures that compose the rock surface itself. There’s no ‘blank canvas’ in rock art! As I chanted, the irregular pattern of these crystals smoothly coalesced into a regular lattice-work pattern, always gently shifting. Embedded in this lattice were diaphanous symbols—the usual lines and circles, again always mutating. Their form and movement appeared to correspond to the modulation of my voice.

Carvings on the Badger Stone (after Hedges 1986).

As I hit a certain tone, the patterns seemed to reach a certain stability, and the atmosphere was charged with a pregnant and slightly ominous expectation. Nothing dramatic followed. But my feeling was that if I had taken a slightly larger dose, or perhaps if I had managed to side-step the familiar shock that impending tears in the fabric of reality induce, I would have gone into the rock.

This reminded me of an article I had read:

In many cultures, the shaman in his trance passes through the rock into the spirit world, and to communicate what had happened in the trance, the shaman depicts what had happened on the other side on the rock… In addition, several contemporary shamans have acknowledged that the rock art is a marker for where a shaman could enter the rock.

Grant S. McCall

Could vocally-induced altered states, perhaps aided by other trance induction methods, have played a part in the genesis of some rock art? There is strong evidence that acoustic effects such as echoes play a part in the Korku tribe’s decisions for locating rock paintings, and Steven Waller has found unusual echoes at over 100 rock art sites across the globe (Trubshaw 1997). Whether this idea can be extended to include the more intimate use of voice seen in my own experience is unclear; but the notion of entoptic phenomena being seen, not behind closed eyelids, but on the rock surface itself, is surely intriguing when considering rock art. Even more intriguing is the idea that the genesis of some prehistoric visual forms may have been rooted in synaesthetic experience, and owed as much to sonic performances as they did to purely ‘visual’ phenomena.

Transmedia contexts

We should realise the full extent to which our division of ‘the arts’ into respective media—writing, song, dance, visual arts, etc.—may blind us to the function of rock art. The term ‘multimedia’ has recently narrowed in meaning to refer to shoving a CD into a computer. Perhaps we should adopt the term ‘transmedia’ to refer to attempts to break down the walls between various artistic media in an active, body-centred way (see P-Orridge, 1997). ‘Transmedia’ is to separate artistic media what synaesthesia is to the five senses; and both may inform our view of preliterate cultures.

Citing Nancy Munn’s research into the teaching systems of Aboriginal mothers, where symbolic visual elements, hand gestures and language are utilised simultaneously to impart information about the mythical landscape, Robert Andreas Fischer (1997) argues:

So-called orality within indigenous societies has … never existed. Oral communication is the tag non-alphabetical literate societies have received from alphabetic literate societies. In reality, so-called oral communication is composed of an extremely sophisticated, multi-layered, polysemic codification-system of simultaneous communication systems. The "orality" of indigenous societies is actually a form of "savage multi-mediality".

We cannot let any trace of our ‘frame & gallery’ approach to visual art distort our investigations into carvings that were probably part of a culture where different artistic media flowed into each other, and merged with the environment.

In the archaic universe all things were signs and signatures of each other, inscribed in the hologram, to be divined subtly.

Giorgio de Santillana & Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill

In unearthing rock art’s many possible meanings, we must be cautious about saying that meanings ‘belong’ to such-and-such a painting or petroglyph. Especially when dealing with abstract symbols. For if we are to take the Aboriginal mothers’ methods of teaching to be a viable contextual possibility for prehistoric rock art, we must consider the possible replication of the symbol in other media, and even in the environment.

What I mean by this can be seen if we visualise scenarios around, say, the Badger Stone. Perhaps some symbols on the stone are replicated in geoglyphs on the ground before it, or on body paintings or tattoos. It is impossible for those present to consider these symbols as wholly distinct from the bodily motions, ritual actions, vocal performances or stories woven around and among them. The symbols on the stone are not the foundation or ‘base’ of the web of significance; they are merely elements in the network. (But then the same is true of all symbols, even today—only the linearity of prose blinds us to this.)

This network extends outwards beyond human society. A cup-and-ring could relate to the form of a burial construction (see Bradley 1997), a water source, a heavenly body (e.g. the Pole Star—see Oakley 1998), a whirlpool, a tunnel to the otherworld, or the circle of the horizon. The network of meanings could also extend inwards beyond culture: to the eye, mouth, breast, nipple, navel, vagina, anus, or neural structure. Any or all of these references could coexist simultaneously in the web of meaning.

Similarities between the forms of cup-and-rings and monumental structures (after Trubshaw 1997).

This vision of signification, with meanings floating in a complex pool of cross-references, where symbols are only anchored to human life through ritual and the body, is what I have been led to through my experiences of altered states and my study of rock art. It obviously presents a difficult challenge to Western academic traditions (be they institutionalised or not). Because the only language that can grapple with this vision is one that owes as much to poetry as to prose, and more to play than to work. Finally, maintaining this vision requires something that totally breaks the present boundaries of intellectual study: active involvement.

There is a huge amount of study to be done, and fun to be had, in interpreting and revitalising archaic artforms. We should not let the inherent uncertainty and multiplicity of meaning involved in this task discourage us; but rather appreciate and enjoy the many-faceted, unfixable nature of reality that makes these things inherent. Beyond entoptics, I feel that it is in the comprehension of this more general paradigm that altered states—both subtle and intense—will benefit rock art research.

A personal testament to the archetypal nature of vortex imagery. I did the finger-painting on the left after a psilocybin-fuelled Chemical Brothers gig, 7/10/95. Six months later the 5 year-old daughter of a friend spontaneously presented me with the drawing shown on the right.

Footnotes

1. Championed by David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson. ‘Entoptic’ literally means ‘inner eye’. [back to text]
2. I like the term ‘otherworld’, despite its neo-Celtic connotations. To me it simply signifies a self-consistent world that is Other than this one, only accessible via altered states. Its after-death connotations are, given shamanic testimony, entirely appropriate. [back to text]
3. An ayahuasquero is a shaman whose sacramental psychedelic is the potent brew called ayahuasca. This comprises varying hallucinogenic plants, usually DMT-containing varieties, plus the harmine-containing Banisteriopsis vine. [back to text]

References

• Bahn, Paul, 1998, ‘Stumbling in the footsteps of St Thomas‘ in British Archaeology February 1998
• Bennett, Paul, 1998, ‘Cup-and-Ring Art: Its Folklore, Myths, and the Shamanic Perspective’ in Towards 2012 part IV, Unlimited Dream Company
• Bey, Hakim, n.d., ‘Evil Eye’, http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/bey/sp000536.html
• Bradley, Richard, 1997, Rock Art and the Prehistory of Atlantic Europe, Routledge
• Chapman, Bill, 1998, Letter in British Archaeology April 1998
• Cox, J. Halley & Stasack, Edward, 1970, Hawaiin Petroglyphs, Bishop Museum Press
• de Santillana, Giorgio & von Dechend, Hertha, 1999, Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating The Origins Of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth, Godine
• Dronfield, Jeremy, 1996, ‘Entering Alternative Realities: Cognition, Art and Architecture in Irish Passage-Tombs’ in Cambridge Archaeological Journal vol. 6
• Fischer, Robert Andreas, 1997, ‘Protohistoric Roots of the Network Self’ in Towards 2012 part III, Unlimited Dream Company
• Layton, Robert, 1992, Australian Rock Art: A New Synthesis, Cambridge University Press
• McCall, Grant S., n.d., ‘One Medium, One Mind’, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/3339/rockart.html
• McKenna, Terence, 1991, The Archaic Revival, HarperSanFrancisco
• Meyer, Peter, 1994, ‘Apparent Communication with Discarnate Entities Induced by Dimethyltryptamine (DMT)‘ in Lyttle, Thomas (ed), Psychedelics, Barricade Books
• Most, Albert, 1986, ‘Eros & the Pineal’, http://www.magnet.ch/serendipity/dmt/eros.html
• Oakley, G.T., 1998, Verbeia: The Goddess of Wharfedale, Norlonto
• P-Orridge, Genesis, 1997, ‘Thee Splinter Test’ in Towards 2012 part III, Unlimited Dream Company
• Trubshaw, Bob, 1997, ‘The Altering State of Rock Art Research’ in At The Edge no. 8

A !Kung dancer falling into the !kia trance

by Gyrus

When the Dutch began to settle in southern Africa in the 17th century, they called the indigenous hunter-gatherers the San.1 ‘San’ is a word used by the native cattle-herding nomads of the valleys of the Cape of Good Hope to refer to the peoples of the higher grounds and mountains. The Dutch also used the term ‘Bojesman’ to refer to these people, which turned into ‘Bushmen’; this term became widely used in the West. Because of the racist and sexist connotations of this word, current anthropologists prefer the term ‘San’.

Many different, but intimately related cultures are embraced by the term ‘San’, and they cover a large area of southern Africa. The names of individual San tribes are mostly ‘given’ titles—for instance, the !Kung2 call themselves the Zhun/twasi, ‘the real people‘. There are strong cross-connections between the different San peoples in their religious beliefs and social lives, but the information I’ve used here is from the !Kung in the north and the /Xam to the south.

The San live on a diet of gathered plants—roots, berries, fruits and nuts—and hunted game animals—antelope, giraffe, warthogs and birds. Women do most of the gathering, though sometimes they kill smaller animals. Men do most of the hunting, but like the women they possess an extensive knowledge of the local plants—the !Kung have been called "superb botanists and naturalists."3

Awareness of the special relationship between the San and one type of antelope, the eland, has been heightened by rock art research. The Drakensberg Mountains, in Lesotho, contain one of the greatest concentrations of prehistoric rock paintings in the world. The closest contemporary San people to this area are the /Xam, but information from the !Kung has also been integral to shedding light on this art, demonstrating the common cultural bonds across space and time among the San. No San continue to produce rock art, but through examining interviews with San from the 19th century onwards, rock art researchers have begun to elucidate some of the probable meanings behind paintings done by the San long ago. San culture has been forced to change over recent centuries, because of the influx of white settlers and because of their increasing interaction with pastoral cattle-herders. Nevertheless, the survival of traditional ways of life has been strong enough to carry some of the psycho-mythical patterns of ancient San rock-painters into the present.

This essay will be necessarily simplified, as my main aim is to look at the ways in which testimony from modern !Kung and /Xam, and the testimony of past San left painted on rocks, reveals the specifics of how San relate to the eland. Our core concern here is how the eland as a physical reality—its behaviour, physiology, and the process of hunting it—stimulates and meshes with the eland as a vital symbol in San social and spiritual life.

Figure 1: Rock painting from Fulton’s Cave, Giant’s Rock, Lesotho

The eland is not the only animal hunted by the San, but they prize it highly. It is central to many ceremonies, and seems so important to San rites de passages (like a girl’s first period and a boy’s first kill) that Lewis-Williams has called it the San animal de passage. The rock painting in fig. 1 should be familiar to readers of Towards 2012 from Chris Knight’s article on menstruation and the origins of human culture. It was originally thought to represent a burial rite, but evidence from San people implies that it is most probably a ritual based around a girl’s first period.

In such !Kung rituals, the girl lies beneath a kaross, an animal skin robe, secluded in a specially constructed hut. There is an association between this ritual and what is known as "eland sickness"—for the !Kung, the symbolic importance of illness and menstruation are intimately related.4

The !Kung’s Eland Bull dance is performed for this event; women clap their hands and dance around the menstrual hut, mimicking the mating behaviour of eland cows, swishing the ‘tails’ they wear. All these elements can be read into the Fulton’s Rock painting. In the dance, one or two elder men imitate eland bulls, using sticks as horns, sniffing the dancing women. This is seen as the climax of the ceremony, and the whole dance "is so beautiful that the girl in the menstrual hut weeps, overcome by the wonder of it."5 During the dance, an eland is said to appear—symbolically, but as a living reality for the participants. The faded figure of an eland can be seen in the bottom left of the Fulton’s Rock painting.

The girl herself is associated with the eland in numerous ways. Special ‘respect words’ have to be used when referring to either. When asked why it is an eland dance (as opposed to any other animal dance), !Kun/obe, an old !Kung woman, said, "The Eland Bull dance is danced because the eland is a good thing and has much fat. And the girl is also a good thing and she is all fat; therefore they are called the same thing."6 Research into steatopygia (supposed ‘excess’ of fat in the buttocks) has shown that a store of fat is necessary in women for the menstrual cycle, and during puberty a girl’s fat store is almost doubled.

For the !Kung, fat is linked with fertility and balance. A !Kung euphemism for sex is ‘to eat or drink fat’. They are greatly interested in the fat of the eland, which is used as part of ointments rubbed on girls during their menstrual rites. Eland fat, particularly fat accumulated around the heart of the male, is one of many things thought by the !Kung to possess n/um, ‘supernatural potency’, which is most effectively transferred or communicated through the sense of smell. They consider the odour of cooking fat, and of the girl during the dance, to be highly pleasant. On coming out of menstrual seclusion, !Kung girls make a mixture of eland fat and certain plants, and go around every hearth in the camp, placing some of the mixture in each fire. Thus n/um is transferred from the eland to the girl, and from the girl to the whole group. This ritual is seen as essential in the maintenance of socio-cosmic balance among the tribe, a balance that ensures enough fat for the girl, food for the people, and rain for the land. But not too much, especially not too much food; a glut of supplies is seen to cause petty bickering.

Another link to the eland is found in an expression used by the !Kung to describe a freshly menstruating girl: "She has shot an eland."7 She is thus regarded in terms of being an animal and a hunter. The bond is furthered in a custom which dictates that a girl coming out of menstrual seclusion should look down to the ground; then the eland will look down as well, making it easy for the hunters to stalk up on them.

This brings us to the complex of observances and rituals clustered around hunting, especially those associated with a boy’s first eland kill. The core aspect of hunting is the intimate link between the hunter and his prey. This link forms the central axis around which the hunting process revolves.

Figure 2: A rare instance of a San painting showing a hunter shooting an eland, from Lariston, Barkly East, Lesotho

Arrows alone are not enough to kill large game animals such as antelope; so they coat the tips, which remain embedded after the shaft has broken off, with poison. They must then return to camp, and track the animals the next day to find where it has died.

While walking away from the animal he has shot, a hunter must not hurry. He must walk slowly, because if he quickened his pace or ran, so too would the animal. Back at the camp, he is questioned about his hunt. He will never answer directly. If he has been successful, he will say that he only saw the animal’s tracks, or that a thorn had stuck in his foot; the others will know from this that he has shot an antelope. When a !Kung boy has shot his first eland, he doesn’t return to camp until late afternoon. First, he makes a fire, and uses the ashes to draw a circle on his forehead with a line running down his nose. This imitates the red tuft of hair on the eland’s forehead, deepening his link to his prey as well as signalling wordlessly to the others on his return that he has had success.

Like menstruating girls, boys returning from their first kill are isolated in a hut. The /Xam build a special hut for this, and the hunter is cared for as if he were ill. And he is ill, in a sense, because of his bond to the eland. He must be quiet, and act as if his life-energy, like the eland’s, is ebbing away. Otherwise, the poison may be ‘cooled’—made ineffective.

The supernatural being /Kaggen is a part of many San cultures, and he often intervenes during the period when a hunter is trying to be sedate. He comes in the form of a mantis or a louse, and will try to irritate the hunter in various ways to trick him into waking, lashing out, or otherwise breaking his link to the dying animal. /Kaggen works on behalf of the antelope, and prevents the hunter from becoming complacent about his task of maintaining a bond with his prey.

The next day, the animal is tracked to see if it can be found. When a !Kung boy’s first eland kill is found, he does not approach it directly, "he crouches down behind an old man and places his arms around him; they both then pretend to stalk the animal. . . . [T]he position is like one adopted by a medicine man and a novice when the young man is learning how to go into a trance and to cure".8 A fire is lit, some parts of the eland are cooked, and the eland medicine dance is danced, "in praise of the fat". Medicine men go into trance and use the n/um they raise through dancing to heal.

Returning to the camp, the boy is praised by the tribe, and the remaining parts of the eland are cooked and shared. Sitting in the centre of the spread skin of the eland, the boy is ritually initiated. He is scarified on his arms, and a mixture of eland fat and plants is rubbed into the cuts; this combination of bleeding and anointing again echoes the menstrual rites. In !Kung terminology, scarification ‘creates’ a hunter just as the Eland Bull dance ‘creates’ a woman. Both are children who have died, to be recreated as members of society ready for marriage.

Marriage itself is connected to hunted animals. If a man desires a woman for marriage, he will leave an animal he has killed outside the huts of the woman’s band, demonstrating his ability to provide food. There are numerous variations on this and what follows, but again game animals, especially antelope like the eland, form a major part of a phase of social and individual transition.

Discussing !Kung marriage customs, where the groom gives eland fat to his bride’s parents and the bride is anointed with eland fat, Lewis-Williams confronts a major question: why is the eland in particular, and especially its fat, so important? He did not reach any conclusions until he discussed it with the !Kung. Apparently, in most antelope species, the female has a greater store of fat than the male. In the eland, this is reversed. The large accumulation of fat around the heart of the bull eland means that males have more fat than females. Lewis-Williams emphasizes that this is a point "which the !Kung themselves find remarkable: it excites their interest and they consider it to be an important distinguishing feature of the eland. The animal is, in their thought, almost androgynous in that, by the male’s possession of so much fat, the usual differentiation is uniquely reversed."9 And so, menstruating girls are spoken of as hunters; and a boy who has killed his first eland is cared for as if he were menstruating.

Sexual difference is one of the most basic polarities of human life, and of most animal life. It is not, though, a fixed duality; it is a dynamic relationship, especially among humans, where it is governed by fluid cultural categories. Among the !Kung, shifts in these categories are treated as liminal zones, where androgynous symbolism (rooted in eland physiology) signifies transition and sacred ‘betweenness’.

Asked why the word tcheni, meaning ‘dance’, is used as a ‘respect word’ to refer to eland, a !Kung informant said: "Your heart is happy when you dance."10 Their healing dance rituals are often associated with the killing of game animals, celebrating the sharing of meat and the relaxation of social tensions. Moreover, such dances form the very centre of !Kung social and spiritual life.

Popular perception of ‘shamanic’ cultures often carries with it an image of the shaman as a lone figure who is consulted by the tribe for healing and other purposes—an individual mediator between the tribe and the spiritworld. In !Kung culture, there are shamanic figures, called ‘medicine men’ by anthropologists, who specialize according to the quality and associations of the n/um, spiritual energy, they possess. Thus there are those who possess springbok medicine, eland medicine, rain medicine, locust medicine, giraffe medicine, etc. But despite this specialization, shamanic activity among the !Kung is much more communal—being focused in the collective healing dance—than the situation suggested by the ‘lone shaman’ image. "In fact, everyone is encouraged to try to learn to heal, and over half the men, and ten percent of the women usually become healers."11 Even those who do not attain this status participate actively in the dance. For example, the common form of the dance is for the women to sit around a fire while the men dance around them in a circle, moving one way round then the other. The women’s clapping and singing acts as an inspiration and source of guidance for the healers entering deeply bewildering and powerful trance states. The communal aspect of the !Kung ceremonies is again reflected in the way the dancers will care for each other as individuals enter deep states of ecstasy, often supporting and attending to the bodies of those whose souls have temporarily left to journey into the spiritworld.

The trance state itself is the probable reason that more people do not become healers. It is powerful; sometimes dangerous, often feared. The !Kung hold that n/um is stored in the pit of the stomach or base of the spine. The process of prolonged rhythmic dancing and singing ‘boils’ the n/um, causing it to ascend up the body, and to be excreted in the form of sweat on the upper body. This experience may cause one to shiver and tremble, and can cause nasal bleeding (streams of blood can be seen to emanate from the noses of many dancing figures in ancient San rock paintings—see fig. 3). This blood, particularly its smell, can be used in healing or to induce trance in neophytes. The peak of the trance—full visionary consciousness, associated with ‘out-of-body’ experiences—is attained when the boiling n/um reaches the skull, inducing a state known as !kia. Entering this state is likened to dying. More mature and experienced healers can avoid the bodily collapse, rigidity, trembling and moaning that !kia often induces, but no one enters !kia without respect for the precarious balance between life and death that it signifies. The experience is braved over and over again for the simple reason that it allows access to dimensions where invaluable healing, both physical and spiritual, both individual and communal, becomes possible. The !Kung believe that everyone is latently sick, and that physical or mental illness is merely the manifestation of what is there all the time. Thus they not only treat tangible ailments, but through their healing dances work to stop sickness from manifesting, a form of ‘preventative medicine’.

Figure 3: A row of dancers entering trance, from Fetcani Glen, Barkly East, Lesotho. Note the nasal flows and the hooves instead of feet in some instances.

Once more the eland figures in this special ritual. !Kia ‘death’ is likened to the death of a shot eland. "When an eland is pursued, it sweats more than any animal; this sweat, like the sweat of a medicine man, is considered by the !Kung to contain very powerful n/um. Brought to bay and near death, the eland trembles and shivers, its nostrils are wide open, it has difficulty in breathing and its hair stands on end . . . As it dies ‘melted fat, as it were, together with blood’ gushes from its nostrils".12 In interpreting therianthropic figures in ancient San rock art—e.g. humans with antelope ears or hooves—Lewis-Williams suggests that they represent healers in trance. Approaching !kia, the healer possessing ‘eland medicine’ may feel him or herself take on the form of that antelope, and retain that form throughout their journey in the spiritworld. Taking on the form of an animal expresses the radical shift in self-image that !kia precipitates. Brain chemistry, energy structures in the body, and consciousness itself are transformed through the dance, and the !Kung encapsulate their inner understanding of these shifts by linking them to their observation of the animals that sustain them:

As the eland stands at the entrance to male and female adult status and to marriage so, for those who possess its supreme potency, it is the medium which gives access to the mystical experience of trance.13

Once more the bonds between the San and the eland are brought to life, through intricate natural symbolism.

Footnotes

1. From the !Kung San page at the Lawrence University Department of Anthropology, now defunct. [back to text]
2. The various symbols like exclamation marks used in San terms indicate their use of clicking sounds in their pronunciation. [back to text]
3. From the !Kung San page at the Lawrence University Department of Anthropology, now defunct. [back to text]
4. This association doesn’t seem to carry the incredibly negative (and taboo) connotations of our own culture’s view of menstruation, as the following discussion will show. [back to text]
5. A !Kung informant, quoted in Lewis-Williams, p. 45 [back to text]
6. ibid, p. 48 [back to text]
7. ibid, p. 51 [back to text]
8. ibid, p. 59 [back to text]
9. ibid, p. 62 [back to text]
10. ibid, p. 64 [back to text]
11. From the !Kung San page at the Lawrence University Department of Anthropology, now defunct. [back to text]
12. Lewis-Williams, p. 91 [back to text]
13. ibid, p. 100. This aspect of shamanic practice, like many primal magickal techniques, has survived (or re-emerged) into the Western occult tradition. Talking of Aleister Crowley’s use of Golden Dawn techniques to enter and explore the ‘astral plane’ by assuming a god-form, Kenneth Grant notes that Crowley "chose the form of Horus . . . He sealed the plasm of his astral body in the mentally formulated image of a golden hawk (a vehicle of Horus) and, in that form, he explored the subtle aethyrs of the universe." (Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God) [back to text]