Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal

Psychedelics, Spirits and the Sacred Feminine: Communion as Cultural Critique

Cameron Adams

Any

perusal of trip reports found online (for example on erowid.org), as well as in ethnographic reports of shamanism, shows that communication with entities plays a key part in these experiences. Though the entities may take a variety of forms, the psychedelic itself is commonly personied as female; a manifestation of the Jungian Sacred Feminine. Though ethnographic materials do conrm a crosscultural association of psychedelics as female, these do not support an archetypal interpretation of the feminine. Instead, I assert that these tools draw out not only the individuals shadow but also the cultural shadow of the society and thus acts as an effective cultural critique. In my own research on cosmopolitan psychedelic culture in general and on psychedelic healing in particular, the use of these substances invokes a sense of nurturing, love, and an approach to balance a s s o c i a t e d w i t h f e m i n i n i t y. Fo r e x a m p l e, psychotherapeutic effects include alleviating emotional imbalances, doing personality work, dealing with end of life fear, inner exploration, working with interpersonal relations and spiritual development. These experiences lead to a heightened sense of well being through a sense of unconditional love and acceptance where ones experience can be assessed as it is without judgment. This is commonly associated with a connection with earth and cosmos, a focus on nature and an acknowledgement of the beauty of all things. To my research participants, these are seen to be feminine qualities. This is further reinforced by the use of the personal pronoun she when referring to psychedelic substances, in particular plant based psychedelics such as ayahuasca and Salvia divinorum, with fungi and laboratory chemicals being less feminised. Yet, in ethnographic contexts, where the psychedelic substance is also considered to be feminine the typical motifs include, but are not limited to becoming the ancestors who set up reality and culture as it now is, supernatural warfare (including healing related to witchcraft), divining criminal and/or antisocial acts, entering the spirit world to negotiate with spirits on behalf of the living

and the shamanic journey of death and rebirth (Dobkin de Rios 1993; Eliade 1964). The contrast between these two experiences of a feminine spirit begs us to evaluate what it means to be feminine, and why these divergent motifs are applied to ostensibly the same entity or phenomenon. It is Sherry Ortners (1974) assertion that in all societies women are subjugated. It is further argued that this is due to a universal attribution of male endeavour to culture and of female existence to nature. The argument is that due to the biological facts of reproduction, women are limited in their action, while men, freed of these biological constraints, can apply themselves to the elaboration of the arts, technology and religion; in short cultural activities. Though, on the surface, this argument seems to imply a certain universality to masculine and feminine roles, the truth is in no way so simple. Goody and Buckley (Goody 1969; Goody and Buckley 1973), in reviewing sexual division of labour cross-culturally, nd that, with the exception of the biological fact of reproductive roles, there is no hard and fast universal as to what men or women do. Likewise, Moore (1994) notes that the cultural uidity of womens roles, make it impossible to assert a communality based on shared membership in a universal category woman (9), leading Loftsdttir (2002) to remark that the sign woman [is] characterised by diver sity rather than singularity (306). The same, as an obvious corollary, can be said of man (Gutmann 1997). In fact, in the review of the anthropology of masculinity, Gutmann makes clear the fact that the only universal aspect of femininity and masculinity is that they create each other; they are boxes constituted by biological facts of male and female into which diverse collections of cultural material can be ung. Yet, Gilmore (1990), in an ironic echo of Ortner, argues that men in many cultures believe that women simply are born women while men need to create and re-create themselves in the model of an ideal masculine type. This is seen to be focused on the accumulation of power at each others expense and

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amounts to a narrow honing of male identity. In other words, the masculine role becomes rather well dened while the feminine is allowed to remain relatively vague. If the masculine is developed within narrow tolerance while masculine and feminine are cocreated through each other, we are left with a denition of the feminine as encompassing the unpredictable, unconstrained, possibly undervalued, potentially dangerous, but more than anything, the unmasculine. Of course, as we have seen, this can encompass a wide variety of specics as exemplied by the Hindu feminine as idealised in Kali who conveys death, destruction, and the consuming aspects of reality. As such, she is also a forbidden thing (Kinsley 1997). The idea of the unpredictable and unmasculine feminine is brilliantly expressed by Jack Nicholsons character, Melvin Udall, in the lm, As Good as it Gets, when he replies to a fans question about how he writes women so well with I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability; reason and accountability being denitive of masculinity in this case. The rise of masculinist focused denitions of culture appear to begin with the transition from foraging to horticultural societies. Band level organisation is characterised by (relative) social equality and generalised resource sharing. Men hunt while women forage, yet all is shared widely. In this context, division of labour is an integrative force. However, as population size increases beyond the ability to maintain dense face to face networks, more land becomes managed to provide for vegetable matter, which consequently reduces the availability of game (Fittkau and Klinge 1973). Vegetable forage and horticulture (i.e. womens economy) remain plentiful and predictable and can be shared easily, in the rare occasion that plant food must be shared. Yet, hunting becomes more unpredictable making generalised sharing of meat impossible, thus heightening its economic and alliance value. Accounting of sharing becomes standard and thus network development and maintenance through economic means arises. Mens work takes on a different social meaning and valuation than does womens work. In this context, we nd the rise of male power, and thus, masculine denitions of society. One aspect of the masculinist bias of cultural ideals is found, of course, in religion. Geertz (1966) argues that religion promotes moods and motivations appropriate to the culture in question. These moods and motivations act as cultural ideals, and that which is not encompassed by these is repressed. As Harris (1997) notes, these spiritual, and ultimately cultural, ideals are held to be within the realm of men; women are often excluded or not held to the same ideals or standards. The aspects of everyones personality, as we all exhibit the full range of human emotions, moods and motivations, that fall short of these ideals and are thus repressed can be referred to as the Jungian concept of the Shadow (Goldsmith 2010; Shulgin 2002). Likewise, the aspects that fall outside of these ideals, but are still available to women, as they are not held to the same standards of social discourse, comprise a form of socio-cultural shadow. However, as these aspects of the shadow must be dealt with on a regular basis, they form the shallows of the enshadowed profundity of human experience. However, in acknowledging that the feminine is, perhaps, best dened as not masculine, lets not become too enchanted by Ortners assertion that the feminine is in all cases a subjugated and powerless class. For example, it is common for women to be excluded from mens ritual activities, not because they are unworthy, but in some cases, because it is feared that if the women have access to the ritual paraphernalia they will take social ascendancy (Gregor 1985; Hays 1988; Murphy and Murphy 1985). Further, postmenopausal women are able to achieve the status of honorary men in many cultures (Cheater 1986; Sullivan 2001) that allows them the full spectrum of masculine and feminine action for that community. In fact, this trans-gendered boundary crossing seems to be the source of power as exemplied by the common practice of transvestism among the worlds shamanic practitioners (Eliade 1964). The power of the feminine in western mythology is exemplied by the episode of Odysseus and the sirens. The allure of the feminine is represented in the irresistible song of the sirens and its power is only dwarfed by the inevitable death awaiting whomever hears the song and is irresistibly drawn to the singers. Yet, Odysseus displays the idealised classical cultural traits of craft and industry to mediate the danger of the titillating feminine. By plugging the crews ears and having himself tied to the mast, Odysseus is able to dip into the dangerous feminine without suffering the consequences. I interpret this as a mythological reication of the power of Geertzs moods and motivations over the discounted emotions. Likewise, shamanic techniques of ecstasy (Eliade 1964) -- in the case under discussion, psychedelics -- provide the

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means to enter the shadowy shallows without drowning in the dark depths. It matters not what the specics of masculine or feminine may be. What I am really doing here is destabilising our idea of what the feminine is. When we hear or read people describing psychedelics as feminine spirits, we naturally envisage our own model of femininity. The concept of the feminine may be universal, but it is structural; a vessel in which we drop culturally specic ideas. The feminine is unpredictable, dangerous and erotic not because of any innate quality but because it is the manifestation of what we culturally downplay. It titillates and threatens destruction, but what it titillates and destroys is merely the masculine denition of idealised culture. That said, what we experience as entities in the psychedelic experience, or by extension other altered states of consciousness, and to which we ascribe Jungian archetypes, may not be what they appear. As the similarities and differences between aliens, fairies, elves and angels attests (Brown 2008), it is clear that anomalous experience, particularly that of numinous quality, is cloaked in the cultural trappings of the observer. This is not to argue the ontological status of such entities, but rather to make clear that as we enter a state of loosened associations, which makes such experiences increasingly likely, we are nevertheless obligated to process these experiences or encounters through our cognitive and cultural lters. In this context, the feminine acts as a critique of society. As we dip into the cultural shadow that manifests as feminine, it shows us what we value as a society through the stark relief of presenting what we dismiss. The psychedelic feminine is the gateway into the shadow from which the arbitrary boundaries of culture can be perceived and normality and rationality redened. This may very well be the healing, teaching and reworking that the entities we encounter in the psychedelic experience perform upon us. References As Good as it Gets [Motion Picture] 1997 United States: TriStar Pictures and Gracie Films. Brown, R.A. 2008. Angels and elves, archetypes and aliens: Anomalous encounter experiences viewed through a depth psychological lens. Ph.D. Thesis, Pacica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA. Cheater, A.P. 1986. The role and position of women in pre-colonial Zimbabwe. Zambezia 13(2), 65-79. Dobkin de Rios, M. 1993. Twenty-ve years of hallucinogenic studies in cross-cultural perspective. Anthropology of Consciousness 4(1), 1-8. Eliade, M. 1964. Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fittkau, E.J. and H. Klinge. 1973. On biomass and trophic structure of the Central Amazon rain forest ecosystem. Biotropica 5, 1-14. Geertz, C. 1966. Religion as a cultural system. In Anthropological approaches to the study of religion (ed.) M. Banton, 1-46. New York: Praeger. Gilmore, D.D. 1990. Manhood in the making: Cultural concepts of masculinity. New Haven: Yale University Press. Goldsmith, N.M. 2010. Psychedelic healing: The promise of entheogens for psychotherapy and spiritual development. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press. Goody, J. 1969. Inheritance, property and marriage in Africa and Eurasia, Sociology 3, 55-76. Goody, J. And J. Buckley. 1973. Inheritance and womens labour in Africa. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 4(2), 108-121. Gregor, T. 1985. Anxious pleasure: The sexual lives of Amazonian peoples. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gutmann, M.C. 1997. Trafcking in men: The anthropology of masculinity. Annual Review of Anthropology 26, 385-409. Harris, M. 1997. Culture people nature: An introduction to general anthropology, seventh edition. New York: Longman. Hays, T.E. 1988. Myths of matriarchy and the sacred ute complex of the Papua New Gunnea highlands. In Myths of matriarchy reconsidered (ed.) D. Gewertz, 98-120. Sydney: University of Sydney. Kinsley, D. 1997. Tantric visions of the divine feminine: The ten mahavidyas. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Loftsdttir, K. 2002. Never forgetting? Gender and racial-ethnic identity during eldwork. Social Anthropology 10(3), 303317. Moore, H.L. 1994. A passion for difference. Essays in anthropology and gender. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Murphy, Y. and R.F. Murphy. 1985. Women of the forest. New York: Columbia University Press. Ortner, S.B. 1974. Is female to male as nature is to culture? In Woman, culture and society (eds.) M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, 6787. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Shulgin, A. 2002. Psychedelic therapy and the shadow. Presented at the Mind States Conference, Negril, Jamaica, 16 October 2002. Audio podcast av a i l a b l e f o r f r e e d o w n l o a d a t : h t t p : / / www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?p=163 Sullivan, L.P. 2001. Those men in the mounds: Gender, politics, and mortuary practices in late prehistoric eastern Tennessee. In Archaeological studies of gender in the southeastern United States (eds.) J.M. Eastman and C.B. Rodning, 101-126. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. C a m e r o n Adams, Ph.D., is a medical, cognitive and ecological anthropologist currently i n t e re s t e d i n psychedelic c u l t u r e , psychedelic medicine and ecological consciousness. He currently holds a temporary lectureship at the University of Kent while conducting web based research on virtual communities. He also co-organised Breaking Convention: A Multidisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic consciousness.

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